Background

At 3 my child went through a trauma and was never the same. On the first day of pre-school she had really bad separation anxiety, my wife had to stay at the school with her, when she had her back turned, our daughter was picked up by a teacher and taken out of the school off around a playing field. When she returned she was a trembling wreck with a bloody nose from struggling to get away from the teacher. When I came to collect them the teacher told me "I don't want a traumatized child in my class". She became terrified someone would take her away again. Then COVID hit. 2 years of therapy had no effect. Over those two years she regressed and the autism spectrum started to present. (Itchy clothes, PDA, transitions, social challenges, food restrictions). Regressive autism is a common profile, approx 30% of cases make up this profile. The genetics were her sensitivity and incredible mind, the rest was environment. Turns out nurture is stronger than nature. She is still who she is, she just isn't struggling. Every challenge that made the spectrum gone whilst her sensory profile renames, she tells me that has reduced too and life is easier. If she gets too stressed out or loses connection with peers and her teacher she starts to regress but we know a swim and some collaboration gets the connection back.

To help her, I did what we do in the cyber industry, I look at why things fail, why some therapies make people worse and worked backwards. That led me to Dr Daniel P Brown's work in attachment healing, that when therapy goes wrong you are left in "disorganisation of the mind", that modern approaches of the 20th century fail to take into account attachment. It made me question, was the regression seen in my daughter a child falling into disorganisation of the mind? In certain states of mind attachments can't form so that means attachments, can't be repaired in chronic states.

That lead me to search for child attachment healing concepts. Dr Aletha Solter's Attachment Play teaches how different play types make up your attachment and our natural stress & trauma release, yet her play concepts didn't work, my daughter's play just looped, she would cry for hours in what people call meltdowns. Solter teaches that we respond to crying incorrectly, a child having a tantrum is self regulating.

That lead me to Dr Bruce Perry's work, that there is a sequence to development and a sequence to healing. People heal bottom up not top down like a lot of psych modalities approach things. e.g. CBT, ACT. If you have an ok base those approaches work but if you don't they are invalidating to the feelings in your body.

I figured out swimming in cold water brings a certain clarity, it takes you through a stress cycle and releases a flood of positive chemicals that are missing in some people. Studies show the insular cortex that controls the salient network which does the switching from the default mode network to the exec network malfunctions in certain mental health and neuro diverse conditions ( Jason S. Nomi). I noticed my child would sensory seek cold water in the bath so I tried it myself and felt the difference then found child safe ways to do it together. When people do a task together collaborating, their brains sync. That switch wasn't working. My brain was as much not in the healing part as hers wasn't.

We went to the local outdoor pool and jumped in. Me first to model, then I told her to hold eye contact with me and breath through the shock together. We caught our breath then swam to the end with her on my back. She sat on the steps grinning "This feels amazing". When we got home play started working, I learnt to sit with her cry vs trying to soothe or calm her, which was hard, having a child screaming at you in distress and try to stay zen like for two hours is more than most parents need to learn. The saddest part for me is that when that happens, psychologists tell you to walk away, put your own mask on before helping your child. Yet that had taught her when she cries her parents reach the point that they have to walk away. Children are egocentric they can't see it is not about them. She would do everything to try and trigger me to leave or respond in the old way.

I spoke with Dr Solter about it. "Cry, cry with your child, model". With another adult present, I did and it worked. Just a gentle tear, nothing over powering or scary for a child. That advice to walk away had done so much harm and was the source of her meltdowns, "when I get distressed my parents disconnect, that makes me more distressed". It creates the impossible dilemma. If you do start to feel activated by some ones cry, that is your own wound from how parent's responded to yours. So when you are triggered you need to release those emotions with someone as that gives the resolve you didn't get. Isn't it obvious when it's explained like that? I stopped feeling any activation with her cry and could hold any big feeling she could throw at me. The trying to soothe and over respond that modern parents do is the wound from 'cry it out' styles of "Boomer" parenting gone too far in the other direction. The psych industry are teaching emotional management not release or regulation. Its one of the reasons mental health is getting worse, the concepts are not suitable for children, it doesn't foster healing our crying release and our play is changing as we become more digital.

I've learnt if you change your response you need to do it three times for it to stick with the child and them to learn the new way. The 4th time things are different. We don't cry alone, we cry together. It was at that point she stop trying to trigger old ways and let her emotions out. You could hear her cry change, from the scream of a meltdown to the whimper of relief. In 6 weeks, 2 years of meltdowns went away and she started leading play, playing the games she needed. All I had to do was be present, read the play type and not over power her play, she would take on the role she needed to heal.

The first regression came. It was a teacher, a company invited to give a talk on cyber bullying, her first time in a talk of 60 kids. The speaker asked "Does anyone known any logos?" She put her hand up and answered Apple. The presenter turned it into a cheap joke. "You are wrong, You meant fruit" The kids burst out laughing at her with a couple laughing to her face that she got it wrong. She came home devastated, Mum was away and it was just me. I'm sitting there going "fuck its me" what have I done, why is she like this? Mum suggested to ask about school and it slowly came out, she was terrified she had done something wrong. If people have never understood you, you have never had attunement, how can you laugh at yourself? We went for a swim, jumped in the cold outdoor pool then the warm indoor pool. She started trying to drown me and push me under water, jumping and wrestling with me. I went to stop her then realized it was power-reversal play. So I played along letting her overpower me. She then asked to play swim school. She was the teacher I was the student. "I can see you are trying so hard!", "You are doing really well try this!"… She was saying what she needed to hear, playing it out symbolically giving herself resolve. We got home and at some point she went to take some scissors upstairs, she slipped and fell. As I walked over to her she froze. "It's really hard right now isn't in, mum's not here, you must be really upset"… She snapped back no, I'm embarrassed. She cried so hard. That was the trigger, the emotion from school coming out.

The school said she didn't understand the joke because she is autistic… It pretty obvious that it wasn't the child that didn't understand. Institutes so not take responsibility for their mistakes. They like to keep the power dynamic. Yet a key lesson is life is that we are all flawed and make mistakes. The people around her didn't understand and we need to own it.

I got to point out to a Christian school, that each time she regresses and I lose the essence of who she is, I have to take her for a swim. If what I am learning is true, that a big part of autism is a child in overload impacting brain develop and children can be born activated or become activated early in their life, parent connection can't happen to bring them back yet going in water creates a window of healing…. Who puts babies in water as the first step… I spoke their language, you can see it in peoples eyes… this flash or awe and wonder. The spirit firing… John the Baptist, turning parents hearts to their children. They started to help and listen to my silly ideas instead of brushing us off as parents.

Then the next regression came, social processing changing, play stopped working and started to loop again. 8 weeks of school, you see it in all children rupturing at the end of terms longer than 8 weeks, by week 11 you see it in the teachers too. So we would go swimming by week 7 and the regression never came.

A parent commented in the change in my daughter and asked for help, it was the same for them, we could watch the children's playground play, come up with games based on those play types, tell the parent not to try to soothe or regulate the child and let the cry complete and there would be a shift in 2 weeks if they were neurotypical, 6-8 weeks if they were neurodiverse. ND children need cold/cool water swimming to get play working whilst healing their cry. In Browns adult attachment work they report seeing a shift in 6 weeks too. It was incredible, you could see the light back in her child's eyes in 2 weeks. The mum left a voice mail after 5 days: "It was just like you said. We had done two years of therapy with no change". You could hear her voice cracking with relief and emotion.

For my own child I started to make games for every trigger that made up her spectrum that had formed after she regressed at 3 years old, treating each sensory trigger as abstract trauma on an overloaded nervous system. Meal time became crazy robot, where I'd use regression play to spoon feed her but have my arm going crazy throwing food around. "Dad whenever there is a new food I want to play this game" I'd make dishes that would trigger her like mixed up food, stews and soups and give her the choice, throw it out and get MacDonalds or junk food from the fridge or play a silly game with me. She always picked play. New meals would be served Asian style in the centre of the table that you can pick and try from, introduce them "sideways" from my plate instead of directly on hers. Children will eat what they need to over a week. You can see it in growth spurts she switches to mainly carbs, coming out of a regression more carbs, then protein then mixed. We all have this innate body wisdom that we know what we need, we have often lost connection to it. Have you ever noticed when stressed your food tastes different? How are you meant to learn new textures if you have a higher sensory profile and your palette just wants carbs? It's mis-attunement and abstract attachment wound forming between parent and child as the child is overloaded and struggling to process. Every symptom is a nervous systems screaming in fight/flight. Tip toe walking, increase sound, itchy clothes is the body unable to switch off the threat that I can't get comfy. We had to cancel going out once as she was so upset over her clothes. That made her more upset next time. "What if I impact the plans and people get unhappy". It's why transitions are hard. So we modeled laughter and healed every trigger through play.

For transitions we made up a game where she pushes me over, gets her power back in the moment, itchy clothes was the same, make her laugh as she takes the frustration out pushing me over that it switches her from threat to safety. For PDA every demand became a game, the night schedule became complete laughter, playing silly games, pillow fights where she would over power me to get out any powerlessness she felt in a day of school, smashing up models of mean teachers or mean kids for who she had ruptured with that week. For her angry protector we used non-sense play. Acted out ruptures again and again when she was happy, we would run up to each other joking pretending to get upset with each, other have fake pillow fights so she could over power me, then hug and pretend to cry in a silly ways. Act like angry dogs or bulls chasing each other, her over powering me with a wand or yoyo to hypnotize me so she could jump on and ride me and control me.

Then when real ruptures came she could trust me to turn to the game we had made, once she could see I could hold her anger, she would let her more vulnerable feelings out. Her anger stopped.

As we up skilled the 10 play types she went from playing with only boys to playing with girls, then get frustrated with the power dynamic of their play and rupturing, previously I had only done 3 play types. If children are playing different play types they rupture or don't have the skills. I taught her the play types and how to read other peoples behaviour as play, what the games meant, to ask herself; did she want to hold onto her power or share and let that person have some power as they were probably struggling in their own way. She learnt to negotiate creating a game and holding power whilst not powering over others or letting other power over her.

We had an amazing teacher(s) at her school, her school really did make good, they went above and beyond to support her, we learnt that my kid was gifted so we did collaborative passion projects with the teacher, writing stories where the teacher would delight in it and give feedback then we would work on them at home. She told the teacher that one of the characters was her. "Winky" it became her nickname, between class work they would start to play little non sense play games together, other girls saw and wanted to join in. Non sense play processes fear of authority. Creative narrative writing and stories became another release. As we turned up to school all the kids would be greeting her in their little characters. She used to blank kids when they said hello, yet suddenly she would jump into character and play back with them. She opened up. Sometimes the teacher would do structured games on the play ground to scaffold the children. If you could bottle Mrs C up, and clone her, these kids would have a chance in the school system.

Connection which is achieved through collaboration lowers sensory activation, once sensory load is lowered pathways open up, our sensory profiles are not static. She started winning awards and thriving at school. We had two years of the same teacher. Dr Perry suggests two years is what schools should aim for. Term 1 establish rapport and connection, 2-3 learning happens, term 4 is wrapping up the year. If you keep the teacher you have more effective terms, the 2nd year term one is much more productive.

We she started the 3rd year you could see the dip from loss of connection. Collaboration quickly built that connection. We started to figure out how to move the connection away from the teacher so each year she doesn't dip and use her peer skills, we created collaborative classroom work with peers. If kids enjoy collaborating together they took it to the playground. She found a peer with the same sensory profile as she had and they started to help each other in class, she built a little group of neurodiverse girl friends, she would start to ask the teacher to pair her up with certain girls.

With her deeper cognitive profile there are times she gets annoyed when power dynamics surface and will go be silly with the boys or go read in the library. She can read what she needs in her body and has all the skills to help herself. If life throws a rough patch, go play in cold water for the extra release. We are now working on figuring out supporting a sense of self so its not on achievements. Which is a challenge as that is what schools value.

She even pointed out the flaw of neurotypical play. Kids play out their power wounds of parents and schools power over powering them. They fall into a hierarchy as they model it, the smartest or strongest often powering over the others. ND children do the opposite, they are more at parallel play, when they move to collaboration they will not give up power from their wound. You see it all though the neurotypical world, communities and workplace dynamic and clicks forming around power. Real healthy play is in the middle, affilative power-with and collaborative. As Dr Brown says, we train the wrong leaders, people that crave power shouldn't have power, the people that don't want power don't try to be leaders. Founders often are doing non-directive play, building something and inviting others to join them. Their power wounds build the culture. Every community suffer the wounds of the founder. Every countries culture has the wounds of its history, tall poppy syndrome comes from the prison yard. "It will be alright mate" avoidance attachment at a society level. Singapore kicked out of Malaysia, the over performing gifted kid. Kiaso (meaning must not fail) embedded in the culture from the wound. Trump Americas wound on display. You can see social processing change on a society level since covid, everyone slipping down to survival mode. People getting more extreme and focusing on their own interests.

Whilst all this was happening we made a time before bed where she could cry/play and let out all of the daily stress, she had capacity to get through the next day, once the physiological sigh returned to her cry, regressions stopped, swimming was needed less. Now we only see a regression when life throws bigger stressors once a year. A change of year and new teacher and peers means connection needs to be restored with new people at the start of the term, lots of collaboration.

When you feel the emotion in your body and your body naturally goes into its calming response via the double breath, whimper and shiver you learn that big feelings are safe, if you try to resist or stop them it just makes them worse as you never get to learn that release happens. We all have a load until we start to struggle and processing changes, development gets impacted, concentration gets impacted and that can happen at any age as we are constantly remapping our brain networks. Between birth and teens its Body, Attachment, Sense of Self, Power and Control, Becoming. At Puberty the body changes again, you test attachment further, you find a deeper sense of self and that loop repeats, then in the late 20s-30s it happens again, looping through life until networks start to deteriorate.

I've spent two years trying to spread awareness; research centres, universities, governing bodies and I only ever had one response. "Go write a book like Piaget, no one will every reply to you due to funds. I'm retiring so figured I'd let you know as I like the way you described your observations"

I am a person outside their guild pointing out they got it wrong. There is a thing about Drs or people that work in field with competitive entry points. They over value it and it become part of their identity. When I shared what I had learnt online in a therapist forum "You need to do your work like we did if you want to have a say". Why does "work" have to happen between the 4 walls of a university? If you look at psychology, studies often cant be repeated, each modality has their camps and contradict each other, most don't know why it worked. The industry is disorganised and lacks a theory of mind. I've pulled from OT, Neuroscience, Psychology. If I was in a university I'd be told to pick one, stay within a lane. Test a tiny part.

Every parent does this with a child naturally without a degree. Secure children do it together on a playground.

This is an example of the flaw.

De Jough says CPTSD is just PTSD do his 8 day EMDR and it resolves. He has 3 studies that claim his intensive EMDR program resolve CPTSD. They were used to campaign against CPTSD being added to the DSM and ICD. Yet he measured trauma, not long term relational patterns, not if they had learnt how to release trauma themselves.

Dr Brown would say it's an attachment wound, heal the attachment and most do not need EMDR and has a small study to support it. His pillar collaboration is a play type and a level play develops to by about 4-5 years old. From 5-7 play develops into complex collaborative symbolic play. Children building worlds together with roles and rules. EMDR is symbolic play.

Solter would say change the way you respond to a cry, use the 9 play types to bring development back on track, and a child will naturally play what they need to heal within the parent connection. 100+ instructors around the world and two very small studies of no more than 10 people.

Each person is looking at the part, no one looking at the whole of how development happens and what needs to be repaired or retaught.

There is no agreed developmental theory of mind to test against. Studies just looking at little parts or trying to prove why something works, then when it fails the only person blamed is the client and their resistance.

In the cyber industry when there is a flaw, we find a solution, spread awareness and the industry validates it and jumps to protect computers in 48 hours. Yet the industry that is there to protect the most vulnerable of our society doesn't do anything.

I'm slowly documenting everything I have learnt for other parents, a lot of the slides come from Solter's Aware Parenting concepts, I trained to become an instructor by they don't like their concepts being changed. They had nothing about rebuilding play and restoring play in children, how to bring a child out of overload etc, so I've expanded it to include what I needed. Taking concept my daughters OT taught me and how we applied that at home.

I sat with my daughter and created the content here for schools, going through the different play types together and how disruptive behaviors in the classroom can be read as the relational need, documenting what she would want teachers to say as a struggling child. It's a work in progress. Use play and collaboration to engage students struggling, understand the impact of power-over natural of school and how a teacher could be the first secure person a child meets or someone that reinforces relational wounds. Understand how a higher sensory nervous system means more is stress and trauma. How if you power over someone their attachment will play out.

That these poor kids are going to what might as well be war everyday, their nervous systems getting fried and being totally misunderstood, the harm the neurotypical classroom and power dynamic can do to a developing mind. Accommodations aren't nice to have. School refusal is a child with nothing left in their nervous system. Kids that need this release healed though play, laughter and crying, kids that need to be understood and feel safe and connected, their own parents overloaded and struggling. So much that gets labeled as genetics is environment which shows urgency that environments need to change. That starts with education and understanding. Even now NDIS has been cut for these kids. These are all the ones that can be helped, not "autistic enough". What the government has put in place is terrible. PPP parenting isn't right. You need an OT, Psych and Teachers around the family, along with education on how this release works. This would help every child but it might not be other children's source of the spectrum, some can be other genetics, inflammation or auto-immune/immune stress at key developmental times. The experts need to go figure out how to address that so pathways open up and repair of play and development can then becomes possible for those kids. A kids with a hypo under responsive nervous system probably wouldn't respond as well as a hyper one. I do also need to stress, you can't cure neurodiversity, the sensory profile, the way you think and see the world different is autism, the spectrum is the struggle that doesn't have to be for some. The bits that get you labeled with your support needs, that can shift, just like concentration can improve. No one is born with sensory integration or the ability to concentrate.

My Daughters OT Centre wanted to pilot the concepts with other parents but got nervous when it teaches parents how stress and trauma get released. They wanted a psychologist to tag along, "what if a parent made it worse". "What if it upset a parent to know this?" The irony is you cry, you cry to heal and that needs to be held not soothed, calmed or avoided, no parent should ever be blamed or blame themselves, if the experts that should know this do not actually know this. What hope do you have as a parent of a struggling child? The parent has to heal their cry along with the child, I'm an incubator baby, your cry shuts down when no one comes, its why they now have skin on skin after birth from the harm it did children. I've had to heal that shiver and learn to go into a full trauma shiver to release my life's traumas.

Solter's book Tears and Tantrums detail this and was written in the 90s with all the studies. Brown's work detailed CPTSD is a disorganised attachment or significant disturbance with later trauma on top. Heal the attachment not process trauma in 2016 yet it isn't known. If this release isn't healthy and you do therapy you are at risk of being made worse. Leichsenring, Steinert, Rabung and Ioannidis (2022) found therapy help 63% of people and a new approach was needed if it wanted to get better results.

I've never been able to find a psychologist to help run a trial, why would any one believe what I've seen, especially when it means what they are practicing is counter intuitive. Solter's community already have parents teaching this to other parents, children are already playing the games under a parents nose. A parent not noticing is equally harmful. When I look back at old videos, I can see my daughter doing all the play she needed, every cry, scream or rupture, every bit of advice I was given was disrupting the natural process. I just needed to learn how to read it.

The part that gets me the most. Brown teaches psychology mirrors spirituality and developed the most direct path to awakening and Buddha-hood. Tummo Yoga generating heat through your central channel of nerves, quietens my mind where mindfulness fails, meditation works for me after Tummo. Cold water swimming does the same. Every practice needed is within religious or indigenous rituals.

I was bored so mapped out 22 religions and found they all follow the same sequence. Settle the body, community and attachment, identity, ethics, concentration, higher states, disintegration and integration, conduct, grief and death, pilgrimage, sound what they do with each state and conduct differs. You can look at Christianity and see all the schims. Baptist kept the baptism, Catholic has the ritual, Evangelical has the missionary, Orthodox has the contemplation practices, Quaker have the listening within, Protestant/Anglican have the scripture. Some have lay people as the leaders. Each ritual does something to the nervous system… Cold water, touch, oils - spikenard gaba, myrrh anti-bacterial, frankincense anti-inflammation, fasting is ketogenic, Singing hymms syncs breath and nervous systems, a shared meal releases oxytocin. The 'bridal chamber' is tantric, the ritual still there of consummating marriage. Everyone watered down into symbolism that doesn't have the original effect.

When you have a connected cry, there is a calm that enters the mind afterwards, that state is where natural wisdom arises from. When you have a sexual climax it's the same state but with more bliss, you don't desire anything and are content. That is the states tummo, dzogchen and christian mystic are achieving and learning to stabilize. You don't have to chase it, its there when we connect with each other, when we play, laugh and cry. The highly sensitive neurodiverse children are the ones that benefit most from the practices. The Bard or Psalmist was the gifted musician, the seer or sage is the kid with pattern recognition. Each culture had variations of these roles. Before religions there were indigenous practices, the Shaman held all the roles in one person. If you follow it you can see institutes made it controlled through them and in doing so lost the real ability, then there were guilds, and universities, it moved the healing part to science and again split further, Neuroscience, OT, Psychology, functional health each one looking at a small piece not the whole. Here we are today society in a bit of a pickle, kids mental health getting worse. If you look at Shamanic practices, its just symbolic play with rituals and using altered states.

Anything that powers over each other is human distortion, you can read the bible passages that academics say aren't written by the original authors and they all add power over. Women being excluded even though Jesus and Paul practiced with them and they were the myrrh bearers, Jesus is constantly scolding the men for getting it wrong, the men all ran off after his death, the women stayed. The book of Timothy defining the church structure not written in Paul's style. If you put it back together you see the whole picture. It's like psychology, each modality having a part of the picture. If you point out it has it wrong a lot of people would say "It worked for me" yet it failed the most vulnerable and it gets put on the person… Just have faith...

Buddhism has similar challenges, the tulku system of reincarnation created by the institutes to pass on power. The institute forms to protect the knowledge but ends up powering over it because that is our greatest flaw as humans, the need to power over each other. If you look at magik and darker practices that happen along side religions, if you can read play and symbolism you can take resolve away from someone and drive them crazy.

Nothing will change for these kids struggling unless there is education, whilst me and my daughter's story involve neurodiversity, all children have this release, we are all human. We work the same way, just our stories and games to play might vary.

Parents, Psychologists, OTs, Teachers all need to know how this works and support a family. GPs and Psychiatrist's need to thrown the DSM out and create proper diagnostics and identification for early interventions and at risk groups. Autism and ADHD need to be split into the different types with ways to identify which, so treatment can be tailored. Nervous system sensitivity plays a part. Depression, anxiety are this release isn't healthy.

Preventative Psychology, heal this release in children before they are adults and the wounds are harder to repair, heal within the family unit inter-intergenerationally, have it so we all have this skill and can give each other resolve or know how to go heal our own traumas through play. It's not a science, its an art, something we all can do as it's a core part of being human.