Therapy

Parenting support is straightforward: a place to think, with someone who is not going to judge you and is not related to anyone involved.

—   Behaviour you have run out of responses to

—   Boundaries and consistency — setting them, and then holding them when you are worn down

—   Co-parenting after a separation, including with someone you find difficult

—   Parenting a child with ADHD, autism, anxiety or a chronic condition

—   Parenting a teenager who has shut you out

—   Disagreeing with your partner about how to handle something

—   Guilt, and the sense that you are failing

—   Parenting differently from how you were parented, which is harder than it sounds

—   Being a single parent with nobody to hand it over to at the end of a hard day

Usually individual sessions with you, or with both parents together. Sometimes that is short and practical — four or five sessions on a specific behaviour, with a concrete plan. Sometimes it goes further, because parenting has a way of surfacing your own history: the reaction you cannot control, the voice you hear coming out of your mouth, the thing you swore you would never do.

That second part is not a detour from the parenting work. It is frequently the whole of it.

If you are co-parenting with someone you cannot easily talk to, individual support helps you manage your part of it. If the underlying problem is that you cannot agree on the arrangements themselves — schedules, holidays, decisions about school or healthcare — that is a mediation question rather than a therapy question. Our divorce mediation and conflict coaching services exist for exactly that, and conflict coaching works even when the other party will not participate.

FAQ