Hello and welcome

I'm Anisa, a parenting coach, speaker and mentor, and I've spent more than 25 years working with children and families.

But I'm also a mum, and I think that's important. My daughter is now 18 and, like every parent, I've had the experience of knowing all sorts of things professionally and then discovering that parenting your own child is an entirely different matter. Family life has a wonderful way of reminding us that children haven't read the books and rarely behave according to the plan.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons curiosity has become such an important part of my work. I've never been particularly interested in telling parents what they should be doing. I'm much more interested in what is actually happening in their family.

Why is this difficult at the moment? What might be sitting underneath the behaviour? What is this child trying to communicate? What happens just before things unravel? What are we missing?

Very often, it's when we stop trying quite so hard to fix the thing in front of us and get curious about what's behind it that something begins to shift.

A little about how I got here

Children and families have been part of my working life for as long as I can remember.

I originally trained as a teacher and spent many years in education and school leadership before starting my own business. I've also been fortunate enough to live and work in Hong Kong, Colombia, Australia, Fiji and the UK.

All of those experiences have shaped me.

I've seen children in different homes, schools, cultures and circumstances, and one thing I've learnt is that there really isn't a single blueprint for family life. What works beautifully for one child can be completely wrong for another.

That feels particularly important in my work with neurodivergent families, where parents have often been given plenty of well-meaning advice that simply doesn't fit the child standing in front of them.

My job is to help you work out what does.

Curiosity. Connection. Communication.

These are the three words at the heart of my work.

I help parents step back and see the bigger picture. Sometimes that means spotting a pattern nobody has noticed before. Sometimes it's changing an expectation, trying a different conversation or understanding a behaviour in a completely different way. And sometimes it's simply having someone outside the family say, Have you thought about it like this?

I don't arrive with a judgement about what you should have done differently. I arrive curious. We start with the family you actually have, not the family anyone thinks you ought to have, and we work from there.

Over the years I've continued to learn and add different approaches to my professional toolkit, including specialist training in neurodivergence, coaching, CalmTalk and Johansen Sound Therapy.

But the tool is never the starting point. Your family is.

Away from work

I'm a big believer that there is more to all of us than our job titles.

I'm a mum, wife, dog walker, enthusiastic baker, photographer and lover of a good conversation. I can get completely absorbed in an idea that interests me, and I'm almost always curious about why people do the things they do.

Yorkshire is home these days, although living in different parts of the world has left its mark on me, including an accent that people still can't always quite place.

After all these years working with families, I still find them endlessly interesting.

No two are the same. No two children are the same.

And that is exactly why I still love this work.

Professional background & training

• Bachelor of Education

• Coaching qualifications

• Neurodivergence Coach

• CalmTalk Practitioner

• Johansen Sound Therapy Practitioner