How Can Therapeutic Parenting Help Me?

Accessing support for Therapeutic Parenting (TP) allows you time out of your day-to-day functioning as a parent or carer, to reflect on what has been happening, how you have responded and how well your responses have served your child.

In The Context Of Children’s Challenging Behaviours, Thoughts And Feelings:

As mini-humans, our children are open to the same challenges we are as adults, though their capacity to problem solve, communicate and therefore access their support is limited. What happens is that they may become self-sufficient, making decisions and developing beliefs (out of awareness) based on limited experience, perspective and fantasy thinking (using hypothetical situations and ideas as being a reflection of reality). Ultimately, their aim, like ours, is to have their needs met and survive their world, but sometimes the way they learn to do this doesn't serve them well and it can feel, for them, and seem to you, that they are not surviving well and getting their needs met at all; besides you want to see them living!

Using TP, together we can:

• Develop your knowledge and understanding of your child’s emotional and biological developmental & needs

• Explore how your children’s life experiences may have impacted them i.e. bereavement, domestic abuse, parent separation, birth of a sibling

• Address the challenges you have with parenting the way you want, to improve your relationship with your children through an understanding of attachment & your own experiences of being a child

• Understand why you are triggered by your children’s behaviours

• Develop your understanding of mental health, self-esteem and emotional literacy

• Increase your confidence in supporting your children

• Develop resources tailored to yours & your children's needs

• Reduce the need for external services

In The Context Of Trauma And Attachment:

This is for parents and carers who have knowledge that their child has experienced trauma and difficulties in attachment. Examples may be

• Adoption

• Domestic Abuse

• Sexual Abuse

• Loss of a parent or carer

• Neglect (limited capacity to parent, alcohol misuse and mental health)

• Prenatal Trauma (substance misuse, domestic abuse, chronic anxiety)

Between the ages 0-3 years, a baby’s brain is still developing and it thrives with nurture and safe relationships. Without these, neural pathways are thwarted and not fully developed, instead, a heightened need for survival becomes their focus; changing the developing brain.

Useful Blog: What To Expect When You Book A Therapeutic Parenting Intensive.

The impact of trauma and poor attachment in research is still a developing area, it’s OK not to know this, you can use TP to fill the gaps and teach you what you need to know about your child’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours so that you can help them. What I can tell you right now, is that your child’s brain can be changed, those neural pathways that were stunted because their needs weren’t met when they reached out, so they no longer reach out and instead, may push you away, can be re-established through nurture and attachment.

The first stage of your child’s recovery is safety, not the safety you innately offer, but the feeling of safety. The ability for your child to feel safe, believe it’s real, that it will last and that it’s for them for just being them. Therapeutic Parenting can help you identify your child’s deep motivations and relational needs in their behaviours so that you can respond to the need and not the behaviour and in doing so, meet their unmet need and increase their feeling of safety.

Therapeutic Parenting can help you navigate and facilitate the following challenges your child may show. The possible reasons given for these behaviours are to illustrate the difference between the behaviour and their motivation, they are not the same for all children.

The need for control - children learn that the only way to be safe is to be in control which means not letting you be in control.

Defiance - sometimes the world in which children live are so oppressive, the only way to survive is to be defiant .

Aggression - aggression can be in the context of flight or fight. Though you may not perceive a dangerous or fearful situation, children’s brains who have experienced trauma can be triggered and then the body and hormones take over.

Running away - a child may struggle to belong if they have never felt like they have, they may run away as a subconscious way to maintain distance in relationships, even though it causes them pain.

Parenting can seem like the most difficult job in the world, especially when we’re functioning of half the information we need and we don’t have access to the right kind of support, the type that helps us think outside the box, that validates us and doesn’t judge us or our children.

If you’d like to work with me directly, and access therapeutic parenting, click here and send me a message or click here and give me a call. I also have a free Facebook community for parents & carers, why don’t you come and join us there too, I spend a lot of time in the group, answering questions and creating content of group members’ needs and experiences. If you’re not on Facebook, you can subscribe to my Newsletter and receive all my content and offers straight to your inbox. You’ll also receive open access to the replay of the Self-Esteem Online Workshop I ran in April, 2019, when you subscribe.

Here’s what you can expect when you book a one-off Therapeutic Parenting Intensive.