Category: Neuroscience-aligned
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When First /Then and Visual Schedules Become a Condition on Autonomy
My daughter Lily is 18 years old. Yet during a recent conversation with a new occupational therapist, I found myself explaining why her preferences should matter in decisions about her own life. Her immediate suggestions were whether or not I had ever tried “First/Then” or a Visual Schedule with Lily. First, I want to address…
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What If We Stopped Asking, “How Do We Stop This Behavior?”
There is a question I have heard many times in my years as a parent, educator, and advocate: “How do we stop this behavior?” It is an understandable question. When a child is screaming, running from a classroom, hitting, refusing to participate, throwing things, or otherwise struggling to regulate, adults need to respond. Teachers have…
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Behavior Is Not the Brain: Why My Childhood Made Me Question Behaviorism
When people hear me criticize behaviorism, they often assume I’ve never taken the time to understand it. They tell me to read B.F. Skinner. They recommend Israel Goldiamond’s Constructional Approach. They point me toward nonlinear contingency analysis and explain that ABA has changed. The implication is usually the same: If you understood modern behavior analysis,…
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Owning Our Truths to Show Up Authentically for Our Children
We can not meet our children on a level of creating potential if we have no sense of what it means to meet them in their full, unique truth. The truth is: we were taught to move away from our truth. Culture has created and sustained behaviorism, and faith that it would teach us how…
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My Students Understand. Why Don’t Some Adults Get It?
Of those things people recognize me by at this point, yesterday one of my 4th graders pointed at it and asked, “What do ALL those words mean?” Not just one—every single one. So instead of brushing it off, we sat down and talked about it, and honestly, it turned into one of the most meaningful…
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When the Mind Can Only Take Us So Far, the Body Brings Us Back Home: What Lives Under the Challenges We Seek to Understand
I remember sitting in my daughter’s room during a moment of overwhelm, saying the supportive things I’d read in the books, trying a different approach to the situation, and allowing her to have space to unravel. I remember that forced calm inside of me that I perfected in my career as a nurse, and noticing…
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The Power of “I Don’t Know That I Don’t Know”: How Authenticity in a Chaotic Moment Created Inconvenience and Expansion
In our tiny slices of reality, which are completely unique to us and created by our programming and experiences, we bump up against what we label as problems or challenges. We believe that our current reality is something that is fixed. We tighten into the triggers and divert up to our intellect to figure it…
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Autism Acceptance Month Is Not a Celebration—It’s a Reckoning
Every April, the world turns its attention to autism. The posts go up, the slogans circulate, and suddenly everyone is talking about “awareness” again. But if I’m being honest, awareness has never been the issue. Autism is not hidden. It is not rare. It is not misunderstood because people haven’t heard of it. It is…
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What Happened Before That Moment?
Sometimes a small sign says a lot about how we think about children. Today I walked past a table with a sign that said: “All emotions are okay, but not all child behaviors are okay.” And I stopped. Because that phrase gets repeated in education spaces as if it’s wisdom. People nod along like it’s…
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Choice Doesn’t Fix It: Why PBIS Still Harms Kids
When I was a little girl, I didn’t speak until I was four years old. I remember the way adults looked at me—like I was broken, like my silence defined me. They didn’t see the potential bubbling beneath, only the ways I failed to fit the mold. That early experience taught me something I carry…