Raising Resilient Kids

Talia is a incredible resource and educator for families & children. Her framework for raising resilient children is practical and brilliant. We took a virtual class to help with our pre-teen son and found not only have we been able to get him more independent, but the household is calmer and more manageable. She has tools to help implement her frameworks- manageable for anyone. Highly recommend Talia's class for any family, as there is lots of great advice. I wish I would have known this earlier as a parent!

We worked with Talia with our 7 year old. He seemed not to be clicking with reading despite being a very curious kid. Talia helped him gain the confidence and skills he needed and now he’s feels excited and proud about his reading. The parenting skills Talia taught us were also incredibly helpful. Our house has become calmer! I loved how she explains the why behind everything- learning about how kids’ brains work and then translating it to how to connect with them was really helpful for our family. Thank you, Talia!

Before I started working with Talia, my daughter was not interested in reading. After we started working with Talia, her attitude totally changed! She introduced fun ways for her to read without it feeling like a chore and also coached us as parents about how to support her literacy through games and conversations. She would look forward to their time together, and didn't think of her as a teacher, but a friend! I highly recommend working with Talia.

Our family hired Talia in the midst of a pandemic with our son's school existing primarily online (very difficult to engage for a 5-year old) and increasing worry that he would not obtain the skills to enter first grade by the end of his kindergarten year. Talia was able to navigate the nuances of 2020/2021 and manage to get our son, not only up to speed, but beyond the reading level of an average child his age. She surpassed our expectations as a teacher and was very easy to work with and accommodating. Our son entered the summer excited about school and proud of his accomplishments. Highly recommended!

I had the good fortune to meet Talia professionally a few years ago. I quickly became a fan of her practical, data-backed approach to teaching & learning as well as creating resilience in young children / early learners. I read her newsletters and was able to apply a bit of wisdom each time. Then, when my son entered pre-k this school year we started to notice VERY big feelings (even happy feelings) manifesting in physical dysregulation, especially in the classroom and on the playground. He struggled to focus, to listen, and avoided high-pressure situations whenever possible. He resisted playing by himself, always wanting either our undivided attention or a screen. He was prone to pushing or punching on the playground or manifesting his feelings in other physical ways. I reached out immediately to Talia for her guidance. After an incredibly helpful (and free!) consultation she recommended her 10 week Raising Resilient Kids (RRK) program. My husband and I signed up without hesitation. Before RRK I would say we had a mostly calm household but with outbursts of chaos and a nagging feeling that we were missing the tools to make it better. Our kid didn't just need help to be his best self, WE needed help to enable him to be his best self. The course was incredible for both of us, and the outcome for our son has been game changing. We have a 5yr old who will HAPPILY play independently for as much as an hour, no screens, no bids for attention. We have roles and responsibilities in the household that appeal to our individual values and senses of pride. We have a family mission that guides our life at home and in the world. When things get stressful, we have an arsenal of techniques to guide us through those challenging times. And even more comforting is we now understand what may be the root cause of the challenge to begin with. We wouldn't have any of this without Talia. If you're contemplating this course, or her help in general, DO NOT WAIT! Her wisdom will remain with our family always. We love her and are forever grateful!

Our whole family benefited tremendously from Talia's Raising Resilient Kids parent program. Our 6-year-old son used to be quick to express overwhelm, anger, physicality and had very intense reactions to structure at home, losing games or trying/learning something new. By implementing strategies that encouraged his independence and leadership more, these symptoms have mostly resolved after only 2 months. Now that the tantrums have subsided we can see more clearly who he is - a little boy who wants to take risks and be in his own charge while he explores his world. He's also a little boy who needs his parents to reflect his unique strengths and apply effective parenting strategies when he is faced with the growing edges and spaces between his upstairs and downstairs brain. Our household is now experiencing more calm connection, and let me tell you that the investment is soooo worth it. Talia helps frame our children's experiences developmentally and in ways that build genuine empathy and skills to guide children based on who they are. I appreciated her authenticity, holistic approach, and problem solving that resulted in immediate results. I'd recommend this course to anyone guiding a child.

We had an amazing experience working with Talia. We appreciated her holistic approach to reading, phonics, and self-confidence. Talia was a positive and exciting presence and our daughter looked forward to each of their meetings. We’ve always had lots of books around and our daughter has been excited about the worlds they held, but she wasn’t interested in reading on her own and would come home telling us that she was at the lowest level of reading in her class. We felt this was OK and our daughter was just moving at her own pace, but began to get concerned that she would internalize this idea of being the lowest in her class and begin to think of herself as someone who was no good at reading. We started looking for someone to work with her and found Talia through a recommendation from another parent. In working with Talia, we realized that our daughter hadn’t been getting the phonics support that she needed, and once she started getting that she rocketed forward. We loved that Talia saw learning to read as part of a larger picture contextualized within notions of personal growth and self-confidence and that she engaged us as parents and helped us develop new approaches to supporting our daughter. After four months with Talia, our daughter is now reading on level and is looking for opportunities to read to herself and to us. We’re grateful that our daughter now sees herself as a reader.

My daughter entered Kindergarten in 2022. Like so many children, her school experience was disrupted by the pandemic. However, we were fortunate that she had some in-person schooling the year before. Additionally, we were very fortunate because she had a sense of stability and regularity through it all. Her days were marked by vast amounts of playing, making art, and her most valued activity, being read to. Alice loves books. That is why I was struck by her late in the year Kindergarten parent/teacher conference where it was discussed that she is not yet reading. More importantly, she was avoidant. She had difficulty persisting. It was becoming evident that learning to read was feeling really hard for her. When beginner books were sent home from school to begin nightly reading, she insisted that she is not the one who is supposed to read, I was. Alice, an active, engaging, creative, zesty kid, appeared flooded by negative feelings about both herself, and the thing she had always cherished, books. I could see that her confidence was being hit. I could also see that these feelings could erode her overall love for learning, she would say she didn’t want to go to school. A colleague and friend of mine told me about Talia. I reached out and we began our work together. What strikes me about Talia is not only her deep understanding of literacy and learning, it is also her understanding of a child’s emotional life. She recognizes and addresses the impact that struggling to read can have on a child’s self-concept. She became a partner to me and my husband. She met with us alongside teaching Alice on a weekly basis. We wanted to be educated, she spent time conversing with us about the literacy landscape. I always thought because I read so much to Alice, she would surely be a reader from the start. I came to understand that Alice, like many kids, needs a more directive approach to learning to read, something she was not getting in school. Talia gave us a plan on how to support Alice’s literacy skills while also building her resilience when faced with challenges. Our eyes opened to what Alice needed to learn to read. I always let Alice have her lessons on her own with Talia. But one day, later in their work together, I was in on a session. I couldn’t believe it, Alice was reading. She persisted through the whole book, and it was the first time I had ever heard her read. It was emotional and amazing. Talia knows how to engage kids, she knows what is developmentally appropriate to help them learn, she knows how to take on challenges and offer effective strategies when things get hard. I’ll never forget when Alice came into my room after a session with Talia and said, “mommy, I can read for 1st grade.” Her pride was palpable. We are deeply grateful to Talia’s talents and skills as a literacy coach, she has had a huge impact on our daughter’s early literacy life. Alice surely would not be where she is today, if it weren’t for her work with Talia.