London and SurreyTiffany GrimleySpecial educational needs specialist, founder of Kids Critters
A specialist, a parent, and a room full of creatures that ask nothing of your child.
Kids Critters is one person. That's deliberate. The same person meets your child in the first session, writes to their school, and is still there two years later, with no handovers, no associates, no starting again.
Five lives before this one
Tiffany did not arrive at this work in a straight line. She grew up between countries, built a marine business on a Pacific island, and has been diving since she was sixteen. That matters more than it sounds, because every one of those things taught her the same thing she now uses in a room with a frightened child: you cannot rush someone into trusting you, and you should never panic.
A childhood between worlds
She grew up across Jeddah, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Desert nights, horse riding under a sky full of stars, and a great deal of practice at being the new child in the room who does not yet know the rules.
“I have never believed a border was a wall. My whole life, it has been an invitation.”
The house in Vanuatu
She and her late husband Matt moved to Vanuatu and lost their boat almost immediately, when another yacht hit it. More than a hundred villagers turned out to refloat it. Out of that came a commercial diving and charter business, and a home with a blue roof on the shoreline.
“Look after the people first. Everything else follows.”
Beneath the surface
Her first dive was at sixteen, off Ras Al Khaimah, and it opened with blacktip reef sharks. She has been in the water ever since. The best of it was Aranuka Atoll in Kiribati, coral gardens and nothing between her and the light.
“The sea teaches you patience, and never to panic at depth.”
One of the families she met in Vanuatu is still with her fourteen years later. Their words are on the testimonials page.
Before the critters
Tiffany came to this work through special educational needs, not through animals. Years spent as a specialist in special educational needs, in rooms with children who had been described to her as difficult, disruptive or too much, long before she ever brought a reptile into one.
What she kept running into was the same wall: the strategies worked on paper, and the child still would not come into the room. Something had to make the room worth entering.
Matching the animal to the child
Most animal assisted therapy runs on one species. A dog, or a horse. They are warm and responsive, and for a great many children that is exactly the right thing. Tiffany has two dogs of her own in the mix, Jupiter and Violet, for precisely those children.
But for a child who finds sensory input overwhelming it can be the opposite. A dog approaches. It makes eye contact. It wants to be stroked a particular way, and it notices when you get it wrong. For a child already overwhelmed by being read and responded to all day, that is another demand in a long line of them. That is the child almost nobody was catering for, and it is the reason the reptiles are here.
A bearded dragon sits still and lets itself be looked at. A gecko is fascinating without ever needing anything back. Poppy the tortoise moves slowly enough that nothing about her can startle you. The pressure comes off, and quite often that is the moment a child starts talking.
A parent, too
Tiffany is a mother as well as a practitioner, and that shows up in the practical things: sessions that do not punish you for arriving late, no expectation that your child performs, and a straight answer when you ask whether something is working.
It is also where The Empowered Mum came from. Six months of support for the parent rather than the child, because the two are not separable and almost nobody funds the second one.
Credentials
None of the above matters if the basics are not right. So, plainly:
Enhanced DBS
On the Update Service, so it can be verified today rather than whenever it was issued.
Fully insured
Public liability and professional indemnity. Certificates on request.
Animal Activity Licence 059485
Issued by the local authority, covering keeping and exhibiting the animals.
Elysian Awards 2026
Silver Winner, Making a Difference with Animals, and Outstanding Contribution in Education.
UK Enterprise Awards 2026
International Therapeutic Education and Mentoring Excellence Award.
Safeguarding policy
Written and available on request.
Kids Critters Ltd
Registered in England and Wales, company number 13643791.
Every animal is captive-bred, handled on its own terms, and retired from sessions the moment it stops enjoying them. Children learn as much from being told an animal has had enough as they do from holding one.
Come and meet her first
No commitment and no assessment. A conversation about your child, what has been tried, and whether any of this is likely to help. If it isn't, she'll say so.