I am an adult-child interaction specialist working with parents, teachers, and therapists to give children relationships that set them up for their best lives.

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I started out my career as a special education teacher who wanted more for my students than the one-size-fits-all ways of learning. I felt terrible for the kids who sat in classrooms feeling bad about themselves for wanting to do just about anything else. In fact, I was one of those kids myself. As a child, I struggled to feel understood and accepted by my teachers and peers, and that tended to get in the way of my feeling happy at school.

 

As a consultant working mainly in homes and classrooms, I get to help adults understand children better. I use the NeuroRelational Framework (NRF) to target areas of development that could use enhancement, particularly the ability to self-regulate, make friends, take on responsibility, and learn. I use Hand in Hand Parenting to help parents strengthen their child-rearing skills. I use The Work in 4 Questions (Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction Technique) to help adults improve their relationship with children, often by improving their relationships with themselves.

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It was while working in the field of infant and early childhood mental health that I found the NRF, which was created for children ages 0-3. I realized that this idea needed to be shared with school-age children and adolescents as well. This model is especially promising for disrupting the preschool to prison pipeline because it moves us away from the compliance model of behavioral science, and in its place, uses a safety-challenge-threat lens of neuroscience. This model seeks to first establish relational safety, then challenge children short of putting them into a threat response that would give them toxic stress. All ages can benefit from interventions that prioritize relationships and the developmental needs of the brain. I now train, consult and coach adults on how to use relationships to rewire brains, helping both adults and children become calmer, more joyful, and cooperative human beings.

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My work is influenced by the following schools of thought:

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• Bruce Perry's Neurosequential Model, which meets a child where they are in their brain development and proceeds from there

• Stanley Greenspan's DIR/Floortime, which emphasizes development (D), individual differences (I), and relationships (R) for rewiring brains to regulate energy, connect with others, and tolerate sensory stimuli

• Daniel Siegel's Interpersonal Neurobiology Movement, which studies brain science and the effects of interpersonal relationships for child development

• Alfred Adler's theory, the bedrock of Positive Discipline, which explains how the source of behavior is discouragement or encouragement

• Patty Wipfler's Hand in Hand Parenting approach, which uses principles from Re-Evaluation Counseling, a listening technique that promotes deep healing in children as opposed to surface behavioral strategies

• Circle of Security, which teaches that difficult behaviors are communication of unmet needs and describes how to meet those needs based on building a strong relationship pattern

• The intersection between child-rearing practices of indigenous cultures and neuroscience

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