Parental Guidance Counselling

Parenting is a central role in many people’s lives. Creating a context for the growth and development of children is one of the primary functions of a family. Often this is as emotionally and intellectually challenging as it is rewarding, not least because all of us were children ourselves and the manner in which we ourselves were parented is the central reference point in the way in which we in turn parent.

I’m very interested in this dynamic. One way of looking at this is that it provides a context for the re-experiencing of our own parenting but this time around with an adult’s perspective. Our nervous systems, with all their patterning and unconscious leaning and our souls too, are presented with this little being, who is of us and from us and we are charged with it’s care. It’s a remarkable psychological and spiritual opportunity and it can really throw down the gauntlet of a profound challenge.

Our nervous systems, with all their patterning and unconscious leaning and our souls too, are presented with this little being, who is of us and from us and we are charged with it’s care. It’s a remarkable psychological and spiritual opportunity and it can really throw down the gauntlet of a profound challenge.

The nature of this challenge? On the one hand we unconsciously revert to the parental strategies that were present in our own growing as well as whatever strategies we developed to survive childhood and establish ourselves as functioning people in the world.

Most of us are sensitive enough to realise that some of these strategies might not have a positive effect on our children. Most of us are good people and there is also a strong biological drive not to damage the well being of our children, so we might catch ourselves behaving irrationally, harmfully or simply at a loss of what to do. And when we see the damage of our behaviour reflected back to us in the behaviour of our children it causes us sufficient alarm to make us pause and try to re-evaluate our approach.

There is a lot of complexity here made more so by the ongoing thrust of a child’s biological and psychological maturation. The helpless infant becaomes the energetic toddler who becomes the capable pre-schooler, each phase of development carrying with it particular developmental tasks, learning, physical and neurological growth and change and all of them requiring adaptation and positive response from us as parents.

We grow our children, teach them about what being a person is all about – watch their own immutable natures making themselves known, work hard to understand and accept them, teach them how to use the tools that nature has given them, all the while being open to what we are being shown about ourselves and the world.

It’s a big, important and enriching job.

What I do in parental guidance counselling

I aim to provide direct, useful, practical input to parenting dilemmas.

My approach is to understand a child’s behaviour in the light of his/her current developmental phase and the unique demands of the tasks of that stage. I look at the ways in which the movement towards attaining these developmental milestones is imacting on the child’s life, relationships with siblings, peers and parents.

I adopt a non-problematising approach, preferring instead to see difficulties as adaptations, the psyche’s best effort to solve the unique demands placed on it by the child’s biologically driven development and the environment in which this development is taking place. This is a general principle of my work and is an insight drawn from Ego State Therapy, that all of our idiosyncrasies, foibles, even our failings and behaviours that cause pain are the psyche’s best attempt to adapt and to help us grow.

Using these ideas I formulate an understanding of the child’s behaviour as well as what it is touching and activating as a response in parents. The aim is to develop new ways of being with problematic behaviour and to build a repertoire of parental responses that de-escalate intense emotion and conflict and promote growth.

I enjoy working with parents in this way – when we parent well nature itself smiles.

Please do make contact with me for further information or to make an appointment.

---

Other Services

Couple and marriage counselling

Sometimes couples consult me seeking assistance with one of the most important functions of a family – the parenting of children. Read more here

Individual Psychotherapy

Although couple therapy and marital counselling are areas of special interest roughly 60% of my work involves working one a one on one basis with individual clients. Read more

Recovery from complex trauma

Complex trauma is a general term given to intense and often repeated traumatic experiences typically experienced in childhood in contexts of abuse and neglect. I have a special interest in working with survivors of the these experiences. Read more

Psychotherapy with men

I am touched by and interested in working with men who are facing difficult life events and developmental transitions. Read on for more information