It certainly would be easier if each child came with a manual but where would the learning and exploring be in that? Parenthood is an indescribable, amazing experience but at the same time it can be anxiety provoking and frustrating. Parental counselling can take place in one of two ways.

Firstly, if the parent’s child/teen is in therapy with me, it would be requested of them to also take part in a few parental counselling sessions. The reasoning behind this is that as the child/teen learns new skills and behaviours to manage their difficulties, relationships and environments, this too will create change within the family, as a whole. That is, behaviours that parents used to utilize to try eliminate the problems at home, will no longer work or will result in the child/teen reverting right back to their previous ways. Thus, parental counselling, here, provides a platform to discuss potential changes in their child/teen and in turn, how they, as the parents, need to adjust to maintain this new effective change.  

Secondly, parenting is not easy especially when the parents’ current techniques they are using to discipline, connect with or assist their children are not working. Each parent is unique with different ideas of how to bring up their child and in addition, each child is different – thus, parental counselling here, creates a platform to look at each child, each parenting style and each circumstance individually, to come up with new, more effective ways of parenting.