Parenting & Families

Therapy for Parenting and Families

As in most relationships, the parent-child dynamic has the potential to be either beautiful or broken—or somewhere in between. Healthy, successful relationships require care and intentionality to maintain, and parenting is no different.

Yet familial relationships, parent-child in particular, can often be fraught with conflict and hurt can be created and perpetuated.

Family Dynamics

Among the reasons that homelife can be uniquely complicated, clients commonly report some combination of the following:

  • Physical proximity of living in the same shared space
  • Communication
  • Changes that come with new transitions, including age, life cycle events, and interpersonal issues.
  • Divorce or blended family situations
  • Generational negative family patterns, or family of origin influences

Parenting and Families

Parenting plays a specific part or role—and counseling for parents helps clients develop a stronger point of view as it relates to this role. So much of our ability to parent well is related to how we establish our “compass” through which we make decisions. Executing our role with comfort, confidence, and consistency requires coming to that role from a well-defined, intentional, open place.

With that, therapy for parenting and families includes a few major objectives.

  1. Increase self awareness, intention, and consistency in the role
  2. Establish value-driven decision making
  3. Practice clear, kind, and honest communication
  4. Develop healthy boundaries, communication skills, and a willingness to see and hear as well as be seen and heard.

As these goals are reached, members of the family system are able to differentiate in safe, respected, and healthy ways. Family values serve as a starting point, the guide with which behavioral patterns are developed or broken.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by parenting and/or family dynamics, it’s time to increase self-awareness, insight and possibly, recalibrate. The therapeutic process is like a GPS that shows you where you are and outlines the various ways for you to get where you want to be. Therapy for parents can help you feel less lost or stuck. It can be an environment where you can gain insight through deeper exploration and psycho-education. It can also be an environment where you gain or increase confidence as well as diffuse fears and negative patterns. With your therapist, you can grow by practicing your parenting potential! You can be a catalyst for an improved, healthy family system with both interdepence and connection.