Parenting Skills

​Parental demand is coming at us in ways we never expected…

…and none of us were ever taught any of this stuff.

If you think about it, raising an infant is the easiest stage. Feed, wash, swaddle, repeat. The skills required for infants are pretty easy and don’t require much knowledge. If they are crying, check their diaper, feed them, play with them, make sure they sleep.

Beyond infancy, the demands and technical knowledge requirements really change. That’s to say nothing of the time management, personnel allocation (Johnny to soccer and Mary to dance), equipment expertise (phones, computers, software, video systems), and mathematic prowess most adults lack.

A common complaint is the loss of personal connection with adolescents and teens often related to the constant intrusion of social media, texting, and television. When we were young, the television was the nemesis. Now it comes at us from every direction 24 hours a day.

If you’re like many other parents, all this has you feeling like a failure, lost in a swamp of responsibilities and a world changing so fast you can’t recognize any of the landscape. You’re left feeling desperate, that time is passing too fast, and the youth of your children is slipping away. The frantic clamoring to hang on, reconnect, even force them to want to hang out with you only serves to drive them away.

Lots of research has been done and techniques developed to teach parents those vital skills we didn’t find in any course catalogs in college or high school. That’s where a skilled therapist comes in to guide you through the learning process.

The pressure to keep up, to be prefect…

…to get it all right and to have flawless children can be too much.

Is it any surprise that many parents feel stressed out, anxious, or depressed?

The constant self-evaluation and criticism damages a person’s self-esteem and confidence which effects their ability to make future decisions. The cycle is only perpetuated by this process and causes us to feel worse about our ability to handle the challenges that will certainly come.

Just so you know, wanting to do a good job as a parent is normal – and so are your feelings. We hear it often and have had great success helping families through the process.

One of the most important things we can do as parents…

…is try and understand our child’s perspective – even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.

To say the world has changed since we were young may be the understatement of all time. It’s changed so much in the last 20 years that it’s hard to recognize things where we once felt we were an authority.

If you’re like many of our clients, you are struggling to wrap your head around the stuff your kids are into. The on-line video trends, social media, and even the words they use seem strange and leave us frustrated and feeling detached.

Unfortunately, it can leave you feeling sad, unfulfilled, and anxious when you cannot find a way to connect with those you love. The feelings are similar to those felt by those grieving the death of a family member.

A vital aspect to successfully working through the challenges of parenting today…

…is the ability to see the challenges the world is presenting to your children through their eyes.

Something that may seem insignificant to you may be earth shaking to them. As an example, consider that for us it may have been the trendy fashions, latest hair style, or newest gadget. For our children it may be similar, and the difference is in the inescapable scrutiny of their peers provided by social media and the constant access to our children even in the safety of our home.

Telling our children, “just don’t pay attention to what they say,” lacks perspective. They have no choice but to pay attention, because everything everyone says is on display for everyone else – and so are your children and their actions, beliefs, opinions, and reactions.

Shrugging it off is a thing of the past. Minor mistakes are memorialized on video, postings, and comments, and can be recalled, republished, and reposted with ease. The tight rope of their words and actions is stretched over a much higher and larger canyon than ours ever was.

Perspective is everything in this conversation!

We’re here to help…

Our goal is to assist you and your child to align with, maintain, and enhance his or her developmental direction.

The milestones we traditionally used to measure the development of young people are ever flexing and twisting. The commonly held goals remain, but the methods and tools needed are constantly changing.

Their race runs a different route than ours, but it’s still a marathon that requires support along the way. Who knew you might need some of that support, too?

You obviously realize you can’t know everything, what with all your responsibilities and demands. That’s precisely why you found you way here. It’s our job to stay current on trends, including threats and opportunities to your children and to take the role seriously when it comes to helping you in your relationship with your child. You can trust us to be your safety net.

Here’s what we’ll accomplish together…

You’ll learn how to tolerate frustration so that you can better manage your relationship with your child.

The differences between you and your child are sometimes obvious and often confusing. Those differences can cause frustration for both of you, but the frustration doesn’t have to lead to anger if managed properly.

Frustration is a common byproduct of misunderstanding, and our goal is to try and help you consider each other’s perspectives, increasing your empathy and understanding for one another.

It is much easier to forgive, accommodate, and appreciate another person when you have tried to understand their circumstances, their thoughts, and their feelings.

You’ll understand the stages of your child’s development so that…

As we said above, the world is ever-changing and the traditional milestones for children, while they remain grounded in the same foundations, change in appearance and presentation as times change.

The complexity of keeping up with the changes in the way the world influences our expectations of our children is significant. The understanding we have of where our children should be by a certain age in their development and how that applies to the modern world requires a skilled guide and someone who dedicates substantial time to remain educated and informed regarding those matters.

We help you recognize each stage of psychosocial development and the critical tasks to be achieved in each — tasks such as attachment, control over bodily functions, speech, separation, exploration, the power of play, independence, advanced learning, and exiting from the family system, are some of the vital stages.

You’ll understand how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors mutually influence each other so that…

When we work with clients, we help them to increase their awareness of how their thoughts, and even assumptions, influence or prompt their feelings. We then help them connect how their feelings then shape the way they behave.

For example, using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, commonly referred to as CBT, we connect the thoughts to the feelings that lead to the actions. Once those connections can be made and practiced, the skills can be applied to our experiences and reactions from moment to moment as we interact with our families. These skills help us communicate and avoid our old ways of thinking and reacting.

You’ll learn new interventions… so that your child will be better prepared for the future.

It’s not on the level of the debate of nature versus nurture, but it fits nicely into the conversation. To say that a person is a product of their environment is largely accurate. Particularly with regard to children, they do as they see others do, especially when it involves their parents or caregivers. Simply put, we lead by example. Our ability to use the skills we have learned teaches them to do the same.

We are the model for their behavior and ability to cope with the challenges that life is bound to present. Modeling good behaviors, strong skills, and appropriate reactions prepares them for whatever may come.

You will better understand the timing of interventions and which to utilize, considering your family’s social environment and community.

Not every skill or technique fits every situation. The real success comes from reading the situation and determining, accurately, which technique is most likely to result in achieving the goal.

The objective in our therapy sessions is to provide you with numerous tools to include in your kit for responding and interacting with your child. Without overwhelming you, we want you to have a generous selection of ways to approach the difficult, unexpected, and often never experienced moments in your life with your children.

Like the adage, praise in public/punish in private, you want to know when, where, and how to use your new skills.

Time passes fast…

…and before you know, they will be all grown up.

Don’t let the pressures, anxiety, and fear rob you of the moments you have. Don’t get caught up in judging yourself for the things you were never taught how to do. Instead, decide to do better and start by reaching out.

You’ve come this far because you know you want to do things differently – and we can help.

You are a good parent… or you wouldn’t have come here!

Let’s help you be better. Call us for a free phone consultation at (630) 358-9821.