Children Matter

After I started my practice as an Occupational Therapist, combining what I had learned from the Three Principles with Parelli's wisdom about energy and relationship, families began seeking my help. They came to me in crisis. Exhausted. Desperate. Having tried everything—doctors, therapists, specialists, every behavioural strategy, and parenting book they could find. And I would see them for an hour. An hour in my rooms could help me understand what was happening. I could see the parents' energy, know the child's responses, and explain my framework about the two hands, focusing on their thinking rather than managing their child more intensely. But an hour was not enough for families who were truly struggling. They needed support, not just advice. They needed someone to see what was happening in their daily lives—the morning chaos, bedtime battles, and constant overwhelm. They needed sustained help, not a weekly appointment where everyone was on their best behaviour. I began to realise that what these families needed was something I could not provide in traditional therapy sessions. One family—a mother with a young son diagnosed with autism—came to me in profound crisis. She was exhausted, had not slept properly in months, and felt like she was drowning. Every day was a struggle. Every moment required vigilance and management. Traditional autism interventions had given her strategies, techniques, and things to do with her son. But what she needed was not more things to do. She needed relief. She needed to understand what was happening from an entirely unfamiliar perspective. I worked with this family more intensively than I'd worked with others. I helped the mother see that her anxious thinking—her desperate need to fix, manage, and control every moment—amplified the chaos she was trying to prevent. Something changed when she shifted her energy and used her right hand instead of constantly reaching for her left. The family felt I had saved their life. Not because I had cured autism or made their son "normal," but because I had helped them find peace amid their situations. They could function again. They could breathe. Someone suggested documenting this family's story—a look at alternative approaches for autism, "horse whispering ways" applied to family dynamics. The documentary was made and aired on television. What happened next shocked me. Calls came from everywhere. Parents across Australia are saying, "That's my family. That is exactly what we are experiencing. Can you help us?" And I realised something profound: this was not one family's unique crisis. This was an epidemic. Families everywhere were exhausted and overwhelmed, drowning in strategies and interventions that did not address their needs. They did not need more techniques; they needed someone to help them see their situation differently. They needed what I could not give them in one-hour appointments. That is when parents asked, "Can you come to our house? Can you see what is happening?" So I packed my pyjamas. I began living with families in their homes for 3-5 days. I did not observe from the distance of a clinical setting but was immersed in their daily reality. I saw the morning routines, mealtimes, transitions, and bedtime struggles as they naturally unfolded. This changed everything about my understanding. In my rooms, I could theorise about what might be happening. In their homes, I could see exactly what was creating the chaos. And it always came back to the same thing: well-meaning parents, drowning in their anxious thinking, inadvertently amplifying the problems they were desperately trying to solve. Over the following years, travelling across Australia and living with hundreds of families, I saw the same patterns repeat. Parents came to me in crisis with babies who would not sleep, toddlers with constant meltdowns, young children diagnosed with or at risk for autism, sensitive children who seemed overwhelmed by everything, and families where daily life had become a continuous battle. What they had in common was that they had tried everything traditional approaches offered, were exhausted from constant management, one-hour appointments had not given them sustained relief, and they needed an entirely unfamiliar perspective. What I offered: Sustained observation of their actual daily life, focus on the parents' thinking and energy, not just the child's behaviour, the framework I'd developed—the two hands, understanding separate realities, trusting natural intelligence—and support in shifting their perspective rather than adding more techniques. I need to be clear: these are my observations from my practice. I do not have controlled research or long-term outcome studies. Some families experienced significant relief quickly. Others needed more professional support beyond what I could offer. However, through years of this work, it became indisputable that many struggling families were not getting what they needed from traditional approaches. They needed someone to help them step back from the chaos and see it differently. Not every family I worked with had the same dramatic shift as that first documentary family. Change looked different for each household. Some families found that their child's "behaviour problems" dramatically decreased when parental anxiety decreased. Others discovered their child had been misdiagnosed—they were not autistic, just susceptible, and overstimulated. Still others learned to function peacefully with their autistic child's genuine differences rather than constantly battling against them. This united them: when parents shifted from managing harder to understanding differently, family life became more livable. This did not cure autism, make sensitive children less sensitive, or end all challenges. But it gave families relief. Peace. The ability to function and even find joy in their daily life together. The documentary aired years ago, but the epidemic I discovered then continues today. It's even worse now with more information, strategies, and pressure on parents to do everything perfectly. Families are still drowning. Still exhausted. Still desperate for relief. They are still offered one-hour appointments when they need sustained support and an entirely unfamiliar perspective.