About Julia.
Who you'd be inviting into your home, and how I think about this work.
A short version.
I'm an occupational therapist based in Port Townsend. I've spent over six years in pediatric OT, most of it in early-support work with babies and toddlers — birth to three — and their families, using a parent coaching model.
Before my master's in occupational therapy at the University of Washington, I spent another six years in behavioral medicine at Seattle Children's Hospital, as a mental health counselor and pediatric behavioral specialist on the inpatient psychiatry and behavioral medicine unit. That work still shapes how I understand children, families, and behavior today — particularly the habit of asking what a behavior is for before asking how to stop it.
I've worked with children across a wide range of neurodevelopmental, genetic, and medical profiles, in homes, clinics, and developmental preschool classrooms.
I live in Port Townsend with my husband, our son, two dogs, and eleven chickens.
Three things that shape everything I do.
Behavior is communication.
Having come from a behavior management background, I now see what's often called behavior as a response — to something in the environment, or something internal.
My focus is understanding what set it off and what need it was trying to meet, building that understanding within your child and your family, and then finding replacement strategies or environmental changes that meet the need properly. Suppressing a behavior without meeting the need underneath it tends to produce a different behavior, usually a less convenient one.
Play is the work.
Therapy centers on the activity your child actually wants support with, done in real time so we can see what's helping and what isn't. It's very activity-based.
For young children that often looks a lot like play — because play is their main occupation, and because a skill built inside something a child wants to do is a skill that survives contact with an ordinary Tuesday.
We're partners.
Like any therapy, this is relationship-based. I work in partnership with your child and your family, and welcome everyone in as it fits.
Feedback is always welcome — including the awkward kind. Open communication is how we build a relationship that growth and trust can happen in, and you know things about your child that I never will.
On neuroaffirmative practice.
I describe my practice as neuroaffirmative and autistic-affirming, which in practice means a few concrete things.
Goals are about participation and wellbeing rather than about appearing typical. I don't work on stopping stimming or enforcing eye contact. Where a child's way of doing something works for them, we keep it and build around it rather than replacing it with the conventional version.
It also means being honest that this is a stance, not a neutral default — and that you're allowed to disagree with parts of it. If your family wants something I don't think is in your child's interest, I'd rather we talk about that directly than quietly work at cross purposes.
The best place to start is a conversation.
Call or email me directly — a first conversation costs nothing, and it's the fastest way to work out whether I'm the right person for what's going on.
Get in touch