I provide the following one-to-one services directly with parents:
I serve as a confidant and a sounding board so that parents can vent, talking openly about how overwhelmed and scared they are. They can process the heavy decisions they need to make with a compassionate, yet objective person – minus pressure and judgements. Many parents are helped by feeling REALLY listened to, while knowing their confidentiality is honoured.
I relate to parent’s fears and uncertainties. I have been there and still AM. I provide empathy, by truly understanding parent’s lived reality. And yet, unlike even well-intentioned family and friends, I can relate in a professional manner.
I help to navigate decision-making processes. Faced with big decisions about a whole array of possible therapies and services – both mainstream and alternative – parents can often get lost in information and overloaded with choices. I offer my own experience to help process information, based on facts rather than be clouded solely by emotions.
I guide people to learn the language of Autism. Personally, in the beginning I found that everything sounded so foreign to me – it was a totally new language! What did SLP mean? OT? ABA? R&R? DIR-floortime? GFCF? Self-Regulation? Now, I know what all of those mean but at the beginning when you are overwhelmed, exhausted and emotional it just adds to the stress.
I share lifestyle information and refer to supportive professional resources. For example, I tell people about: Speech Language Pathologists’s, Occupational Therapists, Behaviour Consultants, Naturopaths, Autism Associations, specific books and websites. I am more than happy to share the different therapies my son has done and how they have helped him, and even services I investigated but decided not to utilize.