About Me

 I am passionate about nurturing emotional and relational intelligence in children. My mission is to empower each child through evidence-based, trauma-informed and neurodiversity-affirming practices that support regulation, deepen connection, and foster resilient identity development.

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I am a Registered Counsellor with a Bachelor of Teaching, a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education, and postgraduate studies in Play Therapy and Special Needs Education.​ As a child advocate with over two decades of experience, my journey began in 2001 as a teaching assistant, igniting a passion that continues to drive my professional growth to this day. This extensive work with diverse young minds has equipped me with deep insights into how children learn, communicate, and navigate their worlds.

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My approach

 

I practice from a child-centred, trauma-informed, and neurodiversity-affirming foundation. Every child's neurology, communication style, and way of being in the world is valid, not a deviation from some imagined norm, but a genuine and worthy expression of human diversity.

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At the heart of my practice is an understanding of how safety is experienced in the body. Drawing on Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 1994, 2011), I recognise that a child's nervous system is always scanning the environment for cues of safety or threat, a process Stephen Porges calls neuroception. This happens beneath conscious awareness, and it shapes everything: whether a child can play, connect, learn, and regulate, or whether they move into protective states of fight, flight, or shutdown. For neurodivergent children, whose nervous systems may be wired for heightened sensitivity or different patterns of arousal, this understanding is essential. My role is to become a genuinely safe presence, and to help co-create environments where a child's nervous system can settle enough to engage, explore, and grow. 

 

Drawing on the foundational work of Bowlby and Ainsworth, and brought forward through the relational neuroscience of Dan Siegel and Allan Schore, I understand that children develop their capacity for regulation, connection, and identity within the context of relationships. The therapeutic relationship itself is not a backdrop to the work, it is the work. Attunement, repair, and the consistent experience of being seen and held are the mechanisms through which healing happens.

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Relational neurodevelopment grounds this further. The developing brain is a social organ, shaped by relational experience from the earliest moments of life. When children have experienced misattunement, chronic stress, or relational rupture, as many neurodivergent children have, through invalidation, pressure to mask, or systems that failed to understand them, the imprints of those experiences live in the body and the nervous system, not just in memory or behaviour. My practice integrates an understanding of how early relational experiences shape neural architecture, and how consistent, attuned, playful connection can support the nervous system's capacity to reorganise toward greater safety, flexibility, and wellbeing.

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Trauma, in my practice, includes not only acute events, but also the chronic harm that can come from invalidation, pressure to mask, misattuned relationships, social exclusion, and systems that were not built with neurodivergent children in mind. These experiences may not always be named as trauma, but they leave real marks on regulation, on identity, on a child's sense of whether the world is safe and whether they belong in it.

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My background in early childhood education and teaching gives me a distinctive lens in therapy sessions. I understand how children develop, cognitively, relationally, and emotionally, across the earliest years and into middle childhood, and I bring that developmental knowledge into every aspect of my clinical work. This also means I can stand alongside caregivers and educators as a knowledgeable collaborator, helping bridge the worlds of home, school, and therapy.

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Play is the language through which children communicate, process, and heal. Within a safe and attuned therapeutic relationship, co-regulated through the principles of Polyvagal Theory and held within an attachment framework, play becomes a powerful vehicle for nervous system regulation, identity development, and relational repair. My role is to follow the child's lead, honour their pace, and hold space for whatever needs to emerge.

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Specialised Training

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DIR Floortime® Certified I am certified in the Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based (DIR®) model, an approach that honours each child's unique developmental trajectory, sensory profile, and relational style. Rather than targeting compliance or skill acquisition, DIR Floortime follows the child's natural interests and affect, building genuine connection and developmental capacity from the inside out. DIR is deeply consonant with relational neurodevelopment and Polyvagal principles: it prioritises the co-regulatory relationship as the foundation for all growth, and meets children where they are developmentally — not where age-based norms suggest they "should" be.

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Tuning in to Kids® (TIK) Facilitator I am a qualified facilitator of the Tuning in to Kids® program, an evidence-based emotion coaching intervention developed at the University of Melbourne. TIK supports caregivers in recognising, naming, and responding to their children's emotional experiences with genuine attunement, in essence, supporting caregivers to become a co-regulating presence for their child. For neurodivergent children,  who may express, experience, or communicate emotions in ways that differ from neurotypical expectations, and who may also carry alexithymia or heightened nervous system sensitivity,  this kind of attuned caregiving is not simply helpful; it is foundational to felt safety and relational security. Research consistently demonstrates that emotion coaching strengthens the parent-child attachment relationship, supports co-regulation, and reduces distress over time (Havighurst et al., 2010, 2013).

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My Philosophy

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I believe that children are inherently competent. I presume competence in every child I work with, regardless of how they communicate or how their development presents. I do not work to make neurodivergent children appear more neurotypical, masking and camouflaging carry real costs to identity, nervous system health, and long-term wellbeing. Instead, I work to help each child know themselves, value themselves, and navigate the world in a way that is authentic to who they are.

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I support caregivers as essential partners in this work. Children heal in the context of relationship, and the quality of the caregiving relationship is one of the most powerful forces shaping a child's developing nervous system and sense of self. Drawing on attachment theory and relational neuroscience, I help caregivers understand their child's nervous system responses, recognise their child's unique bids for connection, and build the attuned, co-regulatory presence that neurodivergent children, and all children,  need to flourish.

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My foundation in early childhood education reminds me that the earliest relational experiences shape everything that follows, that the architecture of the brain, and the felt sense of safety in the body, are built in relationship, long before words are available to describe them. Whether I am working with a young child, a school-aged child, or the adults around them, that understanding of early relational neurodevelopment informs every conversation, every session, and every plan.

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