After all, if your child is struggling with emotional outbursts, intense reactions, or challenging behavior, it seems logical that they would be the one who needs support.
And sometimes they do.
Let me start by saying that I think therapy can be incredibly valuable for children. Many kids benefit from having a skilled professional help them understand their emotions and process difficult experiences.
But there is something important that often gets overlooked:
Your child may spend one hour a week with a therapist.
They spend the rest of the week with you.
Therapists rarely get the opportunity to respond to the challenging moments that families are navigating every day. Parents do.
- ✦Parents are there when a child refuses to get dressed for school.
- ✦Parents are there when a sibling conflict escalates.
- ✦Parents are there when a child melts down over something that seems small but feels enormous to them.
Those everyday moments are where change happens.
What Does the Research Say?
For many childhood behavioral challenges, parent-focused interventions are among the most effective approaches available.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that, in regard to kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder:
“For younger children, the treatment with the strongest evidence is behavior therapy training for parents, where a therapist helps the parent learn effective ways to strengthen the parent-child relationship and respond to the child's behavior.”
Why?
Because parents are uniquely positioned to influence hundreds of interactions that occur between therapy sessions. When parents understand what is driving behavior and learn new ways to respond, the entire environment around the child begins to shift.
The Shift That Changed Everything
Like many parents, I initially focused on finding help for my child.
We invested significant time, energy, and money into therapies, including occupational therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. While those approaches can be incredibly helpful for many families, we didn't experience the meaningful progress we were hoping for.
The biggest change happened when we, as parents, began to understand what was happening underneath our daughter's behavior and started responding differently.
Over time, we noticed a pattern:
Parents understand behavior differently
↓
Parents respond differently
↓
The parent-child relationship begins to shift
↓
The child's behavior begins to change
The more we changed the environment around our child, the more our child changed within it.
Why I Work Primarily With Parents
I work directly with parents because they have the greatest opportunity to influence what happens in a child's daily life.
When parents gain new tools and a deeper understanding of their deeply feeling, highly sensitive child, those changes don't happen for one hour a week.
They happen at breakfast. They happen after school. They happen at bedtime. They happen during the hard moments, the ordinary moments, and all the moments in between.
And when parents begin responding differently, children often begin feeling differently — and behaving differently — as well.
That doesn't mean children never need therapy. Some do.
But in my experience, one of the most powerful ways to help a deeply feeling, highly sensitive, explosive child is often to support the adults who love them most.
Curious whether parent coaching could help?
If you'd like to talk through what's happening in your home and whether parent coaching might be a good fit, I'd love to connect.
The first session is risk-free. I only charge for the coaching package after we both know it feels like a good fit. If, after the first session, you decide not to continue, there is no charge. No pressure, no commitment — just a conversation about what is happening in your home and whether this approach could help your family.