Our Story

From darling to “problem child”

Our son was five when things changed. Suddenly and without warning. He sat in the living room playing Lego on his Xbox. He would shrug his shoulders and say “I don’t care”. Repeatedly. Little did we know that would just be the start.

It quickly progressed from shrugging to blowing kisses. Cute in some moments, very awkward in others. Next came an unstoppable need for attention of any kind.

He became unbearable in classrooms. We got that dreaded “we need to talk” call from his teacher. The first of many.

The Odyssey

And so began a seemingly never-ending cycle of diagnostics, medication, interventions and special school programs. Months of home schooling because one school refused to take him. Countless hours spent with psychologists, medical specialists and behavior experts. Binders full of protocols, assessment and “findings”.

Unfortunately not many answers.

And worse, no improvement.

The agony of not knowing

We empathize deeply with parents having gone or still going through their own version of this.

For us one of the most frustrating elements was not getting to the bottom of it. Not understanding what was happening to our child.

And to sit through years of trial and error, protocols and repeating the same story over and over to every new expert without making any meaningful progress.

That feeling of not knowing what is really going on would go on to shape almost everything that came next.

No permission, but a mother’s motivation

Frustration can cripple. Or serve as fuel.

Sonya took matters into her own hands and started helping kids herself. To learn from them. In the hopes of one day helping her own son. She went back to school, studied Autogenic Training, PMR and dipped her toes into tools like EMDR, hypnosis.

She struggled with the theory. Being dyslexic didn’t help.

The protocols she was learning felt abstract. “Lifeless”, if that makes sense.

She began trusting her instincts instead. Asking the kids to describe in pictures what they were dealing with. How they viewed themselves and their situation.

Using pictures changed everything.

The kids freely shared what they saw in their inner cinema.

The pictures brought clarity. Clarity led to more success.

And something became increasingly obvious:

Many children could show Sonya things they could not simply explain to her.

That became the heart of her work.

Over the years she became unusually good at sitting with a struggling child, extracting information, recognizing patterns and finding a useful next step when the obvious route stopped working.

Her first signature breakthrough:

A young girl whose painful jolts had doctors puzzled. Medically, there was nothing wrong.

After just the third session the jolts stopped.

And never came back.

The Artist & the Architect

Word spread. Sonya kept learning, adapting, refining.

People wanted to know how she works.

Which led to an even more audacious chapter: making her skill teachable.

It took us a full year to shape a training program built around Sonya’s creativity and experience. We were a near perfect duo: Sonya the creative artist, Chris the logical, rational, systematic counterpart.

We quickly got traction with professionals in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxemburg.

To date we have trained close to 900 people. Most were professional therapists and coaches. Even a handful of pediatricians.

And over 15 years, Sonya’s own work has grown through roughly 5,000 sessions with children.

What began as one mother trying to understand her own child had become a craft used by professionals far beyond our own practice.

The toll

This journey came at a cost.

Raising a struggling child and making marriage work while building a business around this work stretched us to the limit.

There were years of long days, doubts, fights, and moments where we wondered if we were completely crazy to keep going.

We continued walking. Eventually with a limp. Sometimes on all fours crawling.

But we’re still here.

Ready for a next chapter.

The next chapter

We’re not starting over.

We’re re-starting from a completely different place.

Wiser, more experienced, scarred, and with a much clearer sense of where this work is most useful.

Today, the territory that fascinates us most is still remarkably close to where it all began:

What do you do when a child cannot simply tell you what is going on?

A shrug. “I don’t know.” The same answer again.

That is where the detective work begins.

LizardTamer is our way of helping children make those difficult inner experiences visible, understandable and discussable.

And now we want to explore that craft with experienced professionals who already work closely with school-age children.

Not because they need another qualification.

Because sometimes another way of seeing what is happening inside a child can change what happens next.

You work with children professionally? Explore practical ways to help children show you what they struggle to explain. [Learn this craft →]

You Need help for your child? Sonya currently takes on a limited number of cases. [Tell us about your child →]