A director asked me a question recently that I plan to answer on Thursday.

“How do we keep our staff when we can’t give them a raise?”

She was asking because she’s watching good people walk out the door, folks committed to children and families. You know the ones. The teacher who could calm any toddler. The home visitor families asked for by name. The person who held the whole team together on the hardest days.

Maybe you’re watching it happen too.

Here’s what I know after more than 25 years with the adults who care for children: they’re not leaving because they stopped caring. They’re leaving because they care so much, and they’ve been handed moments nobody prepared them for.

The child who throws a chair. The parent yelling at them. The preschooler who bites, kicks, and then crumples into sobs. Big feelings and complex behaviors, every single day, with no real tools to meet them. That’s what burnout looks like in our field. And the data backs it up: burnout and job stress outrank pay as a top reason frontline staff leave.

And friends, that’s actually hopeful news. Pay and caseload may be out of your hands. The tools gap is not. That’s a variable you can move.

So I’m hosting a free briefing, just for leaders.

You Can’t Pay Them More. You Can Still Keep Them.
A free 40-minute briefing for executive directors, managers, and decision makers
Thursday, October 15 | 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern | Live on Zoom

In 40 minutes (I respect your calendar, I promise), you’ll:

• See what one departure is really costing you, with the replacement math done live using your sector’s numbers
• Understand why your staff are burning out, and the specific, fixable driver underneath it
• Walk away with the Frontline Retention Audit, a free 3-minute self-assessment you can run that same afternoon
• Get your hardest questions answered, live

I hope in our 40 minutes together, you feel supported. Leading right now is lonely. You’re holding your staff’s exhaustion, board’s expectations, and the families who depend on all of you. You deserve space to say, “Of course this is hard. Let’s figure out what’s going on.”

It’s okay to not be okay. 

Who should be there?

If you make decisions about training, budget, or staff retention in early learning, home visiting, child welfare, pediatric clinics, or behavioral health, this hour is for you.

If you’re on the front lines and reading this thinking, “My director needs to hear this,” forward this email. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do for our team is say, “I think we need support.”

Can’t make it live? Register anyway. Everyone who signs up gets the replay within 24 hours.  

➤ Reserve Your Seat

Your mission: come, and let yourself be supported.

Your homework: bring a fellow leader who needs this too.

Because when we keep the adults, children keep the people they trust. Staff outcomes are child outcomes. Every time.

P.S. Frontline friend, if your team is stretched thin and you don’t have a seat at the decision table, this is your seat. Forward this to your director with one line: “Can we go to this together?”

Over 100 of You Showed Up…

I have been trying to find a word for what I am feeling, and I am not sure one exists. I’m tearful even as I write this.

Today we premiered the film about Becoming a Connected Champion. Over 100 people came. Some of you I have known for years, my family, people from trainings, clinics and conference rooms across the country. Some of you I had never met and had never heard of me until someone forwarded you a link. Thank you for showing up for children today, with curiosity.

I keep reaching for a word that means both honored and responsible at the same time. The closest I can find is entrusted. This work feels as if something was handed to me, and I am not allowed to be careless with it. That is exactly how today felt.

Seven minutes. That is all the film takes. In seven minutes, it captured something I have spent 25 years trying to explain at podiums and in rooms with all of you. I watched the film with all of you and found myself tearful, which is a strange thing to say about your own work. But it is not really my work. It is the work of every person who has sat in one of these rooms and decided to try something different with a child the next morning.

I’m so humbled to share this work with all of you.

What we shared

The numbers we put on the screen are not marketing. They come from the people who have been through this training.

• More than 1,000 professionals trained
• 82% feel less burned out
• 99% leave with more hope
• Over 90% of Champions feel more equipped to use interventions that strengthen relational health for children and families

The people who work with and parent the most vulnerable children are the close to quitting because no one is equipping them. A child or family waits roughly six months for mental health services; but they see YOU tomorrow morning. This is where my work lives. You need tools that fit in the five-minute windows you actually have, and you need people around you who understand.

Watch the film

If you missed the premiere, the film is waiting for you. Seven minutes, and you can watch it over your own lunch.

Watch the film and see what we do

Come be a Connected Champion

The Becoming a Connected Champion Fall Virtual Conference is November 4 through 6. Three days, live and virtual.

You walk in overwhelmed by big feelings and complex behavior. You walk out certified, with practical tools in your hands, a shared language for your whole team, and a community that has your back for two years.

• Your Cards for Connection toolkit, shipped to your door before we begin with lots of fun extras
• Up to 14 hours of CME/CE
• A sponsored meal
• Two years in the Champions Collaborative – 24 more hours of relational health support

And, the first 50 registrants get 90 days of our new app before anyone else in the world has it.

Reserve your seat

To everyone who came today, to everyone who forwarded the link, and to everyone who sat with us: Thank you. I am still a little overwhelmed.

See you in November.

— Doctor Amy

P.S. What word would you use that conveys both honored and responsible to share important work? Let me know.

EEEK! Our film is done, and at minute 6 you’ll see why I burst into tears. It’s a little surreal to see my life’s work come to fruition in a short film. But you get to see it first because whether you’re a parent or a professional – you’re the ones out there every single day on the front lines, holding up the sky. My life’s work has always been about supporting you so that we can support more kids.

Join me for the premiere on Thursday, October 1, at noon Pacific. Twenty minutes over lunch. No cost, no pressure. Just me, a few hundred of my closest friends, and a whole lot of excitement.

I honestly doubted anyone could capture what we do in just a few minutes. We did it in seven.

A few, fun details:

• Something most of you don’t know about me
• Minute SIX! The moment I burst into tears over what this work is doing
• Why this matters if you’re a parent
• What you’ll never un-know

This film is also your first look at what it will feel like to be with us at our fall Virtual Conference, November 4 to 6. On Thursday, I’ll share how to join us.

Bring a friend. And a tissue. You’ll need it.

With compassion for all you do,

I know your inbox has been getting a lot of love from us lately (fall launch season will do that), so this one’s short and sweet. Just an update on what’s been happening behind the scenes, a couple of fun teasers, and an answer to a question I keep getting asked.

What we’ve been up to

Behind the curtain, our team has been deep in training and rebranding mode, getting our signature offer ready for its next chapter: Becoming a Connected Champion, powered by Cards for Connection™. We’ve also been working closely with our marketing team on our fall launch, and there’s a lot coming your way that we’re genuinely excited about.

I’ve been on the road too. This month took me to the Early Intervention and Prevention conference in Illinois and up to the Hope and Culture Summit in Washington. This week I’m spending time with two incredible groups, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and UKANDU. Every one of these rooms reminds me why we do this work.

And because we can never resist a little fun, our friends at Muse Storytelling put together a teaser video for us. Keep an eye out for it. It might make you laugh, it might make you tear up, it will definitely make you want to come play with us this fall.

“Can parents take this training?”

This question has come up a lot lately while we’ve been promoting our fall conference, so let’s settle it right here: absolutely yes.

Parents are not just welcome, they’re wanted. So many of the professionals who train with us are parents too, I can’t think of a group who would benefit more. This conference covers how to respond to behaviors and big feelings in children of all ages, and it also gets into the barriers we carry from our own upbringing that shape how we show up as caregivers. Every single person who leaves this conference, parent or professional, leaves changed. There is real hope and real joy in learning a new way forward.

It’s virtual, so if you’ve been on the fence, here’s an idea: 

Grab two friends and turn it into a watch party. We’re offering a discounted rate for groups of three, which makes it easier (and more fun) to do this together.

The first 50 people to join also get access to the Dr. Amy app, a tool I truly believe will become priceless for caregivers.

I know it’s an investment up front, and payment plans are available if that helps.

Here’s a way to look at it: if you pair the conference with two years in our community of practice, it breaks down to about $23 a month. That’s a pretty small ask for a lot of long-term change for your family.

If you’ve been looking for something transformational this fall, whether for yourself, with a colleague, or with a couple of friends, this is your sign. Learn more & join us here!

In one of our recent Champions Collaborative meetings, the community of practice open to everyone certified in Cards for Connection for two years following their certification, we had the privilege of meeting a young man named Sam. Sam is the CEO of Autism Rocks and Rolls, and he came to us with a lived experience worth slowing down for. 

A few things from his story have stayed with me.

First, Sam talked about accommodations. In his words, accommodations allow people to show what they’re capable of. He pointed out that, in some form, everybody needs accommodations. For people with autism, the right accommodations aren’t extra, they’re what allows them to shine.

He also gave professionals and parents permission to learn as they go, to adjust their approach over time rather than getting it perfect from the start. His hope is that everyone working with someone with autism becomes a detective about their behavior, curious about the message underneath it rather than the behavior itself. Behavior is communication. That’s the heart of it.

This idea sits at the center of our certification program. One of our cards, “What’s Behind the Behavior?”, names the intervention we teach, and it is built entirely around that question. From there, we teach professionals to respond to what that behavior is communicating, whether it’s an unmet need, a missing skill, or a feeling underneath the surface.

In Sam’s mind, accommodation should be universal, offered to everyone rather than reserved for a few.

After talking with Sam and his mom, I had a reflection of my own. When we offer accommodations to people on the spectrum, we give them a path to regulation. Accommodation leads to regulation. And regulation is what allows the thinking brain to come online, what makes relationship and learning possible in the first place. Accommodation leads to regulation, and regulation leads to learning. That felt like a real aha moment for our group.

Finally, Sam talked about explaining “the why”. Too often, people with disabilities are forced into an intervention, a support, a specialist, or a therapist without ever understanding the reason behind it. When Sam was first told he needed speech therapy, he pushed back. In his mind, he already knew how to talk. It wasn’t until someone explained that speech therapy was also about the nuances of communication, about relating to others in social spaces, that it started to make sense to him. People with disabilities deserve to understand the how and why behind an intervention, not just be subjected to it in the name of fitting a mold of what we consider socially appropriate.

Our Champions left that meeting moved by Sam’s honesty and openness, by how funny and warm he is, and by how much knowledge and success he carries. The biggest takeaway for all of us: when we lean into someone’s lived experience and truly listen to their story, we learn more than any book or class could ever teach us.

If these tools are something that would make your work more meaningful, we hope you join us for our fall conference, November 4-6.

They turned the camera on, asked me how I was doing, and the first thing out of my mouth was this: 

Today is the day the world finds out about this.

I hadn’t planned to say it. It’s just what I was feeling.

We’ve spent this summer with a film crew. They came to Central Oregon, sat me down, and asked me questions I’ve never answered publicly before. Why this work exists, who it started with, and what I’m actually trying to do to leave an impact in the world. I answered for hours. Some of it I’ve never said in a training, or on a podcast, or to you.

Then they followed us to Eugene, where a hundred and forty early childhood professionals spent two days learning to be a champion in the life of a child. Cameras at the back of the room. Real people, real practice, no scripts.

Here’s what I keep thinking about.

For twenty-five years, this work happened in small rooms. A six by eight office with one window. A basement with one window. A motel room on a home visit. The work was always real, yet almost nobody ever saw it. And even fewer people could access it.

Someone is finally pointing towards our story. And the strange part is that it isn’t really about me. When I watched that room in Eugene, I didn’t see a training. I saw a hundred and forty people who were ready to be a champion in a child’s life, learning to believe it.

That’s the thing I’ve never been able to show you. Only tell you.

Soon we’ll be able to show you.

I’m not going to say more today, because I want to say it big, and loud, and with lots of intention. What I will tell you is that this November is going to be the biggest thing this work has ever done, and that what we’ve been building is bigger than “just the cards.”

More very soon.

And if you want to be part of what’s happening this November, join the waitlist for our Cards for Connection™ Virtual Conference, November 4–6. You’ll be the first to hear conference updates and registration details.

Join the Fall Conference waitlist here!

As I’ve been working with Muse Storytelling, a new marketing partner of mine, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I do this work and where it actually began.

If you’ve been to one of my trainings, you know the origin story has a couple of parts.

Part of it comes from the work I did for over two decades with children who had experienced significant trauma. The work was rooted in wanting them to feel less alone and for the adults in their lives to better understand how trauma effects their every day behavior. Like many professionals looking for a bigger reach, when I had the opportunity to train other professionals, I was excited. A group of pediatricians asked me to build a curriculum they could use during pediatric visits. I gave them interventions for strengthening relational health, tools for buffering the trauma and adversity so many children and families face.

Those two worlds, my years with children carrying trauma and a curriculum built with intention for professionals working under real time constraints, became the origin of this work. The goal was simple: put interventions in the hands of the professionals on the front lines. I couldn’t reach every child who’d experienced trauma or every family facing adversity, but I could coach the people who were reaching them every day.

Working alongside a marketing team with real storytelling skill has brought me back to this truth over and over: the most important part of this work is connection.

When a professional connects with a child or a family, in a moment shaped by intention rather than urgency, that connection changes something in that person’s life. In an epidemic of loneliness, in a world of screens and rushed schedules and adversity we may never see, connection is the building block for healing our society.

What I want every professional to know is this: you can do this work. You already are doing this work.

Yes, we offer tools. We offer evidence-informed interventions. We build confidence and competence. But at its core, this work is about elevating what these professionals already know to be true, that the relationship they build with the children and families in their care is what makes the difference.

They are the intervention. The relationship is the intervention.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading a few of these stories over the past couple of weeks, glimpses of the lives our work touches. And if you’ve been considering certification in Frontline Relational Health, and Becoming a Connected Champion, I’d love for you to join us at the start of November. It will be transformative.

At the end of my training day in West Texas, after spending the day with almost two hundred early childhood professionals from Head Start, the director walked to the front of the room. I assumed she was about to transition the group to their next activity, wrap up the day. Instead, she started telling a story.

This director, Mrs. Webbs, is strong. Brilliant. Steady. She moves and thinks with intention, so the moment she started speaking, I knew whatever she shared would be moving.

She told the room that two years ago, she’d met me at the National Head Start Association Conference. She remembered my keynote, but what stuck with her even more was a smaller talk I gave in the exhibit hall. From that moment, she said, she knew she wanted to bring me to West Texas someday. She’d been thinking about it ever since.

She told her staff she couldn’t remember all the specific things I’d said that day two years ago. But she remembered how it made her feel. And her hope, she said, was that as we spent the day together: talking about pencil moments, the importance of connection, using the CLARITY Model to see children’s behavior through a more compassionate lens, that her staff would walk away feeling the same way she had.

Then she paused and told us she was a religious woman, and she wanted to empahsize one thing:

“God bless you, Doctor Amy.”

My eyes filled with tears. Partly because of the blessing itself. But mostly because I understood what she was really saying: thank you for putting this work into the world.

This is my life’s work. I love watching professionals catch small insights, little glimmers, pieces of hope, and the realization that they can make a difference in a child’s life, and that in most cases, they already are.

I was so proud to be in West Texas today, and so struck by the collective wisdom in that room. We told dad jokes. We danced. We sang “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” And somewhere in between, two hundred professionals understood children’s behavior just a little bit more.

If each of them takes just one small tool back to their classroom and uses it with the thousands of children they’ll interact with over their careers, that ripple is enough. That’s the whole point.

If this story resonates with you and YOU want to be that somebody in a child’s life, you can do it and you can learn with us on November 4, 5, & 6. Join the waitlist here.

I was in West Texas last week, training almost two hundred professionals. Tonight, after a long day of teaching, I went down to the hotel bar for a glass of champagne and some quiet time to collect my notes — thoughts on the curriculum, ideas for what comes next.

For most of the night, I sat by the windows, soaking up the last of the sunshine, jotting things down. Then the man next to me struck up a conversation. He’d noticed how intently I was writing, and, out of what felt like genuine curiosity, he asked what I was working on. What I did for a living.

I told him I work with professionals so they can better understand how to help kids. He asked me to say more, so I told him: I want professionals to understand children’s big behaviors and complex feelings. I train people to understand childhood trauma, and what to do about it.

His eyes went wide.

“I’m just a hick from West Texas,” he said, “but I’ve had a lot of trauma in my life.” He paused, then added, “I don’t mean to trauma dump on you, but—” and told me about a mom who struggled with meth and heroin, and the things he saw as a kid that no child should see. He said he wished someone in his life had known to explain what was happening to him. He was, in his words, a real bad kid in school. Eventually his dad sent him to military school. It straightened him out, but only for a while. Then trouble found him again.

He’d seen therapists. Psychiatrists. I told him my hope is that we put tools and understanding directly into the hands of the people kids see every single day — teachers, coaches, providers — so kids don’t have to wait until they’re sitting across from a therapist to be understood.

He got a little tearful. “Yeah,” he said. “That would have made a big difference for me.”

He kept talking about how he’d slowly rebuilt his relationship with his dad, how his mom drifts in and out of his life, how dating is hard for him now, how he worries about having kids of his own someday.

I think he was surprised that I just sat there and listened. I told him: we all have a story. In turn he looked at me and said, “And we all have a little bit of trauma.”

Both are true.

This is the work. This is why it matters. I was reminded, again, that connection heals trauma, and that everyone we meet is carrying something we can’t see until we make room for it.

If this story resonates with you and YOU want to be that somebody in a child’s life, you can do it and you can learn with us on November 4, 5, & 6. Join the waitlist here.

I want to tell you about the last two weeks, and how important connection has meant to me. It feels almost insignificant to write this after two weeks of glowing messages about camp. But I realized that after all of the pouring outward, I needed to absorb a dose of connection for myself. 

Since our move to Central Oregon, there are days I’ve felt adrift. Not in a dramatic way, but more like a low hum underneath everything. New town, new providers, new neighbors, new routes, new version of “normal” I’m still building. I know how to talk people through hard transitions but I still have to remind myself that all of those practices apply to me, too.

Then the last two weeks happened, and I noticed the hum quiet down.

I got to see a couple of my closest girlfriends, back-to-back. Not for big planned events, just life, and hanging out. I flew to Minnesota one week and had another friend come to me. In Minnesota we simply did life together for a few days. Drop-offs at camps, breakfast, walks, and watching shows. In Oregon we swam, hiked, and cajoled kids. With both friends, we laughed, vented, cried, and helped each other out. I got to share my problems instead of solving others; and, and instead of getting advice I didn’t ask for, I got beautiful friends who just listened.

On top of two sweet visits with girlfriends, my son visited and I’m deep into planning a special getaway with my daughter. None of this is extraordinary. But stacked together, these visits did something. I felt less like I was holding myself up and found myself laughing with ease.

Here’s what I don’t want to do: wrap it in a bow and tell you a trip fixes your problems. But you know what’s like salve on a heavy heart? Connection. Connection fixes everything when you’re feeling adrift and you aren’t sure what problem should be solved. Having people who know you, who don’t need the backstory, who show up without making it a whole thing, made the adrift feeling a lot more bearable.

If you’re in a season where you feel a little unanchored, turn towards someone. Just one person is enough. Find a person who actually knows you, who you don’t have to perform for, who’ll pick up the phone. If you have that person, call them. If you’re not sure who that is right now, that’s worth sitting with too.

This week is mostly about gratitude, and a reminder to myself as much as to you that we all need genuine connection.

P.S. This is part of why I care so much about the work we do at our Fall Conference, November 4–6. Relational health isn’t just theory for the families we serve, it’s something I have to keep practicing myself. If you want in, here’s the link.