Serendipity Play Therapy

01/06/2026

Oh dear, broken wheels on my play therapy suitcase again! Probably the fourth one in six years 🤣 Think it’s trying to tell me I carry around too much kit!

21/05/2026

One of the biggest pressures many parents and carers face is the feeling that they are expected to “fix” a child’s behaviour.

It’s not always said directly, but it can often be felt in meetings, school conversations, reports, and the way progress is measured.

“How quickly are things improving?”“Are the behaviours reducing?”“What strategies are working?”

Sometimes it can feel as though healing should follow a clear timeline — that with the right support, the right parenting, or the right intervention, everything should begin to settle quickly and neatly. But children who have experienced trauma don’t heal in straight lines.

When you’re caring for a child who has lived through loss, fear, instability, or difficult early experiences, it’s easy to start feeling under pressure yourself. You can find yourself focusing so much on behaviours and outcomes that you lose sight of what the child may actually be communicating underneath it all.

Children who have experienced trauma do not need “fixing.”

They need to feel safe.They need consistency.They need connection.They need adults who can stay alongside them, even when progress feels slow, messy, or uncertain.

In my experience, the real shift often happens when we stop asking, “How do we stop this behaviour?” and start asking, “What might this child be needing from us right now?”

That isn’t always easy, especially when families feel watched, judged, or under pressure to show visible progress. But meaningful, lasting change rarely comes through pressure or quick fixes.

It grows through safety, trust, patience, and relationships built over time.

14/04/2026

08/03/2026

02/03/2026

03/02/2026

When you see “PTUK therapist,” you’re seeing a mark of quality 💙

It represents accredited training, regular clinical supervision and practice rooted in research about how children heal and grow through play.

For parents and schools, this means reassurance that therapy is:

🌿 ethical and child-centred
🧠 evidence-based
🛡️ grounded in safeguarding
🤝 supported by ongoing supervision

Every child deserves support that is safe, thoughtful and professional — that’s the PTUK difference.

20/01/2026

19/01/2026

An excellent explanation of how play therapy works ❤️🐻…..

The world of Winnie-the-Pooh offers a gentle and powerful way of understanding play therapy.

The Hundred Acre Wood is a separate, protected world. It is not quite home and not quite reality, yet it is always deeply connected to it. This closely mirrors the play therapy room. It is a safe, symbolic space where children can explore their inner world through play, imagination and story.

In play therapy, children are not expected to explain their feelings using words. Like Pooh and his friends, they express worries, fears, hopes and relationships through characters, play themes and repetition. This allows children to explore difficult experiences at a safe emotional distance, whilst being held within a trusting and attuned therapeutic relationship.

Crucially, what happens in the playroom does not remain there. Over time, the emotional regulation, confidence and understanding developed through play gently transfer back into the child’s everyday life, at home, at school and within relationships.

A much-loved quote by A. A. Milne captures the heart of this process:

“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Play therapy helps children rediscover these truths about themselves. Not by telling them, but by allowing them to experience it through play, relationship and felt safety.

Play is not ‘just play’.

It is how children make sense of their world and how deep, lasting change begins.