Most support for neurodivergent children begins with the behaviour and works backwards: quieten it, correct it, contain it. Somenté begins somewhere else: with what the behaviour is signalling, and what your child's nervous system is responding to. From there, the work is interpretation; helping you read your specific child, and build the conditions where they can function as themselves. We are a coaching and education practice. We work alongside the therapists, educators and clinicians already supporting your child; we never replace them.
About Somenté
We start with the child in front of us, not the behaviour in the room.
Giving back the power to parents & children
Built for change that holds at home
how we work
Our programs: A pathway that deepens, not a menu to choose from.
Somenté isn't a set of separate services. It's one progression, entered where your family actually is, and deepened as understanding grows.
Read More About Our Programs
The front door. A conversation to understand where your family is and which starting point fits. Free, and the right first step for everyone.
For families without a clear picture yet. We help identify what's at play, improve communication at home, and point you toward the right next steps and people. It ends with a written profile of what we're seeing — not a diagnosis, but a clearer map.
For families who already have clarity and are ready to build on it. We establish the understanding and the conditions — safety and connection first — that everything else depends on.
The deepest work: an individualised approach to how your child's system functions day to day. Blueprint builds on Foundation; it isn't a starting point.
our process
What to expect
1
Clarity
We start by understanding this child specifically: what their nervous system is responding to, and what's being signalled beneath the behaviour.
2
Foundation
We build the conditions that have to come first — safety, connection, and a home that makes sense to your child's system.
3
Depth
From there the work deepens into a sustainable, individualised approach: one that holds up on the ordinary hard days, not only the calm ones.
Lauren Quirke
OUR FOUNDER
Lauren's background is in clinical exercise physiology and neuro-rehabilitation, where the rule was always the same: understand what you're looking at before you decide what to do. When she started working with neurodivergent children, she didn't yet know how to read them; so she built that understanding from every direction she could find, alongside occupational therapists, speech therapists, and the research itself. What she kept seeing, family after family, was the same thing: enormous effort, and no foundational explanation for what was actually happening underneath the behaviour.
Somenté exists to give families that foundation.
Why Somenté
A different, more sustainable starting point.
1
Safety & Connection
A child's system has to feel safe and connected before it can learn, regulate or stretch. This comes first, always.
2
Self-Efficacy
The growing sense of "I can affect what happens to me," built through experiences a child can actually meet.
3
Autonomy
Room to be a separate person, with their own pace and preferences. It's the ground genuine independence grows from.
Articles
Read More About How we Work.
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