Welcome to The Best Beginning Child and Family Therapy
At The Best Beginning, we provide therapy for children from 0-17 with a specialized service for infants and children under 3 years old in collaboration with their parents. Our goal is to support families in fostering healthy relationships and emotional well-being.
Play and Creative Psychotherapy
Play and creative therapy offers a variety of means from Art to Music, Puppets, Drama or Sand Play to Messy, Sensory or Story Play. Ailish works with children from 0 (and their parents) up to 17, adapting the modality of Play/ Creative Therapy to the developmental stage of the child / young person. Children are part of a family and therefore Ailish works closely with parents to provide a systemic family therapy approach bringing her broad experience as a professional Social Worker also.
Play is the child's language and the child's work. Play therapy provides the opportunity to express and also to make new connections in the brain, promoting healing and finding new ways to cope.
Creative therapy is also available to adults.
Parent sessions
Best practice in child mental health is always to begin with parents/carers.
The Best Beginning and The little Coeliac therapist offers face to face and online sessions for busy parents that require practical, evidence based ,practice individualised support to the issues they find challenging.
Parent sessions involve a preventative approach to child emotional and behavioural difficulties, increasing reflexivity, creative and playful response and the development of real skills in parenting.
The Little Coeliac Therapist
Ailish Lydon currently provides the only specific mental health service for coeliac children in Ireland.
Coeliac disease is a gastrointestinal autoimmune disease with physical and neurological symptoms however for children it can often be "silent" and present with emotional and behavioural symptoms but not limited to those described below.
Anxiety, fatigue, headaches, brain fog, anxiety, anger /agitation, sleeplessness, hyperactivity/ stress, emotional regulation, pain & regression in the areas of emotional , physical , learning, eating issues/ fears/ difficulties, toileting and continence Pica, ataxia and ARFID, fussy /picky eating, eating disorders, issues that are much less explored.
Face to Face and Virtual Sessions available
Many coeliac children will manage dual diagnosis of coeliac and another physical /medical condition. Or coeliac and a neuro diverse diagnosis or psychological issue.
Coeliac disease is multisystemic- meaning it can effect all or any parts of the body. An understanding of this is crucial for mental health in coeliacs.
Clinical supervision
Clinical Supervision is available for CORU Registered Social workers, Mental health professionals and Play therapists. Areas of interest include multidisciplinary team working, child & adult mental health, physical health & disability /medical and bereavement.
Face to Face and virtual sessions.
Contact us
For inquiries or to book an appointment, please fill out the contact form below and our team will get back to you as soon as possible.
About us
The Best Beginning Child and Family Therapy and
The little coeliac therapist