Family-based Coaching, Collaboration, and Consultation

We (Attic Therapy) truly believe that we all, just by being ourselves, offer the best possible gifts to others. This includes the caregivers, educators, and health care providers of those children who struggle to fit in to the world as it now exists. However, it most especially applies to parents. You did not choose your child. But you were chosen to have this child. You may feel in over your head, but you have amazing skills, and tools. Your strategies work (sometimes!). You have language, resilience, and experience with mastering hard learning curves. In other words, you are equipped, as adults, to mentor and support and protect and raise your child.

At Attic Therapy, we believe that it is not more tools, skills, strategies, or resources that we need. In fact, many of us could do with less! Like the potential of your average smartphone, we are already swimming in options. More choice, more information, and more learning curves may actually just be more discouraging. Parenting/ educating/ caregiving is hard. Slowing down, becoming very clear on exactly what is needed right now, and knowing when to stop and rest - these are all meta-skills that can benefit from coaching supports.

So here's the offer. You decide how much time you want to spend organizing and categorizing and learning about your existing tools. You have a lot of them; we guarantee it. You may not know how to use them all exactly in ways that align with your hopes for your child's growth. You may feel clumsy, like you either aren't using enough force, or occasionally too much. You may find yourself questioning your own judgement, switching approaches mid-task, or otherwise confusing yourself, your child, and everyone around you. You may be more practiced in some kinds of strategies and skills than others, and these may need to replaced, or at least nudged aside as you get better at using less familiar actions and routines. All of that is normal (at least when dealing with an out of the norm situation!). Outside coaching can help.

We just need to know your preferred rate of learning. The pace of coaching support is going to depend on your chosen goal, your existing toolkit, your ability to practice within your resources (please be realistic!), and your budget. We can provide scheduled availability, but we are billing for this in advance, so this relationship will require a commitment on your part. If you truly like this model, feel free to suggest your own preferred schedule and we will do our best to accommodate. We get constraints.


Here are some possible goals for a coaching partnership:

1. I want my child to succeed in a defined, measurable self-care, productivity or leisure task (please specify).

2. I want my child to be able to regulate themself successfully in a (specific) environment for a (specific) length of time.

3. I want to feel connected with my child and for my child to feel connected to me so that (specific) new experiences can be met and enjoyed together.

4. I want my child to manage a major life transition (specific, time-limited) with a growth in self-esteem and resilience, rather than regressing developmentally.

5. I want my child to feel part of a group and to contribute voluntarily and spontaneously in observable (you guessed it - specific) ways.

6. I want my child to show acceptance of who they are and to celebrate what they can do (as shown by specific behaviours or actions), rather than constantly being made aware of and having to abide by their limitations.

7. I want my child to experience delight and to have a way to access joyful, shared (and specific) fun.


An example of a family coaching timeline (each visit 2-4 hours):

Visit 1: Taking inventory of tools and strategies that are already working in supporting your child, and validating your skills as a family - observation of typical family interactions, some attempted challenges in the direction of your desired goal, and discussion.

Visit 2: Giving you a couple tools/strategies to try which you may not have thought of - but which are well within your capability. We may sort through the evidence as regards your situation with you, check off all the resources we know about, bring out some tried and true approaches, or maybe brainstorm with you to find something uniquely suited to your family.

Visit 3: How's it going? Let's try that a little slower, faster, or maybe shift the context a little...this is the coaching part. We want to see how you are feeling about your own ability to match tools and strategies to the real world of fast-moving inclusive situations. This is where we move closer to the desired goal scenario, but do a bit more hand-holding, modelling, maybe suggesting new ways to do the same thing, that sort of thing.

Visit 4: Refining the use of your tools/strategies to be more effective in achieving the one hard thing (that you and your child find meaningful and important). You're doing it, and you're gaining confidence. Your child is starting to understand a new option or options emerging from shifts within your relationship. By now you should have a strong sense of optimism and an idea as to how long it will take to get to your goal.

Visit 5: Summarizing what you are proficient at, where your skills are emerging, and figuring out where you want to go from here. This can be just in discussion with your family, or we can write it up quickly.

Usually, achieving one experience opens up options for more...you may have ideas and want to try them, or you may want to keep going in the same direction and build practice time, quality, or simply quantity time enjoying your child's success.

In between: you have access to us via text, email, and for pre-scheduled phone calls. We can video-conference instead of a home visit if that works better for you, and you can provide us with footage of how it's going at home for our feedback or for informational sharing. In other words, we are offering a relationship-based model of support rather than standalone therapy "sessions."

Limits to this model:

• We will operate under HIPA guidelines in terms of sharing and storage of health information as regards your child. However, you as the family unit are our client, first and foremost.

• We will continue to attempt to provide detailed information as to the evidence that informs our clinical and creative reasoning, if you ask.

• We will provide you with structured times that support our full attention on your family. In between, text/email/phone response times will be based on the ongoing juggling of our own family, and our other commitments, alongside the relationships we build with our clients. We do not promise any particular response time other than asap!

• We will not suggest or support the use of strategies or tools which we think may pose a substantial risk of harm or injury to any party.

• We will only provide formal written reports/letters to third parties if requested, and at an hourly rate above and beyond the coaching rate.

• We will not provide therapy supports that you could reasonably access in a timely manner through publicly funded channels, but will do our best to collaborate with our publicly funded counterparts in ways that support enhanced access for your child to wraparound care.  


Rates and Fee Schedules

Download a copy here of our contract with families to look over, fill out, and sign if you are good to go.