Parent collaboration: the part that makes it stick
Here’s an uncomfortable bit of math every honest behavior analyst will admit: we’re with your child a few hours a week. You’re there for the other hundred-plus. If a plan only works while one of us is standing in your kitchen, the plan doesn’t work. So at Oak & Arrow, teaching you isn’t an add-on to the service. In a real sense it is the service.
Services designed and led by Oak & Arrow’s Board Certified Behavior Analysts: Paige Tully, BCBA #1-20-44228, CT license BA.001021, and Tiffany Salvatore, BCBA #1-25-81796, CT license BA.001840. Both came to behavior analysis from the classroom.
What collaboration means here
It doesn’t mean homework packets, and it definitely doesn’t mean anyone grading your parenting. It means you’re in the room during sessions, you see the strategies live, and somewhere in every visit we hand you the wheel while we’re still there to help. You’ll learn why the plan is built the way it is, not just what to do, because the why is what lets you adapt on a Sunday when nothing is going to script.
And it goes both ways. You know things about your child no assessment can surface: what soothed them at two, what a certain look means, which battles aren’t worth it. A plan written without that knowledge is a plan written half-blind. You’re not an observer of this work. You’re the co-author.
What you’ll be able to do
- Read a brewing meltdown earlier, and know which lever to pull.
- Run the routines that used to need us.
- Honor a communication attempt fast enough to teach it.
- Understand the data well enough to argue with us about it, which we genuinely enjoy.
- Feel less like a referee in your own house.
A note if you’re running on empty
Some parents hear collaboration and think: one more job. We want to be straight about this. The early weeks do ask something of you. But the entire point of the ask is to hand you a house that runs with less firefighting, not more. In our experience, the biggest change is often not in the child at all. It’s in how confident a parent feels by month three. That’s not a bonus outcome. That’s the outcome.
Questions Parents Ask
Yes, and when someone else does a big share of the caregiving, they should. Consistency across adults is half the battle, so bring whoever your child’s week actually runs through.
Welcome to most households. Part of our job is helping the adults land on one plan they can both actually run. Consistent and imperfect beats perfect and contested, every time.
More of what we work on
Social Skills
Taking turns, reading the room, making and keeping friends. Practiced in real settings, because that’s where friendships actually happen.
Functional Communication
Helping your child ask for what they need, in words, signs, or pictures. For many kids this is where everything else starts.
Behavior Support
Aggression, bolting, transitions that run the house. Every behavior is doing a job for your child. We find the job, then teach a safer, easier way to get it done.
Executive Functioning
Routines, transitions, starting and finishing things. The skills that make school days and mornings work.
Daily Living Skills
Dressing, brushing teeth, washing hands, cleaning up. Everyday routines, taught step by step until your child can run them on their own.
Something else going on?
Most of what families bring me doesn’t fit neatly in a box, and the assessment is where we find out what actually helps.
Start with the interest form
Tell me a little about what’s going on. You’ll hear back from me, not an intake department, within 24 business hours.
Interest Form
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