Belle’s OT Corner
Belle’s OT Corner
Play Season: Ep 7 Persistence in Play
This final episode of our play season explores how playful moments build the persistence skills children need throughout life. When children engage in play, they're not just having fun; they're developing the ability to notice problems, try different solutions, and maintain emotional regulation through challenges.
Join me as we dive into the intricacies of how we can support the children in our lives to develop their persistence within play. From noticing the problem, trialling some solutions, seeking help from adults to maintaining their regulation and using adults for co-regulation throughout!
Whether you're a parent, teacher, or therapist, this episode offers practical strategies for fostering persistence through everyday play. By embracing these approaches, you'll help the children in your life develop confidence, resilience, and a lifelong belief that they can overcome challenges.
What persistence skills have you noticed developing through play? Share your experiences and join the conversation!
Don't forget to share the podcast around with anyone that you think could benefit from it and follow me on @bellesotcorner on instagram and Facebook for more insights.
DISCLAIMER:
Whilst I will always make evert effort to share correct information as at the date of the podcast, research is constantly happening and as a profession we learn more everyday. One therapist may have a different way of doing things to another, and every child's needs are unique. By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others Consult your child's paediatrician or therapist for any recommendations for your child.
Hey everyone and welcome back to Belle's OT Corner. I realise I say the same thing every time when I start these episodes, but that's alright. Today we're going to be into our last episode in our play season and we've kind of gone through all the stages of play, what some of those social development within play looks like. And today, just to round it out, I thought we would talk quickly about building persistence in play and how play is such an important tool through which we learn some of these persistent skills. We look at how we can keep going at something and figure something else out, try a new idea, skills that we then end up needing later in life as adults and as older kids and teenagers, to be able to, you know, keep going through the things that we really don't want to do. And a lot of those early skills of persistence do come through play, because it's this safe space to make mistakes, try something different and see what happens. So, to round out the play season, I thought we'd quickly touch base on building some persistence within play and why that's so important, but also what it looks like as well. Wow, so, as I'm no, I have no doubt that you will have picked up I like problem solving and I think it's such an important part of what we help our kids to develop.
Speaker 1:Be that your own kids, be that kids in your class, or be that your nieces, nephews, whatever children in your life. Problem solving skills are such an important part in our life. To be able to go, hmm, I wonder. The power of an I wonder is huge. See what would happen if I'm curious or I have a problem and I'm not just going to give up, I'm going to go. Hmm, could I just do the same thing again? Could I do something slightly different this time? And that ability to keep going and have another way of doing something or another try or going you know what? This is out of my remit and I need help. And that part of problem solving to go actually no, I do need help within this situation is so important as well, and you've probably picked up on that. It's, I find, it a really interesting area to work in because I tend to talk about it in most of our episodes, but I thought today we'd give an episode to it in and of itself.
Speaker 1:But problem solving is such an essential skill and has such a big place within play in terms of how it develops. Oh, excuse me. So when I was thinking about this episode and part of the reason it took me a little while to put it up is I really wanted to get my head around how I wanted to present this content to you guys and really I want you to see if you can think of it within kind of two ways. So when we have our persistence, we have the problem solving side of persistence and we have the maintaining my regulation side of persistence as well, because I need to be able to be frustrated and be uncomfortable and stay in this activity or pause and come back to this activity but then be able to figure out what's going wrong and what else I could try this activity but then be able to figure out what's going wrong and what else I could try. So in today's episode we're going to talk about these kind of two parts of problem solving, two parts of persistence. I mean this problem solving component and this idea of how we can maintain our regulation, particularly in relation to play, and what we can do as adults to help the kids that we work with, to help your own children to be able to navigate some of these, and what we can do as adults to help the kids that we work with, to help your own children to be able to navigate some of these and what are some other? You know, I love a quick, little easy change that we can make that actually has such profound impact, be it in the morning routine, in bath time, in bedtime, in play, whatever it is. How can we bring in that element of playfulness that's going to help build some of these skills as well?
Speaker 1:So that's a little bit of a waffle about what we're going to be talking about today, but let's jump into it. So we'll talk about problem solving first, and when we think about problem solving, we want to think about some of the bits that are involved within that. We want to think about some of the bits that are involved within that, and I'm only going to talk about a couple of them today so that we can then spend some time talking about. Well, what does that mean? What could we actually do?
Speaker 1:So one really big, important bit in problem-solving is noticing there is a problem, noticing that this isn't quite working, but having the confidence to go, or having the knowledge or the lived experience to go. Well, I can figure this out somehow. I don't know how I'm going to figure this out, but I want to figure this out and so I'm going to keep trying. Now, this could be anything from there being a problem with the lid going on the container to my pencils run out, to the blocks that I'm trying to build with aren't stacking because they're not quite straight, and I want to build a tower of 10 blocks, but it keeps on falling over when I get to seven blocks. You know, all of these little bits of problem solving is everywhere in our day, but the first bit that we need is to be able to go oh, oh, there is a problem, and being able to recognize that there's a problem and keep going with the activity.
Speaker 1:Now, for some kids, you won't necessarily notice this, because they'll just kind of keep trying and they've recognized that there's a problem and they've got the confidence to go oh, I could try this, or I saw someone else do that, so I'm going to try that, and they start to naturally do this. For other kids, you might see that they notice there's a problem and they don't know what to do with it and so they leave, or you might see a child that's going to keep doing the same thing over and over again, and it's actually that noticing that's the tricky part. So there's kind of two parts in this it's the noticing and then it's also the. Well, I can do something about it and I'm going to change what I'm doing. I'm going to change my plan to be able to try something different, and this could be change my motor plan, change how I'm doing something, change what I'm going to use. There's so many different things that we could change, but this whole concept of noticing a problem is really important when we look at problem solving. But this whole concept of noticing a problem is really important when we look at problem solving. And so what can we do as the adults? Well, one of my favorite things that we can do is model problems.
Speaker 1:We forget, as adults, how much of our life we just do and how much of our life has become habitual and our brain doesn't have to actively think about it anymore because we're adults and we've had lived experiences and we've figured out what works for us or, in some cases, we're still figuring out what works for us, but some of the day-to-day things frequently don't require us to actively think about it. I can get dressed whilst I'm thinking about what I'm going to make for breakfast, what time I need to leave, and probably 15,000 other thoughts that are running through my head at that time, but very rarely is one of them. On dressing, apart from maybe choosing my clothes, I could be eating my dinner and maintaining a conversation with someone, because I don't have to think about how I'm going to eat my dinner. I could be in terms of, like, how I'm going to use my cutlery, unless I'm trying to cut through something that's not working, in which case then I will pay attention to it and might have to actually watch what I'm doing, but most of the time I can manage that without having to actively think about it, because it's something that I've been doing for so many years now decades and we forget as adults that there's lots of these little things that we do, that actually, the little people in our lives are having to think about these things, and we can make it playful and fun, but there's a lot of thinking and problem solving that they have inherently within their day. So how can we help them start to notice some of these problems a bit more? We can model it within our day-to-day life. It could be as simple as the jars not opening and you play it up and you make it a little bit silly around. Oh, it's so tight, it's stuck, stuck or it's you know, you're struggling to open a packet of chips or crisps or whatever you call them, wherever you are, and you model being like I can't do it. I'm going to hold it here instead, because what we're doing is we're modelling there's a problem and we're explicitly labelling that problem, and then we're also modelling what else you could try. But this whole idea of actually, even if it's playfully and you could be sitting down playing with your child and maybe oh, there's so many things that can happen in play. But maybe, let's say, you're playing dress ups and you model that the hat has gotten stuck on your ear and you model that the hat has gotten stuck on your ear. Or maybe you're playing spacecrafts or spaceships sorry and you're jumping on the couch to get to the moon and all of a sudden you go, oh, it's too far, I can't jump that far. You can, but we're creating these little problems within what we're doing playfully to then go, oh no, oh, it's okay, I can figure it out, or oh no, I need help, or just that's not gonna work. So let's do this instead. You know I had, um, oh, I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1:I was playing once with a lovely little young man and we, we were playing cops and robbers. And he goes yep, you can be inside, and then we'll run outside, and then we'll run back inside, and there is this beautifully clean glass door between us and outside, and so I made a big thing of all right. So where are we gonna run? We're gonna run, run, run, run, run and bang. And now I didn't completely face plant into it, but I've made a big thing of all right. So where are we going to run? We're going to run, run, run, run, run and bang. And now I didn't completely face plant into it, but I made a big sound with my hand against the glass door to go oh no, I can't get outside and he goes. Well, you have to open the door.
Speaker 1:And it became this beautiful play interaction where it's just being able to identify and model having these problems, modelling that this is okay and we can figure it out together. And the biggest one when we look at modelling having these problems is that playful element. If it is a problem that you're having, you know, breakfast time getting dressed. Maybe you can't find your shoes or socks or, you know, maybe someone's homework's stuck somewhere and, as much as possible, if we can be playful around these elements and say, well, where is it? Oh, there's me. Has it grown legs and run away? You know, all of these bits and pieces, helping notice where the problem is, is such a powerful part, and just on this one as well, sometimes all we have to do is notice and maybe point out the problem.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that you have to solve the problem every time. Sometimes you just go oh, that's not going to work, and then allow that time to see if maybe they go, okay, we'll go and do something entirely different instead. Totally fine, maybe it's that they can solve the problem. Or maybe you sit there for a minute and you go. I don't know. Do you know? I don't know, I wonder, I wonder. And then you can start to figure it out together.
Speaker 1:But just starting to make sure that we're not always going and it's so easy to do and I catch myself doing it all the time. It's not a bad thing if you do, but you just want to start to bring awareness to it. The number of times I might say something like whoop, that's really high, make sure you. Blah, blah, blah. I'm telling you the problem and I'm telling you what to do about it. Instead of oh look, you're really tall, you're up, really high. It's a bit scary up there, allowing that time for the thinking to happen. And sometimes the thinking won't happen, and that's okay too.
Speaker 1:But just acknowledging that it's actually not always about the solution In fact, it's rarely about the solution. It's often about the process of noticing and then thinking so what, what could this be? And the other one excuse me, the other one that works really nicely hand in hand in this is let your child solve some of your problems, even if, even if they're made up problems, even if, let's say, oh, there's so many ones you could do. Um, let's say you're getting dressed and you put your shoes on the wrong feet deliberately and you go oh, no, what's happened? My feet don't feel comfortable. And then you go oh, my shoes are on the wrong feet. See if you can go. Oh, change them over then.
Speaker 1:Or if you're stuck opening that packet, like we were talking about before, maybe give them a try to see if they can figure it out or if they can tell you what to do differently, help them to engage in some of that problem solving when it's not about something that they directly want to do, where there's that emotional investment. And if you think about some of the regulation stuff that we're going to be talking about in two seconds, but if you've listened to our regulation season and even our sensory season, think about how you know we're so much more emotionally invested and emotionally charged when it's my problem. But if I'm helping you solve your problem, I've got more access to my brain and I can engage in more of that problem solving together, and so let your kid be engaged in, you know, solving whatever little problems are happening in your day. I, um, you know, had one of my favorite things to do in a job back in Australia was I knew what I wanted to get out of a session, but a couple other kids I was working with, they were play sessions, and so we were working on some of these skills, but the actual activity that we were doing was not important, and so I would come out to them and pick them up from reception and I'd say, hey, I have a problem, my brain is not working and I haven't chosen any toys, and it's just. It's too many choices. My brain can't do it. And so they would come around to the back where we kept all the toys, and we'd look through the cupboards and they'd choose what they wanted, and then they'd pull one out and they'd be like do you think this one? I'm like, no, I don't feel like that one, because it's going to be, it's too tricky, it's going to make my brain work too hard. And so then they go back and they see they could find one that would be maybe a little bit less tricky for me, and this beautiful problem solving process came out. Now they didn't realize that that's actually part of what we were working on and we did it in a different way. But get them involved in solving some of these problems and it's amazing to see what they come out with. It's great fun, excuse me.
Speaker 1:So then we have bits of modeling, figuring things out. So once we can notice there's a problem, what we need to be able to do is have a try at something, and there's a part to this called ideation, which is being able to have the idea of something to do, and there's a part to this of how we build our ideation of how we watch what other people do see what works for other people. Then we start to explore things ourself. We start to see some of these like cause and effect, bits and pieces that can come together. But when we look at having problems within our play and we look at this dynamic of being able to do problem solving, we'll be to be able to do problem solving. I need to watch somebody else do it, and so it's a great thing when you're playing with your kid, particularly if you go back to and think about some of the parallel play stuff that we were talking about. This is a really powerful way to start to explore and model different things.
Speaker 1:So I could be sitting there and going. You guys know I love blocks like building blocks, and they're building blocks and that's great. And I'm trying to build my rock block tower and I'm deliberately making it crash every time and I'm like, oh, it's just, it's not working. Okay, well, I'm gonna put two on the bottom this time and then I'm gonna build it up. But oh, that didn't work. Okay, this time I'm gonna go really slowly, I'm gonna be really careful and I'm gonna see if I can sit them just on top. Oh, I, I got four. Okay, really, really slowly. Oh, I did it, and so in that, all I'm doing is narrating the thinking or the problem solving. That's going on Equally. I'm narrating the problem, but I'm also narrating what I could try, what I could do, how you might be able to model it.
Speaker 1:Now, at times you might be doing this silently, at times you might be using your language to support that as well, but just keeping this idea open of the power of playing alongside is huge and the power of playing alongside where we can model different things and different ideas. Or maybe you know, you're doing a bit of um, pretend play and let's say, oh, let's say you're at the park and you've set up a cafe and you've come to order something and you're saying there and you go, I don't have any money. Oh no, I can't pay for this, I don't have any money. I know I can go and get some money. And then you reach down and you rummage and you pick up I know I can go and get some money. And then you reach down and you rummage and you pick up a stick and you go okay, and that's five dollars. You go, how much do I need? And your child goes you need a hundred dollars. And you're like, okay, great, fantastic, I need a hundred dollars now.
Speaker 1:And then you go pick up a leaf and you go, okay, well, that's, that's twenty dollars. And then you go and go, okay, I need something else. And you go, what else could be money? I need some money. How am I going to find some money? And then you go, oh, I'm going to grab this stick, and that's another $50. And then all of a sudden, that pretends like it's enough money and on we roll with the game. But this idea of not just saying, oh, I'm going to grab a handful and I'm going to use this, but I'm actually going to use this opportunity to think through what I could do and, within this really fun, playful situation, I'm showing some of this flexible thinking. I'm showing some of this pretend play, but I'm also showing how to kind of solve some of these problems as we go along as well.
Speaker 1:Sidestep to that is then looking at bits that you can model within your daily routine as well. How, within your day, can you model figuring something out? Maybe you're helping your kid get dressed and they get stuck because kids are wiggly, and you go, oh no, your leg's stuck, your toes are stuck, your fingers are stuck. What are we going to do? Should I pull it down? No, no, that didn't work. Should I? Should I pull on the neck? Nope, nope, that didn't work. Oh, I know what if you wiggle your fingers? No, that's not quite enough. What if you wiggle your fingers and I pull at the same time and then, all of a sudden, the hand gets free or the toes get free or whatever it is?
Speaker 1:But using these opportunities to model the figuring it out, do we know exactly what to do in those situations? Most the time, yes, is there a huge amount of power in doing that problem solving together, more than you could believe, particularly if we can do it playfully, particularly if we can have that connection and be a little bit silly with it. The more that we can be on their team and figure this out together and go along this shared problem solving process together, it's so much fun and it's so, so helpful for them to start to build some of their own persistence and some of their own problem solving skills, particularly the more that we can have fun with it because, as I was saying at the start, when we're playful, when we're silly, it's a safe space to be able to explore new things and be able to try new things, and that's what we want. And also, if you think about the last time that you were silly and be that a silly interaction or a playful interaction you had with a kid or a friend or a partner, whatever it might when you get that true feeling of safety and silliness, it's fantastic what can happen. And then you get all these really positive emotions that come along the same time and you feel like you can do anything. And that's what we want to support for our kids is giving them this idea of it doesn't matter if you get it wrong.
Speaker 1:I was on a walk the other day and there was a really high leaf and I went hmm, I wonder if I can jump and hit that, because I was in a place with friends where I felt really safe and I went yeah, I'm going to jump for it, and I got it. And then I went for the next one and I got it as well. And then there was one that was really high and I definitely don't have the jumping skills for that, but I try it anyway. And this idea of being a little bit playful, being a little bit silly, being a fully grown adult, jumping for leaves in a tree because it's fun, but there'd be people that I'd be with that I wouldn't do that with because I didn't have that same sense of playfulness and safety with them. So it's always always such a powerful space to be able to do things within play and bringing this little bit of playfulness into what we're doing. So that's the bit on problem solving in play that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 1:Now for the rest of today's episode, I just want to touch on looking at how we maintain our regulation within play, particularly thinking about some of the co-regulation supports that we can use, how we can pause and return, how we can repair and try again, and also how we can look at building this safe space. See the links we're building here today. Guys, it's all coming together, having this safe space where we can explore new emotions and explore frustrations, and explore getting angry and explore maybe being a bit sad when we look at some of our pretend play scripts that we can pull in. It's a really safe space to explore different feelings. And then what can we do about them. Is what we want to just stay angry? Great, let's stay angry in this play or do we want to stay angry and do something to change my regulation to help me feel better so I can get back to something. Great, let's do that as well.
Speaker 1:But I'm getting ahead of myself. If you haven't listened to the co-regulation episode back in oh gosh, I don't even know what season it was in. I want to say it was in our regulation season, because that makes logical sense. Um, but if you haven't had a listen to the co-regulation episode, I do recommend you go back and listen to it, because it will give a lot of the building blocks for what we're kind of talking about today. But if we think about play within our co-regulation and where that becomes so important is we want to start to be thinking about well, yes, it is in the regulation sorry, I was just checking at the same time but when we're thinking about play and co-regulation, it's this idea of how can we get a bit excited and how can I use myself as a bit of an anchor to go oh, we need to slow down a second, and then let's go again. And then, oh, we need to slow down a second, because if we go again too much and too much and too much and too much, it's not going to fall apart, the wheels are going to fall off. But how can we bring this bit of excitement and playfulness? And then, who will be able to slow down?
Speaker 1:And it could be as simple as changing your breathing. Oh, that was. Oh, that was a lot of fun. That was, that was really good. I loved that. We did it. Oh, should we do it again? Yeah, let's go. And it could be as simple as that. It could be those couple little breaths, that little bit of time, and then go. That was really fun, have a little bit of a pause and then, hey, should we, should we do it again? It could be. So it could be just being able to go. Yeah, this is really hard.
Speaker 1:Or if let's say we're trying to do something in our play and it's not working. Let's say we're doing coloring and my pencils aren't working, it's just not working. And you play into that feeling, then you go oh, it's just oh, and so I'm meeting you where you're at and then I'm using myself to help you calm down a little bit, to help you support that regulation, so that we can then go into some of those problem-solving bits of do we need a pencil sharpener, do we need a different pen, whatever it might be. But first we're going to acknowledge that it's frustrating. And it's this idea of we can't do one without the other. We cannot play all the time if we're not regulating it along the same time. If we're not managing our regulation throughout the day, we're not going to be able to do the activity successfully.
Speaker 1:And so, looking at where that kind of pull and tug and rope pull and to and fro, to and fro I can't, that doesn't anyway. Where that give and take that's the word I was looking for where that give and take sits around. I was looking for where that give and take sits around. Oh, okay, we're gonna get a little bit excited. And then, oh, we're gonna come back and do a little bit of regulation. And it's not saying that we're gonna stop what we're doing to go and do something different. At times it might be that at times it might be oh, we've gotten a little bit excited, should we go and have a bit of a spin, or should we go and have a bit of a cuddle, or should we go and, you know, do something different before we come back. But at other times it might be as simple as taking that little pause within your play to go. Wow, oh, I'm getting a bit tired. Oh, and you know we can play it up and be silly in so many different ways around why we're having a little pause and sometimes we don't even need to give a reason.
Speaker 1:I was, you know, having this lovely play interaction where we were bouncing on a ball and rolling over the ball and crashing into the floor and it was great fun. I was laughing, they were laughing, I was almost crying because I was laughing so much. And then I just noted they were just starting to flitter a little bit with their regulation and it was starting to break, because they just were getting so excited that we started to get some silly movements and so we turned it into using the ball to roll over us and roll back down and do some of those big squishy steam rollers to go and I'm changing my pace to go slower instead of which is what we weren't doing to go, brought him back and then we went off and played again and it was fantastic fun and so just keeping that in the back of your mind and also keeping in the back of our mind that co-regulation goes both ways guys, if we get really excited and really really silly, they're gonna come along with us. But if we keep going, they're gonna come along with us. And all of a sudden you've got a dysregulated adult and a dysregulated child and it's easier than you think to get there. And so, if needed as well, pulling in your partners, pulling in your you know family, sisters, whoever's around, just go. Or if you're a teacher, pulling in someone else, just I just need two seconds. Two seconds to just go and regulate myself so I can come back to this. The other bit and we've touched on it a little bit but is this idea of pause and return? So just because we're taking a break in quotation marks to support our regulation, that doesn't mean the play has stopped. And the regulation bit can be playful, it can be like a steamroller, it can be just taking some breaths, it can be just stopping talking for a minute and just giving that extra time. We're pausing to come back. We're not just stopping entirely, we're just shifting a little bit, making a slight change to what we're doing, to support us coming back and to support us persisting within this play that we're doing. It's also really important that we're doing.
Speaker 1:It's also really important that we're frequently going to get it wrong when we think about these bits and we're going to try and do something and it's not going to work and it might cause some frustration or some sadness or some big emotions, or we might get more dysregulated because of what we as the adults have done, and that's okay. I often get it wrong more times than I get it right, and then we look at going, okay, well, oh, that's not what we needed. I was wrong. Let's do this instead, or let's come back or let's whatever it might be and that repair part of it where we go. Yeah, that that wasn't right.
Speaker 1:And this goes hand in hand with when we're looking at modeling different things. We can model elements of this as well. Oh, no, that didn't work. Oh, that wasn't what we wanted to do. Nope, that wasn't it. That's okay, though we can try this instead, and this can go for any age as well. Really, this, it is such important, even in like adult relationships and things that you have. But this idea of just going that wasn't quite right, that wasn't quite what we wanted and we're just going to come back and try again, or do you know what? That wasn't what we wanted, and actually we're going to leave it and go and do something else. Um, but the biggest bit with this is looking at how we can have this element of pausing time supporting that regulation. What can we do within our regulation? What does this child's regulation needs look like? So, if you're thinking about things in the classroom, how can we set up activities that are going to match what their regulation needs are anyway, inherently through the play activity as well. That's then going to support a bit of that persistence and keep going.
Speaker 1:The last bit that I wanted to touch on today was around play as this safe space to explore new emotions, and this is more just to kind of keep in the back of your mind more than anything else when you're playing. But we've talked about play and how, all the different types of play and all the different stages of play and the social play and all of that. We've talked about the persistence in play. We've talked about how we can use that co-regulation to support that sustained engagement and bits of persistence within play. The last bit is looking at.
Speaker 1:Play is so fantastic to explore different feelings, different emotions in a really safe way, particularly if we look at bits of pretend play. Play is so fantastic to explore different feelings, different emotions in a really safe way, particularly if we look at bits of pretend play where we can explore getting frustrated because I'm pretending to be someone else. It's fantastic fun when we look at bits of mental blank. What am I trying to say? Particularly, like mums and dads play and you see kids all of a sudden go how you need to go and do this and that was naughty, and playing to that little bit of anger and frustration, it's the cutest thing ever. But it's a really safe space to start to explore these through emotions and also move through these emotions. And this is where our regulation support as the adults can be so important.
Speaker 1:If someone's getting frustrated in play because what they're trying to do isn't working, let them be frustrated, be frustrated with them and then use a bit of your co-regulation to support to start to calm down, to solve it together. We don't want to jump in and solve it straight away. Let them be frustrated, be frustrated together, be really grumpy about the fact that the cars aren't driving properly and they're not going straight or they're not going fast enough. Be in that moment with them, be on their side and then use your little bit of co-regulation support and again go back to the episode or send me a message if you have any questions and then be able to go. Well, now we can fix it together. And I'm not going to tell you how to fix it, because we're in this together.
Speaker 1:If we're exploring and we're getting angry at something or we're getting sad about something or we're just getting a little bit overwhelmed because it's just all a bit much, be there with them. Allow them to explore those new feelings. If it's a bit of fear and scared, particularly if you're doing a new movement or if you're at the climbing frame and you're being really silly, but we're going to go really fast, are you ready? I don't know. I've got that kind of weird feeling in my body and my tummy and I don't really know if I want to do this or not, but I'm having fun. Be there with them. I go oh yeah, I don't know. Should we try? Be that little bit silly with them and help them explore those new emotions? Be that really strong anchor with them. They know that they're safe with you. They know they can explore these things and they know that you're on their side with them because they can try and you're gonna be there with them to help them through it, and that's the most powerful bit.
Speaker 1:But that just about wraps up our play season, guys. So if you have any questions at all, as always, send me a message on instagram or send me an email, um to bellsotcorner at gmailcom. I'm always happy to answer any questions you guys might have. I love getting them. They're fantastic. I love hearing about what you guys are up to. Um, oh, lost my train of thought again, but that's the end of our play season.
Speaker 1:I'm still undecided on exactly what I want to talk about in our next season. I've got a couple ideas kicking around, um, but if you do have any thoughts, just let me know. More than happy to tailor it to what you guys would like to hear about as we all chat and jump on these ones together. But otherwise, I hope you guys have a fantastic week. And I'm just thinking yeah, it's Monday. Hope you guys have a fantastic week and, as always, if there's anyone that you know that you think might enjoy the podcast, please send it their way. Give it a share If you could rate and review it, guys. It? I know it sounds silly, but it truly does make a world of difference for me. On the back end of some bits and pieces, but otherwise have a fantastic week and I will speak to you soon. Bye, guys. Thank you.