A calm, trauma-informed toolkit for the parents you support.
Practical skills, plain-language metaphors, and crisis resources you can share with parents of traumatized children — all in one quiet, browsable place.
Has something like this ever happened to you?
Even when parents do have their hearts in the right place, it can be hard for them to know what to do in the moment. Whatever the root cause, it’s a frustrating reality. Sometimes, the hardest part of working with children is the parents.
What if it didn’t have to be this way? What if you could equip parents with the knowledge and tools they need to support the child in the hours they’re NOT with you?
I know it sounds impossible. Parents aren’t trained clinicians, and you only see them for a few minutes a week. How can you teach them everything they need to know about trauma triggers and provide tools that are simple enough to remember and use “in the wild” in that short amount of time?
As clinicians, we don't get a ton of specific training on how to engage with parents as part of working with the child.
Calm will walk you through small, easy-to-implement steps that you can use to work with parents while treating the kids, improving outcomes across the board.
Best of all? It’s free.
If you help kids cope with trauma and you’re tired of parents undoing your great session work, enter your email address below, and I’ll send over an invite link.
Q: Who was this app built for?
A: Clinicians who work with traumatized children and families.
Q: How does this app work?
A: The app is broken down into smaller sections. The first is a psychoeducation section, which provides psychoeducation about trauma with easy-to-grasp metaphors and explanations therapists can share with caregivers. The largest section is the skills section, which provides a variety of skills clinicians can teach to parents to use with their kids outside of session. Finally, the app has a tracking section that can monitor parental support and highlight major changes.
Q: When do I use this app?
A: This app can be most helpful in preparing you for a parent feedback session, parenting work, or a conjoint parent-child session.
Q: Will I ever have to pay to access it?
A: No, it is and will remain free of charge.
Q: Is this app evidence-based?
A: The app is based on evidence-based principles from gold-standard trauma treatments. However, the app has not been studied itself with an IRB.
Hi! My name is Melissa Goldberg Mintz, and I'm a clinical psychologist, Clinical Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, and the author of Has Your Child Been Traumatized?
Early in my career, I noticed a pattern that kept repeating:
The children who recovered most reliably weren't necessarily receiving the most sophisticated treatment. They had something else: a caregiver who knew how to show up.
The research confirmed what I was seeing clinically. The caregiver-child relationship is one of the strongest predictors of post-trauma recovery.
But most clinical training focuses almost exclusively on the child. The evidence was clear. The implementation was not.
That gap — between what the research shows and what clinicians are trained to do — became the center of my work.
Calm was designed specifically to help close that gap.