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Woven Roots Therapeutic Practice

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Edinburgh, Scotland
Woven Roots Therapeutic Practice

I’m a play therapist and clinical supervisor who works relationally and creatively.

I’m interested in how stories, play, and relationships support meaning-making within neurodivergent experiences, across therapeutic and professional practice.

28/10/2026

I love this little memory hack for students: the Method of Loci.

You picture a familiar place — perhaps your home, classroom or the route to school — and attach the information you want to remember to different spots along the way. Later, you mentally walk through that place to help bring the information back.

As a dyslexic thinker, this really lands for me. I often find that ideas stick when I can connect them to images, places or something meaningful. It’s a lovely reminder that memory doesn’t have to work in just one way.

Spatial and visual ways of remembering can be a resource to harness. What if, instead of only asking children to repeat or write information, we helped them find a route through it that makes sense to them?

28/10/2026

Linda Murphy writes about co-regulation as creating a shared focus of attention. Yet when people have different social learning styles, we may be together in the same space while attending to different things — or moving at different speeds.

This is where the dance of adjustment comes in. We notice when our rhythms have drifted apart and make small changes: slowing down, allowing more time, shifting our focus or finding another way to reconnect.

For Linda, co-regulation is something we practise together. It doesn’t mean that two people have to respond in the same way. It means staying attentive to one another and finding a pace where both can take part.

28/10/2026

I like how Linda Murphy breaks co-regulation down into the nuts and bolts of everyday life, while keeping the child’s “edge of competence” in view.

Take making a recipe together. A parent might begin by handing their child one ingredient at a time to add to a bowl. As the child grows in confidence, the parent can gradually offer more ingredients or invite them to make a small decision, such as how much of an ingredient to add.

The activity becomes more complex at the child’s pace. The parent stays alongside, adjusting the support and challenge so the child can participate, build mastery and share the experience. Over time, repeated experiences of co-regulation can help children internalise skills that support self-regulation.

28/10/2026

I’m drawn to Linda Murphy’s nuanced view of regulation as something relational, built through partnership between a parent and child in everyday family life. She describes daily routines as co-regulation opportunities, where parent and child can take on competent, meaningful roles. For example, while baking, a parent might measure the flour and the child pour it into the bowl. With laundry, the parent might hand over each item for the child to place in the basket. The task gets done together, with space for the child to participate and experience mastery.

Lisa Dion also understands regulation as relational, but in Synergetic Play Therapy she places particular emphasis on the therapist’s self-awareness, attunement and presence in the play relationship. The two perspectives share the idea that the adult’s contribution matters, while focusing on different contexts: Murphy centres shared activity and the child’s competent role; Dion centres the therapist’s regulated, attuned presence with the child. Murphy’s examples are guidance for parents in family life, distinct from the therapist’s clinical role.

20/10/2026

Sensory layering and memory

When a child has working-memory or executive functioning challenges, spoken information can disappear before they have had time to organise, store or use it. Sensory layering gives the brain several pathways into the memory.

Imagine a child revising words for a spelling test. They might:

• look at the word and highlight the difficult letter pattern
• say the word aloud and listen to its sounds
• tap or clap its syllables
• build it using magnetic letters
• trace or write it in sand
• connect it with a picture, action or familiar location

The spelling is now visual, auditory, tactile, spatial and physical. If one route is difficult to access, another may help the child retrieve it.

Returning to the words briefly more than once within the following 24 hours can also support reinforcement and help the learning become more firmly established in long-term memory.

The aim is to make information meaningful and concrete, while helping the child discover the strategies that support their own neurodivergent brain.

20/10/2026

Neurodivergent children with executive functioning challenges may struggle with working memory, organisation, task initiation, shifting attention or holding several instructions in mind. These differences can affect reading, writing, maths, note-taking and learning new information.

When these challenges remain unnamed, the child may experience them as implicit personal deficits: I’m lazy. I’m careless. I’m not clever. I should be able to do this.

Play therapists working with neurodivergent children can offer an important piece of identity-affirming work. Through play, metaphor, visual resources and developmentally appropriate conversations, we can make these differences concrete and understandable. The child can begin to recognise: My brain holds information differently. Some tasks place greater demands on my working memory. I may need instructions broken down, written reminders or more time.

This self-awareness can replace shame with language, understanding and self-advocacy. It also enables the therapist to advocate alongside the child within educational settings, helping adults recognise that forgetting an instruction, struggling to begin or producing inconsistent work may reflect executive functioning demands rather than a lack of effort.

When challenges are named with care, they no longer have to sit quietly inside the child as evidence that something is wrong with them. They become understandable aspects of their neurodivergent profile around which meaningful support can be built.

20/10/2026

I love Thomas E. Brown’s metaphor for executive functioning difficulties: an orchestra without a conductor.

The orchestra may be filled with talented musicians, each capable of playing beautifully. The difficulty lies in bringing them together: knowing when to begin, what to prioritise, how to maintain the rhythm and when to shift.

This can help us understand children who have many abilities but struggle to begin a task, organise their thoughts, remember instructions, manage time or move between activities. The skills are there, but coordinating and accessing them can be difficult, particularly when the child is tired, overwhelmed or under pressure.

Visual prompts, predictable routines, breaking tasks into manageable parts and support from a regulated adult can become part of the external conducting the child needs.

The orchestra is not lacking talent. It needs support to play together.

20/10/2026

Splinter skills

Neurodivergent children often have uneven skill profiles. A child may show a real strength within an area they otherwise find difficult—for example, understanding complex maths with a calculator while struggling with mental arithmetic because of working-memory demands.

This can appear inconsistent, but similar-looking tasks may rely on very different combinations of memory, language, coordination, sensory processing and executive functioning.

The child’s strength is genuine, and so is their need for support. Recognising both helps us remain curious rather than assuming, “If they can do this, they should be able to do that.”

20/10/2026

Landreth describes one of the most significant qualities of the play therapist as the art of “being with” a child.

Being with means offering the child our full presence: observing with intention, listening with empathy and recognising their play, feelings, wants and needs.

Within non-directive play therapy, the child is not told what to play or how to play. The therapist holds the structure through a consistent time and space, predictable boundaries and a reliable ending, while the child chooses how to use the session.

Children often seem to value this balance of freedom and containment. Their ideas, choices and pace are respected, while the therapist remains closely attuned and emotionally present without taking over or directing their experience.

From the outside, the therapist may appear to be doing very little. Yet they are listening deeply to the child’s words, choices, movements, play and silences. Their intention is to hear and understand the child and to create a relationship within which the child can encounter themselves more fully.

The reflection Landreth shares below beautifully captures the potency of the play therapy relationship and the heart of being with: offering a steady, accepting presence and trusting the child to lead the way.

20/10/2026

“When other children come here, do they play with these toys?”

It sounds like a straightforward question. But in play therapy, a child’s question may carry more than one possible meaning. They might be curious about the room, wondering whether it feels like their space, checking whether other children use the toys, or seeking reassurance that their time here is special and secure.

Landreth encourages therapists to pause and wonder about what may sit beneath a child’s words, rather than rushing to provide a factual answer. A gentle reflection such as, “You’re wondering who else comes to play in here,” can leave space for the child to show us what the question means to them.

There isn’t one hidden meaning to uncover. The same question may mean different things for different children—or something different from one moment to the next. Our task is to stay curious, notice the child’s response and follow their lead.

Sometimes, making room for the meaning behind a question helps a child feel heard without needing to explain more than they’re ready to.

Address

First Floor, 64 Albion Road
Edinburgh
EH75QZ

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 7pm
Tuesday	9am - 3pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://wovenrootstherapy.org/

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