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Have you ever wondered what is going on for your child beneath the surface? Do you want to connect with your child more deeply and help them to process life’s challenges?

After becoming a parent you might find yourself reflecting on how you were raised—sometimes wanting to follow in your parents’ footsteps, other times determined to do the opposite. Either way, you know that your choices will shape your child’s life.

Parenting is about finding a balance between support and challenge. Dr. John Demartini encourages us to focus on love, care, and helping our children fulfill their unique values, rather than striving for perfection. By allowing our children to face challenges with guidance, we foster resilience and growth within ourselves and our families.

EMDR therapy doesn’t just focus on the past—it also addresses the present and the future. By desensitising past trauma, managing present triggers, and preparing for future challenges, EMDR provides a comprehensive healing process.

There is no doubt about it, all children can benefit from therapy. The difference between children and adults, however, is talk therapy won’t always be the best option for children. Particularly very young children.

One of the most insightful tools we use is the Solar Return chart. This astrological technique provides a roadmap for the year ahead, helping individuals gain clarity, purpose, and a deeper understanding of their personal journey. Let’s explore why doing a Solar Return is so beneficial and how it aligns with our mission of fostering growth and fulfillment.

Determining your hierarchy of values is not a one-time exercise but an ongoing journey of self-discovery and growth especially when going through a period of transition or when feeling lost and not sure what to do in life or you’re not simply feeling like yourself. As you gain clarity on your values, you’ll find it easier to navigate the complexities of life, relationships, and parenting.

Uncovering the driving force behind your thoughts, feelings, and actions through the 13 question Demartini Value Determination Process.

Astrology, in particular, has become a powerful tool on my journey. It’s far more than horoscopes or predictions—psychological astrology is a practical tool for self-discovery that enhances psychological self-awareness.

As parents, it can be challenging not to take it personally when our children engage in lying behaviour.We might feel frustrated or tempted to take the moral high ground.

At The Family Systems Hub in Melbourne, we utilise a systemic, developmental, and integrative approach to support children, parents and families. Our focus is on identifiying and mobilising their strengths while addressing and transforming vulnerabilities within the family system. 

“The Field,” as used in Family Constellations, originates from the work of Bert Hellinger, a German psychotherapist and former priest.

In the Netflix series ‘Another Self’, it highlights Family Constellations sessions and reveals how unprocessed trauma, passed down through generations, manifests as illnesses, relationship issues, career obstacles, and financial struggles. This approach helps heal these deep-seated wounds, bringing harmony to the family system.

Play is a child’s medium for self expression and making sense of the world. What a child cannot say with words, they show us through their actions. Often children find it difficult to articulate emotions or challenging experiences. Play Therapy allows the child to do this through their most natural language: PLAY

Raising children has been the most transformative, challenging, and rewarding task of my life. There have been moments when life pushed me beyond my known limits. During those times, I turned to astrology for guidance, first as a client and later as a student.

To break the intergenerational cycle, adult children must respectfully return the burdens that belong to their parents, allowing them to fully embrace their own lives and thrive.

In Australia, to make things easier as they like to do in this country, they established June 1st as the day when winter begins, as well as December 1st as the day when summer begins.

Many couples seek counselling when the strains of parenthood begin to affect their relationship, causing shifts in their connection and happiness. While traditional prenatal classes cover essential topics like birth, feeding, and childcare, the importance of nurturing a couple’s relationship during this pivotal life stage is often overlooked.

The effectiveness of Family Constellation Therapy is rooted in its ability to tap into the family’s collective conscience, a concept Bert Hellinger (the founder)  described as the “knowing field.”

Regression looks like a step or two backwards in terms of your child’s development and behaviour. This can include a return of previously mastered skills like sleeping, eating, toilet training, or even baby talking and crawling.

After almost five years of growing the Play Therapy Hub, and helping children and families across Australia connect and heal, we decided it was time for a major change to our brand to bring it more in line with where we are now and where we are headed.

It’s that time of year again. School return is just around the corner. For some, that can bring feelings of excitement and anticipation. For others, there could be feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.

Your child does not need to be ‘fixed’, they are not broken and nor are you. Your child might be struggling and need support, or you might be struggling and need support. But the goal of therapy is not ‘to fix’ or change a child.

Supporting children through grief and loss and can be particularly difficult. Sometimes in our own pain, finding the words may be hard, or feelings may be too confronting to face especially when we are grieving with our child too.

When picturing the social inequality of homelessness within our community, many people forget that children are a part of this picture.

Here’s the thing about feelings. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. Annoying isn’t it. But there is something that does work and it’s so simple you’ll wonder why you’ve never tried it before – reflecting.

Having been an educator myself, I have seen that in the last few years, there has been a particular emphasis on supporting and managing behaviours with children from traumatised backgrounds. But what does that actually look like?

Challenging behaviour is a clue that a child has an unmet need. A child’s behaviour can be seen as a form of communication. Think of a child’s behaviour as an iceberg. At the tip of the iceberg what can see is the child’s words and behaviours.

Adults often hide information, especially if it appears negative or harmful. Children, on the other hand, are notoriously honest (often to their parents’ shame!). They open up about their feelings and opinions regularly.

So you’ve heard the words gentle parenting. Maybe you saw it on the news, heard it from a friend, or read an article about it on your phone. It’s become a well-known phrase lately and we’re seeing it gain popularity across social media, and in our everyday lives.

When we first arrive in this world, we arrive in shock, facing change and present with extreme vulnerability – completely dependent and unable to fend for, or take care of ourselves against the big new world.

Regression looks like a step or two backwards in terms of you child’s development and behaviour. This could look like a return of issues with sleeping, eating, toilet training, baby talk, hyperactivity, increased tantrums and clingy and needy behaviours.

I’d like to invite you to consider a time when you have experienced an intense emotion. Perhaps you’d been looking forward to something for a long time, and then it got cancelled.

Interplay Therapy is an exciting new way for our therapists to work with children and their caregivers, focusing primarily on the relationship between child and caregiver.

The term rupture is used when speaking about connection between adult and child, where one party feels hurt and disconnected from the other person.

The term connection is used in the field of therapy, but that doesn’t help explain what it actually is. Have you ever had an experience where you look at someone who is sad and feel a sense of sadness yourself?

We sometimes see parents lose faith in the Play Therapy process because they expect to see results sooner or expect a therapist to quickly “fix” their child.

We got some news today about lockdowns ending. Finally. Although (for the most part) I’m absolutely ecstatic, admittedly, there is a part of me that feels a little bit anxious. It’s back to work – how is that going to look?

There is often a lack of knowledge in schools about adopted children’s life experiences and the impact that these have on the behaviours or challenges of adopted children.

Sexualised behaviours, or more importantly Harmful Sexualised Behaviours (HSB), are actions that are abnormal for a child’s age and stage of development, and also hurting others.

Some parents are perfectionists in every aspect of their lives. They excel at everything they do—if there was even any chance of “failure”, they wouldn’t bother trying. They make big sacrifices to meet their goal, and to turn their dreams into reality.

It is common for children to feel worried or anxious when receiving medical interventions. However, with enough preparation and planning, choice and coping techniques, children can have a positive experience and medical trauma can be avoided.

Being able to regulate emotions effectively and efficiently is not an innate skill. A child’s capacity to manage their big emotions relies on their brain development and their experiences.

Sleep exists at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it is frequent conversation topic. We often ask each other “How’d you sleep last night?”; and hear “I’m so tired.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and countless lockdowns are giving rise to some big feelings.  Many of us are feeling overwhelmed and are unsure what to do with our emotions. How do we handle them and ourselves with care?

Sometimes children steal after experiencing early-childhood trauma, abuse, or neglect. Stealing often goes hand in hand with lying and dishonesty. When a child is struggling with stealing, things might go missing and then magically reappear.

Children learn by observing and listening to those around them. When kids learn things by watching people and imitating their behaviours, this is referred to as observational learning.

It’s all too common in which a parent has feelings of guilt or shame for passing their child their phone or iPad for a moment of peace – be that in the car, at a café or restaurant, when waiting for an appointment, or possibly most noticeably – to ‘hush’ a tantrum.

Parents often ask, ‘how will play therapy help my child?’ The answer is simple. Play therapy helps children get to the root of the issue. Play therapy is a bottom-up and inside out approach to psychotherapy.

Child’s play has changed in many ways – but the way in which it can capture you and pull you into a magical world away from the everyday hustle and bustle has not changed. It releases endless joy and creativity and inspires onlookers.

It is science that tells us that by simply naming a child’s emotions, we help them to get their emotions under control – name it, to tame it. In order to understand the power of naming your child’s emotions, it is important to talk a little about the brain.

It can be tough, those first few days at kinder, day care or school drop offs, especially when your child is crying and not wanting to let go.  Separation anxiety can be seen as a normal part of early childhood. Sometimes it can be a child’s way of communicating.

Wanting the best for our children comes with the territory of parenting, but for those starting out on the journey of seeking support, the choices can be overwhelming.

When a parent has a concern about their child’s social and emotional wellbeing it is not uncommon for them to hear comments like, “wait and see,” “they will grow out of it.” Or simply told that children are resilient and will manage it on their own.

In a year filled with constant change and uncertainty, the easing of Melbourne’s lockdown restrictions brings a mixed bag of emotions – relief and anxiety, hope and fear, freedom and overwhelm.

One of the side effects of social distancing, self-isolation and distance learning is the undeniable move towards more and more screen time for all.

In terms of relationships, boundaries can be seen as the restrictions and limitations on our wants, desires and capabilities… which our independent self is likely to challenge!

We know it’s natural to want to ask questions of our children, especially when we’re trying to figure out how they truly feel about the people and experiences in their life, but doing so can lead to them feeling misunderstood.

Although it looks like lots of fun on the surface, pretend play is actually an essential building block for healthy childhood development. Pretend play begins to develop when a child is around two years old.

What gets in the way of parents bringing their children to play therapy? What are the emotions and thoughts behind the reluctance? And can I help to reframe those emotions and thoughts in more helpful ways for families?

One thing that unites all parents is the struggle to get children to listen. Whether you’re trying to ensure physical safety or teaching valuable life lessons, one thing is certain – they probably don’t want to hear it.

Play is fun. It is entered into willingly by participants, with no agenda. It’s the way children connect to each other and the world. It forms the basis of all our favourite childhood memories, and it has a superpower even beyond those things … Play is therapeutic.

Sudden changes to many facets of life including the closure of schools, increased health precautions and changing economic factors, have significant social, psychological, emotional and behavioural implications for children.

As families begin to physically distance and self-isolate themselves to protect their health and flatten the curve, many of the parents and caregivers we work with are wondering how to structure their kids’ day without feeling overwhelmed.

Play Therapy and Art Therapy can both prove effective in helping children explore their emotions and trauma through creativity. But what’s the difference between these modalities?

As a new mum, I agonised over every parenting decision and choice I made. Is she crying because she is still hungry? Will she overheat in that grow-bag? Reflecting on those early days, I think what I craved most was reassurance.

Conscious parenting is a concept binding ancient eastern beliefs and western psychology. It’s a philosophy that requires the parent to be mindful of their influence on a child and attuning ourselves to our calm centre within us.

Developed in the 1940s, play-based therapy for children may seem a relatively new practice, in comparison to more traditional modes of psychotherapy. But the difference is, it’s highly specialised and tailored just for kids. Using their own language, play.

In short, child-centred play therapy is for all children. There are so many ways in which a child can benefit from therapy, and even more reasons for exploring this option.