Playful Connections

12/10/2025

🙉 Stick with me here as I share my starting term reflections!

💪 For years I tried to form “healthy habits” - jumping on exercise bandwagons, beating myself up when I inevitably fell off! I was all or nothing, if I missed a day I felt like a failure and just gave up.

🧠 Now I understand my brain works on ROUTINE - not habits! If I really unpack it, there are lots of little routines I have in my day that I barely notice. But the most important one for my mental health, and for the purposes of this explanation, has been understanding how exercise can be part of my routine.

✅ For me, that means it starts the night before - getting all my stuff out and ready before bed, having lights out by 10pm, knowing what I’m going to wake up and do so I’m not stuck with indecision in the morning!

🤷🏻‍♀️Because it’s part of a routine, it does mean that sometimes the steps don’t line up and then the exercise doesn’t happen - but I no longer beat myself up about it because I know when the conditions are right again, I’ll do it. This means I can miss a day (or even 2 weeks in the school holidays) and not feel like a failure!

🤔 How does this relate to my work and why am I posting it here?!
When conditions are right, when the steps are in place - we set kids up to succeed. We can also show them that sometimes the conditions aren’t right, and when that happens it’s ok if the outcomes looks and feels different.

💗 When we think about supporting kids, this idea really matters.
If a child doesn’t do something we thought they could or would, it’s worth pausing to reflect: Were the steps of their routine in place? Were the conditions right for success? Often it’s not about can’t or won’t, it’s about what was missing from the sequence that helps them feel safe, ready, and supported.

🌱 Routines and predictably help us to thrive, we also need to show ourselves compassion when life gets messy or looks different! It’s not about white knuckling it and “never giving up” - it’s about responding to our needs and the environment around us.

23/09/2025

🌟 Have you been wondering about your child’s communication development?
🌸Are they commencing in a new environment in 2026 and you’d like to be sure their needs are met?

🤹🏻‍♀️ Term 4 is always a bit topsy turvy, but that also means I have a handful of appointment times available across the term to offer for one-off screeners or initial consults!

Making a referral is as easy as giving me a call, or heading to my website and filling in the referral form 💕💕

Speech Pathology services and Neurodiversity Consultant

10/09/2025

💫 My referral pathways very intentionally focus on the early years — not because I don’t enjoy working with older children, but because my expertise lies in supporting, educating, and empowering families right from the beginning.

🌸 Early “intervention” is about building the skills and capacity of families and children so they can thrive. My goal is to help families face future challenges and curve balls with confidence, and with the knowledge of where to turn for support when it’s needed.

📣 Giving children a voice — and options for how they use it — as early as possible nurtures their self-advocacy skills, strengthens their connections, and supports their sense of identity.

🥰 I work alongside families and children as they grow, through changing needs and environments. This allows me to create deep, lasting connections built on trust and shared experiences. It’s a privilege I never take for granted. 💜

28/08/2025

🌟 Empowerment happens when children understand themselves and have the tools to share who they are and what they need with the world.

🥰 It also happens when families and education settings deeply understand children’s needs and how to support them.

🔥 This Speech Pathology Week, with the theme “Impact through Communication,” I’m sharing some of the resources that have shaped how I build advocacy skills in my own family, and in the families and children I work with.

Some of the resources pictured are my own, and others are created by colleagues doing amazing work in the neuro-affirming space:
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👉 .my.brain.is.messy
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👉 The Amazing Autistic Brain cards

Not pictured - the ASUP from Dr Ross Greene, a game changer for supporting kids to share the messages behind their behaviour 💥

💕 When children know they are understood, accepted, and heard, they build the confidence to communicate their most important — and often most personal — needs.

Empowerment through Communication 💜
An integral part of being a Speech Pathologist.

25/08/2025

🌈This week is Speech Pathology week and it has me reflecting on my career evolution!

🥰 When I started my Speech Pathology career I loved it. But a few years ago, I wasn’t sure I’d still be here. I was in the “wrong” kind of Speech Pathology job for me — one that didn’t fit my values, my strengths, or the way I wanted to support children and families. I was juggling mum life and work life and feeling lost. I questioned if this was really the career for me.

🌺 Starting Playful Connections changed everything. I found my way back to what matters most to me: connection through communication.

🌼 For me, that means affirming all communication styles, walking alongside families to build strong relationships, showing children trust and respect by following their lead, and building communication around what matters most to them.

💕 Now I get to lean into my passions — noticing the nuance of early communication, celebrating every way a child shares their voice, and supporting parents to feel confident and connected.

🙋🏻‍♀️ I love being a Speech Pathologist. I love the flexibility Playful Connections has given me to expand my scope and shape my own “version” of support. While I still think we need a name change to capture all that we do, I’m proud to be part of this profession again. 💜

18/08/2025

🥊 Reducing the mealtime battle!!

In Part 1 I shared the philosophies behind how we do mealtimes.
✨ Here’s what that looks like day to day in our house:

🤸 It means flexibility — sometimes around where we eat, when we eat, or how much we move during meals. It means keeping 2–3 safe foods available every time (often the same ones to reduce my mental load). It means breaking meals into parts so everyone can build their plate in a way that feels accessible.

🍛 Sometimes that looks like a “banquet style” spread in the middle of the table, or cooking a curry but keeping some bits out sauce-free. Sometimes it looks like removing a food or adding a barrier if one child finds it distressing — and treating that sensory response as valid.

📋 We use a weekly meal plan for predictability and to take the decision fatigue off me. We also remind each other that it’s ok not to love every meal, and that tastes can change over time.

🌋 And the reality? There’s still frustration, mess, refusals, and nights where I feel defeated when a previously safe meal gets turned down 🤪🤪

💕 This isn’t a perfect system. It’s what works for us, grounded in the choices and philosophies I shared in Part 1. It’s taken a lot of unlearning and reflecting to get here. Every family will look different — and if mealtimes are working for you, chances are that some of these things sound downright bonkers! That’s ok 🤣

I’d love to hear if this is helpful to you, or for you to share how mealtimes look in your family!

13/08/2025

🍽️ Mealtimes can be complex — especially for Neurodivergent kids and adults.

I’ve been asked to share what works for us, so I’m doing it in two parts:
1️⃣ The philosophies and principles that guide our choices
2️⃣ What that actually looks like in our house

These philosophies come from a mix of my work, personal experience, and learning from amazing people like and . They’ve evolved from reflecting on:
🤔 What works (and doesn’t work) for us now
🤔 What we want to hold on to
🤔 What we want to change for the future

🍰There are many layers to eating and mealtimes. This post is simply an example of what our family has needed to put in place. For some children, additional specialist support is also essential — for example, help with the complex physical processes involved in eating and swallowing.

🎉 I love working with families to build their own foundations — because when we get those clear, the strategies that follow actually make sense. In collaboration with other professionals, mealtime support is something that Speechies can do!

😮‍💨 It’s not always easy. Often it means unlearning a lot of what we grew up believing about food and mealtimes. In recent years, I’ve even shifted from some of my early professional training — because when we know better, we do better.

11/08/2025

Time for another “why I wear this play_spark t-shirt” post!

💫Co-regulate and Connect💫

🌀 Before a child can learn or engage, they need to feel safe.

💕 Co-regulation means sharing your nervous system with someone else. It’s an offering and a connection to help another person reach a regulated state. Side note - regulated doesn't always mean “calm”! But that’s for another time 🤣

🤝When a child is having a hard time, I focus on connection. A safe relationship with someone else shouldn’t be a reward for “good” behaviour — it’s a tool for regulation and a sign that you’re accepted no matter what.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Co-regulation for me often looks like sitting in silence, showing a child I am there, sharing my calm if that’s what they need and showing them how I manage my own dysregulation when it pops up (which if I’m home can happen a lot!!!). It’s not about “fixing” or rushing, it’s about being there and letting the feeling be ok.

🥰 This shirt is a constant reminder for me that we exist in relationship and my regulation is a child’s regulation - we can work on choosing to share our calm or our chaos!

08/08/2025

The Double Empathy Problem (Damian Milton) reminds us that communication and interaction difficulties are not one-sided — especially when there are differences between Autistic and neurotypical communication styles.

When communication differences are present, we need to work together to build understanding and accept all styles as valid. There is no single “right” or “best” way to communicate.

We are moving away from the deficit model that asked children to fix their differences — and towards strength-based supports that honour diversity and create mutually supportive systems. 💛