“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
-Wayne Dyer
How I Can Help
Each family I support is different, and I strive to honor and respect those differences because that’s what makes your family wonderfully unique. These differences also make our work together individualized and specific to your family. Overall, I’m constantly assessing the strengths and needs of each family. I want to use your strengths to keep building on what already works and to help you to develop new capacities. We also bolster these strengths to dive into challenges and areas of need, searching for the root cause of the problem. Some of the common challenges I support families with are listed below.
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I help moms and dads with anxiety deepen their trust in themselves and their parenting capacities so they can parent from a place of joy and security instead of a place of worry and fear.
We often see that kiddos with anxiety have parents with anxiety. By you choosing to work on your anxiety, you're supporting yourself and your child. If you feel more safe and secure, it will be easier for your child to feel that, too, in their experiences with you.
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Of course there are seasons for every parent when they feel overwhelmed and exhausted. When this becomes chronic, however, it’s not sustainable for your well being and it’s helpful to recalibrate.
We are all wired based on our experiences. Some of us have more stressful experiences in our lives, and over time these stressors can add up and leave us feeling empty, especially when a little person needs us.
The beautiful and fascinating part about the brain is that it can grow and change based on our relationships, which is how therapy works. We can rewire your brain, over time, to feel more safe and less stressed so you’ll have more resources to show up for your kiddos.
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Since each of us is raised differently, it makes sense that you and your partner have different approaches. If you are both willing to come to sessions, we can work to get on the same page. I offer neutral information, backed by research on child development, attachment theory, and how relationships impact and change the brain. This approach, combined with exploration around how each of you was raised, can often help us find enough middle ground for you to leave therapy feeling united enough as parents- and your kiddo will reap the benefits of less stress and more connection, too!
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One of my favorite things about parenting work is how effective it can be. In many cases, partnering together as the adults supporting a child can help shift challenges. This is because adults have the capacity to change the environment, but children do not. It’s also because when a child has a problem, each individual family member also plays a role in that problem, so when we work with the parents, we can shift things for the whole family instead of just the child. If you’re willing to give parenting work a try, you might be surprised at what we can accomplish together.
It is true that some kiddos also need their own support in therapy in addition to parenting work. In those instances, we can get started with parenting therapy and find a play therapy opening for your kiddo as it becomes available.
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Oh, what a gift to the world! These kiddos have such big hearts. We need more sensitive people who can see and feel the heartache of the world and do something about it. Before your kiddo changes the world, though, it's helpful for us to figure out ways to support them in their sensitivity, and ways to support you to make sure your batteries are charged to parent a sensitive child.
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Big feeling kiddos bring so much joy to the world- their excitement and happiness can be contagious, and they often feel so deeply for others. On the flip side, the less comfortable emotions, like worry, fear, sadness, and anger can feel like bottomless holes with big feeling kiddos.
We can partner together to help your big feeling kiddo find helpful ways to express their emotions, and for you to help contain their emotions until they're old enough to do it on their own.
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All behavior is communication. Instead of working to stop the behavior, we'll work to understand what on earth your child is communicating with the challenging behavior, and then find ways to meet their expressed need. Once we meet the need, the behavior won't be necessary anymore, and if it does come back, you'll have an idea of what it means.
It's important to note that another piece of the puzzle can be that our expectations for our children have to be adjusted. I offer information on what's developmentally appropriate to help us understand your child and make adjustments when needed.
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This challenge presents a little differently for each family, but in general, we work to uncover the root of why it appears that your child doesn’t listen. Most of the world operates under the belief that behavior is to be changed and we focus on what behaviors are deemed appropriate. The lens I offer in therapy is that all behavior is communication, so we seek to understand the why behind the behavior first. Not only does this help us be more specific in our response to the behavior but it helps us to understand your child better, and all people want to feel understood and valued.
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All behavior is communication. The first place we start with challenging behaviors is figuring out what your child is communicating. Once we know what need they're expressing to us, then we can respond in a way that fills their cup so the need becomes less intense and the behavior is no longer necessary for communication.
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Sometimes, behaviors like this come from a child not feeling safe- emotionally safe- in the world. By emotional safety, we're talking about how a person feels like someone understands and responds to their needs most of the time. No parent sets out with the intention to make their child feel a lack of safety, but sometimes with busy schedules, traditional parenting approaches, and other responsibilities, it can inadvertently happen.
Working to support a kiddo like this often includes us learning about how to fill their emotional cup and help them feel safe in the world.
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Extended tantrums can be a huge drain on your resources as a parent. We'll unpack the tantrums together to figure out when and what could be different. Often, there are strategies we can employ to support your kiddo in feeling emotionally safe, seen, and soothed that help to reduce the frequency and intensity of tantrums.
It's also important to hold in mind that for littles, tantrums are developmentally appropriate and a necessary part of their growth. If your little is in this stage, we can work to help you be present during tantrums without your batteries being totally drained.
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This is a great time to work on anxiety about parenting, as well as explore your childhood experiences so you have some awareness of what your autopilot responses might be when your little one arrives.
Our default settings for how we will parent are ingrained in our brains and bodies from how we were parented when we were children. If you already know you'd like to do some things differently than your parents, this is a wonderful time to start therapy.
Our goal is not to blame your parents for their challenges when you were younger, but accept that they did the best they could and choose make different choices when you become a parent. We all have our challenges and shortfalls as parents- it's simply part of being human.
All parents do the best they can with what they have. Therapy is a place where you can add new tools to your toolbox and consider possibilities that weren’t options before.
