Before I coached children, I spent time coaching multiple adults online at once, each with different goals, different injuries, different constraints, all in the same call. That experience is part of why I believe group sessions do not have to mean generic sessions, even when the group is made up of neurodivergent children with quite different needs from one another.
Individual Attention, Delivered in a Group
In a group setting, I am watching several children at once, but I am not running one script for all of them. Each child has their own entry point, their own pace, their own version of what the session's overall activity looks like for them specifically. Two children might be doing what looks, from a distance, like the same exercise, while the actual demand I am placing on each of them is different, matched to what they are ready for that day.
This requires more attention per session than a one-size activity would, and I do not pretend it is simple. I am tracking where each child is in real time, adjusting instructions, entry points, and pacing individually, even while the group is nominally doing one activity together. Some children need more structure. Some need more space. Some need a peer nearby to feel comfortable engaging at all, which is one of the real benefits a group setting offers that 1:1 sessions cannot.
Group Is Not a Lesser Version of 1:1
I think group sessions get dismissed sometimes as a lesser version of individual attention, a compromise made for cost or convenience. I do not experience it that way. For some children, being around peers is part of what makes the work possible, offering a kind of social context that a 1:1 room does not provide. The group is not instead of individual attention. It is a different setting in which individual attention still happens, just alongside other children rather than apart from them.
I offer both formats, 1:1 for children who need deeper individual support without the presence of peers, and group sessions for children who benefit from that shared context, and I try to be honest with parents about which setting seems better suited to their child rather than defaulting to whichever is more convenient for me to run.
What stays consistent across both is the underlying approach: understanding each child specifically, rather than running a single program and hoping it fits everyone in the room. Whether that is 1:1 or group coaching, the setting changes. That principle does not.
