Thedy Veliz, PhD is the founder of the Institute for Non-Formulaic Youth. He is a parent coach, child and family therapist, researcher, educator, and consultant. He is a California-licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), a Certified Applied Clinical Neuroscience Professional, a Certified Highly Sensitive Child Practitioner, a Certified Highly Sensitive Person Coach, and a Certified Resilience Coach. I have also completed the NeuroLeadership Institute’s Brain-Based Conversation Skills and the Co-Active Coaching coursework.
Dr. Veliz recently completed a doctorate at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). His dissertation introduced a novel conceptualization of children who struggle and suffer the most through the construct of non-formularity. He has also developed a parenting approach that leverages the neurobiological substrate of supportive, trusting parent-child relationships to provide co-regulation for children who struggle with self-regulation due to their highly reactive stress response system. Importantly, these children usually have unidentified higher abilities that are expressed in diverse ways and require a different approach to their parenting, education, and overall developmental support.
Dr. Veliz works primarily with parents of children who struggle with behavioral, relational, learning, social, and emotional challenges. In other words, he works on the child through the parent, because healthy parent-child relationships provide the physiological and emotional regulation that non-formulaic children are unable to orchestrate on their own through the neurobiological effects of co-regulation.
Dr. Veliz strives to help parents become “therapeutic parents” so that their children feel comfortable seeking their support and parents feel comfortable managing the parent-child relationship. My work has taught me that even when the relationship between a child and their parent is strained, what the child really wants is to be understood by their parents, not so much by a stranger (e.g., a therapist or teacher). Thus, my job is to reestablish and strengthen that important bond. Indeed, when the connection between parent and child deepens, the child naturally starts to feel better.
