
Parental Guidance
Parents struggle with common issues such as battling over homework, communicating with teachers, establishing basic rules and expectations at home. Increasingly, parents also worry about their children’s mental health and face new challenges such as managing technology and “screen time”, as well the sharp increase in the number of children struggling with anxiety and other mental health challenges.
It’s an anxious time to be a parent, and sometimes it can feel like we, the parents, are working harder than our kids, who sometimes seem to lack initiative and a sense of personal responsibility. At home, some parents struggle with children who lack respect for others in the family and for house rules, or children who show a worrying level of avoidance, focusing instead on alternate realities like video games. Equally challenging for parents are children and young people who, far from avoiding anxiety, take it on too all too powerfully, exhibiting painful levels of worry and stress.
We help parents get perspective on these and other issues in order to better position themselves with their children as they go through the difficult process of growing up. Finding ways to “drop the worry ball” so their children can pick it up for themselves, establish a more authoritative position in the families’ shared life at home and ultimately to return to that enjoyable parental role of compassionate, supportive “fan” are some of the goals of this work.