Cynthia Singleton
Parent Coach, Speaker & Advocate
Powerhouse advocate & mama bear warrior
Cynthia has walked the autism path for over two decades with her son from the days when he didn’t speak to today where he graduated his Associates Degree at HCC in general studies and is working in accounting. The road has been anything but smooth. Both glorious peaks and sad valleys.
She traveled this path with other families. She worked for and with several agencies so she saw a wide variety of families and how their kiddos experienced autism, and she knows the Texas states service system very well.
Two steps forward, one step back as we went from ABA to private school to home school to public school to private placement to residential school to transition program to community college. Therapies, interventions, diets, and supplements. We’ve tried a lot. Some were fantastic. Some a waste of time.
As a parent coach, she will help you map out your child’s Autism RoadMap for 1) a new diagnosis of autism or 2) making a successful transition from school to adulthood.
As an Advocate, she’s helped more than two hundred families get the services their child needs. To reach more parents, she’s created comprehensive on-line special ed parent training: the Empowered Parent Advocate Bootcamp
Her Experience
She began advocating for her own son with autism nearly twenty years ago. She didn’t just want better services. She wanted better systems. She worked to transform bad policy into better policy in a variety of systems for people with autism by:
Training graduate students from 12 areas about family needs
as the founding Family Faculty for the LoneStar LEND (Leadership in Education for Neurodevelopmental Disabilities) in the Texas Medical Center.
Responding to Houston area family needs
as the Houston Advisory Chair for the now dissolved Texas Council on Autism & PDD
Advocating for better coordination between in the fractured mental health service system
Leading the grassroots effort in 2006 and 2008 that passed the Texas state insurance reform for children with autism.
Writing the Texas Autism Supplement
Training 600+ members of the Houston Police Department Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Officers
Her Awards & Recognition
2018 Recognized by ARC of Texas as Mom Advocate of Note
2008 Empowerment Award for Excellence in Promotion of Self-Advocacy,
2007 Senate
Resolution No. 1211; from the Texas State Senate
Her Approach
It’s about relationship, communication, and knowing your rights.
She teaches her clients how to cultivate relationships that will truly help them obtain what their child needs. It takes a team. You need experts on your team who can listen and work with you to meet your child’s needs.
She coaches her clients to communicate clearly and effectively. Speak from the heart, get to the point, and choose your battles. Most people really do want to help, they often just don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why you have to.
She has heard school staffers make at least one illegal and/or incorrect comment in every IEP/ARD meeting that she’s attended in over 18 years of advocating, . You, as a parent, must know your rights in order to know whether what you’re being told by school staff at an IEP/ARD meeting is true.
