Back Mountain Music Therapy

12/17/2025

12/15/2025

We see this often

If your child falls apart after school, it’s not because they’ve been “holding it in all day to save it for you”.

It’s because school requires constant regulation, masking and compliance — often far beyond a child’s nervous system capacity.

All day, many children are working hard to sit still when their body wants to move, stay quiet when noise feels overwhelming, follow instructions when their brain is overloaded, and hide anxiety, confusion or distress just to get through.

From the outside, they may look calm, capable or “fine”.
Inside, their nervous system is running in survival mode.

By the time they get home — the safe place — the effort runs out.
What comes next can look like tears, anger, refusal or shutdown.
But this isn’t bad behaviour.
It’s the cost of holding it together all day.

This visual is here to reframe what after-school meltdowns are really telling us.
Not “they’re being difficult”.
But “they’ve been coping for longer than their brain could manage”.

Support doesn’t start with consequences.
It starts with understanding, decompression and safety.

👉 Explore our Masking Toolkit for deeper support around restraint collapse, regulation and neurodivergent wellbeing
link in comments below ⬇️ or via Linktree Shop in Bio.

Save this. Share it with a parent or teacher.
Because behaviour after school often tells the truest story.

12/11/2025

✨ Children Learn to regulate through us. Our calm becomes their calm.

12/05/2025

"When we dont understand, we pathologize."

Dr Sue Johson

11/13/2025

THIS! 🔥

"When you join people where they are and are intentional about what you're doing and how you're tailoring your interactions, it's amazing what can happen."

10/17/2025

Self-regulation does not equate to self-awareness. However, to attain self-awareness and its ascending levels, self-regulation is required.

10/16/2025

Imagine individuals coming , some slumping, shut down, others chaotically moving back and forth,or changing subject to subject. Some going from item to item in the room, unable to focus long enough to dive in, some having a hard time expressing,possibly intellectualizing everything and yet others yelling, melting down. All of them come, one by one in one into the rooms. Suddenly, someone who appears to look like a telephone operator walks into the room. She eyes each individual as they come and takes notice of what each and every person is doing, how they present themselves bodily and affectively....

10/02/2025

Contact with a supportive, safe attachment figure "tranquilizes the nervous system" Schore, 1994 p 224)