Terrible advice from a therapist changed the way that I raise my kids.

Some people adjust to parenthood seamlessly. I wasn’t one of them. Instead, I was an overwhelmed, exhausted, first-time mom, surrounded by “experts” who were teaching me systems and strategies that felt fundamentally wrong.

We worked with a therapist who had us implement this really complex rewards system for potty training with ever-escalating rewards that backfired horrendously. It involved a decorated treasure box, a board game-style spinner, and prizes that grew over time from fifty-cent stickers to $20 toy cars. We trusted that it would work—we were being guided by an expert, after all—but increasingly-appealing rewards won’t help a child for whom, it turns out, the whole thing is medically, physically impossible. I decorated the heck out of that prize box, and I’m convinced the whole debacle set our potty training journey back by years.

Not long after that, we went to a therapist who recommended that we ignore behavior that we didn’t want to see. To demonstrate, she deliberately said something deeply upsetting to my child to trigger a reaction she could then ignore. In front of me.

I sat there, watching my child suffer, sweaty and shaking and heart racing and dread in my stomach, and I thought: This cannot be the answer.

Coerce. Reward. Ignore.

It just felt so wrong.

I didn’t want to coerce my kids; I wanted to connect with them. I didn’t want to ignore them when they were experiencing their greatest distress. That’s when they needed me most. I couldn’t see how throwing rewards at them or ignoring them when they were struggling was ever going to teach them skills. So the next time that challenging expectation came around, they still weren’t going to have the skills to meet it.

But it was so hard not to do what the “experts” were recommending. All the fear, all the doubt. What if I’m totally screwing up my kids? What if motherhood is supposed to feel this crummy? But I was unhappy, my husband was unhappy, my kids were unhappy, and I fundamentally believed that it shouldn’t have to be this hard.

There had to be a better way.

I needed a way to teach my kids the skills they needed to be capable and more independent.

So I stopped waiting for someone to hand me a plan and started building it. Not because I had all the answers—I absolutely did not. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of watching my kids play and learn and seeing what caused them to light up inside, hours spent reading all the research I could get my hands on. I started making choices based on what we actually needed rather than what some regimen said we should need.

And something shifted.

Not because what I was doing is complicated. It’s not. Not because it requires overhauling your parenting or adding more to your already impossible mental load. It doesn’t.

Because it’s simple. It’s evidence-based. And it actually works.

It was life-changing.

And no one was showing parents how to do it.

My family needed straightforward, low-lift ways of teaching the capable-kid skills that children need to be more independent, confident, and able to meet challenges. What I was figuring out for my own family turned out to be what other parents were desperately looking for, too.

Parents started telling me I was changing their lives.

My son changed mine first. In figuring out how to help him, I figured out how to help a lot of families.

Parents are overwhelmed, second-guessed, and inundated with conflicting advice more than ever before. After years of working with families one-on-one, I kept thinking about all the parents who’d never find their way to my office. So here I am.

A lot of loud voices in our culture are telling parents to give their kids more independence. No one is telling you how.

I’m here to tell you how.

Here, I’ll give you insights and strategies that I give families I work with privately. Simple, evidence-based, and for your real life. No overhauls. No guilt. Just tools that work.

Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.