PookyH

16/10/2026

Repeating the same phrase over and over isn’t meaningless. It’s echolalia and it’s communication.

Echolalia is the repeating of language, either straight back to you or borrowed from a favourite show, film or song. It often gets read as meaningless copying, or as a child who isn’t really listening. In fact it’s a genuine form of communication and regulation. It’s often doing a job.

Sometimes it buys time to process what was said. Sometimes a quoted line carries a feeling the child can’t yet put into their own words, so ‘to infinity and beyond’ might mean excited, or safe, or ready. Sometimes repeating a phrase is simply soothing, an anchor when the world feels like too much. The point is that it means something, even when the meaning isn’t obvious from outside.

What helps instead:
1. Assume it means something
Treat echolalia as communication and look for the message inside it.

2. Learn their phrases
Notice which lines show up when and what feeling tends to sit behind them.

3. Respond to the meaning, don’t correct
Answer what they’re telling you rather than trying to stop the repeating.

A child using echolalia isn’t failing to communicate. They’re communicating, just not in the words you were expecting.

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09/10/2026

If you’ve ever clicked a pen in a meeting or jiggled your foot in a queue, you’ve stimmed. Welcome to the club. A stim is a repeated movement or sound that helps us feel calm or comfortable, and autistic and ADHD people often just do it more, or in ways other people notice.

Stims do useful work. Rocking might calm a body that’s had too much, whilst bouncing can lift energy on a flat day. Humming blocks out a noisy room and flapping is often pure joy with nowhere else to go. These aren’t bad habits; they’re intelligent adaptations.

That’s why ‘sit still’ so often backfires. A child can usually hold a stim in for a while, but it costs them. Energy that could go on learning or friends goes on keeping still instead. The need doesn’t disappear either. It waits, then often spills out later as a meltdown or shutdown.

In school, the aim is less holding in. A seat at the edge of the room lets a child move without feeling watched. Blu Tack or a band round the chair legs gives busy hands and feet somewhere quiet to go. If a stim is disrupting others or causing harm, look for a swap that does the same job, like tapping a knee instead of a desk, and agree it together rather than making it a rule.

At home, expect more stimming after school. Lots of children hold it in all day and let it out once they’re through the door, which can look like things getting worse. More often, it means home feels safe. And if stimming suddenly increases, treat it as information: it’s often telling you about tiredness or worry before your child can put it into words.

Stimming isn’t a child failing to cope. It’s a child coping.

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07/10/2026

We all know what a trigger is. Its opposite has a name too. A glimmer.

A glimmer is a small cue that tells the nervous system it’s safe. If a trigger is anything that sets off the internal alarm, a glimmer is the opposite, a tiny signal that all is well and it’s okay to settle. A favourite song, a soft blanket, a certain person’s voice, the weight of the dog leaning against you, a particular mug of tea. Small, ordinary, easy to walk straight past.

The useful bit is that glimmers work a lot like triggers in reverse. We’re used to hunting for triggers so we can reduce them. We can hunt for glimmers just as deliberately and stack them up on purpose. Each one gives the nervous system a small nudge towards calm and a day with more of them in it is a steadier day.

How to use them:
1. Go looking for them
Notice what makes a child’s shoulders drop, what they gravitate to when content.

2. Build them into the day
Sprinkle the small safe-signals through the routine on purpose, not just in a crisis.

3. Keep a glimmer list
Collect them together so you both know what to reach for on a hard day.

A regulated nervous system isn’t only about removing the bad. It’s about deliberately adding the good.

06/10/2026

I have a copy of this fantabulous book to give away. Let me know why you’d like a copy, or who you’d like to win it for and I’ll pick someone to send it to…

It’s a fab book – super practical full of ideas and set out in easy to digest chunks so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

06/10/2026

FREE WEBINAR: Neurodivergent Children and Grief

7 ideas for supporting and an opportunity for Q&A

Please come along and pass it on

Join us for another practical 7 Quick Wins session. This time we're looking at supporting neurodivergent children through grief.

01/10/2026

A meltdown isn’t a master plan to wind you up.

When we decide a child is ‘doing it on purpose’, we’re crediting them with a level of control they don’t have in that moment. A meltdown happens when the brain flips into survival mode and the parts that could plan, calculate or manipulate are exactly the parts that have gone offline. There’s no strategist at the wheel.

It matters because ‘he’s doing it on purpose’ changes how we respond. We meet a deliberate act with consequences. We meet a child who’s lost control with help. Only one of those actually works, because only one of them is true.

What helps instead:
1. Assume lost control, not a plan
A child in meltdown isn’t strategising, they’re overwhelmed.

2. Ask what tipped them
Look for the trigger, not the motive.

3. Help them back
The job is regaining control, not winning a standoff.

A child in meltdown isn’t executing a master plan to wind you up. They’ve lost control and accusing them of choosing it only makes it worse.

30/09/2026

This one is for the adult ADHDers in my network - or those supporting them. It’s a very practical guide to ADHD at work including finding, applying for, carrying out and developing within a job. Accessibly written in chunks with highly actionable ideas. I think this would be a great read for employers and educators looking to support ADHD adults into work as well as ADHD adults themselves.

Is this one you’d be interested to read? If so, tell me why?

I have a copy to give away tell me why you’d like it and I’ll choose someone to send it to.

Or you can pre order a copy. It’s out on October 21st. If you order direct from Jessica Kingsley Publishers quote POOKY20 at checkout for 20% off this and all titles.

29/09/2026

Break is the least supported part of the school day. Lessons have a plan, an adult and a task. Break has a whistle, a big open space and a lot of children trying to work out where they belong in it. For some children it’s the best bit of the day. For others it’s the bit they spend all morning dreading.

The changes that help are usually small. One school I worked with let a Year 4 boy be the person who took the equipment box out each day. It gave him a reason to be there, a job to do and a way to start conversations without having to start conversations. Another gave a girl who found the noise too much a five minute head start at the end of lunch, so she could get back into class before the corridor filled up.

What’s one small change that made break time easier for a child in your school?

I’d love to hear yours. A job, a place, a person, a routine, a rule you quietly dropped. Big or tiny, planned or accidental. Share it below, because someone reading this has a child in mind and hasn’t found the thing yet.

28/09/2026

A child on their own at break isn’t always a child in trouble.

We see someone alone and want to fix it. Sometimes that’s right, the child is lonely and needs a way in. But a child who has spent three hours managing a classroom may need the next fifteen minutes to speak to nobody at all. That isn’t sad. It’s how they top the tank back up before the afternoon.

Break is one of the few points in the day a child gets to stop performing. For the ones who mask their way through lessons, doing nothing on a bench isn’t a problem to solve. It’s the thing keeping them upright by home time.

How to tell the difference:
1. Ask once, kindly
’You look happy enough there, want anything?’ checks in without hauling them into company.

2. Watch the face, not the fact of being alone
Content and flat look different and you know the child.

3. Believe the answer
If they say they’re fine, let being alone be allowed.

Alone and lonely aren’t the same thing. One needs fixing. The other needs leaving be.

26/09/2026

This is a weighty book. I found it a little daunting until I opened it and found that whilst it’s packed full of of the research and evidence that so many of us value, it’s broken down into a million digestible chunks with LOADS of practical suggestions about what to actually do. It looks and feels quite different to a lot of parenting books which can often be a bit more of a friendly pop-psychology feel whereas this one takes itself a bit more seriously. But that’s not surprising when you note the depth of credibility and experience the authors bring.

So be brave and dive in. It is way more accessible than it looks and there are so many great explanations and ideas in here. I was especially interested in the chapters on sleep and finding purpose.

A great read for families and for those supporting them and it’s always fantastic to read a book that champions teens. Teens are brilliant and even more so with supportive adults on the sidelines.