10 weeks of practical, brain-based tools for parenting highly-sensitive kids and steady support for YOU.

Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors: A Course for Parents

Get support with the gifts and challenges of parenthood with neurodiversity in the mix.

Live sessions on Zoom :: Dates TBD for our next series

We’ll explore the neuroscience of behavior, expanding your toolbox with a series of flexible, practical strategies for responding in the midst of intensity and overwhelm, then wrapping up the series by growing your capacity for managing stress and reducing frustration.

This course was created by Robyn Gobbel, host of The Baffling Behavior Show podcast. The information is practical, smart, playful, and packed with immediately useful tools—I love teaching it, after mentoring with Robyn for more than two years!

This group is especially designed to explore what’s fueling BIG behaviors and how engaging differently can invite different results in situations like these:

- high anxiety around transitions, separation, new routines, and peer/social interactions
- “rest and digest” challenges, like picky eating, toileting issues, bedtime worries, and sensory sensitivities
- sibling tangles and power struggles (that no one can win)
- meltdowns and tantrums (and how to tell the difference)
- aggression and risk-taking (that scare the bejebes out of you!)
- PDA tendencies, including demand avoidance, frequent frustration, anxiety, defiance, and control-seeking

With this no-shame, no-blame approach to parenting, you’ll finally understand why good intentions and honest emotions can clash—even when you “know what to do”—but especially when you feel overwhelmed.

This series is strategically designed so you don’t just learn a bunch of parenting tools and techniques. You will be equipped with practical interventions that actually work—and you’ll understand which tools to use when and why—based on the science of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human.

This series is especially powerful for parents navigating neurodiversity in their kids, themselves, or both.

Our weekly topics are mapped below, so you have an idea of where we’re headed. This is not an open-process therapy group. We’ll follow a weekly course curriculum created by Robyn Gobbel, LCSW, host of The Baffling Behavior Show.

What you can expect:

  • 45-ish minutes of teaching each week

  • 20-30 min of Q+A every time we meet

  • Full-color printable workbook + fridge sheets to keep the tools at your fingertips

  • Sensory tools to use between sessions

  • You get to decide how much “homework” (i.e.—behavior experiments, reflection, resources) you engage in

I trust your judgment, insights, and bandwidth. There’s no such thing as “being behind” in this series. You are where you are. All of you is welcome.

Send me your questions via email, or hop in with the registration button at the bottom. This series is geared for families navigating neurodiversity and behaviors that feel confusing, overwhelming, or not responding to “typical” parenting strategies.

If we haven’t yet worked together, and you wonder if this group is a fit for your family, request a free phone consult, and let’s chat.

If you’d like to enroll with a partner/co-parent, the fee is per family, not each—they are welcome to join you!

Partial scholarships & payment plans available by request. Overall, the group will apply to raising kids ages 2-15.

Section I: How to become the expert in your kid’s behavior

We’ll explore the brain science of regulation and behavior, with attention to non-verbal communication, taking a no-shame, no-blame approach to making sense of big reactions and specific support for anchoring through BIG behaviors and high stress moments.

I’ll share how I talk with kids about understanding their own brains and needs—so you can help guide them through this process, too. And you’ll get to experience a whole new perspective on what it means to navigate the world (inside and outside) with a vulnerable nervous system.

Modules 1 + 2
What You See Isn’t What You Get
Regulated, Connected Kids Who Feel Safe Can Behave Well

You are nearly the best-equipped person in the world to write the operator’s manual for your own child, second to only to them!

Why do none of the off-the-shelf parenting books seem to work for your kid?
Because they’re not written for or about them.

What a book can’t tell you is how to handle each individual moment when you and/or your child are flooded. You know them best. And ALL behavior is important communication.

The deal with parenthood is that we don’t get all the information up front. It’s more like a spigot that turns on fast or slow over time, sometimes a trickle of insight flows out—other times it’s gushing!

In this series, we’ll start with navigating the hotspots, making sense of what’s happening in those moments, and working backward from there…so you can uncover what’s sparking intensity or shutdown—and meet the next mighty moment with more perspective & tools.

Module 3
A New Lens On Behavior

Why rewards, consequence, logic & control don’t budge some of the most persistent behaviors.

When we focus on the behavior, it can feel like playing a game of Whack-A-Mole! Just when one behavior shifts, another one pops up…you’re not nuts, and you’re not the only one. This his how vulnerable nervous systems respond to stress.

Together, we’ll get curious about how Connection, Protection, and Non-Verbal communication are part of the path to finding new ways in.

Section II: Now Let’s Shift Those Behaviors (not ‘fix’ your kid)

Module 4
Getting To Know The Engage, Protect, Shut-Down Brain Pathways

Module 5
Increase Felt Safety (in the body, the environment, and relationships)

Module 6
Changing The Brain With Connection and Co-Regulation

Modules 7 + 8
Strategies To Calm The Activated Brain And Soothe The Shut-Down Brain

Module 9
What To Do When Their Thinking Brain Returns (Or “What about a consequence?”)

Section III: Why Knowing Isn’t Even Half The Battle
(Why “know better, do better” isn’t the whole story)

Supporting your child and their needs is an essential responsibility of parenthood. But it does not require you to let go of your own needs in the process. It’s possible to feel more connected with your child without losing track of yourself. I’ll show you what I mean…no bubble baths or solo retreats required. And no judgment if those are part of your dream! We’ll lean into expanding your capacity by tuning into yourself.

Module 10
How You Can Know What To Do And Still Not Do It

Modules 11 + 12
Growing Your Capacity For Stress Tolerance + 4 Steps To Not Flip Your Lid

We’ll wrap up together, with a chance for review, more Q+A, and a tiny celebration!

Registration is $775 per family.

Payment plans available by request.

Hosted by MereAnn Reid, LPC, RPT, child development specialist and registered play therapist.

This collection of resources and portable tools is shaped by over 20 years in play therapy, early childhood education and youth programs, with lessons learned from working with kids in classrooms, playrooms, and summer camps. My approach to working with child development and family dynamics includes extensive training in attachment, sensory & emotional regulation, relational neuroscience, trauma healing, and mindful parenting.

My work with kids and families has been significantly influenced by several mentors and colleagues. Since 2017, Robyn Gobbel has been an mentor for me in parent coaching and neurosociology (the brain science of human behavior). When she created this course, I joyfully joined her in a full year of intensive study in a community of committed parents and neurodiverse humans.

My personalized teaching of this material also incorporates the brain and neuroscience research of Dr. Bruce Perry—founder of the Neurosequential Model of early childhood development—the playful parenting approach of Hand in Hand Parenting, and attachment theory of Circle of Security.