A neurodivergent coach serving neurodiverse families
While working as an Occupational Therapist for over 30 years, and now as a Parent Coach, I have seen many recurring patterns that affect the child, the parent, and the entire family.
And so I developed the LGC Framework that:
- Gives parents clarity and confidence in their parenting
- Empowers the child to develop to the best of their abilities - without shame
- Offers peace and relief for the whole family
My 3 Core Principles
Family Centered
Experts often prescribe solutions that focus on your child but don’t take into account your family culture, lifestyle, and unique needs. Let’s co-create solutions that work for your whole family, not just your child.
Neuro Affirming
Let me show you how to address your child’s challenges. We'll focus on nurturing their strengths and unique qualities with an approach that is empowering and doesn’t create shame.
Relationship Based
I firmly believe that you are the best person to guide your child. Let's harness the power of the parent-child relationship to facilitate lasting changes while strengthening your bond with your child.
Tangible results from happy parents
It was love after the first video!! I stumbled upon Christian's brilliant video about emotional regulation and my wife and I became clients not long after that. We have two neurodivergent children, and Christian offered us the space and the tools to analyze our thoughts and model a better life for them as they grow. It was an organic process and jived well with our parenting style. We are grateful that someone like Christian was there to help guide us. We will be lifelong clients with Christian as our children grow older and we need help. I HIGHLY recommend that you take the time to check out all the content Christian creates, after you do that, just imagine getting that same level of interest and expertise, but 1 on 1... It's a no-brainer.
Greg Richards
Father of two neurodivergent children
We met Christian when my son was mentally struggling with the toll his illness was taking on him, and just had to withdraw him from school. Christian's quiet, thoughtful manner (and amazing beard!) helped my son to overcome his anxiety at meeting people. He helped me understand my son and enabled me to create a constructive space where my we could both connect. I cannot recommend Christian highly enough, he is a child whisperer and the confidence he gave me has helped me to forgive myself for past failures and to understand that we all need to give one another more grace and forgiveness. My son is back running and climbing and regaining his confidence and talking with excitement about going back to school for the end of the year. If you are considering using Christian, don't hesitate — it is the best decision I could have made.
Yvonne Raleigh
Initially we worked with him as an occupational therapist when our son very young, and with Christian's help, he went from needing an aide in school (kindergarten) to being without an aide by 2nd grade. Furthermore, he educated us, as parents, on how to model behavior, guide our son, and support his development. During the next 10 years, our son made significant improvements, but his transition into the teenaged years introduced new challenges involving boundaries, electronics use, and anger issues. We returned to Christian, and over a period of three months, Christian created a very safe and open space for us to creatively explore our issues, gently challenge our thoughts, and create a new way for us to interact with our son and hold him accountable. This was a lot of work on our end, but led to dramatic improvements in our son's behavior, and the tensions in our family relaxed. We all learned to give each other grace but also hold each other accountable. We are forever grateful to Christian and will always have him on speed dial to help us as we continue to grow and learn as a family.
Anna-Maria Hays Putnam
Christian's specialty in supporting neuro divergent kids and parents stood out to me as someone who could uniquely help me understand and support my child as well as us nervous parents. We have been given a lot of tools and methods for communicating and supporting our child in navigating life without shaming or blaming! We've been able to navigate tantrums, boundaries and help her in her relationships. He is kind and supportive and focuses on what works for your family's needs. Not what is conventionaly proper.
Mindy Worel
When I met Christian, my son was struggling with "traditional" therapies. The techniques, strategies, and parenting skills that Christian taught me made sense and really helped me and my son. When my son and I have a "dispute", his solution would be "let's talk to Mr. Chris" because of his deep trust. But now, my son and I have excellent communication skills with each other and work out our issues through conversations and reflections. My mother often says how grateful she is for my work with Christian as she sees how much it has helped our entire family. I will never forget when I passed the California Bar Exam in 2014. I told my mother and son, and then emailed Christian — I had so much gratitude for this wonderful man that I felt he truly contributed to my success. I’ve accomplished so many things that I don't know how I ever would have without him. Christian helped connect the dots in complex problems, and he’s given me the tools to be the best version of me. Through working with Christian, my self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-acceptance has grown. Christian is kind, receptive, intelligent, and he makes me laugh when I really didn't think it was possible.
Michelanne Hrubic
Mother of son diagnosed with Autism
Christian helped me and my husband figure out what type of parents we want to be. We had some specific issues with our toddler that we needed support on, and Christian gave us gentle, respectful tools and exercises to try. These gave us a sense of purpose and focus because we were taking control of the situation, but most importantly they were fun for our son. He responded brilliantly every time and while things are of course not perfect we all feel more confident and relaxed. Christian is kind, thoughtful and intuitive, he listens deeply and made us feel like we were already good parents, we just needed a little extra support from an expert. He blends traditional coaching techniques of listening and asking thought provoking questions with his experience of knowledge of children and their development. I highly recommend working with Christian!
Jennifer Elworthy
FAQs
Can’t find what you're looking for?
Reach out and I'll get back to you with an answer.
Absolutely! While many of my clients have received a diagnosis for their child, others haven’t for various reasons. My goal is to make your parenting easier by addressing the difficult situations that come up on a daily basis and to provide you with tools that will help you and your child, regardless of a diagnosis.
Coaching sessions take place once a week. This frequency will allow you to create powerful and lasting changes.
Yes. As a coach, I agree not to disclose any information pertaining to my clients without their written consent.
I will always work with your parenting style, your values, your family culture, and your lifestyle. Together, we identify small steps that allow you to make things better without being overwhelmed. I trust that you know what's best for you and your family.
The type of coaching I provide will not interfere with any therapy that your child may be receiving. Many of my clients choose to work with me to address parenting challenges that are not addressed by their child’s therapies. Thanks to my broad professional experience and understanding of various therapies, I’m often able to suggest ways to improve the outcome of these therapies.
Yes. I have extensive experience working with many different conditions. Many families I work with deal with challenges related to ADHD, Autism, Bipolar, OCD, Dyslexia, Tourette’s, Down Syndrome, Sensory Processing Disorder, HSP/Empath, etc.
Coaching services are not covered by health insurance.
As the client, you’re always in charge of what you want to discuss during our sessions.
My clients typically experience positive results at the end of each session. A positive result may include new insights, better understanding, or clarity about what the next step needs to be.
Together, we focus on specific goals. Short term goals for each session and longer term goals that are carried over from one session to the next. Some challenges are quick to resolve whereas others may require more work.
At the end of each session, we reflect together on what has been achieved. Reflecting opportunities throughout sessions make it easy to be aware of specific outcomes.
My role is to help you figure out what’s realistic based on the needs of your child and of your family. Together, we come up with new strategies and solutions that YOU believe are realistic. I will always follow your lead!
I never tell parents how to raise their kids! You raise your child based on your culture, values, beliefs, and lifestyle. You are always in charge of which situation you want to address.
My role is to guide you to:
- Sort out and prioritize the problems.
- Identify solutions that work for you AND your child.
- Obtain information that you’re having a hard time finding.
- Restore confidence in your parenting!
I will only give you assignments that you believe are realistic to implement. You are in charge of telling me “more” or “less”!
Having both spouses/partners on board always makes things easier. This being said, I have worked with parents whose spouse/partner was not on board. In spite of that, they felt that the services were beneficial in understanding and supporting their child better, and making their job as a parent easier.
It is rarely an issue. My extensive experience working with hundreds of children over the years comes in handy in understanding difficult situations. Even though each child is completely unique, many challenges tend to have common denominators. Asking you the right questions allows me to understand your situation accurately. In some cases, we may decide to bring your child in for a short part of the session, which will usually be enough to fill in some gaps in my understanding of your child.
In addition to working with parents, I often work with teens and young adults on a variety of issues as long as they are motivated and able to participate in virtual sessions. Virtual coaching is usually not effective with younger children.
Find calm and relief for the whole family
Nothing gives me more joy than witnessing parents become more confident in their parenting and share how the wellbeing of the entire family has improved!