Better Together Autism Consulting offers online or in person parent coaching services. Coaching is for caregivers who wish to learn evidence-based strategies to use with their child who is diagnosed with autism, showing signs of communication delay, and/or experiencing difficulties with social communication. Children do not need to have a diagnosis for parent coaching to be beneficial to caregivers wanting to support a child. Colleen has provided consulting and online coaching for many families living across the US and elsewhere in the world.
Through Parent Coaching families will learn engagement strategies, participate in assessments, and develop goals and positive behavior supports. The coaching program allows parents to create parenting skills that maximize growth for their child through provision of naturalistic, relationship based, objective driven therapy.
Relationship Development Intervention (RDITM) is a cognitive, behavioral, developmental intervention focusing on parent and family training as the means to create growth within the core deficits of autism spectrum disorder. RDI incorporates current research on child development, autism, and the brain to provide the curriculum for parent education and training. Families work with an RDI consultant to learn naturalistic methods of engaging their child in joint attention activities, while delivering a series of objectives, all modeled on typical milestone developmental markers. Social communication, increased social motivation, flexibility, and problem solving are taught through dynamic thinking lessons, under the guidance of the consultant. RDI occurs within the home, within the family, to strengthen and reinforce parent/child bonds, and the effectiveness of parenting as a support for the autistic child’s overall growth.
Colleen offers parent coaching for families who would like to improve developmental outcomes for their children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, social language delays, and behavioral concerns. Early Start Denver model fosters parental use of a child-centered responsive interaction style. This embeds many teaching opportunities into play, and daily routines, and is proven to enhance outcomes compared to community treatment as usual. Parent coaching is an evidence based practice, reduces parent stress, and increases parental competency in creating learning for their child.
From the book Coaching Parents of Young Children with Autism written by Sally Rodgers, developer of Early Start Denver Model:
Defining Coaching within Parent-Implemented Early Intervention Approaches:
The Goal of coaching parents to implement interventions with their children at home is to increase the learning opportunities available to children in their everyday, moment-by moment life with their caregivers. This involves infusing needed learning opportunities into all the environments and interactions that a young child daily experiences. In this context, a learning opportunity is an event in which the child acquires a new skill or strengthens an existing skill. In order to be a learning opportunity, the experience requires the child’s active attention, effortful goal-directed opportunity, and success.
There are learning opportunities already present in each child’s daily environments, and the products of this learning are evident in the skills the child has developed. In order to increase a child’s learning opportunities, a caregiver needs to know:
Colleen is a Certified ESDM Trainer and is passionate about helping others learn about the model. Training is offered both online and in person, and offers completion of all steps within the ESDM training process, as mandated by UC Davis Mind Institute, resulting in official certification as an ESDM practitioner. Please review the training process here.
Colleen is available to provide overview workshops for those wanting to learn more about the ESDM. Workshops are 2-4 hours in length depending on the learning goals of the audience. Use the contact form for more information and to discuss your learning requirements.