Stop Surviving Days Full Of Disruption And Start Thriving With Your Child

Does this sound familiar?

“I feel helpless and don’t know how to calm them down or keep everyone safe.” (You can find strategies to help with meltdowns here.)

“Every morning is a battle to get my daughter out the door."

“All the advice I find is about forcing my child to fit in, not about understanding their world.”

“School calls me daily about my child’s behavior. I need solutions that work at home and at school.”

If this resonates, you’re not alone. There are brain informed, connection based strategies to replace chaos with calm, conflict with collaboration, power struggles with partnership, and frustration with flexibility.

Your child isn't bad. Behavior is a symptom, fix the cause.

Our children are doing the best they can with the skills they have. And so are we. 

Regulation, connection, and capacity come first.

Beneath every behavior lies a child’s unmet need and a gap in skills to meet that need in a way we adults find acceptable. You can find common unmet needs, underdeveloped skills, and behavior treatment approaches for common behavioral challenges here.  

Tools

In behavioral regulation, tools are the concrete strategies you explicitly teach children:

Deep breaths (You can find my favorite way to teach this to kids as young as 1 year old here)

Taking a break when frustrated

Asking for help

Keys

In behavioral regulation keys represent the neurological and emotional capacity children need to use those tools:

Brain networks that regulate stress and sensory input

Interoception skills that let a child notice rising frustration

Impulse-control circuits that pause a knee-jerk reaction (You can find some play based ways to teach this here)

Resilience wiring that helps them bounce back from upset

What makes this behavior treatment different? Real change happens when you address both

Most behavior management strategies or behavior therapies stop at lecturing kids about the tools they should be using, or punish children for "choosing not to" use the tools, and ignore that the child doesn't have the keys!

When you combine tools + keys, you:

Explicitly teach children the “how” (tools)

Build the “can” and “will” (keys) through trauma-informed co-regulation and brain-based exercises

That synergy unlocks the full toolbox giving your child and you both the skills to handle challenges and the thriving neurological foundation to apply them with confidence.

Brain-based behavior support for real life

Learn strategies for common (and not-so-common) struggles

From neurotypical toddler to neurodivergent teen and everything in-between

I lived It. I got it wrong. I learned it. I got it right

I don’t just regurgitate research (although I am a research nerd!) and I never blame the child or their caregivers. In my three roles (as a parent, pediatric OT, and autistic adult), I moved from surface-level, compliance based, behavior fixes to a deep brain based, co-regulation, skills building, and collaboration approach.

This unique blend of lived and professional expertise shapes every strategy I share.

As a parent

My child’s behavioral disorder once put her on a path to be dead or in jail; learning to meet her neurological needs turned everything around. 

As a clinician (pediatric occupational therapist)

I replaced compliance chasing with curiosity and capacity building, transforming how therapy actually works.

As an Autistic Adult

I have had to learn first-hand how to work with the brain I was born in instead of against it.

About Devina King, B.A. Psy, MSOTR/L, ASDCS, ADHD-RSP

Devina is an autistic occupational therapist, parenting coach, author, and credentialed autism and ADHD specialist with over 17 years of experience working with children, specializing in behavioral regulation and neurodivergence. As both a clinician and a parent, she combines professional expertise with personal experience parenting neurodivergent children who previously struggled with behavioral disorders. This unique perspective allows her to bridge the gap between science and real-world application, offering compassionate, evidence-based behavior treatment strategies that empower children to thrive.

You can learn more about Devina's credentials, lived experience, and approach here. 

Publications

Devina has written many books. Her book From Surviving to Thriving: The Art and Science of Guiding Children to Develop Behavioral Regulation available on Amazon here, provides actionable insights for parents, educators, and professionals looking to support children in building essential self-regulation skills. Devina is an AOTA approved professional development provider. Reviewers praise her works for her comprehensive, refreshing and practical, compassionate approach that takes complex psychological concepts and evidence based approach and breaks it down into concepts anyone can understand and apply. Devina has been included in publications such as this article in Psychologist Brief available here and this article in Doctors Magazine available here. Stop by her store here to explore her latest resources, workshops, CEUs and parent coaching sessions designed to help children succeed in their behavioral development journey!