Meet your social coach:

Christine O'Leary

Certified PEERS® Provider and Social Skills Coach

I'm a fellow parent of adolescents with social challenges myself - and I'm here to help!

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About me

Hello, I'm Christine but my friends call me Chris.

If your adolescent or young adult needs help to make and keep friends and gain social skills and confidence - you're in the right place!

I'm a fellow parent and over the past 14 years, I have been raising my own children and step-children (now adolescents) with a diagnosis of autism and ADHD and supporting them with their social challenges. I first discovered PEERS® when my son asked for help with learning social skills and he and I completed the PEERS® course, with me as his social skills coach.

The difference for my son has been profound, and since then, I've had many parents ask me about social skills training for adolescents. I know what it's like to have a child who finds it hard to make and keep friends, who feels socially awkward and is beginning to isolate, and is vulnerable to bullying, depression and anxiety. I know that as a parent, it can be really worrying. And it can be hard to know what to do as there are very few support programs out there for teenagers.

Today, I'm so happy to say that my son is a happy, confident and articulate young man. He has a beautiful group of friends around him, he's thriving at school, his wonderful sense of humour is shining through, he's started playing team sports and he has recently started a part-time job that fits around his studies. His teachers tell me often how wonderfully he is doing at school and the positive changes they have seen in him.

I’ve seen for myself the difference this program can make, and my passion is to share everything I’ve learned with other families.

Having completed the PEERS® program with my son and the PEERS® Certified Provider training through the University of California, I KNOW that social skills can be explicitly taught - and learned. And having these skills in their toolkit makes all the difference for these teens.

I value the uniqueness of each individual and draw on a strengths-based and adolescent-centred approach in our small-group sessions, which are warm, respectful, relaxed and inclusive. I have more than 28 years of experience as a communications specialist, and I’ve spent much of my career in the not-for-profit, education and disability sectors - and I’m a mum of adolescents on the autism spectrum myself. I bring all that combined knowledge and experience to every session and every teen I have the honour to work with. And most of all - we have FUN! It’s true! Learning social skills is actually SO much fun.

I look forward to the opportunity to help your teen flourish as the beautiful individual they are so they can live their best life - with some extra social skills in their toolkit that they can use should they choose to.

Get in touch! I’m looking forward to hearing from you.