Parent Therapy & Coaching
Virtual support in Washington and Montana for parents raising big-feeling kids while trying to understand their own nervous system, history, and patterns.
Dylan Spradlin, MA, MSW, LCSW, LICSW
You wanted to parent differently.
Maybe you promised yourself you would not yell like that. Shut down like that. Give in from panic. Get rigid from fear. Carry everyone’s emotions until your own body waved a tiny white flag.
And yet here you are: loving your child deeply, trying incredibly hard, and still getting pulled into reactions you do not fully understand.
You are not failing.
Parenting has a way of pressing directly on the places in us that still need care.
Maybe this is what “not working anymore” looks like:
You know the kind of parent you want to be, but in the moment your nervous system seems to take the wheel.
Your child’s big emotions, anxiety, sensitivity, defiance, shutdown, or intensity bring up fear, anger, guilt, grief, or helplessness in you.
You find yourself yelling, over-explaining, giving in, getting rigid, going numb, or feeling like you have no idea what to do next.
You are tired of advice that focuses only on your child’s behavior and ignores what is happening underneath it — for both of you.
Your child is not the only one with a nervous system.
Parenting is relational. Your child brings their nervous system into the room, and you bring yours.
That means the work is not just “how do I get my child to stop doing this?”
The deeper question is often:
What is my child communicating?
What gets activated in me?
What pattern are we caught inside?
And what would help us find more safety, clarity, and connection?
How I Help
I help parents slow down the pattern and understand what is happening underneath the conflict, guilt, anxiety, shutdown, anger, grief, and overwhelm.
We may look at your child’s behavior, your own childhood and attachment patterns, your nervous system responses, your boundaries, your fears, your grief, and the places where you learned to abandon yourself in order to keep going.
This is not about blaming you.
It is about helping you have more choice.
When you understand what is happening inside you, it becomes easier to respond to your child with steadiness, repair, and connection instead of panic, shame, or survival mode.
Parent therapy can help you:
Understand why certain behaviors from your child feel so activating
Respond to big emotions with more steadiness and less reactivity
Set boundaries without slipping into punishment, control, or collapse
Repair after yelling, disconnection, conflict, or overwhelm
Notice your own needs without feeling guilty for having them
Understand the difference between your child’s feelings and your own
Build more trust, clarity, and connection in your family
Feel less alone in the hard parts of parenting
What sessions are like
Sessions are virtual and focused on you as the parent.
Sometimes we will talk through specific parenting moments and what to try differently. Sometimes we will slow down and look at the deeper pattern underneath your reaction. Sometimes we will focus on grief, shame, boundaries, your own childhood, or the nervous system response that keeps showing up before you can think your way out of it.
We will not spend our time pretending parenting is easy.
We will also not make shame the teacher.
The goal is more safety, more self-understanding, and more room to parent from the adult you are now — not only from the survival strategies you learned long ago.
You do not need to become the perfect parent.
That person does not exist.
You need enough support to become more present, more regulated, more connected, and more able to repair when things go sideways.
Your child does not need you to get it right every time.
They need you to keep coming back.
And you deserve support while you learn how.
Ready to begin?
Start with a $25 virtual consultation. If we decide to move forward, the consultation fee will be deducted from the cost of your first session.
We’ll talk about what is happening, what kind of support you are looking for, and whether parent therapy and coaching feels like the right fit.
FAQS
Common questions about therapy for parents
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It is therapy, with practical parenting support included. We may talk about limits, language, repair, routines, and what to do in hard moments, but the work also goes deeper into your nervous system, attachment patterns, grief, shame, and the places parenting activates old survival responses.
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IParent therapy usually begins with you. This gives us room to talk honestly about what is happening without asking your child to hold adult concerns. If child or family sessions would be helpful, we can talk about whether that makes sense clinically.
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Yes. This work can be especially helpful for parents raising sensitive, intense, anxious, autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, PDA-profile, or otherwise big-feeling children. We focus on understanding the nervous system underneath the behavior rather than forcing your child into strategies that do not fit.
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Nope.
Then you are a parent with a nervous system. We will look at what happens before you lose it, what your child’s behavior touches in you, and how to repair afterward. Repair is not a failure. It is one of the most important parts of secure connection. -
No. I do not provide couples therapy. If co-parenting or relationship stress is part of what is happening, we can talk about your side of the pattern and what support may be appropriate.
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Sometimes, depending on the child’s age, comfort, consent, and clinical needs. I do not provide individual therapy to both parents separately, and I am careful about confidentiality and role clarity.