Insights from a Parent Living with Autism
Being the parent of a child with autism, ADHD, and other exceptionalities can be both wonderful and incredibly challenging – as I know from 30 years of experience in this role!
If you’re feeling trapped in endless chaos, trying to figure out a way forward, or building a support team, I can help!
My unique, neurodiversity-affirming approach to supporting families is grounded in a blend of developmental models backed by research. My training and over ten years of being certified in RDI (Relationship Development Intervention, a comprehensive, family systems approach, informs my understanding of both child development and autism. My deep knowledge of the Self-Reg model unlocked my understanding of how neuroscience helps to explain stress cycles that grow within a family system. I know your child is going to be best supported creating a calm and regulating environment that builds on everyone’s strengths and empowers their caregivers.
You and your child already have all the tools in place to develop a stronger connection and create the ideal learning environment for them to make progress; it’s my job to help you find the best ways to use those tools together. Together, we will help your child to more easily access a strong, co-regulated relationship with you, because this is the foundation of how all human beings learn.
Customized Approach
My approach is uniquely tailored to each family’s needs, and may include:
- Developing customized goals to address short- and long-term priorities for your child and family,
- Providing you with access to the exclusive multimedia learning resources I’ve developed for my clients,
- Helping you to choose other supports for your child,
- Building bridges with school or daycare teams,
- Conducting observations of your child in the classroom or community settings, to better support program planning and goal-setting,
- Collaborating with other service providers on your family’s support team.
I am particularly drawn to (and have extensive experience) supporting families with:
- Children and teens whose experience of the world often overloads them, leading to meltdowns (or what is sometimes called “challenging behaviour”) or strong resistance to the typical demands of everyday life,
- Multiple children with autism,
- Neurodivergent parents.
Life experience underpins all of my work with clients. No amount of training or certification can replace the years of hands-on experience that I gained from guiding my two awesome neurodivergent children to grow into confident, capable adults; the wisdom I’ve learned from being their parent is woven through everything I do.