Are You Overwhelmed By The Challenges Of Being A Parent in New York City?
Are you frustrated with your child?
Are you having difficulty with discipline?
Do you feel like no matter what you try, your child just won’t listen?
You may be unhappy with your child’s progress in school, or maybe you are struggling to resolve endless sibling conflict.
Do you feel you are going at it alone and lack guidance on how to be an effective parent?
Every Parent Faces Challenges While Raising Their Children!
Being a parent is the toughest job in the world, no question about it. Kids don’t come with an instruction book. How many courses on parenting did the average parent take when they were in college? The truth is, all parents struggle with raising their children. Many families report terrible conflict at home, such as disrespectful back-talk or kids being defiant and refusing to listen.
The good news is that Parenting Counseling can help you navigate the pitfalls of child-rearing and help you prevent problems before they come up! When you receive personally tailored advice from a skilled, empathetic professional, you can understand why you are struggling and improve your relationship with your child.
Parenting Counseling in My Lower Manhattan Office Can Help You Foster A Healthy Parent-Child Relationship
Parenting Counseling is amazingly effective at resolving children’s behavior problems and emotional issues. As parents, we possess tremendous power to influence our children’s well-being. By just "Tuning up" our parenting a bit, we can bring about major improvements in behavior and emotional health. Parents are the most important elements in a child’s life. In Parenting Counseling, I work with you to create a personally designed plan for how to improve your child’s life in every way.
One of the first techniques you will learn in Parenting Counseling is what I call “Defusing a tantrum.” I ask you to recount to me in detail everything that happened in your child’s day leading up to a tantrum, crisis or other misbehavior. Then, we go through these events step by step and re-plan what you could have done and how you could have interacted differently with your child, in such a way that would have prevented the entire misbehavior from happening in the first place! I help you learn how to identify small changes you can make as parents that will help prevent similar problems from happening again in the future.
You see, most unwanted behaviors in children are fueled by unhappiness. Your child may feel bored, frustrated and powerless to remedy his situation, and misbehaves in a desperate attempt to relieve that unhappiness. But, by taking measures at each step of the defusing process to inject joy and good feelings in your child’s day, we prevent the frustration and pressure from building up, so the tantrum never needs to occur or can be completely defused.
For a fascinating discussion of how to validate your child's feelings, click here.
For example, I carefully determine with parents exactly when you should say “No” to your child and when to say “Yes,” finding a balance your child can be comfortable with. Too many commands make a child feel restricted and bossed around, and they feel resentful and may rebel or tantrum. Together, we determine how often to issue a command to your child. We work on a plan to reduce the commands you give to help bring your child into his comfort zone. Since he is receiving fewer commands, he feels less controlled and more self-determined. Ironically, this sense of independence leaves your child much more inclined to comply with the fewer remaining requests you do give. During sessions we will go through all the times you tell him or her what to do each day and decide which commands are less important and can be cut out and which ones should remain.
To find our exactly how Play Therapy reduces tantrums and defiance, click here.
Many New York City parents seek parenting advice from a child psychologist or a play therapist!
In addition to teaching you how to “defuse a tantrum”, I help you reframe your child’s behavior and view it from a new perspective. Many parents become alarmed by certain perceived misbehaviors and catastrophize that their child is going down a terrible path. Many child behaviors, however, are actually within the range of normalcy, and I help you see that there is no cause for alarm. There’s a certain amount of mischief that each family can healthily tolerate, and I let you know what is within that range. I help you distinguish between a minor acceptable misbehavior and something that may be more serious and call for intervention.
Gentleness and joy!
Overall my approach to parenting is one of gentleness. Being gentle with children every step of the way makes them so happy that it usually prevents almost all misbehaviors in the first place! Children are completely dependent on us to rescue them from unhappiness. Therefore, I advise parents to awake with the mantra of “How can I make my child happy today?” Contrary to popular belief, children are not at all resilient. They are emotionally fragile, extremely sensitive, and they are terribly harmed by a harsh parenting approach. I can help you learn how to give your child the patient, effective guidance and support he or she needs. Independently or together with Child-Centered Play Therapy, Parenting Counseling can help you improve your relationship with your child.
But, you still may have some concerns about parenting counseling…
"I should be able to fix my child’s problems on my own." You may feel ashamed that you need to seek professional help. Nobody is going to tell you how to raise your kids!
The truth is that it takes great courage to ask for help when you need it. The wise person realizes the best way to improve his situation is to seek advice from those with experience. During Parenting Counseling, I help you develop a specific, personally tailored plan under which your child will thrive!
You may be able to help, but I’m not sure I can afford Parenting Counseling…
Play therapy and Parenting Counseling are early interventions that can address the difficulties you and your child are experiencing early, and make sure they don’t develop into larger problems when your child gets older. By investing in a few months of therapy while your child is young, you can save years of educational and social problems, as well as potential costly treatment in the future.
What if my partner is not willing to seek Parenting Counseling?
Even one parent in Counseling can make a huge difference to your child’s emotional health, behavior and well-being. Often, when the other parent sees improvement, he or she is inspired to attend as well. The main point is to be patient with your partner and implement changes gradually.
You Can Feel Confident In Your Parenting Skills
I have been working with parents and children for my entire life. My mother owned a Montessori school in New York City, and I worked for her growing up through college, dealing with parents and challenging children’s situations. I was a teacher for many years and have now been six years full-time in psychotherapy. I have four energetic boys of my own and have been through many obstacles and challenges in raising them. I bring this triple vantage point of teacher, psychotherapist and parent into my Parenting Counseling work, as it allows me to understand the many dimensions of children’s emotional health.
If you are ready to get started, or if you have additional questions about Parenting Counseling and would like the guidance of a child therapist in New York CIty, you may call me for a free 15-minute phone consultation at 646-681-1707.
I also invite you to download my free report on the effectiveness of punishment and join my email list.
The next time you’re in the middle of a parenting challenge give me a call and I can troubleshoot the issue with you on the phone. I look forward to speaking with you!
To find out how Play Therapy benefits a child's emotional health, click here.
For a fascinating discussion of how Play Therapy helps for child ADHD, click here.
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