Parenting Support

Negotiating life with kids is full of challenges.

And you probably NEVER anticipated many of them!

You’re going headlong into this parenting thing with everything you’ve got, and it still doesn’t feel like enough.

You wonder if you’re off track… or is your kid off track? There’s so much to consider all the time. It doesn’t seem like you could be doing it right, doing your kid right.

It’s bad enough that no one picks up their toys, eats what you make for meals, or wants to get off their devices.

But, when your kid melts down in the grocery store, you feel like a big loser for everyone to see. And what’s the right thing to do?

You want cooperation. You want to connect with your child. You feel like there should be some flow between you and your child, but you have yet to experience that, or maybe you did once. But now, it feels like challenges are building and snowballing.

Parenting can be taxing and exhausting!

You’ve tried some techniques mentioned by parenting experts, but honestly, they didn’t work. Then you felt even more lost and confused.

You’ve tried to parent more gently and thoughtfully than your parents did with you. But sometimes, you wonder if it backfired.

You believe you listened better to your parents than your kids do to you. So does it really work to be gentle? You don’t want to have to make your kids be scared of you to listen, but honestly, no one modeled it for you! You don’t have any tools that are both kind and effective.

It’s no surprise you accidentally yell at your kid! Of course, that’s what happened to you when you acted how your kid acted. You really didn’t want to yell, but you felt cornered. The yelling happened before you could stop it.

You have no other way right now. You think, “That’s not even what I meant to do. I just couldn’t help it. It’s not who I am. It’s not who my kid is.”

If you’re tired of the dead ends…

I’m here to help you develop a new plan.

From my years of treating childhood trauma in adults, I have a perspective on childhood that most adults have forgotten – one that allows me to piece together puzzling behavior or actions.

Discussing what’s developmentally appropriate…

I will be happy to hear what things have been like in your household – the struggles and successes. You’ll tell me what things are like and can help normalize the difficult but appropriate stuff.

Establishing a baseline…

When we know what’s going on, we can start talking about what is best to let go of and what we can do to change the dynamics in the house for a happier outcome for everyone.

Connecting to your child…

It will require you perhaps to think in ways you haven’t before. Usually, parents have some ways of thinking about kids and parenting that are incomplete and difficult to execute. Once I help them see their child and the situation from a different perspective, the parents’ behavior changes, so the children also change quite quickly!

Creating a plan…

The wonderful news is that you can be both gentle and effective. The tools do exist, and they do work. I draw from RIE (Respecting Infant Emotion) created by Magda Gerber and my understanding of how human infants and children have developed over millions of years of evolution. I’ll educate you on what babies and kids can and can’t do, how to optimize their mental and emotional health, and to create a lifelong bond that will serve you, and most importantly, your child, with lifelong positive mental health.

We’ll usually have a plan in place within 2-4 sessions.

Taking the lead…

I’ve found that parenting issues aren’t easily resolved by reading a few books or articles or by following the right person on Facebook or Instagram. We can get really good ideas and ways of thinking, but the execution takes some personal guidance. My job is to stick with you while you try new ways of being with your child and give feedback on how you’re doing and why something may not have worked. I’m your guide until things feel like they’re in a new groove with you and your kid.

Laura* and Jamal* were puzzled by the extremely resistant behavior…

… coming from Sage*, their four-year-old. He had started pushing their kitten and making nasty faces at them when they gently corrected him. It seemed so unlike him.

They acknowledged some changes in the past few months: a move (but only a few blocks away), starting preschool, and a new kitten, of course. Sage seemed to handle the changes fine… even enjoyed them!

We worked to find out WHAT was at the root of the troublesome behavior changes they noticed in Sage. After working together, we learned they had missed some important pieces that Sage couldn’t articulate yet. I gave them tips and tools on ways to talk to Sage to elicit more information about how he was feeling and what he was thinking. There was another kid at preschool who had been unkind to Sage. In fact, the new behavior they saw in Sage was similar to what he said the other kid was doing to him – making faces and pushing.

In addition, Laura’s and Jamal’s response to his unwanted behavior strained their relationship with their son. In therapy, we explored ways to repair and strengthen that bond. Talking to the parents about how mirroring happens in the brain and why Sage had acted the way he did helped them drop the negative feelings and thoughts they had about their son. They could see how he experienced the situation at daycare and could now see how he acted through a new lens. That lens revealed truths about Sage, rather than them getting stuck in projections (their false ideas) about who he was, why he acted, and why he did.

By the time the family was done with therapy, the parents could see the world through Sage’s eyes and had many resources to help them for the rest of Sage’s childhood.

It’s time for you to have YOUR “a-ha!” moments!

Get your own guide on this parenting journey.

I’m here for you and your child. Reach out via email at therapy@drlesliewright.com or call (805) 836-0975 for a free 20-minute consultation, where we can discuss my approach further and ensure it lines up with your parenting values.