My name is Nicola Fehlmann. I am a qualified therapist and hold a degree in Psychology, a Masters in Learning Sciences and am a Fellow in DIR/Floortime with Profectum. I believe in an holistic approach that requires all facets of the child be considered: for this reason I regularly participate in interdisciplinary training, meetings and supervision with professionals from the fields of Speech and Language, Occupational Therapy, Nutrition, Neuroscience, Education and Mental Health

Nicola’s CV
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The Children’s Classes are inclusive of all children and are individualised to support each child based on their unique character, as well as sensory and motor profile. Each child is considered from a number of perspectives; communication and language, social-emotional developmental level, functional movement, visual-spatial, auditory and tactile. Our approach is to encourage children to develop engagement and intentionality, enjoy rich friendships, discover the patterns and rhythms in words, numbers, music and nature, problem solve and achieve mastery from their own efforts. Our spaces include thoughtful areas that bring out children’s imagination and reasoning. All children thrive in environments that consider them, any labels become somewhat redundant.

Private intervention sessions are available in the afternoons and weekends based on the DIR/Floortime model. These sessions include the family and/or siblings and occur in naturalistic settings.

I am particularly interested in developing holistic reports of the children that consider their bio-psycho-social profiles after meeting them in a number of settings such as their home, school and within the family. These reports include edited video footage of the child to substantiate any observations I make. I encourage families to insist on all therapists working with their child to share their insights, observations and approaches so that an interdisciplinary team forms to support the child and family.

Please press the enquiry button to send an email or phone 022 736 4392 if you would like to discuss this further.

“The Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based model (DIR®), a theoretical and applied framework for comprehensive intervention, examines the functional developmental capacities of children in the context of their unique biologically based processing profile and their family relationships and interactive patterns. As a functional approach, it uses the complex interactions between biology and experience to understand behavior and articulates the developmental capacities that provide the foundation for higher order symbolic thinking and relating.

During spontaneous “Floor Time” play sessions adults follow the child’s lead utilizing affectively toned interactions through gestures and words to move the child up the symbolic ladder by first establishing a foundation of shared attention, engagement, simple and complex gestures, and problem solving to usher the child into the world of ideas and abstract thinking.”

  • Dr Serena Weider and Dr Stanley Greenspan (2003)
  • Mrs Fehlmann is certified as a DIRFloortime® therapist by ICDL (www.icdl.com) and Profectum (www.profectum.org)