Parent coaching is an integral part of what we do at ACCL. You spend more time with your child than anyone. Your role in your child's intervention program is crucial. We work closely with parents to develop child and family specific goals to enhance child and family quality of life and decrease parental stress. We tailor parent coaching goals to your specific child and family needs. We teach you how to arrange and capitalize on opportunities to teach your child, to strengthen your parent-child relationship and to increase the social interactions between you and your child. Happy interactions are a primary goal.
 
For our youngest learners, we use a format developed by Dr. Shahla Ala'i-Rosales with the Family Connections Project at the University of North Texas. We teach you essentially how to DANCE with your child. Hart and Risley (1999) compared social interactions between parents and their children to a dance. This dance is seen from play to conversations and continues because of the joy of interacting. Children with a diagnosis of autism often do not participate in this dance unless explicitly taught. Our goal is to teach you and your child how to engage in this dance together and strengthen your parent-child relationship. Parents are taught to identify and arrange opportunities to teach their children during everyday family routines.
 
For older learners, a modified version of the DANCE teaching format is used, tailored to the interests of the child and parents and informed by the child's existing skill repertoire. 
 
Regardless of your child's age, parent coaching methods involve goal setting, arranging teaching opportunities, using shaping and other reinforcement-based strategies to teach the DANCE, measuring progress, and modifying when needed.