THRIVEChild Progress Review
Know your child, choose the next step.
If you’re reading this page, you’re most likely a parent, or someone caring for a child whose development has been delayed or hasn’t progressed as expected. You may have a diagnosis already, or you may not. Either way, you’ve probably spent a long time watching them closely, asking questions, trying interventions and therapies, or searching for help.
But everywhere we look there’s a confusion of ideas and well-meaning suggestions that simply lead to overwhelm or don’t seem to help your child.
What you’ve needed is something more than another round of general advice: a way to understand and support your unique child, at the deepest level, so you see lasting progress.
I created the THRIVEChild Progress Review to do just that.
Which struggles do you notice?
Your child's challenges will be unique.
...but every issue involves disrupted biology.
What the Progress Review is
The Progress Review is a foundational assessment and interpretation of your child’s current challenges: biologically, developmentally, and across their daily life.
Over more than three decades of research and clinical practice with families around the world, I’ve gained a deep understanding of children’s development, the biology that shapes healthy minds and bodies, and why neurodevelopmental challenges unfold. THRIVEChild is the result of that real-world experience: A powerful framework that helps families whose children are facing autism, other neurodevelopmental challenges, delays, regressions or chronic health problems.
The THRIVEChild Progress Review is a careful, in-depth review of your own unique child. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all plan, a diagnosis, or a way of fitting your child into a category. Instead, it’s an overview report, seen through the eyes of a specialist in children’s development, to help you understand your child’s unique bio-individuality and provide the foundation for a restoration plan. Parents who use these insights find they can become an ‘expert’ for their children, able to choose next steps with intention rather than guesswork.
Who the Progress Review is for
The Progress Review is for parents and carers of children whose development hasn’t unfolded the way you’d hoped. That includes children with neurodevelopmental or chronic health diagnoses, children who have been told they’re “on the spectrum” or “likely to be,” and children who have no formal diagnosis at all, but whose progress clearly concerns you.
It’s especially useful when:
- You’ve tried a great deal already, and you have more questions than answers.
- You feel confused by the different therapies and approaches you’ve tried.
- You want a clearer view of how to restore the biological foundations your child needs.
- You know there’s more to your child than the diagnosis has explained.
- You want someone who will understand the whole child, not just the label.
- You want a serious first step that doesn’t commit you to a long programme straight away.
Understanding your child at the foundational level of child development
Typical assessments look at symptoms and give labels, but they don’t explain the why.
Typical therapies try to manage the symptoms or train skills, but they don’t address the why.
The why lies in your child’s own bio-individuality: how genetics and epigenetics are shaping their future.
This Progress Review lets you understand the biological why for your own child. So if you want to understand your child and their potential from the biological basics up, this is where you’ll find it. A whole new understanding, and one that gives great hope for the future.
When a child’s development stalls, or simply unfolds differently from what you’d expected, the most overlooked part of the picture is development itself. How it’s meant to unfold, what’s shaping it, and the biology sitting at the heart of it all. That’s exactly where the Progress Review is focused.
It’s a careful, in-depth look at your own child. Every child comes to their difficulties by a different route, so your Progress Review is shaped around what you’ve seen day to day, what’s happened along the way, and your concerns.
That depth of understanding is where restoring development can begin. Once you can see what’s really happening beneath your exceptional child’s struggles, you move forward as the person who already knows them best, now with the insight to match.
How it works
- Watch a short video course to begin. It walks you through what to look for in the assessment and gives you the background to understand what you’re already seeing in your child.
- Complete the assessment pack. You’ll complete four assessments that record the details of your child and your family, so I have the full picture to work from.
- Receive your written Progress Review from me, usually within a week, and private to you.
- Join my live ‘Ask & Implement’ workshop, online, where we go deeper into children’s development and explore the next steps you can take to speed progress at home.
The THRIVEChild Assessment pack
- The THRIVEChild Questionnaire is a structured at-home assessment that asks you to rate, item by item, what you have noticed about your child, across sleep, eating, digestion, sensory responses, behaviour, learning, mood, motor patterns, immune health, skin, and the small details of daily life that nobody else has access to. It is comprehensive on purpose. The way each piece fits together is part of how I make sense of what is happening for your child. You can complete it online or on a printable PDF, in one sitting or over a few days, whichever suits you and your family best.
- The History & Timeline Review is a guided timeline of your child’s growth and development, from pre-conception to the present. Step-by-step prompts help you capture the events that may relate to their challenges, so nothing important is missed.
- The Parent Questionnaire elicits key parenting preferences and helps to provide a wider picture of family life.
- Narrative Notes give you the chance to mention anything else that may be relevant: family history, things you’ve noticed or want me to know about to complete the current picture.
Together, these four assessments give me the insight I need to understand your unique child, their needs and the realities of your life.
About Dr B
My name is Shalleen Barendse. I’m a PhD Health Psychologist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, with more than thirty years in clinical practice and research. I founded Nutrigenomic Medicine and the THRIVEChild Programme, and I’m a certified clinician of the Walsh Research Institute.
Over the years, the THRIVEChild framework I developed has helped families restore remarkable progress for many children, and it’s been a privilege to witness those changed lives.
Here’s what I'd like you to take to heart, the belief that sits at the foundation of everything I do. Your child’s diagnosis or challenges are not the end of their story. A diagnosis is not a ceiling. It’s simply a starting point. Children facing delays or setbacks can go on to heal, grow, and thrive, often far beyond expectations.
Shalleen Barendse, PhD
What THRIVEChild parents are saying
I wish we’d known all this at the beginning, it would have saved us so much pain.
The main takeaways for me are observing my child in a different way now, and doing things with a lot more care.
This has given us an amazing insight to know how to help her.
No one has ever explained everything like this, I’m blown away to see how it all fits together.
One family’s story
One of the first children I was ever asked to help was so distressed and hard to manage that a conversation with his mother was nearly impossible. Dealing with the daily reality of severe autistic behaviours and a non-verbal child, his family were exhausted and anxious about his future.
Three things came together for him: a shared vision and hope; parents who were completely committed; and my own part in making sense of a bewildering tangle of symptoms, history and daily observations. Together, we made clear decisions and took the steps that changed the course of his development.
Nearly 20 years on, how did this child’s story unfold? I could tell you about the progress and setbacks, the tears and laughter. But to be brief, he went on to lose his diagnosis, complete a degree and postgraduate studies, and now has his first professional job. His is a wonderful story. His mother sent me a photo of his graduation. Later he texted me a copy of his job offer with the words “over the moon.” I was too!
I’m not promising you the same. Every child is different, and his progress was unique to him. I’m sharing his story to encourage you, and because it shows what can become possible once you truly understand a child’s needs at the foundations of development.
A note on acceptance
There are some very loud voices today, saying that we should just ‘accept’ a child’s challenges and stop there. I agree with the first part.
Every child, every person, at every age, deserves to be valued fully and completely for who they are. That’s the foundation of loving care. Wherever a child is, we want to support them, to make day-to-day life as gentle and as easy as possible, and to meet them with understanding and accommodation in everything that matters to them now.
But accepting a child as they are right now isn’t the same as accepting that nothing more is possible for them. The aim of the Progress Review, and of the wider THRIVEChild work, is to help parents keep as many doors open as we can, to give each child the best possible life now, and the widest possible set of choices about the life they grow into.
What you will have at the end of the Progress Review
This isn’t a surface-level assessment. You’ll have a deeper understanding of what’s happening in your own child’s development and biology, and a framework for restoring health and developmental progress.
A Video Course you can return to whenever you want to revisit the foundations.
A clear, written understanding of what is going on for your child’s development. The biological foundations that matter most, and why.
A prioritised view of the most significant biological disruption related to your child’s symptoms and concerns and relevant paths to address them.
A live Ask & Implement workshop that brings the findings to life.
A basis for the decisions that lie ahead, whether you choose to continue into THRIVEChild ONE or take what you’ve learned and apply it on your own.
A picture of your child that reflects the whole of their daily life, from sleep and mood to learning and behaviour, not a checklist of symptoms.
Wherever you’re starting from
Whether you’re working on your own or alongside a practitioner or team already supporting your child, it gives you a depth of understanding of your own child, and a clear sense of how to move forward from here.
And if you’re considering the full THRIVEChild ONE programme, this is an ideal way to begin. You get to experience how the programme works, before you decide on anything more.
- Access to follow-on pathways. You have access to seek guidance on specific resources and next steps for your child in the THRIVEChild Programme.
- Full credit toward THRIVEChild ONE if you continue. The cost of your Progress Review is credited when continuing to THRIVEChild ONE.*
Start your child’s Progress Review now.
If you have questions before deciding, you’re welcome to send them.
Know your child, choose the next step.
Shalleen Barendse, PhD
