Beyond The Therapy Box

15/09/2026

If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know I talk a lot about the power of play 💚

And why I try and reassure parents who worry that their child won’t “do any work” or won’t sit down for “therapy”

These words capture a few of the reasons why.

Which quote speaks to you?

13/09/2026

When learning feels like a battle, it can be tempting to focus on the bit we can see.

The refusal.
The avoidance.
The tears.
The “I can’t”.
The walking away.
The sudden silliness.
The child who seems to know it one day and not the next.

But the visible response is often only the surface.

Underneath, there may be far more going on.

The language may be too complex.
There may be too many steps to hold in mind.
They may need longer to process what you’ve said.
Starting the task may be the hardest part.
The sensory load may already be too much.
The motor demands may be greater than they look.
Anxiety may be taking up the space needed for thinking and learning.
The activity just isn’t meaningful or novel enough for their brain to focus.

And sometimes the route itself just doesn’t fit the child.

That’s why “try harder”, more repetition or more pressure isn’t always the answer.

Instead,
we need to get curious about what is making learning hard in the first place.

Because when we understand what’s underneath the struggle, we can start clearing some of the obstacles and help them find THEIR way.

That is the part I want to talk about much more here.

I think we hear a lot about following a child’s interests but not enough about why that’s important or about other demands that might be a factor.

Does your child sometimes really want to do an activity but can’t ?

Or are they just not interested at all ?

07/09/2026

07/09/2026

Speech therapy has left the building…

…and found language everywhere.

Beyond The Therapy Box.
Quite literally. 🌿

Speech therapy has left the building…

…and found language everywhere.

Follow along for ideas to support speech, language, literacy and learning through child-led play (all ages!) movement and everyday life.

Beyond The Therapy Box. Quite literally. 🌿

04/09/2026

He’s “just gaming” …

But when I look at this with my Speech & language therapist / early years educator eyes, I see far more than that.

Reading. Planning. Memory. Problem solving. Vocabulary. Strategy. Negotiation. Research. Persistence. Communication. Flexibility. Self-advocacy. Learning systems. Trying again.
There’s actually a really long list of skills & knowledge they could be developing…

Not every game, and not every child, will involve all of those things.

But this is exactly why I keep coming back to LOOK AGAIN.

Sometimes the communication and learning isn’t missing.

We’re just looking for it in the wrong place. Or through the wrong lens ..

What does your child love to do that other people might dismiss as “just…”?

02/09/2026

I’ve worked with children for years and I still keep finding new reasons to LOOK AGAIN.

I’m looking forward to reading these two…

There can be so much going on underneath when a child who appears to be “not listening”, “not trying” or “refusing”.

Often the most useful question is:
What is their brain being asked to manage here?

And reflect on what can we do to make things easier, safer and more accessible…

What’s something you’ve learned about (or a book you read) that completely changed how you interpreted someone’s behaviour?

01/09/2026

If your child is dreading going back to school, it might not be the schoolwork that’s too much.

The hidden demands of a school day can be enormous.

Think about everything a child is being asked to do before we even get to the learning.

Listen while filtering out scraping chairs, other children talking and movement around the room.

Work out what an adult means, often from lots of spoken language delivered quickly.

Remember several instructions while finding the right book, getting a pencil and working out where everyone else is up to.

Know when to speak, when to wait, when someone is joking, when the rules have changed and what to do when they haven’t understood.

Stop one thing and move onto another because the bell says so.

Plan. Organise. Start. Shift attention. Remember. Inhibit. Regulate. Recover.

And then do it all again.

And somehow communicate what is wrong when, by that point, they may not even have the words for it.

A child can be bright, curious and completely capable of learning and still find the “demands around learning” overwhelming.

Sometimes “I hate school”, “I’m not going”, headaches, shutdowns, explosions after school, or seeming to cope all day only to fall apart at home are telling us something important.

Not necessarily that a child needs to get better at tolerating school.

But that we need to become much more curious about what school is asking of them.

And if school has already become too much and you’re now facing home education, you might be wondering:

“What on earth do we do instead?”

If that’s you, I’ve made a free guide, “Not Going to School. What Now?” to help you find your feet without feeling you have to recreate school at home.

Comm.ent GUIDE and I’ll send it over to you …

💬 What part of the school day seems the most difficult for your child ?

31/08/2026

We discovered all this not far from home today 😍

Old chapels, wild horses, tiny roads we’d never been down before.

It reminded me how much can come from simply wandering, noticing and following our natural curiosity for a while.

Not every meaningful experience needs to be planned, structured or turned into a lesson.

Sometimes you just wander & wonder. ✨ learning all the time 👌🏼