Play to Blossom

02/11/2025

Sarah R. Moore, Dandelion Seeds Positive Parenting 🩵

23/10/2025

21/10/2025

Mud & Bloom 💗

29/09/2025

Our emotional wellbeing plays a huge role in our heart health. Stress, anxiety, and unresolved emotions can affect not just our mind, but also our body. For children, these feelings can sometimes show up as big behaviours or physical symptoms like tummy aches or a racing heart.

Through Play Therapy, children are given a safe space to explore and express their feelings, helping to lower stress and build emotional resilience – which in turn supports their overall wellbeing, including their heart health. 🌈✨

Today, take a moment to:
💖 Pause and breathe deeply
💬 Talk about your feelings – no matter your age
🏃‍♀️ Move your body, even just a little
🥗 Nourish yourself with kindness and care

A healthy heart isn’t just about physical fitness – it’s about emotional balance too. 💕

25/09/2025

Often, we shut down big feelings. Rather than making space for them, we brush them away or try to fix them

Though this doesn’t remove the feeling, it encourages children to bottle it up, likely leading to a bigger outburst later in that same day or week. Or worse, teaching a child that emotions aren’t okay, leading to avoidance of emotions (which often leads to unhealthy coping strategies later on)

So instead, let’s get good at validating feelings. Validating a child’s feeling helps them to feel understood, and feeling understood is an essential ingredient in feeling connected and supported

Feeling understood helps us to put words to, or name our feelings, and over time, this supports with emotional regulation 🩷

Here are 10 things you can say to a child instead of ‘don’t cry’

If you found it helpful, feel free to give it a share - don’t forget to tag us 💙!

13/09/2025

The Therapist Parent 🧡

06/09/2025

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We don’t need to protect kids from the discomfort of anxiety.

We’ll want to, but as long as they’re safe (including in their bodies with sensory and physiological needs met), we don’t need to - any more than we need to protect them from the discomfort of seatbelts, bike helmets, boundaries, brushing their teeth.

Courage isn’t an absence of anxiety. It’s the anxiety that makes something brave. Courage is about handling the discomfort of anxiety.

When we hold them back from anxiety, we hold them back - from growth, from discovery, and from building their bravery muscles.

The distress and discomfort that come with anxiety won’t hurt them. What hurts them is the same thing that hurts all of us - feeling alone in distress. So this is what we will protect them from - not the anxiety, but feeling alone in it.

To do this, speak to the anxiety AND the courage.

This will also help them feel safer with their anxiety. It puts a story of brave to it rather than a story of deficiency (‘I feel like this because there’s something wrong with me,’) or a story of disaster (‘I feel like this because something bad is about to happen.’).

Normalise, see them, and let them feel you with them. This might sound something like:

‘This feels big doesn’t it. Of course you feel anxious. You’re doing something big/ brave/ important, and that’s how brave feels. It feels scary, stressful, big. It feels like anxiety. It feels like you feel right now. I know you can handle this. We’ll handle it together.’

It doesn’t matter how well they handle it and it doesn’t matter how big the brave thing is. The edges are where the edges are, and anxiety means they are expanding those edges.

We don’t get strong by lifting toothpicks. We get strong by lifting as much as we can, and then a little bit more for a little bit longer. And we do this again and again, until that feels okay. Then we go a little bit further. Brave builds the same way - one brave step after another.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes and it doesn’t matter how big the steps are. If they’ve handled the discomfort of anxiety for a teeny while today, then they’ve been brave today. And tomorrow we’ll go again again.♥️

01/09/2025

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In Child-Centred Play Therapy, the relationship is the therapy.

It’s the trusting connection between child and therapist that creates the foundation for healing and growth.

The Play Therapist nurtures this bond by providing a safe, accepting environment where the child leads through play and change can unfold.

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21/08/2025

Abuse and violence, suffered or endured has an effect on a child emotionally, cognitively, socially and on their connection to self. Play therapy can support children in

* greater capacity to understand, articulate and regulate emotions. With better awareness of positive self expression of their emotions.

* processing their traumatic experiences, integrating these memories into self

* building their self esteem, self awareness and confidence to form identity, increase self efficacy and understand their worth

* gaining the ability to identify their own needs, self expression of those needs in a positive way and learning to rely on caregivers to meet their needs and reduce pseudo independence

* being able to understand and assert healthy boundaries in relationships, especially care givers where violence has been experienced or witnessed.

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09/08/2025

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Recipe for a Play Therapist

Ingredients:

2 heaped cups of empathy

1 strong foundation in child development

3 generous scoops of patience

1 cup of creativity (rainbows and puppets optional)

½ cup of humour (to laugh with, never at)

A pinch of therapeutic limits

4 tablespoons of active listening

A splash of imagination

Endless sprinkles of curiosity

Essential: a calming voice and a warm smile

Instructions:

1. Start with empathy as your base — it’s the heart of every good play therapist. Mix in a solid understanding of developmental psychology to give your work structure and depth.

2. Stir in patience and creativity slowly. These will help you connect with children at their own pace, in their own world.

3. Fold in humour to help ease anxiety and build rapport. Just a pinch can bring light to even the most difficult sessions.

4. Add your listening skills, being sure to include both what is said and what is shown through play.

5. Season with imagination and curiosity. Let the child lead — your job is to follow, understand, and reflect their world.

6. Top with a warm, consistent presence. Children thrive on predictability and safety, so your steady, genuine approach is the glue that holds it all together.

7. Let it simmer over time. Progress is slow-cooked, never rushed.

Serves: One child at a time — with care, compassion, and connection.