Parents kept coming to Kylee Leavitt with the same concerns. They’d been told to wait it out or that their child simply needed more boundaries, but they knew something wasn’t right.
As a pediatric occupational therapist (OT) and a mom herself, Kylee understood their concerns. She built Carolina Sensory Solutions to give parents the guidance and support they needed to better understand their children.
She later began sharing her own experiences with after-school meltdowns online, connecting with parents facing similar challenges. In just over a year, those conversations grew into a community of parents who felt understood and supported.
Running the business on her own meant juggling plenty of admin, so Kylee brought everything together in one place, giving her more time to focus on the families she works with.
Meet Kylee Leavitt
Long before Kylee Leavitt found the words to describe it, she was drawn to children who experienced and understood the world a little differently. After volunteering at an autism preschool and spending time alongside a school OT, she began to realize where her passion could take her.
What drew her to occupational therapy was how closely it connects to everyday life. It’s about helping people do the things that matter to them, whether that’s bathing independently after a stroke or joining in during circle time at school.
#### “As a pediatric OT, your goal is to be able to help people be able to do the things that they need to do, and that they want to do, and that they love to do.”Parents were the missing piece.
Throughout her career in schools, clinics and families’ homes, Kylee noticed that parents weren’t always getting the support they needed. Conversations were often brief, leaving little time to address the everyday challenges families faced.
#### “Working in a clinic, you have maybe one to two minutes when you’re done with your session to just kind of spit out whatever you need to.”
For children with sensory processing differences, those brief conversations weren’t always enough. An hour of therapy each week could make a difference, but what happened during the other hours of the day mattered just as much. The challenges didn’t stop when a session ended. They continued at home, at school and everywhere in between.
#### “With sensory processing differences, it’s an everyday thing.”
Kylee began to see parents as an essential part of that support.
#### “I’m a huge believer that the parent is the expert of their child.”
That belief inspired her to create Carolina Sensory Solutions, a parent coaching practice that gives families the tools and confidence to better understand their children and navigate everyday challenges.She started posting as a mom, too.
A year or two into coaching, Kylee noticed many parents shared the same experience: feeling dismissed when they knew something wasn’t quite right.
#### “These parents are like, but no, I feel deep down inside my gut that something is off, and there’s more to it. And I loved being able to sit in that seat and be able to validate them.”
One challenge kept coming up: the after-school hours. Having experienced them in her own home, Kylee began sharing advice and personal experiences through her Instagram account, Sensory with Kylee.
#### “After-school meltdowns, that’s what we’ve had in our house. And so I was able to base my content around that, and obviously resonated with so many people, because it grew so fast.”
In just 14 months, her content had reached a community of parents who connected with her authentic and honest perspective as both a pediatric OT and a mom.
#### “Something that helps create a community is for them to know that I’m not only a pediatric OT, but I’m a mom with lived experience.”
Today, her after-school course reaches parents across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Alongside her free resources, Kylee offers courses and one-on-one coaching, with working directly with parents remaining at the heart of her business.Three platforms became one.
With two brands to manage on her own, Kylee was finding it difficult to keep everything organized.
#### “I’m like a one-man show behind everything, and it’s really hard.”
Bringing on new parents meant juggling different platforms for bookings, video calls, contracts and invoices through another service, leaving Kylee constantly switching between tools.
That changed when she brought everything into Carepatron.
#### “Now I use Carepatron, and it’s been so helpful, because everything is now in one spot. And I don’t have to have a million tabs open in my brain.”
Now, Kylee can manage her bookings, sessions and administration in one place, making things simpler for both her and her clients. With most families finding her through word of mouth, having a system that supports her growing business is important. Knowing Carepatron is HIPAA compliant also gives her peace of mind when handling sensitive information when working with children.Now she can just sit and listen.
For Kylee, making parents feel heard has always been an important part of her coaching. During sessions, she’d encourage them to put their pens down and focus on the conversation, knowing she would send them a summary of everything afterward.
#### “I was always telling them, don’t worry about taking notes, just sit and listen. And so I’d always send them a follow-up email of all the things that we discussed, and I would be the one taking notes.”
Now the AI scribe takes those notes for her. Kylee can review the transcript, make any changes she needs and use it to put together her follow-up emails.
#### “I love that it has its own little scribe, and I can then go through that scribe and copy and paste and change things how I want.”
The follow-up email hasn’t changed, but the journey has. Rather than splitting her attention between the conversation and taking notes, she can give parents her full attention.
#### “So I’m not focusing on writing on my notes while talking to them, and I can just focus on them.”More time for the families who matter most
Looking ahead, Kylee wants to keep finding ways to support families while making more room for the things that matter most to her.
She’s currently developing a larger course for parents whose children are often labeled as defiant, when there may be something deeper going on. Inspired by a line from Ross Greene, author of The Explosive Child, Kylee believes children aren’t giving their parents a hard time but that they’re having a hard time.
#### “I just feel like so many kids are misunderstood. And in reality, what you’re seeing is just how they’re feeling on the inside.”
Her goal is to eventually have her courses running more independently, giving her more time to focus on one-on-one coaching and in-person workshops within her community. But more importantly, it would give her more time to be present with her own family.
#### “I’m a mom. I want to be able to spend my time with family and with my kids, and not stress, and just know that I’ve built this amazing business that’s helping my family, but also helping so many other families.”
Her advice to any clinician who’s nervous to start, on social media or in their own practice, is short: if something is in your heart, trust yourself and go for it.
