From the first time we talk, you can expect a very warm welcome from me. I know that you are reaching out at a time when life is completely upside down. I want you to know that I see your suffering and I am here to help. You do not have to go through your challenges alone.
Our First Meeting
At first, we will have a brief, discovery phone call, to see if I offer the kind of help you are looking for. If we decide to move forward, an initial, free phone consultation will be scheduled which will take about an hour. During this call, we will dive more deeply into why you are looking for therapy right now, and I will tell you about how I work. As we talk, we will move through a decision tree, pausing to reflect and mindfully consider moving forward in the discussion. It is important that we are a good match for therapy, so I want to us to get to know each other well, before you invest your time and financial resources.
Our Sessions
All our therapy sessions will take place online through a secure video platform. We will start our work together reviewing policies and procedures, to make sure that we are on the same page about our professional relationship. Don’t worry, though, we will also start the therapy work right away, as we layer in any questions or clarifications about your documentation.
Setting Goals
Once our therapy gets rolling, we will take a period to determine the direction we would like treatment to go. After this assessment period, we will set goals for your treatment, together. I want to make sure that your unique needs for therapy are being met. We will regularly review goals to assess our progress, to see if it makes sense to continue with our goals, modify or replace them, or prepare to end our time together.
How Parent Coaching Therapy Works
Calm → Connect → Create Solutions
Parents often come to therapy feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or unsure how to help their child. Many families are navigating big emotions, neurodivergence, anxiety, or conflict that keeps repeating despite everyone’s best efforts.
Parent Coaching therapy provides a path forward.
At Welcome Home Family Therapy, my work with parents and families follows a simple but powerful framework: Calm, Connect, and Create Solutions.
This approach is grounded in interpersonal neuroscience, nervous system regulation, and collaborative problem-solving.
Calm: Regulating the Nervous System
When families are stressed, everyone’s nervous system becomes more reactive. In this state, children struggle with flexibility, frustration tolerance, and cooperation. Parents often find themselves reacting in ways they didn’t intend.
Before families can solve problems together, nervous systems need support.
In this phase of therapy, we focus on:
- Parent self-regulation
- Co-regulation with children
- Understanding behavior through a brain-based lens
- Slowing down escalation cycles
- Using breath, movement, and tone to support regulation
As parents become more regulated, children begin to feel safer and more settled.
This is where change begins.
Connect: Strengthening the Parent-Child Relationship
Connection creates emotional safety — and emotional safety changes behavior.
Children are more able to cooperate, recover from mistakes, and develop independence when they feel understood and supported by their parents.
In this phase, therapy focuses on:
- Felt safety in the parent-child relationship
- Rupture and repair
- Communication patterns in the family
- Parent alignment and partnership
- Helping parents become the primary source of regulation for their child
Parents don’t need to be perfect. They need to be regulated, connected, and emotionally present.
As connection grows stronger, many behavior challenges begin to soften.
Create Solutions: Collaborative Problem-Solving
Once regulation and connection are more consistent, families are ready to create solutions together.
In this phase, I use Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), developed by Dr. Ross Greene. Instead of relying on rewards, consequences, or power struggles, families learn to work together to understand challenges and find realistic solutions.
This part of therapy includes:
- Identifying recurring challenges
- Understanding lagging skills
- Clarifying parent and child concerns
- Supporting autonomy and responsibility
- Building long-term problem-solving skills
Because children’s behavior is outside a parent’s control, influence grows through regulation, connection, and collaboration.
A Flexible Process That Grows With Your Family
These three phases — Calm, Connect, and Create Solutions — are not rigid steps. Families move back and forth between them as new challenges arise and new skills develop.
Over time, families often notice:
- Fewer and shorter emotional escalations
- Increased parent confidence
- Stronger parent-child connection
- More cooperation
- Greater resilience in the family system
Therapy is not about fixing your child or becoming a perfect parent.
It’s about helping parents become the steady, regulating presence that helps children grow.
I help parents become the healers in the home.
I'm Excited to Meet You!
I want you to know that I will be on this journey with you, for as long as it makes sense to do so. I will meet you where you are and challenge you to grow. I am extremely dedicated to helping my clients decrease their suffering and travel this journey of life with greater calm, connection, and safety. I am excited to meet you and hear your story.
You Deserve Support:
Schedule your free discovery phone call here
(626) 755-4059
My Motto: I help parents become the healers in the home.
WELCOME!
What Others Are Saying
"Abby has the Three C’s: compassion, curiosity, and commitment. She is a highly experienced, knowledgeable, and insightful family therapist who offers her clients the highest standards of practice. With her decades of experience in community, private practice, and in-home settings, she brings a unique set of skills and perspectives to her clients. Additionally, Abi integrates her knowledge of affective neurobiology into her work with kids and families in a beautiful way. If you’re seeking a wonderful family therapist, she’s the one!"