COSP and Autism | Help Your Child Thrive

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Nurturing secure attachment without the pressure of neurotypical expectations

Attachment and Autism

Many families with autistic members find that traditional parenting advice doesn’t quite fit.

Often, the underlying challenge is understanding how to navigate the need for connection, sensory sensitivities, and nervous system regulation.

When we look at behaviour through a neuro-affirming attachment lens, it begins to make more sense, pressure decreases, and the connections between you and your child feels safer and closer, without asking anyone to become less autistic.

Attachment and Autism is designed to support families to nurture secure attachment by honouring the neurotype of every person in the family.

How it works

Attachment and Autism can help you:

Learn how attachment needs show up in autistic nervous systems and how to meet them in ways that work for you and your child
Let go of approaches that create pressure or disconnection, and discover parenting with more ease and understanding
Feel more confident in your parenting and deepen your trust in yourself and your relationship with your child

Modules

Each module focuses on one aspect of connection, building on the previous one, allowing understanding, confidence, and connection to grow over time.

Module 1: Closing capacity leaks

We begin by exploring where your energy may be depleted and identifying practical ways to make everyday life feel a little less demanding. This might include small adjustments to routines, sensory adaptations, reducing unnecessary demands, or finding ways to share or outsource executive function load.

This month is not about doing more or trying harder. It is about being supported, settling into our work together, and allowing your system to regain some capacity before we look into deeper relational themes. We start by taking care of you, so that our journey together feels nourishing rather than another demand.

Module 2: Exploration

With a little more capacity, we turn to exploration because it is often the easiest way to connect when relationships feel strained. We'll look at:

Supporting your child’s curiosity and independence in ways that feel safe and attuned
Making space for different processing speeds
Navigating transitions and change with more predictability
Special interests and positive risk-taking as pathways for deeper connection

Module 3: Recovery

Recovery time is an essential part of nurturing secure attachment. Many autistic people need more time and space to recover from sensory, social, and emotional demands. More specifically, we'll look at how we can navigate at sensory overload, anxiety, rejection sensitivity and exhaustion from masking for ourselves and our children.

What will cover in month 2 and 3 can help you find the right balance between exploration and recovery for your family.

Module 4: Being a Secure Base

What will cover in month 2 and 3 can help you find the right balance between exploration and recovery for your family.

How it works

One-to-one

Length: 24 50-minute weekly or fortnightly term-time sessions

Support in between the sessions:

Course workbook

Location: online, via Zoom

Start date: flexible

Fee:

6 monthly payments of £360 for weekly sessions
12 monthly payments of £180 for fortnightly sessions
Pay in full and save: one payment of £2000 (for either weekly or fortnightly sessions)

Group

Length: weekly 50-minute sessions during the summer and the autumn term

Support in between the sessions:

Course workbook

Location: online, via Zoom

Start date: Thursday, September 10, 2026

Time: 10.30 -11.20 am

Fee:

6 monthly payments of £95
Pay in full and save: one payment of £515

Booking: please click the button below to fill in the client agreement form and set up the monthly payments.

Client agreement form

If you would like to explore how Circle of Security can help you, please book an initial consultation below.

Book an initial consltation

You will also receive...

Leading attachment researcher Patricia Papernow suggests that nurturing secure attachment happens on three interconnected layers:

Psychoeducation - understanding the map of attachment and children's emotional needs.
Relational skills - putting this understanding into practice, meeting those emotional needs in day-to-day parenting.
Intrapsychic work - healing deeper wounds and patterns that can get in the way of connection.

The Circle of Security Parenting course covers the psychoeducation piece: you’ll learn the framework and language of secure attachment. To support you beyond the core Circle of Security Parenting framework, I’ve added two elements to help you integrate the learning at a relational skills and intrapsychic level.

Relational skills is about putting our understanding into practice is where the real work happens. That’s why after each session, you’ll receive a Reflection on Connection: a short guided reflection to help you stay focused on what we just covered, parent with intention and apply it in your day-to-day parenting. Usually, I send it via WhatsApp, so that you have it in your phone and can listen to it when you first reach for your phone in the morning.

Intrapsychic work: sometimes, despite our best efforts, something gets in the way. It is often tied to the pain of our own unmet attachment needs. Our reactions may be shaped by experiences we haven’t had the chance to fully process. This is where Brainspotting comes in: a gentle, effective therapeutic approach that helps resolve trauma and deepen your emotional availability. When we tend to our own wounds, we free up more space to truly show up for our children. We will weave Brainspotting into your sessions as and when it feels helpful.

Together, these three layers make your learning not just theoretical, but practical and transformational, creating change that lasts.

Frequently asked questions

What happens during the sessions?

There are three parts to each session:

Checking in about your week, your observations, reflections, wins and challenges.
Studying the course material: each session covers an essential piece of information about developing secure relationships. The content is delivered in a highly interactive and relatable way through videos of parents and their children, graphics and plenty of time for reflection and discussions that will help you to weave your insights into your day-to-day parenting.
End of session reflection offers an opportunity to decide what you would like to take away from the session and explore further during the coming week.

Do I need to do anything between sessions?

The most important thing is to keep your insights from the previous session in your awareness as you go about your day-to-day parenting. It’s not about doing more; it’s about doing differently.

What if I can't complete the course due to family/life circumstances?

Sometimes things come up that make it hard to finish the course in one go. Please know that you won’t lose what you’ve started. We can simply pause and come back to it in a few months. This way, you can move through the course at a pace that works for you and your family.