The Mule

Often we really want to help our children express how they are feeling, but find that our questions are met with silence or a change of subject. In this situation, we might feel that they are not opening up to us, that the lines of communication are broken, that they are keeping their feelings bottled up. We might find ourselves asking,"Why won't you TALK to me?!". But there is something we can do. We can play with them. Through play, we can connect and communicate with our children at an emotional level, in a way that feels safe, natural to them, and fun. Why? Play is a Child's Natural Language Play is the way that a child makes sense of their world. Children use play to process and explore events that they experience, from the day to day, such as shopping and 'mummies and daddies', to the traumatic. Children who have witnessed or been involved in a frightening situation will rarely, if ever, choose to process this by talking about it. Instead, they re-...

September brings return; of children to school, of darker evenings and log fires, of leaves to kick, puddles to jump in, and if, like me, you’re a parent of under four’s, the welcome comeback of the Toddler Group after the Summer break. When my first daughter was born, I was a bit sniffy about my local meet-up, wondering why I was supposed to enjoy drinking cheap instant coffee with a bunch of tired-eyed women I barely knew, until it slowly dawned on me that in this drafty hall was found the last available vestige of a social life, and I began to cling to the chance for weekly grown-up interaction like Leonardo to Kate’s raft in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. September offers further compensation for the loss of Summer in the form of the humble blackberry. The three year old was enchanted, this time last year, by the sudden appearance of these sweet and abundant treats on the hedges, and our daily dog walks around the spidery network of lanes near our cottage became a feast of...