Blossom Play Therapy

10/11/2025

🌿 Fitting In vs. Belonging 🌿

Toko-pa Turner writes:

“The difference between fitting in and belonging is that fitting in asks us to parcel off our wholeness in exchange for acceptance.”
— Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (2017)

So many children — and adults — learn that being accepted sometimes means being smaller. They soften their voices, hide their quirks, or work hard to be “easy.” Turner calls this false belonging — when people trade authenticity for approval.

But real belonging doesn’t ask them to shrink. It welcomes the whole self — the messy, playful, tender, and powerful parts that make them who they are.

In play therapy, children are invited to rediscover this truth. Through play, they learn that they don’t need to fit in to be loved. They learn that they can bring all of themselves — the quiet, the curious, the angry, the brave — and still be met with warmth and safety.

10/11/2025

🌿 Dreams Fruiting From Us 🌿

Toko-pa Turner writes:

“Dreaming is nature naturing through us. Just as a tree bears fruit or a plant expresses itself in flowers, dreams are fruiting from us.”
— Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home (2017)

Sometimes, when life feels heavy or confusing, our inner world still finds ways to speak — through dreams, stories, and small moments of imagination. These are not distractions or random thoughts, but messages from within; gentle fruit ripening out of our lived experience.

Dreams often appear symbolically — through story, art, or movement — reminding us that the psyche continues to create even in silence. 🍃

In Play Therapy, we hold space for these quiet expressions — where children (and adults too) can rediscover the parts of themselves that still want to grow, create, and belong. 🍃

07/11/2025

Information and support for parents of neurodivergent children

The City of Edinburgh Council’s Additional Support Needs section offers guidance, resources, and community connections for parents, carers, and families navigating autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other neurodevelopmental differences. Let’s celebrate difference, support one another, and build inclusive spaces where every child can thrive.

Learn more here

Neurodiversity

06/11/2025

✨ Connection Before Correction ✨

At Blossom Play Therapy, we often talk about the power of connection — especially in moments when children are struggling. It’s easy to slip into correction mode when big behaviours appear, but real change begins when a child feels understood.

As Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson remind us in No-Drama Discipline (2014), our role isn’t to control a child’s behaviour but to help them learn from it. When we pause, attune, and connect first, we create the emotional safety that allows self-regulation, empathy, and reflection to grow.

💛 In practice, “connection before correction” might look like:
• Taking a breath before responding.
• Naming and validating the child’s feelings.
• Using gentle tone, touch, or shared activity to re-establish calm.
• Reflecting together after the storm has passed.

Over time, this approach strengthens trust, emotional intelligence, and accountability — turning moments of rupture into opportunities for growth.

04/11/2025

🧩 Building Trust in Play Therapy 🧩

Brené Brown reminds us that trust isn’t built through grand gestures, but through consistent, reliable, grounded actions over time — the way we show up, keep confidences, apologise, and honour boundaries.

In play therapy, this truth lives quietly in every session:
🌱 The therapist who keeps the same time and space each week.
🤝 The pause before speaking, allowing the child to lead.
🪞 The moment we own a mistake or repair a rupture.

These small acts — often unseen by the outside world — are the building blocks of safety and relational repair. They teach children that relationships can be steady, predictable, and safe to return to.

Trust grows slowly, moment by moment, until it becomes the ground on which healing play can unfold. 💛

30/10/2025

Monotropic vs. Polytropic Thinking

Every brain pays attention differently.
Some children focus like a spotlight — drawn deeply into what they love.
Others move like a lantern — noticing many things at once.

This week’s Substack explores how play therapists can support these different attentional rhythms through a neurodiversity-affirming lens, grounded in the work of Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson, Mike Lesser, Ruth Jones, and BAPT guidance.

Read more:

by Carmen Cecen, Blossom Play Therapy

29/10/2025

🌿 All About Neurodiversity: Sharing What You Love

When a neurodivergent child talks about their special interest, it can feel like words are tumbling out faster than you can keep up. Facts, stories, details — all flowing at once.

It might look like “info-dumping,” but in truth, it’s often something much deeper.

✨ It’s trust — a sign that they feel safe enough to share.
✨ It’s connection — their way of reaching out and saying, “Come see my world.”
✨ It’s regulation — a nervous system moving toward calm and engagement.

In play therapy, we listen for the meaning behind the moment. When a child’s enthusiasm overflows, we don’t interrupt or correct — we join. Because behind the rush of words is a child inviting us into what brings them joy.

Like the dog in the card reminds us, when we find something we love, our concentration and dedication are wholehearted. 🐾

By meeting that energy with curiosity instead of correction, we help children feel understood — and that’s where real connection begins. 💛

29/10/2025

🌿 Moving Beyond the Deficit Lens

Ruth Jones, in her powerful book Neurodiversity-Affirming Practice for Speech and Language Therapists (Routledge, 2024), invites us to shift from a “deficit” view of neurodivergence toward one grounded in empowerment, autonomy, and authenticity.

This call is not only relevant for speech and language therapists — it resonates deeply across all helping professions, including play therapy. When we view difference through a medical lens, we risk individuals being experienced by systems as broken or in need of fixing. But when we listen with curiosity and compassion, we begin to see the wholeness that was always there. 💛

✨ “When we think of neurodivergence, we are moving towards thinking of positive things: empowerment, autonomy, authenticity. However, historically, a neurodivergent profile was viewed through a medical lens… The language itself of ‘disorders’ creates a narrative that is heard and perceived by society as negative, and in turn has created a negative narrative of self for many neurodivergent individuals. They have to work hard to challenge and develop an authentic understanding of self, and in turn the advocacy skills to be who they are and seek the support they require.”
— Ruth Jones, 2024

In every therapeutic encounter, we have the opportunity to affirm difference, nurture identity, and co-create spaces where authenticity feels safe. 🌈

29/10/2025

🌿 Understanding Autistic and ADHD Burnout

Burnout doesn’t happen overnight — it’s often the result of ongoing stress, sensory overload, and unmet needs for rest, rhythm, and support.

This visual by Sonny Jane Wise () reminds us that burnout is not a single event, but a combination of factors that build up over time — like sensory overwhelm, executive fatigue, or the constant effort to mask one’s natural traits.

In play therapy, we often see the early signs of this in children through fatigue, demand avoidance, meltdowns, or a loss of joy in play. These are not signs of “defiance” — they are the nervous system calling for safety, space, and compassion. 💛

Supporting recovery begins with gentleness: reducing demands, meeting sensory needs, and allowing rest without guilt.

Let’s honour difference, protect energy, and create environments where neurodivergent children (and adults) can thrive. 🌈

Image by Sonny Jane Wise,

29/10/2025

🌈 The Neurodiversity Smorgasbord: A Broader Way to See Difference

In the neurodiversity-affirming world, not every experience needs a label to be valid. Sonny Jane Wise’s Neurodiversity Smorgasbord offers a refreshing way to understand human difference — seeing each person as a unique “plate” of traits, strengths, sensitivities, and ways of processing the world.

Instead of fitting people into diagnostic boxes, this approach invites us to see plurality, sensory differences, and even altered states (like dissociation or voice-hearing) as part of the full human experience — not automatically as disorders to fix.

In play therapy, this reminds us to meet each child where they are — to honour the shape of their inner world rather than asking them to fit ours. 🌿

28/10/2025

🐝🌻Bee Breath- Regulation Through Sound and Vibration 🌻🐝

Continuing our neurodiversity theme, we’re bringing in a gentle, sensory-rich breath practice that children and adults alike tend to love — Bee Breath.

✨ Why it matters
Bee Breath uses a slow inhale followed by an exhale with a soft humming sound — like the gentle buzz of a bee.
This vibration stimulates the vagus nerve, inviting the body to slow down, settle, and come back into connection.
For neurodivergent children, it’s both playful and regulating — offering a bridge between sensory experience and emotional awareness.

🌿 How to practice
1. Sit comfortably, spine tall, shoulders soft, and eyes gently closed or relaxed.
2. Breathe in slowly through your nose.
3. As you exhale, make a soft humming sound — “mmmm” — letting the sound vibrate through your face, throat, or chest.
4. Repeat this 3–6 times, noticing what changes inside: the quiet buzz, the way your body feels, or how the air moves more easily.
5. Afterward, take a natural breath and notice the calm that follows.

💛 In play therapy, Bee Breath can be introduced as a game — “Can you make the longest, softest bee sound?” — helping children discover regulation through curiosity and embodiment.
For parents and carers, it can become a soothing transition tool before bed, after school, or whenever the day feels too full.

✨ A small sound. A soft shift. A moment of safety found within the body.

28/10/2025

🌿 Body of Knowledge: Sensorimotor Practices for Awareness, Regulation, and Expansion
by Pat Ogden 🌿

Continuing our neurodiversity theme, we’re using visual tools like Pat Ogden’s Body of Knowledge card deck to bring awareness to the body as a source of wisdom and regulation.

This deck offers gentle, sensory-based practices that help us reconnect with our inner cues — supporting both neurodivergent and neurotypical children to understand how their bodies speak and what helps them feel safe.

✨ From the “Breath” card:

“If our breath is slow, light, deep, and through the nose, we reap countless benefits. The vagus nerve is stimulated, oxygen delivery to our cells is improved, and the mind becomes calm.”

When we breathe softly through the nose and into the belly, our body begins to shift from tension to safety. Shoulders release, the heart slows, and the nervous system gently moves toward calm connection.

💛 Try it now:
• Inhale through your nose for 4 counts
• Exhale through pursed lips for 6 counts
• Feel your belly rise and fall
• Notice what changes

In play therapy, these small embodied practices help children (and adults) discover the body as an anchor of safety — a quiet guide home to themselves.

Image credit: “Deep Breath” © Melanie Weidner 2005.