Private Engagement Six weeks, online.
A 90-minute onboarding call with parents. Then private online visits twice a week for the first two weeks, and weekly for the remainder of the six weeks.
From $12,000Flat retainer, paid in advance
The Work
Before the evaluation. Before the referral. Before anyone gets labeled.
Private family work with Dr. Frances Malone, PNP, PhD. Close, discreet attention to the details and nuances of your child's behavior. Two engagements, entirely individual, with two to three families at a time.
"If a child's behavior shifts significantly with changes to their body, their sleep, their food, and the household around them — then what exactly are we diagnosing?"
This is the question I ask in every family I work with. A diagnosis names a pattern. It does not explain why that pattern is happening in this specific child in this specific family.
I am not anti-diagnosis. I am not anti-medication. I have an issue with the order of operations — reaching for those tools before the child's body and environment have been looked at closely. In my clinical experience, the order matters.
Research-based tools. Used with care, and used systematically.
This is non-pharmaceutical work. The tools I use are well supported by research, yet they are rarely part of the conversation. In twelve years of private practice, I have found they are what most parents would choose to try first, when someone shows them how.
- Nervous system regulation
- For your child, and for you. A regulated adult changes what an already struggling child can manage.
- The ZEN of Parenting
- My own practice for parents in the hard moment: Feel your body. Clear it. Then reconnect.
- Somatic awareness
- Helping your child notice what is happening in their body before it becomes behavior.
- Diet
- What your child eats and the supplements they take, and how both shape the way they feel through the day.
- Physical activity
- Movement used deliberately, as a tool for regulation.
- Positive parenting
- Research-based approaches to attention, limits, and connection.
- Behavioral techniques
- Specific and practical, used consistently rather than tried once.
- Understanding
- You will know why each change works and how to use it, so it keeps working after our time together.
Many parents have tried pieces of this. Few have been shown how to use it systematically, with someone watching closely enough to adjust it as their child responds. That is the difference, and it is what you are investing in.
A child who does not feel good in their body cannot behave well in it.
My first attention goes to everything you have noticed in your child over the years: what they love, what they cannot stand, who they are, what you have worried about, and the things no one else thought were important at the time.
Then I watch your child. How they hold their body, and how their nervous system responds as we talk about what happens at school and at home. I want to know where they sit in the family — their birth order, their siblings, what those relationships are like — so I understand what daily life actually feels like for them. And I want to know how much of their own behavior they are aware of, and which behaviors have been layered on top of the original need.
A routine pediatric visit has no room for this kind of detailed attention. It takes time, and a deep understanding of behavioral stressors, self-regulation, sensory input, and how children process the world around them. That is what I bring to your child.
This is family work. Your child is supported directly. Your family is supported alongside. Neither half works as well alone.
It does not need to be neatly defined. It needs to be real.
Some parents arrive with a teacher's report in hand. Some arrive with nothing but the certainty that their child is not comfortable, and that no one has looked closely enough to see why.
Parents come to me with:
- Stomachaches, headaches, or physical complaints with no clear cause
- A child who will not engage with other children, or withdraws from things they once loved
- Meltdowns, rigidity, or reactions far bigger than the moment
- Concerns from teachers about attention, focus, or regulation
- Sleep that never seems to restore
- Sensitivity to food, sound, clothing, or change
- A household that has organized itself around one child's distress
- A parent whose own nervous system is making everything harder
- An evaluation or referral on the table, and a wish to understand first
Not a program. Your family's work, at your family's pace.
Every engagement begins with a 90-minute onboarding call with you, without your child present. This is where I take in the whole picture — your child's body, your household, what has been tried, and what you have been carrying.
From there, each visit begins with what is working, what is not working for your family specifically, and what your child and your family are ready to take on next. Nothing is handed to you as a protocol to roll through. Everything is adjusted to the child in front of me and the family around them.
This is not family counseling. We will not spend our time going back through every story in your household. The work is practical: specific tools, specific changes, and a clear understanding of why each one works. What you receive is the time and fine, detailed attention of a clinician who understands this from the research and from the inside, and who is steady enough to see your child clearly.
Two ways in. Both entirely individual.
Immersive Engagement On location, then online.
A 90-minute onboarding call with parents. Then three to five days with your child and family on location, followed by a month of private online visits twice a week.
From $22,000Plus travel and accommodation · Flat retainer, paid in advance
In both engagements, I am available to you by text and email between visits. Questions do not have to wait for the next session, and neither do the moments when something shifts.
At this time, I work with families in Washington State.
This work is primarily behavioral, and it sits alongside your child's medical care. Most families come to me with an established primary care provider, and that relationship stays exactly as it is. If I see a physical issue that may be underneath your child's behavior, I talk it through with you, and the next step goes through your child's primary care provider.
As a Washington State pediatric nurse practitioner, the full scope of my clinical practice is available to families here, and some families choose me as their child's primary care provider as well. That is always your choice, and it is never required for this work.
I work with two to three families at a time. Engagements begin with an application.
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