Jennifer King - Educational Psychologists

24/08/2026

🌱 What Every Child Needs to Thrive
Children need more than opportunities to learn and achieve. They need to feel safe, connected, understood and valued.

Strong relationships, time to play, clear and consistent boundaries, and adults who listen to their feelings all help create the emotional security children need to grow.

When children feel secure in their world, they are better able to explore, learn, build relationships and develop resilience.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can give a child is simply the feeling: “I see you. I hear you. You matter.” 💗

21/08/2026

💗 Strong Women Ask for Help

We often associate strength with coping, pushing through and managing everything ourselves. But real strength can also mean recognising when we need support — and allowing ourselves to receive it.

Asking for help doesn’t make us less capable or resilient. Connection, vulnerability and knowing our limits are important parts of emotional wellbeing.

This Women’s Month, let’s remind one another that we don’t have to carry everything alone. 🌿
Strong women support strong women.

17/08/2026

💗 Raising Emotionally Strong Girls — and Boys
Emotional strength isn’t about teaching children to hide difficult feelings. It’s about helping them understand those feelings, express them safely, and know that they are supported through them.
When we listen, validate, encourage healthy boundaries, model self-compassion and allow children to ask for help, we give them skills that last a lifetime.

We’re not just raising strong children — we’re helping to shape kind, confident and emotionally healthy adults. 🌱

Strong minds today. Strong futures tomorrow.

13/08/2026

🧠 The Mental Load Nobody Sees

The planning. The remembering. The organising. The worrying. The constant mental checklist running quietly in the background.

The mental load can be exhausting, particularly when so much of what you do is invisible to everyone around you.

Feeling overwhelmed doesn’t mean you’re failing. Sometimes it simply means you’ve been carrying too much for too long.

This Women’s Month, give yourself permission to share the load, set boundaries, rest, and ask for help. 💗

You don’t have to do it all. Your wellbeing matters too.

10/08/2026

💗 You Matter Too, Mom

Mothers spend so much time caring for everyone else that their own needs can easily slip to the bottom of the list.

This Women’s Month, remember that looking after yourself isn’t selfish. Rest, connection, boundaries and asking for support are all important parts of emotional wellbeing.

You matter too. 🌿

Ed. Psychologists working with a MDT of OT, Physio & Speech Therapists.
Therapeutic interventions for children, adolescents & parents. Psycho-ed assessments

20/07/2026

10/07/2026

Join us in getting this great garden going! We desperately need compost and hosepipe, fencing and stakes. If you would like to contribute monetarily please contact us or your therapist directly :) Thank you!

17/04/2025

Another important step in helping children regulate their feelings is validation. Too often children grow up thinking that feelings like angry, sad, scared and anxious are "bad" feelings. This makes them more difficult to tolerate. Every feeling is acceptable and valid.

It is also important to help children separate feelings from behaviours. When a child is in trouble for acting out what they understand is that their feeling is "bad." When correcting a child it is helpful to validate the feeling first. For example, "I can see that you're feeling really angry right now and it's totally okay to be angry." After validation we correct the behaviour. For example " It is not acceptable to hit your brother when your are angry with him." You then go ahead and offer other acceptable behaviours.

01/04/2025

Many parents ask how they can support their children learn to self-soothe or manage big feelings. Learning how to manage feelings is something that starts in infancy, but infants cannot do this in their own. Co-regulation is very important at this stage, where infants are regulated by being soothed by a close caregiver, who attends to their needs and provides comfort during times of distress. Mirroring facial expressions also teaches infants what different facial expressions mean and teaches them to recognize emotions in others.

This month we still be talking about different strategies to teach children how to manage big emotions.

19/02/2025

Jude came into the kitchen for the 450th time today looking for food. I told him it was dinner time and he smiled.

I took a pizza out of the freezer, showed him the box, which he tapped for yes and let out a loud happy hum.
He made his way back into the annexe and waited.

From his bedroom window he can see into the kitchen, where he watches me make dinner. He dances back and forth with his iPad whilst he waits, keeping an eye on me too. I give him a happy flap back every now and again when we catch each others eye, my way of reassuring him it’s on its way.

Just before it’s ready I go out to him and ask him to pass me his drink, making a drinking action with my hands at the same time. He looks around the room, finds it and hands it over to me. I go back to make his juice, cut up his dinner and take it out to the annexe.

Jude smiles, and dives straight in. Within a couple of minutes he’ll be back by my side, wanting to see what’s on my plate and grabbing any extra food he can. It’s become a routine that has to be satisfied, no matter how much I put on his plate.

He’ll go back and forth, I eat my dinner with about 5 interruptions, but all of our interactions are happy ones. For which I’m always grateful.

I’m able to talk to Jude a little more lately. Language has always been a confusing struggle for him. Even in the happiest moments we keep it short and soft. But talking to him about his dinner, asking him to get his drink and him showing he’s fully understood each time, that’s relatively new.

Something you’d expect a 16 year old to have mastered a long time ago. Tiny, everyday moments that most people would pay no attention to. Place little importance in.

But to us they’re everything. The small moments of joy we see each day. The happy flap, the attempt at a new food, the understanding of a new word, taking his own coat off. Tiny things. Special things.

At some point over the years I stopped worrying about the big milestones. The words that haven’t come, the exams that’ll never be sat, the experiences we’ve never had. And chosen to focus on the small moments.

Stopped focusing on what wasn’t happening and saw the beauty in the moments that are ❤️