Hello, I’m Ruta
I’m a psychologist, integrative therapist and parent mentor, and I created Bond from a belief that has grown through both my professional work and my own experience of parenting:
Children make sense when we take the time to understand them in context. And so do parents.
When something is difficult with our child, it is very easy for attention to settle on the behaviour we can see. The meltdowns. The anxiety. The refusal to go to school. The arguments. The withdrawal. The endless negotiations. The child who seems unable to do something we know they are capable of doing.
Naturally, we begin looking for ways to change it.
But behaviour does not happen in isolation. Beneath it is a child with a nervous system, temperament, relationships, experiences, developmental history and a particular way of meeting the world.
And beside that child is a parent with a nervous system, history and life of their own.
Bond grew from wanting to create a space where we can become curious about both.
Not to find who is getting it wrong, but to understand what is happening between you and your child — and from that understanding, begin to find different ways of responding.
Why I Work With Parents
I know parenting from more than one side.
Professionally, much of my work has involved sitting alongside people when something in their lives or relationships has become difficult to understand. Again and again, I have seen that what initially appears to be a problem often begins to look very different when we understand the nervous system, the person’s history, their relationships and the context in which something is happening.
Parenting has taught me this in a much more personal way.
I am a mother, and my daughter is neurodivergent. Parenting her has taught me that loving your child deeply does not automatically mean knowing what they need.
There can be moments when nothing you try seems to work. When advice that sounds perfectly sensible bears little resemblance to the child living in your home. When you find yourself responding in ways you never imagined you would. And when the sheer responsibility of trying to get it right begins to obscure the relationship underneath it all.
I don’t believe parents need another person standing outside their family telling them what they should be doing.
I also don’t believe that every difficulty can be explained by a diagnosis.
A diagnosis such as ADHD or autism can offer important understanding, but it cannot tell us everything about an individual child. Two children with the same diagnosis may behave similarly for very different reasons — and therefore may need very different things from the adults around them.
This is where my work with parents begins.
We slow things down enough to look beneath what is happening.
We become curious about your child’s behaviour, their nervous system and the world as they may be experiencing it. We also pay attention to what happens in you when things become difficult — not because you are the problem, but because the relationship between two nervous systems is part of the picture.
Sometimes a small shift in understanding changes a great deal.
The behaviour that looked deliberately difficult begins to make sense. A response that had become automatic becomes something you can notice and choose. The urgency to find the right parenting technique begins to soften.
And gradually, there can be more room for something else:
steadiness, confidence and connection.
How I Understand Children and Families
I don’t begin with the question, “How do we stop this behaviour?”
I begin with, “What might be happening here?”
A child’s behaviour is shaped by many things: their nervous system, development, temperament, sensory experience, relationships, environment, previous experiences and what is happening around them now. Sometimes neurodivergence is an important part of that picture. Sometimes anxiety, overwhelm, uncertainty or accumulated stress are present too.
A diagnosis can give us useful information, but it does not give us a map of an individual child.
The same is true of parents.
How we respond to our children is shaped by our own nervous systems, our experiences of being parented, what we believe parenting should look like, the pressures around us and simply how much capacity we have available in that particular moment.
This means I don’t look at the child in isolation, and I don’t locate the difficulty solely within the parent.
I am interested in the relationship and the wider system around it.
What happens when your child becomes overwhelmed? What happens inside you in response? What does your child then experience from you? What happens next? And how does a pattern that perhaps made sense at one point gradually become something neither of you quite knows how to leave?
When we can see the pattern without blame, something begins to open.
We have somewhere to work from.
My Professional Background
My work with parents is grounded in psychology, mental health and therapeutic practice.
I have an MSc in Mental Health Psychology and postgraduate training in Mental Health and Wellbeing, alongside advanced training in integrative counselling and therapeutic practice.
My professional development has included relational and systemic approaches, trauma, attachment, nervous-system regulation, neurodivergence, ADHD, family relationships and working therapeutically with patterns that develop between people.
Alongside talking approaches, I have spent many years studying the relationship between mind and body. This has shaped the way I understand regulation: not simply as a set of calming techniques, but as something influenced by the body, relationships, environment and our felt sense of safety.
I continue to study and develop professionally because our understanding of children, neurodivergence, nervous systems and relationships continues to evolve too.
My qualifications matter to me. But they are not the whole of what I bring to this work.
I bring psychological knowledge, therapeutic experience and lived experience of parenting — and I hold all three with curiosity rather than certainty.
Professional Memberships & Registrations
Alongside my academic and therapeutic training, I hold professional registrations and memberships that reflect the standards, ethics and accountability underpinning my work.
- Registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)
- Member of National Counselling and Integrative Psychotherapy (NCIP)
Although Bond Parent Mentoring and Support is not therapy, the professional values I bring to my therapeutic work — including confidentiality, safeguarding, ethical practice, appropriate boundaries and ongoing professional development — also inform the way I work with parents through Bond.
What It Is Like to Work With Me
You won’t receive a parenting formula.
I won’t give you a list of ten things to do differently, tell you that you need to be calmer, or assume that because something works for one child it should work for yours.
And I won’t sit opposite you simply reassuring you that everything you are doing is fine.
Our conversations are warm, thoughtful and practical. We will look together at real situations from your family life and try to understand what is happening beneath them.
Sometimes that may mean recognising that your child needs something different from what the adults around them have been expecting.
Sometimes it may mean noticing that a boundary is needed.
And sometimes we may discover that the way you are responding — understandably, and perhaps for very good reasons — is contributing to a pattern that is no longer helping either of you.
We can look at that without turning it into criticism.
My role is to bring another pair of eyes, psychological understanding and a steady space in which we can think together. You bring something equally important: your knowledge of your child and your family.
Neither of us holds the whole picture alone.
Over time, my hope is that you need me less — because you begin to trust your own capacity to pause, understand what may be happening and decide how you want to respond.
A Little Beyond the Professional
Beyond my professional life, I am a mother, partner and someone who remains endlessly curious about what makes us human.
I was born in Lithuania and have lived in the UK since 1999. Perhaps partly because my life has crossed cultures, disciplines and different ways of understanding people, I have never been particularly comfortable with explanations that reduce a human being to one label or one way of seeing.
For many years, I have practised Qigong and Tai Chi. They have taught me something that has quietly found its way into all of my work: sometimes change doesn’t come from trying harder. Sometimes we need enough space and steadiness to notice what is already happening.
I love learning, being in nature, travelling, and conversations that wander beneath the obvious answer.
And despite all my training, being a mother continues to teach me.
Perhaps that is important too.
We don’t need to become perfect parents. We need enough understanding, steadiness and relationship to keep meeting our children as they grow — while allowing ourselves to grow alongside them.