What began as intuition, built session by session with individual children, has since been taught to another coach, who now independently works with children using the same underlying approach. Teaching it was a useful test, because it forced me to notice what was actually transferable and what wasn't.
What Didn't Transfer
What did not transfer easily were specific solutions. The resistance band that worked for one teenager was not a technique I could hand over as a general tool. If I had taught it that way, the new coach would have reached for a resistance band with every child who did not respond to an instruction, and it would have worked rarely, because it was never about the band itself.
What Did Transfer
What did transfer was the sequence underneath it: observe before instructing, look for a concrete entry point rather than repeating a verbal instruction, treat sensory and regulation needs as coming before any specific task, and stay in close contact with parents and educators rather than working in isolation. Those principles held up across different children, different sessions, and eventually a different coach applying them.
Teaching this also meant being honest about what still requires experience that cannot be handed over quickly. Reading a child's state accurately, in the moment, is a skill built through repetition, watching many children over time, getting it wrong sometimes and adjusting. I could describe what I watch for, but the actual calibration, knowing how much weight to give a particular signal in a particular child, took the new coach time and direct practice to develop, the same way it took me time originally.
Teaching a Way of Observing, Not a Technique List
I think this distinction matters for how this kind of coaching should be taught more broadly, if it is going to be taught at all. Handing someone a list of techniques risks creating a coach who applies solutions rigidly, the opposite of what this work actually requires. Handing someone a way of observing and adjusting, and then giving them real practice with real children under supervision, seems to produce something closer to what I am actually trying to pass on.
I do not think of this as a finished curriculum. It is still developing, the same way my own approach kept developing over years of working directly with children. What I can say, having watched someone else pick it up and now work independently, is that the underlying approach is teachable, even though no single technique inside it is a guarantee for the next child either of us works with. It is why this coaching stays built around the individual child in front of us, not a script.
