When Supporting Our Kids Means Starting With Who They Already Are: A Conversation Between Two Clinicians

At Next Steps Psychology, I sit across from children who are uniquely themselves and sometimes struggling in ways that are not immediately visible. I provide comprehensive psychological evaluations and work with children and parents in therapy, with a significant portion of my work focusing on children on the autism spectrum and their families. What I notice across many kinds of families is how much parents love their children and how hard they are working to give them every possible advantage, and yet something still feels misaligned.

So, when I had the chance to sit down with my colleague Maggie Vaughan, LMFT, PhD, founder of Happy Apple in New York City and author of the forthcoming book Beyond Perfect: How Overwhelmed Parents Can Break Free from Performance Culture, I wanted to explore what she has been seeing in her own practice. What I see in my work is something Dr. Maggie has been sitting with in her therapy office for over two decades.

This is our conversation.

Dr. Steph: Dr. Maggie, I want to start with something I often see. I will sit down with parents who are clearly devoted and thoughtful, and who have done everything they can think of to support their child. Yet, there is often this undercurrent of exhaustion in the room both in them and in their children. What do you think is driving that exhaustion?

Dr. Maggie: I think it comes from how hard parents are trying, honestly. The parents I work with are not checked out; they are deeply and passionately invested in their children's lives and futures, and that investment is beautiful. What I see, though, is that many parents are running on a kind of parenting blueprint they developed before they really knew their child: a picture of what success would look like, what childhood should feel like, what trajectory made sense; and they're working incredibly hard to support their child toward that vision.

The exhaustion often sets in when there's friction between that blueprint and who the child actually is. It's not that the parents are doing anything wrong. It's that the blueprint was made before they had all the information and before they fully met this particular child.

Dr. Steph: That really resonates with what I see. Parents come in wanting the best for their child, and the evaluation reveals a very specific, unique profile with strengths and challenges that do not fit neatly into a standard roadmap, and I think that can be disorienting because it disrupts the plan they had in mind.

Dr. Maggie: Exactly, and I want to be clear that having a plan, having hopes and dreams for your child, is completely natural and comes from love. Every parent I've ever worked with wants their child to thrive. The shift I try to help families make isn't about lowering their hopes. It's about redirecting the energy. Instead of starting with the outcome and working backward, what if we start with the child, who they are right now, today, and build forward from there?

That's a fundamentally different orientation, and it changes everything. When you start where your child actually is, you're not pushing against them. You're moving with them, and that's when the connection deepens, the stress lifts, and, here's what's interesting, kids often actually flourish more, because they're being supported as themselves rather than as a project.

Dr. Steph: I love that distinction of moving with them rather than against them. In my work with autistic children in particular, I see how transformative it is when families make that shift: when they begin to question the neurotypical template and instead explore who their child is and what their child needs. How does that show up in your work?

Dr. Maggie: It looks like parents learning, sometimes for the first time, to follow their child's lead, and I think one of the most important things I try to convey is this: every child needs a different parent. We all go into parenting with ideas about how we'll do it, what kind of parent we'll be, and what our relationship will look like and those ideas are formed before we really know who our child is. The truth is, we have to be willing to adapt, to meet the particular wants, needs, and disposition of this specific child, and to celebrate them exactly as they are, and that can come full of surprises, beautiful ones, if we're open to them.

Dr. Steph: You have written about this not just professionally but personally. I know your daughter Ivy is neurodivergent, and that your own parenting journey has been a real teacher for you.

Dr. Maggie: It has been my greatest teacher. I came into motherhood with the same thing every parent has: a picture, and Ivy, from early on, was very clear that she had her own picture entirely. She is wonderfully, completely herself in a way that has asked me, over and over, to let go of my expectations and simply pay attention to her.

What she has given me is a lived understanding of what I try to help my clients with every day. I know firsthand what it feels like to release the blueprint and discover that what's underneath it, who your child actually is, is so much more interesting and alive than anything you could have planned. Ivy has surprised me continuously, and every surprise has deepened my love for her and my understanding of her.

She's also shown me that when children feel genuinely seen and celebrated as they are, something relaxes in them. The anxiety quiets. The resistance eases. They don't have to spend energy trying to be something they're not, and that energy gets freed up for growing.

Dr. Steph: That is something I see regularly in my work: relief in kids when their particular way of being in the world is named and honored rather than treated as something to overcome. Can we talk a little about the stress children are carrying? Many kids are carrying a lot. What do you think is weighing on them?

Dr. Maggie: I think children are remarkably perceptive. They pick up on their parents' anxiety, even when parents are working hard to hide it, and they often internalize the message that who they are right now isn't quite enough. That there's a gap between them and the child their parents are hoping they'll become, and that gap, even when it's unspoken, is incredibly stressful to live inside of.

This isn't a criticism of parents. It's really a reflection of the culture we're all swimming in together. We live in a world that measures children constantly: test scores, percentiles, social milestones, athletic performance. It's relentless, and parents absorb that cultural pressure and, out of love, try to help their children meet it, but kids often experience it as I am not enough as I am.

The antidote to that isn't doing less for our kids. It's shifting what we communicate to them through our attention and our delight. When a child knows that you are genuinely curious about who they are, not just who they might become, they feel safe in a way that is foundational to everything else. Resilience, confidence, and the willingness to try hard things and risk failure. It all grows from that bedrock of feeling truly known and accepted.

Dr. Steph: In my work, I use the term "starting where the child is" as a clinical principle, and I love that your book is essentially making that case for everyday parenting. What would you say to the parent who is reading this and thinking, but I just want my child to reach their potential?

Dr. Maggie: I would say, so do I. That's the whole point. I believe deeply in children's potential. What I've learned, both in my practice and as Ivy's mother, is that potential unfolds most fully when it's not being forced in a predetermined direction. When we start where our child is, we're not capping their possibilities; we're actually expanding them because we're working with their real strengths, their genuine interests, their authentic wiring, rather than trying to build something on top of a foundation that doesn't quite fit.

Every child's potential looks different, and part of the joy, and yes, sometimes the challenge, of parenting is discovering what that looks like for your particular child. Not comparing it to anyone else's child. Not measuring it against a cultural checklist. Just getting deeply, curiously, lovingly acquainted with the person your child actually is. That is the work, and it's the most important work there is.

Dr. Steph: Dr. Maggie, this has been such a rich conversation, and I imagine many parents reading this will feel both seen and relieved. Where can people find your book and your work?

Dr. Maggie: Beyond Perfect comes out in July 2026, and I'd love for parents and the clinicians who work with them to get their hands on it. In the meantime, I'm at Happy Apple in New York City, and you can find me on Substack, where I share a lot of this content regularly. My hope is always that parents walk away feeling less alone and more curious about the incredible, specific, irreplaceable child they already have right in front of them.

Our Shared Mission and Partnership

At Happy Apple and Next Steps Psychology, we share a commitment to helping families understand and support children as they truly are, rather than shaping them to fit external expectations. Our work centers on relational safety, developmental insight, and neurodiversity-affirming care for children and families in New York City. Whether through parent and caregiver support or child therapy and comprehensive psychological evaluations, we aim to reduce pressure, increase clarity, and strengthen connection. When clinicians collaborate around these shared values, families benefit from a more thoughtful and aligned approach to growth.