Welcome! I am now in private practice, offering in-person programs at my antique farmhouse in Boxborough, MA, now with the added bonus of being able to be outdoors!
Weekly social skills groups for elementary and middle school kids for the 2023-2024 school year are up and running. Enrollment is always on-going and based on available space in the program. For a quick jump for questions about tuition, my background, and which kids my program works best for, go to FAQ’s here.
I look forward to getting to know you and having your child or teen join our friendly community while learning how to attain, maintain, and sustain real friendships and more successfully navigate social situations. Can you answer “yes” to any of these questions?
Does your child or teen find it difficult to stick up for him or herself? Does your chatterbox not know when to stop and listen to what a friend has to say? Could your shy child or tween use a self-confidence boost? Does the tattletale in the house not know how to solve a problem on their own? Does your son or daughter miss, misunderstand or misinterpret social cues?
Maybe your child or teen “ladles on the silly sauce” and doesn’t realize that the funny has worn off? Do you observe your child struggle with being flexible with friends and attempting to control social situations rather than engaging in collaborative interactions? Does your tween often eat lunch alone with a book? Is the teacher reporting that working in small groups is difficult for your child or tween?
These award-winning social skills groups provide coaching for children in Grades K-8 on how to improve their social skills. (Have a teen or young adult? Check out the JCIT Program.) I find great value in providing opportunities for kids to practice the social pragmatics they have learned and apply those skills in a welcoming, fun, and deliberately unstructured social environment that replicates recess and includes the extra layers of facilitation and support to increase your child’s social abilities and conflict resolution skills. Recess, lunch, and other unstructured times of the day are the hardest for many to navigate. These social groups are the real-time practice and application place for learning these important skills with a social safety net in place.
What differentiates this from other social skills approaches is that it is not clinical in its approach. I do not believe that kids who struggle with these skills need treatment, therapy, or anything that leads a child to think that there may be something wrong. They simply need coaching, mentoring, and tutoring to improve these skills that prove challenging, in the way a child who has difficulty with math or reading would require the same. My staff and I are the people you wish children had at every recess, at every school, every day.
Social skills are learned, practiced, and reinforced using my unique in-the-moment and proprietary social coaching model replicating both outdoor and indoor recess. Because every child and a teen is an individual, my approach is not one-size-fits-all and I do not follow a specific curriculum. This purposeful approach to incidental teaching has assisted many children in gaining social confidence, finding social success, making real and lasting friendships, and generalizing what they learn in other settings.
Browse the website and feel free get in touch to schedule a time to talk on the phone, schedule a Zoom call, or visit in-person to find out more about programs and services.
