Trusting Your Instincts as a Parent

A GP, paediatrician, speech therapist or OT can be brilliant on paper and still be the wrong fit for your child. Here's how to trust what you're seeing.

Handing your child over to a professional, a GP, a paediatrician, a speech therapist, an OT, a psychologist, comes with an unspoken assumption: that the letters after their name mean they automatically know what's best for your child. Most of the time they bring real skill and genuine care. But qualifications aren't the same as fit, and no one, however experienced, has spent every day of your child's life watching how they move through the world the way you have.

This isn't permission to dismiss professional advice or shop around until someone tells you what you want to hear. It's permission to trust what you're actually observing, in the waiting room, in the car on the way home, in how your child talks about a session, or refuses to.

No One Knows Your Child Like You Do

A GP sees your child for fifteen minutes. A paediatrician might see them four times a year. Even a therapist your child sees weekly only sees one version of them, the version that shows up in that room, at that time, on that day. You see the version that unravels after a big day at school, the version that's calm at 4pm and wired at 7, the version that only asks for help in the smallest, most sideways way. That's not a lesser kind of expertise. It's a different, essential kind, and it belongs in the room alongside the professional's.

Credentials earn a seat at the table, not the final word

A good therapist treats your observations as data, not as an interruption to their assessment. If a professional consistently dismisses what you're telling them about your own child, that's worth paying attention to, regardless of how qualified they are on paper.

Not Every Therapist Is the Right Fit

This applies across the board, GPs, paediatricians, speech therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and anyone else who ends up working with your child. Being good at their job in general doesn't guarantee they're good for your child specifically. Some clinicians work brilliantly with anxious kids and struggle to connect with a child who needs more directness. Some are wonderful with younger children and less comfortable once a child hits the tween years and wants more autonomy in the room. Some are simply having an off year, an off month, or are managing too large a caseload to give your child the attention they need.

None of that makes them a bad professional. It can still make them the wrong one for your child, right now. Fit is not a reflection of your child being difficult, and it's not a reflection of the therapist being incompetent. It's just fit, the same way not every teacher suits every student, and not every friendship clicks.

What to Actually Watch For in a Session

You don't need to be in the room to gather good information. A few honest questions, asked regularly rather than once, tend to tell you most of what you need to know.

Questions worth checking in with yourself on:

• Is my child happy, or at least settled, going in and coming out, not thrilled every time, but not dreading it either?
• Are they actually learning or building something, a skill, a strategy, a bit more confidence, or does it feel like the same session on repeat?
• Do I walk away from updates feeling like this session was valuable, or like I'm paying for a chat that goes nowhere?
• Does this person adjust their approach to my child specifically, or are they running the same program regardless of who's in front of them?
• When I raise a concern, do they get curious, or defensive?

Your child is not a one-size-fits-all case study, and a therapist who treats every child the same way, regardless of how yours is actually responding, is telling you something important about the fit, even if everything else about them looks impressive.

Above and Beyond Isn't Guaranteed

Some therapists go well past what's required, they follow up between sessions, they loop in the school, they explain their reasoning in plain language instead of jargon, they notice the small wins and tell you about them. Others do the minimum: show up, run the session, send the invoice. Both might be fully qualified. Only one is actually building something with your child.

Signs it might be time to look elsewhere:

• Sessions feel identical month after month, with no sense of progress or adjusted approach.
• Your child has started resisting, dreading, or going quiet about sessions, and it's a change from how they used to feel about it.
• You're told what's “normal” or “fine” without much curiosity about your specific concerns.
• You leave appointments with more questions than answers, consistently, not just occasionally.
• Communication feels one-directional, information goes in, nothing useful comes back out.

It's Okay to Switch

Changing GPs, paediatricians, or therapists can feel disloyal, awkward, or like starting over from scratch. It's none of those things. It's simply making sure the person supporting your child is actually the right person for the job. A good professional won't take it personally, they know fit matters as much as you do. And your child benefits far more from a therapist who's genuinely engaged with them than from your loyalty to someone who isn't quite landing.

Where to Start

• Your day-to-day observations are real evidence, bring them to every appointment, not just the first one.
• A qualified professional can still be the wrong fit for your specific child, and that's not a failure on anyone's part.
• Check in regularly on whether your child is happy, learning, and getting real value, not just attending.
• Not every therapist goes above and beyond. Notice the difference between minimum effort and genuine engagement.
• Switching providers is a normal part of finding the right support, not a last resort or a sign of failure.

This post is part of our ongoing work helping parents feel confident in the decisions they make for their child, including the hardest one: knowing when someone else's expertise isn't quite enough on its own.