Grow Together

How is your child talking to you?

Could fears, tantrums and power struggles be communicating something important?

What's the need behind those harsh words, prickly transitions and bad behavior? What are they trying to tell you?

I help families grow together after adoption, get unstuck from patterns of stress, and make sense of family changes. I can help you move toward more connection, understanding and trust.

Your family can grow together.

I'd like to help.

My practice is dedicated to raising resilience in growing families. I have a heart for supporting overwhelmed and resourceful parents during the preschool and elementary years. I enjoy working with kids age 3-11.

My specialty is helping parents and kids create new ways to cope with challenges together. About 50% of my practice is working with kids and parents who are neurodiverse in some way—this isn’t a problem, it’s a truth of nature and biological diversity. But the world and our education systems aren’t built with sensitive nervous systems in mind.

I work with families to get curious about the best supports, regulation skills, and communication strategies for your child’s way of being and learning—while helping ease their stress and find their voice of self-advocacy. They’ll borrow these from us until they develop their own.

We will collaborate, so you find cooperation more easily at home and can access your best thinking in tough moments. Instead of tangling over schoolwork or behavior issues, what if you spent that energy connecting and enjoying each other more? It’s my honor to support families in this way.

The other half of my practice is dedicated to working with adoptive families. If we can acknowledge that adoption includes important aspects of attachment, identity, development, belonging, and making meaning of life’s experiences—we can recognize the dynamic role of adoption and its influence across the lifespan, well beyond a one-time event, touching generations. As adoption therapist and adoptee Joyce Macguire Pavo says: “Adoption is a family affair.”

Areas of Specialty:

  • family transitions—moving, new sibling, changing schools, fostering and adoption, grief and loss

  • toileting and elimination concerns—night wetting, pooping issues, developmental worries, sensory aspects

  • adoption support—preparation, post-adoption adjustment, building attachment, navigating open adoption

  • sensory regulation issues—making sense of BIG behaviors, play therapy with sensory supports, music-based therapy

  • neurodiversity-affirming care—understanding the neuroscience of behavior, adaptive strategies for regulation and learning needs, educational advocacy, parent coaching in strategies for regulation and connection, setting realistic expectations for academics and behavior, embracing your child’s temperament, honoring your own needs and limits

Clients are welcome to request a Good Faith Estimate of Therapy Costs.