My Approach

While working as a child psychologist, I began to appreciate the value of including parents into the therapeutic process. I found the more I was able to integrate parental participation, the more positive the outcomes. This makes sense, considering we know the mental health of parents and the quality of the parent-child relationship to be the strongest predictors for healthy child adjustment.

Now as an Educator, I have shifted my focus to reflect who I believe to be most influential to a child's eventual well-being. The parents! While I do work with children and teens on skills acquisitions (healthy coping, flexible-problem solving, emotional insight, organizational skills) the initial steps I take in helping youth is first meeting with their parents.

As part of this process, I help parents clarify what core values they want to instill in their children, areas of their child's development they find troubling, and, most importantly, the hopes they have for their child's future. I also work with parents in helping them understand how their own experience of being parented may be playing a role (e.g., interfering) with the relationship they want to have with their child. Eventually, about half of my clients choose to include their child(ren) in the process either to pursue (child) skills acquisition and/or learn healthier and more meaningful ways to interact with one another. The other half find that the 1:1 work with me to be enough to create a significant enough shift that their child is able to work through many of their challenges without my direct involvement.

My Professional Background

I received my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Early Child Development from Pacific University, School of Professional Psychology in 2009. My clinical training was largely completed at Oregon Health Science University in the ADHD/Learning Disability and Autism clinics.  I completed my Internship at Child and Family Mental Health Services in Albany, Oregon where I worked with children and their parents struggling with issues related to adjustment, mood disorders and trauma. My Post-Doctoral fellowship was completed at OHSU's Autism Clinic where I specialized in differentiating developmental disabilities in children, including ADHD, Autism, ADHD, OCD and Intellectual Differences. In 2011 I co-founded the Portland Autism Center in Portland, Oregon. There, I worked as a psychologist providing treatment to children diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum in addition to other

neurodevelopmental differences (ADHD, OCD, LD) and mood disorders (Anxiety, Depression.) It was during that time I briefly taught Child/Family Intervention as an Adjunct Professor through Pacific University's doctoral program. In 2018 I opened Sprout in Oregon City not as a psychologist providing treatment, but instead as an Educator focusing my expertise in the field of Child Development to help empower parents to take a more central lead in their child's development. As part of this process, I have been granted permission by Clackamas County Family Court to offer Alternative Parent Education Classes to individuals needing to take a certified Parenting Class as part of completing necessary steps in obtaining a divorce. My interest in developing this program for separating parents was sparked when I sat down to DHS's Parent Education Class when I was going through my own divorce. While I found the program through DHS was well-prepared, I wanted to provide the public a series that went a little deeper in the relational and developmental needs of children than was currently available. Presently, my side projects include providing educational seminars to teachers struggling with emotionally reactive and withdrawn students and collaborating with school counselors on ways to improve mental health and well-being of children in the schools.