About
Growing Connected
Growing Connected offers relationship-centered resources for parents, caregivers, and professionals who support children and adolescents.
Our work is grounded in a simple conviction: children grow best when the adults around them understand their needs, respond with steadiness and care, and have practical tools for helping them through big emotions, stress, anxiety, disconnection, and change.
Where this work began
Hi, we’re Jeffrey and Amy Olrick, and we’re glad you’re here. Twenty-two years ago, when our first son was born, we were living in a close community of friends who were also transitioning into the world of parenting. All of us were yearning for a trustworthy roadmap for that joyful but sometimes harrowing journey.
As a child clinical psychologist, Jeffrey began gathering tools to share with us and with the children and families he supported in his clinical work. He was interested in the place where child development, healthy attachment, and, for us personally, Christian faith could speak to one another with clarity and care.
Years later, as parents of three children, we can say that understanding children’s wiring has changed our relationship with our own kids. It has also shaped the way we think about parenting, therapy, schools, communities, and the many adults who help children grow.
We hope the resources we are sharing and creating will serve you well. Knowing what children are designed to need, and learning how to respond to those needs with steadiness and repair, helps. It really does.
We offer these tools humbly, knowing that we have nothing mastered. Neither will you. And that is okay. It may even be the point. We are not aiming for a perfect outcome, but for an ongoing process of returning to connection, curiosity, repair, and love.
Whether you are parenting a child, working as a therapist, or supporting families in a school or community setting, we hope these resources help you feel steadier, stronger, and more connected.
About Jeffrey Olrick, MEd, PhD
Jeffrey Olrick, MEd, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in children and families. He has more than twenty years of experience across public schools, residential treatment, community mental health, private practice, and public health settings.
Jeffrey earned his MEd and PhD at the University of Virginia, where his training focused on clinical and school psychology. His work brings together child development, attachment, family systems, and practical intervention for young people and the adults who support them.
He is the author of The 6 Needs of Every Child: Empowering Parents & Kids through the Science of Connection and Treating Emotional Dysregulation in Kids & Adolescents: Ready-To-Use Interventions for Anxiety, Worry, Reactivity, and Depression.
About Amy Olrick
Amy Olrick is an author, writer, and developer whose work focuses on making important ideas clear, accessible, and useful for families and communities.
She is the co-author of The 6 Needs of Every Child: Empowering Parents & Kids through the Science of Connection. Her writing and work have been featured in outlets including The Guardian and USA Today.
Amy brings a background in writing, communications, platform development, and storytelling to Growing Connected, helping translate research, clinical insight, and lived experience into resources that support real families and helpers.
