Individual Counseling for Parents of Neurodivergent Kids
You show up for your kid every single day: the appointments, the IEP meetings, the meltdown you talked them down from at 6am before you’d even had coffee. Somewhere in all of that showing up, it’s easy to lose track of who’s showing up for you.
This is individual counseling, provided conveniently via telehealth, for parents and caregivers of neurodivergent and disabled kids. A space that’s just yours, where the exhaustion, the grief, the guilt, and the love that comes with this parenting journey can all be in the room at once, without judgment and without having to explain the basics first.
Who This is For
This counseling is for parents who find themselves thinking:
“I love my kid fiercely, and I’m also completely depleted.”
“I’m tired of grieving a version of parenthood I thought I’d have.”
“I’ve become an expert advocate for my child, and I don’t know who I am outside of that role.”
“I need a counselor who won’t ask me to explain what stimming is.”
What Counseling Is (and what it is not)
This counseling is:
- 1:1 sessions with a licensed clinical social worker who is also a special needs parent
- A space where your parenting experience is understood without a translation guide
- Grounded in evidence-based approaches: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Narrative Therapy
- Focused on you: your nervous system, your identity, your grief, your capacity, not a plan for “fixing” your child
- Available by telehealth anywhere in Pennsylvania
This counseling is not:
- Parent coaching or skills training for managing your child’s behavior (check out our Family Support Sessions for this)
- A substitute for your child’s own therapy or services
- A place where you’ll be told to “just be more positive” about a genuinely hard season
- Time-limited or crisis-only. Come for a season, or stay as long as it’s useful
What we can work on together
Parents come to this work for support with:
- Chronic stress and nervous system regulation, so you’re not living in fight-or-flight
- Grief, diagnostic trauma, and the disorientation that can follow a diagnosis
- Advocate fatigue: the particular exhaustion of constantly fighting systems for your kid
- Practical boundary setting, at home, at school, and with extended family
- Reclaiming an identity beyond caregiving
- Processing the isolation that can come with parenting a child whose needs aren’t always understood by others
How Sessions Work
Sessions take place virtually over a secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform, so you can meet from your car during a lunch break, your kitchen table after drop-off, or the one quiet room in your house. You’ll need to be physically located in Pennsylvania at the time of your session.
Cost and Payment
Sessions may be billed to your insurance according to your specific plan benefits. At this time, we are only able to accept Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans (including Highmark Blue Shield and Capital Blue Cross) for counseling services. We are actively working on adding these services to our other insurance contracts and will update this page when that occurs.