My house is full of kids, and cats, and cake and catharticism. It’s Autumn. Time to put things to rest for winter. Time to slow down, watch as nature let’s go of the year gone by. Slow walks looking at the changing colours. Time to breathe. Light a fire. Put the candles on. Have a long bath. Bake. The lunar eclipse last night had one hell of a crazy week leading up to it. Everyone I know has had a torrent of “what the hell?” going on in the lead up. Now it is time to sit. Meditate. Do NOT make plans. Rest. Recover. Let things unfold. Autumn has it’s own precious rhythm, a slow beating drum. D ..read more

Schools are hemorrhaging experienced staff, pediatric referral waiting lists are at an all time high and the curriculum is becoming more and more prescriptive. The result? SEN kids being totally let down and left without education. Families often come across our services while crisis googling at 4am. It is slightly confusing, granted, about what we offer because it doesn’t really have an actual name. It has no specific name, because as far as I can tell, no one is offering, nationally, what we can. It is an online/ what’s app peer support service (for free|). It is personalised, professional ..read more

I woke up last week and took my tea into the garden and it felt decidedly a lot more like September. I love September. I think it is from 20 years of being a teacher and the optimism of a new term and fresh beginnings. SENsory forest school: Both the Monday (10-12am) and Friday (1-3pm) groups start the week of the 11th September at Woodhouse park activity center. These groups are for ages 7-14 and are designed for kids on the Autistic spectrum but open to all. There are a couple of spaces available for the new term. Booking link is here: Forest school Out of the woods (alternative education p ..read more

Autism + environment = outcome. You guys better buckle up because this is going to be a radical one. Today my son made some exceptional progress. It took 10 years for him to learn to swim. I know that most kids do it when they are tiny, but the sensory processing required was just too overwhelming for him. He is 11 now and this is what I have learnt: there is nothing he can’t do, he just needs longer to achieve it. The issue with schools is that time is an expensive commodity and we just keep screaming at them and punishing them till they do what we expect at their age. On Sunday, Zeph put hi ..read more

It took nearly 8 years to get a diagnosis for my son because it was not his ND is was my parenting. I took him multiple times to the health visitors as a baby. His red book is two inches thick. They practically black listed me. I had to point out I had an older son. I was never there. I am so bored of asking for help it is untrue. He was continuously sent to eczema specialists, then I self referred to nutritionist’s, then a specialist Occupational therapist. Eventually I bust into a parenting course I was not allowed to go on at our kids’ school. And I burst into tears. THIS was the problem ..read more

Excluded 44 times in two years. Just read that again. That is what schools are doing to 13 year old ND kids. I spent over an hour on the phone to Mum this week as she thinks he’s about to be PEXED (permanently excluded). I had to go get my beast of burden (Van) from the garage so I asked if I could call later. I requested that the boy and mum come to Forest school Monday so we could talk more and get a plan in place. Please don’t be angry dear reader but to my everlasting shame, I am about to go do a 9-5 in a bolt standard school. There are a few reasons: Firstly, I panicked. I could evolve a ..read more

One of the first things I ask kids who come to me is “What is your super power?” They often look confused, so I get some of the others to help illustrate. “Matthew, what is your super power?” “I have invented a whole language from scratch.” “Jake?” “A limitless capacity for tangential thinking.” “Zeph?” “I can smell any clothes left at the end of school and tell you who they belong to.” Tonight I am interiviewing my mind. This is a one off exclusive. Be afraid. Syreeta is looking slightly dishelved having taken on two kittens with no research what so ever and deciding not to run her business ..read more

The current mainstream model of education in the UK is not really working for neurotypical minds, never mind everyone else. At this point in time I have worked in just about every type of secondary school going: Inner city, leafy suburb, all girls, engineering academy, small school and private (independent) education. In the year before covid, I had 5 training days. Four of them were dedicated to child mental health as we were in a crisis, and that was before we locked them all up for 18 months of solitary confinement and fed them a daily dose of fear that we were all going to die from covid 1 ..read more

Forest school is a funny beast. The kids that come to me have a very limited repetoire of food they will eat, so when tell parents we do weird and wonderful food, their immediate response is “They will never eat that!” Another thing we do with the older kids is to disect Phrases or sayings so they understand what is being communicated. Other times they ask me what they can do in a neurotypical world, so not to offend from a neurodiverse perspective. This week we cooked prawns on the fire pit. Eating at forest school is totally different. Firstly, no one is watching you. Secondly, no one cares ..read more

We are forest school + some I wholeheartedly believe in forest school philosophy, but I also know that for neurodivergent children, the hippy child led philosophy does not also work. The kids that find there way to me are usually ASC burnt out, school traumatised and adult phobic. On the whole, it takes me 6 months to undo the school trauma shit and I say that unapologetically. Today we had a beautiful soul, who came with ear defenders and a dummy but is approx, 7 years old. Last session he could not cope with the walk around and when Iater spoke to mum to reassure her that was ok, he hit her ..read more