Parent Counseling
Helping Parents Build Stronger Bonds and Brighter Futures in Livermore and Across California Online
Is The Best Version Of Yourself Showing Up For Your Child?
Do you want to be an incredible parent and give your child the life you never had, but feel like you’re constantly getting in your own way?
Despite “knowing what to do,” do you find yourself reaching your breaking point easily—lashing out, yelling, or taking things away instead of responding the way you want to?
Perhaps you picked up some harmful beliefs or behaviors during your childhood that are now influencing how you perceive or react to your own kid’s behaviors.
Maybe you’re looking into parenting counseling in hopes of breaking that cycle, repairing your relationship with yourself, and ultimately deepening your connection with your child.
Each Morning, You Probably Think, “Today’s Going To Be Different”
And you start off being pleasant, but all it takes is one tantrum or refusal from your kid and you’re spiraling into anger again. You snap or yell before you even realize your child is crying. You get frustrated because you know what you should have done but didn’t. Then you feel ashamed for losing control.
It’s a vicious cycle where you slip up, feel terrible, formulate a new plan, try again, slip up, and feel even more horrible. It’s enough to make you worry that you’ve ruined your child’s life or at least wasted your last chance at being a great parent.
The truth is: No matter how well-equipped, educated, or motivated you are to be the perfect parent, raising kids can be tough—and the ideal of perfection elusive at best. However, with a little guidance from our parenting counselors at Wonderment Family Therapy, you can learn how to respond to your child’s behavior in healthier ways and support them with fairness, kindness, and greater self-control.
Have questions or want to schedule a consultation? Reach out today, we’re here to help.
Most Parents Are Navigating A Host Of Unseen Obstacles
That’s because we all have unresolved needs and issues from our childhoods that influence us as adults. As children, we often develop strategies for coping when we don’t have all the information and resources we need to process difficult experiences.
These strategies are typically counterproductive, yet they can still emerge during times of stress to protect that wounded child inside of us. That’s why, when we lose control with our kids, it can feel like we’re children fighting with each other—because in those moments, we kind of are.
Why Choose Parenting Therapy Instead Of Child Counseling?
In order to be compassionate, loving, and well-adjusted parents, we really need to prioritize being as good to our inner child as we are to our own children. We need to identify outdated coping strategies, challenge the negative narratives in our lives, and draw upon our internal resources and adult minds to be more flexible in how we respond to stressors.
Unfortunately, the same unmet needs from childhood that prevent us from being better parents can also prevent us from caring for that inner child, which is where Wonderment Family Therapy comes in.
Together, we can help you identify any stuck points, heal the wounds responsible for those faulty coping strategies, and write a new script for your life that enables you to finally connect with your child in the way they need.
Parenting Counseling Invites You To Have A Better Relationship With Yourself
If you’re a high-achiever or a natural problem-solver, you probably have a strong inclination to figure this all out on your own—which is great because we can use that motivation. However, the truth is that most parenting struggles aren’t intellectual problems that need to be solved; rather, they’re emotional blocks that need to be resolved.
So, although counseling for parents involves building new skills, navigating challenges, and learning how to best support your child’s development, therapy is really about you. It’s about starting your own journey of healing—tending to that wounded child and repairing your relationship with yourself so you can enjoy a more loving, connected relationship with your kid.
What Do We Do In Parenting Counseling Sessions?
To get started, your therapist might ask questions like—What kind of parenting challenges are you running into with your child? What was your own childhood and parents’ relationship like? What do you experience during conflicts with your child, and does any of that feel familiar to you? If so, what might that behavior, bodily sensation, or sense of criticism be a reflection of?
Our goal is to identify any unmet needs you had as a child and how they continue to affect you as an adult. Through that awareness, using your internal resources and adult mind, you can start tending to those unmet needs on your own.
As you do this repair work on yourself, you’ll gain greater self-awareness, increase your capacity to solve problems and self-regulate, and essentially become the source of your own corrective emotional experience.
How Wonderment Family Therapy Helps Parents Create Real Change
Although developing insight and problem-solving is important, at the end of the day, parenting counseling is about changing how you relate to yourself. To do that, we focus on rewriting the script—rewriting the stories you tell yourself about who you are, what other people think about you, and how the world really is. The theoretical basis for this work involves three main strategies:
- Redecision Therapy helps you gently revisit your past and take ownership of your agency as an adult. Instead of childhood survival mechanisms continuing to influence how you think, feel, or behave, Redecision Therapy empowers you to make conscious, grounded decisions in the present moment.
- Gestalt Therapy centers on the here and now, looking at the whole organism—mind, body, emotions, spirit—with the aim of facilitating personal growth, improving accountability, and working out unresolved issues.
- Transactional Analysis (TA) is a growth-oriented approach to therapy that focuses on achieving autonomy and improving relationships by deepening self-awareness and changing patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
There Is Still Time Be The Parent You Imagined
Even though you may feel stuck, frustrated, or even hopeless, it is possible to change old patterns, discover the whole of your internal resources, and start living in the here and now. It isn’t that you don’t know what to do; it’s just that you have an outdated story that’s getting in the way, but with the help of counseling, you can rewrite the script, assume a new role, and become the parent you were meant to be.
Still Have Questions Or Concerns About Parenting Counseling?
I worry that attending sessions consistently will be an issue with our schedules.
All of our parenting counseling services are available online and in person, and we have flexible daytime hours, so we can even meet while your child is in school. We can chat while you’re sitting in a parking lot, taking your lunch break, or even hiding in the basement bathroom while your partner entertains the little one for a while. What’s important is getting started, and the rest will flow from there.
How do I know that you’ll be able to help with my family’s situation?
Although I focus largely on children and the parent-child relationship now, I started out treating adults. I’m an energetic, trauma-informed therapist with training in couples counseling, family therapy, and individual adult therapy.
As a therapist and the founder of Wonderment Family Therapy, I also have decades of experience integrating a range of extremely effective modalities into my work, so I’m confident that we can help you no matter where you’re at right now.
Even with counseling, I feel like my level of parenting will never change.
When you’ve been put through the wringer, it’s easy to feel like that. But what are the chances that your fear and hopelessness are actually the voice of a wounded inner child asking for help the only way they know how?
What if that’s your coping mechanism—feeling hopeless to avoid disappointment? What if that was a part of you that we could repair? And what if a minor change like that led to something even bigger and unexpected? Maybe we should find out together…
There Is A Better You Waiting To Show Up For Your Child
If you’ve put everything you have into being the best parent possible, but still feel guilty, ashamed, or defeated, you’re not letting yourself or your kid down. You just need to tend to your own inner child and repair your relationship with yourself, and that’s what parenting counseling with Wonderment Family Therapy is all about.
To schedule your free, 15-minute video consultation, please use our booking page—or request a phone consultation by leaving your number and a note indicating your preference for a call.
Emily Keller and her practice, Wonderment Family Therapy, offer online and in-person counseling for parents in Livermore and throughout the state of California.
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