Therapy grounded in real inner work and genuine human connection.
Do you have any end of the year rituals? A way to gather your experiences, crystallize your memories, celebrate milestones and integrate your growth? If you don’t or you are looking for ways to enhance your end of year reflections, we have a couple of …
Being emotionally drained and physically drained sometimes feel the same but they are not! Because they are not the same, we are often left wondering what’s wrong. We ask this question because being THAT tired and overwhelmed doesn’t make sense when you add up all …
There is no parent in the world that wakes up and says “I’m going to be a terrible parent today”. As a parent you are doing your very best, and sometimes it can seem like doing your best means that your parenting needs to be perfect and you need to have a perfect, happy kid.
Thank goodness that isn’t true! You are human and being human is messy. That means being a parent is messy and so is growing up.
So let’s look at three parenting traps that come up in day to day life, so we can move from trying to be perfect, to being beautifully human.
Doing things perfectly, with zero mistakes (even if that was possible), doesn’t ultimately serve your child.
What does serve them is you modeling how to navigate mistakes and showing them that you are human.
No child is perfect, and they won’t grow up to be perfect adults, and it’s important that they know that’s okay.
If you’re concerned about doing it perfectly all the time, they will be too. Seeing you handle mistakes and challenges will also reduce defensiveness, help rejecting and lying when they do make mistakes because they already have an attitude of: we can manage mistakes and challenges.
If they see you using positive coping skills when you mess up or face a challenging situation, they will internalize that and the focus will not be on the mistake but how you were able to overcome it..
If you allow yourself to be imperfect, you are equipping your kids with valuable life skills they will need as adults. Your child will still love you and be happy, even if you aren’t perfect.
There is a difference between a child being happy in this moment (ah, the best moments are to see a child light up!!) and being happy in the long run. Kids can face disappointments and have unhappy moments and still have a happy childhood.
It’s natural to want to make your child happy, to give them things you didn’t have as a child, especially if you have the resources (time, money, emotional bandwidth) to do it. Parents love seeing their children smile, hearing them laugh and knowing that they have the things that they want.
But, of course, always giving your kids the material things they want or allowing them to do what they want to do when they want to do it, will not produce feelings of true happiness that will fulfill them and last over time.
“No one is happy all the time. Suffering and difficulty are part of the human condition. Some of the richness of life comes from experiencing the highs and the lows. “
(Sarah Rosensweet | Peaceful Parenting | Want to Make Your Kids Happy? Why It’s Okay Not to Try…| https://www.sarahrosensweet.com/make-kids-happy/)
That requires a blend of having joy and fun in the day to day but also having someone to model the skills needed to be successful. As a parent you know the world and human life are not, as my mother would say, “thrill after thrill”.
It’s OK for your child to struggle. By rescuing the struggle all the time, you are sending a message that struggling is not okay or needs to be fixed.
There is value in struggle. Struggling can help your child learn to tolerate frustration, help them feel the push to problem solve independently, learn through natural consequences, regulate emotions, and, most importantly, learn that there is nothing wrong with struggle or difficult feelings.
Thinking that a struggle needs to be soothed immediately can lead to resistance around difficult experiences, not feeling confident to navigate life and developing strategies to avoid necessary life tasks.
“While it can be difficult to watch our kids struggle, they’ll never know the thrill of mastery unless we allow them to risk failure. Few skills are perfected on a first try. It’s through practice that children achieve mastery.” (Parents.com | 7 Secrets to Raising a Happy Child, Marguerite Lamb, April 22, 2008 | https://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/fear/raising-happy-children/)
One tool that I use with younger children is to say, “I’m here if you need support” when I see them struggling with something. This helps them know support is available and to teach them to ask for help after they have tried to make something work themselves.
It takes work to hold back helping them when I know I can help them so easily. But this will foreclose their learning process. Having an awareness of your impulses to fix and holding back on acting on them while they work through something is a crucial part of helping your kids learn.
Parenting can be a challenge and it’s second nature to want to do it perfectly by making your kids happy all the time and fixing all of their problems.
But the reality is, parents are not required to be perfect but they are charged with teaching life skills and providing a safe environment for their kids to grow up.
Knowing the way therapy with kids looks different than therapy with adults can help you feel more relaxed in the process of bringing your child to therapy. Once I point out the fact that there is a difference, it seems obvious. However, when you are …
Do you ever try to take a relaxing moment to yourself, and then notice your brain is escaping to the never ending to do list, upcoming events, or a past mistake? Our brain tends to focus on the past or future, which can lead to …
Parenting is hard and it is even more challenging when your child is struggling and needs more support than you can provide. You may have gotten to this point because the feelings of frustration, worry and concern have become overwhelming.
Taking the next step to help your child may include therapy, and this can be a step in the right direction. It may feel like you are accepting defeat and you cannot provide what your child needs, however, seeking help through therapy is the opposite of defeat, it is your way of showing your child that you love them enough to ensure that they receive the support they need. It is also a great way to normalize and model the importance of asking for support.
It is important to be committed to and involved in the therapeutic process to show your child that you are there for them. You play a major role in supporting and encouraging your child every day and this is especially important when your child is receiving therapy.
The information about your child that you can provide to the therapist is valuable because you know them better than anyone else. Likewise, the skills and coping strategies that the therapist teaches your child will be valuable to you because you can incorporate them into your parenting.
Your level of involvement will vary depending on your child’s age, presenting problem and temperament. Typically a child 4 years old and younger will have a parent present in the session. Younger children can be anxious and not open up if their parent is not in the room.
If your child is 5-12 years old you may check in at the beginning and/or end of the session or you may develop a schedule of one parent session to every three child sessions.
Older children may open up more without a parent in the room and having a parent present in therapy can be awkward for them. Your child’s therapist will be able to assess what’s best for them and their specific needs so they can make recommendations about your involvement.
Your child will definitely need help carrying out the new skills and ways of thinking learned in therapy at home. The guidance and support you provide will be crucial to them successfully implementing what they have learned. Time with a professional is important but real results come from putting in the work between sessions.
More than likely, at some point in your life you have looked to a professional to help you with something; maybe you have worked with a personal trainer to help you get in shape or you have asked a nutritionist for advice about how to eat right.
I bet you didn’t expect to see results from just talking to them. You knew that in order to get results you had to actually do what they advised you to do and stick to it.
The same concept applies to therapy. The skills taught in each session should be implemented in your child’s daily life and routines in order to see results and overcome the challenges that led you to seeking therapy for them in the first place.
It is most helpful when parents are able to present a united front and agree that therapy is valuable and necessary. Sending mixed signals to the child about therapy has the potential not only to delay progress but create new problems for them to have to overcome.
Your therapist will explore how the two separate households run differently and identify the positives of those differences. Helping the child determine how to work with the differences is important. At the same time, in order to reduce anxiety, it may be helpful to align some routines or rules in each household to create stability for your child.
Your therapist will try to reduce miscommunication between parents as much as possible. This means it is ideal to be able to participate in joint parenting sessions.
If your therapist is able to talk with both parents at the same time, the end result is that everyone hears the same thing and is on the same page. This shows the child that everyone is willing to come together for them and keeps them from feeling they are “caught in the middle.”
If it is too contentious to do joint co-parent sessions (both parents, no child present), it may be best to do a pattern of 2 child sessions, then one parent session (alternating the parent that will come to the parent session each time).
Therapy is different for every family because the approach is individualized based on your child’s needs, diagnosis and your family dynamics. There is a process that includes several key elements to provide structure for the overall service that is provided. This includes assessment to understand the underlying cause of their symptoms, problem solving, providing relief and building coping skills.
You, your child and your child’s therapist will all play an important role when it comes to creating a therapeutic relationship that produces positive results.
It’s normal for parents to find themselves reflecting and making some changes throughout the therapeutic process. Being willing to develop new skills and coping strategies that reflect what your child is learning will be so helpful during the course of therapy. Try to keep an open mind and remain flexible and open to new strategies and systems.
There will be ups and downs because progress is not linear. You will be happy when you see your child make positive steps forward and you may feel frustrated when there are regressions.
Just remember that this is normal and it is okay. When stressors arise you will be able to test coping skills and identify stress thresholds. Testing them out during therapy prepares you to face challenges and stressors that will arise after treatment.
The amount of time your child will need to participate in therapy depends on the goals that you and your child’s therapist have agreed on. Typically, therapy will be once a week for a few months but it really is an individualized approach for each child.
Contact us! We would love to support you and your family.
Is your child resistant to the idea of therapy? We covered that here and what to do about it here, in case that is helpful!
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“How long does therapy take?” is a common question that comes up on an initial phone call with someone looking to start therapy. So I wanted to take a minute to answer them in case you have that question too. So, how long does therapy …
We talk a lot in sessions about what kids hear and witness when there is stress going on inside a family.
If a parent cries or parents argue, on some level, kids are going to know. They might directly see or hear. Or they simply might feel that something is going on. Emotional currents run through a family and through households. There is no hiding that.
Also, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come out of my office and bumped into a kid listening at the door of one of the other therapists that work in our office suite. Kids are nosy!
You have to remember that picking up on these things, to some degree consciously or unconsciously, is partly a survival mechanism. Kids rely on their parent(s) to get needs met and they need to know what is going on in the family system so they can estimate how or when those needs can be met. This “thought process” about getting needs met can be largely unconscious. That information is required nonetheless.
To what degree? It really depends on the child or teen, their age, their level of emotional awareness, sensitivity and the family dynamics.
As with most things, it depends. However, I would say that it is likely that some acknowledgement of what is happening will be helpful.
Most of the time, you want to acknowledge that there is some kind of stress or there was a tough moment because they are going to find a way to make sense of it whether you share with them or not. Consider that most kids/teens (and some people in general) will tend to explain things to themselves putting themselves at the center of the story. This way, there is a sense of control.
If parents are fighting over parenting, for example, a child might decide they are the problem and if they are more well behaved or easy, the fighting will stop. Or, if they need less, their parents won’t be so stressed about money. They want to fix it. Just like we all want to solve problems and stop pain.
So, if you don’t acknowledge what is happening and provide some kind of explanation, you risk a young mind trying to make sense of bigger scale problems without support.
So, if parents are fighting over screen time, you might say to your young child: “we are having some trouble agreeing about how much screen time is healthy. So, we are going to try and find a way to agree, even though we have not found it yet.”
Keep it short and sweet.
Yes, they need to see that adults have feelings too. And that adults also have to figure out how to get along and grow through challenges.
If you try to keep everything away from your child, you are not allowing them the opportunity to see how a healthy adult or healthy couple works through challenges.
The key is not flooding them with your feelings.
Let’s say you are grieving. It is OK for your child to see you cry or need time for yourself. You can say “I’m feeling sad about ____ and I need to cry a little” or “I need to take some space for my feelings right now. I’m OK and this is just a wave that needs to pass through”.
With any challenge, you can say “I know that this is a challenge and challenges are here to help me learn and grow. I’m figuring out how to do that right now and it’s a little messy!”
Talk to them how you would want them to talk to themselves, you or others through a challenge. Kids pick up these things fast.
They are going to handle things in they way you show them to handle things. Whether you are intentional about it or not.
No matter what you say, make sure you add that you are OK, they are OK or things will be OK. You want them to understand that they are safe and do not need to worry, that you are handling it.
Even if you don’t know how you are going to handle it yet! You are an adult and you will figure it out. If it is too big to do on your own, you know you can get support to figure it out. One of the ways you can do that is by finding a therapist who can guide you through.
I would expect that you will get a minimizing or distracted response from most kids. Their response is not the important part.
They have ears that hear.
Your acknowledgement is the important part so that can do what they need to do with that information internally.
Consider how you think of things that happened in your own childhood. It didn’t feel important until you saw the impact later. Just like a sunburn. You really don’t know how bad it’s going to be until later. That’s why they minimize it. They haven’t gotten to the sunburn part yet. You have.
Here are some reasons they might not respond to what you say:
If they do respond or have questions, great!
Did your parents acknowledge things that happened in your home? If they did or didn’t, what was that like?
So you see that your child, preteen or teen could really benefit from therapy. And, your child, preteen or teen doesn’t want to do it. This is a tough dilemma. One that comes from being an aware and attuned parent. So, right there, you are …