While I work with children, adolescents, and young adults, I prefer to share with their parents the relational approach I was taught, so that interactions between parent and child become therapeutic and preventive. Thus, through parent coaching, I help parents better understand their child’s challenging behaviors and provide parenting interventions that offer the co-regulation their child needs, as non-formulaic children struggle with self-regulation due to their highly reactive stress-response systems.

Even when I engage in individual therapy with teenagers and young adults, my preference is to concurrently engage with their parents through parent coaching sessions. I see my job as helping parents enhance the parent-child relationship so that, eventually, the young person can confide in their parent, enabling the parent to provide co-regulation, and, eventually, the young person to self-regulate.