Category: Children
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Nursery Rhymes and their Meaning
These seemingly childish rhymes have their roots based in historic fact. Many people have researched the origin of traditional nursery rhymes which have been part of children’s lives for hundreds of years and these familiar rhymes have existed for centuries. Nursery rhymes began to be printed in England as early as 1570. The verses…
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How Babies Learn to Listen
The mother’s voice is vital food for the unborn child’s psychological and physiological development. According to Alfred Tomatis, a French physician, psychologist and educator, the mother’s voice perceived mainly through bone conduction is rich in harmonics providing a major amount of stimulation necessary for the growth of the nervous system. The mother’s voice envelops the…
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When Stevie’s Dog Died
Stevie, a ten year old boy with autism was missing his little dog, Greg, who died suddenly at home. Stevie was unable to express his shock and sad feelings in words but acted out his sadness, confusion and anger in challenging ways. Children with autism have difficulty connecting to their feelings and struggle to comprehend…
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Pharoah’s Initiation – Child’s Play
Regular flights to Dublin offered creative play opportunities for young children in Ireland whose parents were concerned because of their child’s communication or behaviour problems. Parents were supported by energy alignment sessions . On this occasion, a follow up appointment had been booked for Finbar, a little boy I had met on a previous…
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The Talking Tree
In 2015, I documented play sessions with Lesley, a little girl of eight, who, at the age of three had suddenly been removed from the care of her parents because she was thought to be at risk because of their addiction to drugs and alcohol. Such a traumatic experience would have been emotionally painful for…
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Bring My Daddy Back
In my previous blogs about my work with children, I have emphasised my belief that when children are given an opportunity to direct their play without adult control, they are more likely to tap into their own unique self-healing mechanism and direct their play in a way that would give them the healing they needed…
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Simple Pleasures
We all, whether young or old, able bodied or disabled, intellectually impaired or with the capacity to function in all aspects of physical life, have the ability to find a purpose and to reach a fuller potential if we are able to connect to the intuitive pathways beyond our cognitive faculties. We can accomplish this…
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Fairytales, Astrology and Enchantment in Relation to Child Directed Creative Play
This is an excerpt from an article written in collaboration with Sandra Lamb Kilburn, a medical astrologer whose work enhances applied clinical practice at the Living Memory Research Trust . The article explores astrological psychology and specific astrological chart indicators. A detailed case study of child directed creative play sessions demonstrates their application in a…
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Little Drummer Boy
Sam was eight years old with a diagnosis of Down’s syndrome. He attended a local primary school and received daily help from his support assistant within the classroom. Sam’s limited understanding of language, meant that he expressed himself using single words only i.e. names of familiar people, objects and actions. To help him communicate,…
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Fly Me To The Moon
One wet Saturday afternoon in Scotland, several years ago, my four year-old grandson and I spent the morning exploring the towpath on the Polwarth canal bank in Edinburgh. I was ‘baby sitting’ while my son and his wife took a much needed over night break . Undeterred by the weather, Fin and I shared…