All my projects stem from my overall interest in the relationship between family separation and parent skill acquisition. I’m especially drawn to the ways the brain acquires skills, and how those abilities hold up over time. The family unit is always evolving, and ideas about what counts as “healthy” vary across cultures and geographies. Many of today’s most pressing discussions, like foster care, parental leave, universal childcare, and the boundary between educator and parent, are shaped by and in turn shape family behavior. As I read the literature and talk with practitioners I ask myself, what parenting skills does a caregiver need to thrive in today’s world?
I started debating these questions in the basement of a neuroscience lab. Pushing pins into cow brains, I learned how the brain responds to relationship and the world around it. After college I became a Registered Behavior Technician, which is a certification in the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA). I worked as an RBT in a hybrid clinic/home service delivery model providing direct therapy to children diagnosed with Autism. In this setting, I gained a great appreciation for family dynamics and motivations across dozens of cultural contexts.
But crouched between a data clipboard and children’s toys, I quickly realized that in most client cases, the parents were the true determinants of a child’s therapeutic success. After my time as an RBT I taught special education, earning a Master’s in Teaching Special Education General Curriculum, and have taught in classrooms supporting kids with severe disabilities and behaviors.
I’ve also worked at two research centers, both which gave me a higher level perspective that reinforced what I already saw on the ground. I’ve been fortunate enough to be in the room where I could co-author a few research studies, conduct systematic literature reviews, and participate in multiple field projects. You can read those in greater detail under the Publications page.
Cumulatively, the thread which pulls my experiences into a cohesive through-line is that in every context, in every program, and in every treatment plan, the parent is the one who the child wanted to connect with and learn from. While specialized support services are crucial to address concerns and enhance wellbeing, they cannot replace nor compensate for a home that doesn’t have healthy parents.
I hope more programs will start to turn their gaze towards the caregivers in the room with compassion. By positioning the parent as the primary intervention recipient, my hypothesis is that these efforts will provide the most sustainable, highest yield when it comes to raising children.1
Reaching parents, building their knowledge and capacity, shows children how to thrive as healthy adults. I aim to humanize and empathize with caregiver skill acquisition. I want to make these skills visible and measurable, so that practitioners who come alongside vulnerable families have something concrete to teach and track. The evidence is emerging, but what we know so far is promising.
This ethos is what drives my research. Currently, I’m interested in developing a taxonomy of observable caregiver skills for families reintegrating with their children after a separation like foster or institutional care. It is early work, but this website functions as a repository for what I find, like research, writing, and thinking in progress. If something here is useful to you, I’d love to know.
- Of course, this is outside of highly specialized services that only an expert can provide. ↩︎