Parenting would have to be one of the most challenging endeavours a person can experience in life. It can be incredibly beautiful, profoundly fulfilling … and super intense!!

It often requires enormous upheaval and sacrifice in almost all aspects of life, career, social and extended family. It is also common that the couple relationship, connection and satisfaction all take a bit of a nose dive when parenting young children.

This period of life, the enormous changes and responsibility can hit people pretty hard. Some people may experience post natal depression, and I think most people experience elements of “adjustment disorder” in this time.

It is also a time of reviewing how we were parented. There may be family traditions, values and parenting qualities we want to continue with our kids, and we may want to parent very differently to how we were parented. But you know what they say, “there is no guidebook” and sometimes we are faced with parenting challenges to which we feel out of our depth, with no map or compass and reacting from our default learnt behaviours or survival strategies.

Most parents desperately want to protect, guide and love their kids and its very painful when cycles of conflict, power struggles and mental health symptoms develop in children and adolescents. Most mainstream parenting approaches and mental health interventions focus on changing the child’s behaviour. This intense focus on the child can create more difficulties. 

“When parents shift their energies away from trying to fix or change their child and invest in what is in their control as parents, new hopeful pathways open up” Dr. Jenny Brown

I am an accredited Parent Coach of the Parent Hope Project and Parent Confidence Project. 
Based on the research findings of Dr Jenny Brown and Bowen family systems theory, “when parents redirect their energy away from worrying about their child and focus on how they manage themselves with their child, they recover confidence in their capacity to contribute to their child’s wellbeing and responsibility.”
CLICK HERE to read more about this approach

To learn more about my work with Attachment
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To learn more about my work Couples
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To learn more about my work with Families
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