“What are we supposed to do now?” may have been your first thoughts coming home from the hospital with your first baby. You just went on the craziest emotional roller coaster of your life and now you get to take care of a baby. A wonderful gift, but it’s such a challenge.

It takes a village to raise a kid, which is a true proverb, but one that’s not always lived out. If we recognize that it takes a village, why are parents shamed when their children aren’t well-behaved in public? Why do people feel the need to make parenting harder by holding parents to impossible standards?

The issues surrounding parenting may never get solved, but parents can find support by attending parenting therapy.

In this guide we’ll cover:

• What parenting therapy is
• What to expect from parent counseling
• Who would benefit from parenting therapy
• Common issues that parents face

What is Parenting Therapy?

Parenting counseling is a form of therapy designed to offer parents a place where they can work through the issues they face while raising children. It is not a place for parents to get tips on how to parent or to receive advice on decisions. Rather, it’s helping parents deal with feelings and emotions surrounding being a parent.

Family therapy is different from parenting counseling because only the parents receive counseling rather than getting the entire family involved.

What To Expect From Parent Counseling

Parenting counseling may look different for everyone. Depending on your personal struggles, you may spend more time focusing on one aspect of parenting over the others. These are some of the things someone in parent counseling may experience.

Learning About Your Parenting Style

Everyone comes from different experiences and contexts and that affects how they parent. However, there are four types of parenting styles that can be helpful in framing parenting decisions.

The four parenting styles are less descriptive and more prescriptive. Someone may naturally fall into one of them, but they can switch between them either consciously or unconsciously.

• Authoritative Style: This parenting style is a healthy mix of high expectations of children while also understanding their children’s limits. When a parent is authoritative they are willing to communicate openly. This is considered the healthiest style of parenting.
• Authoritarian Style: Authoritarian parent style is similar to authoritative but without the understanding of children’s limitations. Parents with an authoritarian style hold their children to strict and demanding expectations and don’t have room for error.
• Permissive Style: Parents in this style show love, support, and care, but avoid conflict at any cost. Schedules aren’t maintained and rules aren’t enforced. This can be confusing and difficult for children.
• Neglectful Style: This style of parenting includes parents who don’t take time to acquaint themselves with their children’s lives. This includes their school work, friends, and basic needs. It’s important to note that neglect is rarely purposeful. 

During parent counseling you’ll learn more about your natural parenting style and how to implement it well.

Learning About Your Child

During sessions, you’ll spend time learning more about who your child is. Parent therapy isn’t counseling for parents and children, but parents will still gain insight into their child’s personality and quirks.

As a parent, you know your child well, but sometimes outside perspectives can help. A trained counselor may be able to give insight into your child’s behavior and help you align your parenting style with their tendencies.

Learning To Manage Conflict

Parenting is filled with moments of conflict. Kids are constantly getting into things they shouldn’t, making poor choices, and messing around with their siblings. During parent counseling, you’ll learn how to manage conflict better.

As a parent, conflict will often show up at the worst times. Developing healthy conflict resolution skills will make moments of conflict easier to approach.

Reevaluate Expectations

The expectations placed upon parents are impossibly high. Parental therapy gives you the opportunity to reevaluate the expectations you have of yourself and your children. 

As it turns out there’s no such thing as a perfect parent, and there’s no such thing as a perfect kid. You shouldn’t hold yourself to the expectation of perfection and neither should others.

Learning To Forgive Yourself

There’s a good chance you’re a great parent. Society holds parents, especially mothers, to an impossibly high standard of perfection. It’s not possible to be the parent society thinks you should be.

During parenting counseling, you’ll be working on forgiving yourself and letting go of the incorrectly placed expectations placed upon you.

Who Would Benefit From Parent Therapy?

Parent counseling is a great option for parents on any part of their journey. Sometimes a child’s behavior will change seemingly overnight. Sometimes, you face a challenge you simply aren’t prepared for. 

Whether they’ve been a parent for four months or four decades, most parents will benefit from this kind of therapy. 

Parents With Past Abuse

People who lived through abuse from a parent will often bring that trauma into their parenting. This happens in subtle ways and can affect relationships and cause behavioral issues.

Parents who are survivors of abuse would be good candidates for parent therapy so they can better understand how their past experience is affecting their current reality. 

Parents with Marital Issues Or Undergoing Divorce

Parenting during a marriage crisis is stressful. Not only do you have to try and navigate the difficulty of a shaky marriage, you still have to parent.

Parenting counseling can be incredibly important for parents experiencing marital issues or undergoing divorce because it gives a safe space for parents to work through their feelings.

Parents With Substance Abuse Issues

Substance use disorders affect entire families. Living with a substance use disorder (SUD) is made more difficult while trying to raise children. There’s usually guilt, shame, and trauma associated with SUDs and parenting. There’s a lot to work through there, but parental therapy is a great place to start unpacking that.

If you’re a parent suffering from substance use disorder, you are suffering from a difficult disease. Get the help you need by attending parental counseling and start your road to recovery.

Parents Who Are Grieving 

Parents don’t always have the time to properly grieve because they have a household to run. Whether it be the death of a loved one, the death of a child, a miscarriage, or infertility, most parents won’t be able to take the proper time to go through the grieving process, and that can cause issues at a later time.

After having children it may feel like you’ll never have time for yourself again. However, parental therapy can be conducted in shorter sessions and online formats that match your needs. Contact Inner Balance Counseling to learn more about how we can match your schedule and give you a space to properly grieve.

Parents Who Are Parenting

Finally, one of the best reasons to attend parent counseling is because you’re a parent. There will be times throughout your parenting journey that feel extremely difficult. It’s part of the journey, but you don’t have to go through it alone.

Get the emotional support, insight, and techniques to help you every step of the way on your road to being a parent by attending counseling.

Common Issues that Parents Face

All parents go through the initial shock of bringing a baby home, the throes of puberty, and the confused feelings of becoming an empty nester, but there is so much more that parents have to deal with than the big moments in their child’s life.

Issues While Raising Children

As babies turn into children, children into teens, and teens into adults, they’re going to get into some messes. Parents have to face issues with their children as they develop into fully grown adults. These issues can include:

• Children hanging out with bad influences
• Children being a bad influence on other kids
• Navigating technology use or digital addictions
• Sibling rivalries
• Children outright disobeying or challenging parental decisions 
• Children who seem to be lazy in school
• Children with medical issues
• Adult children needing more financial support than you’d like to give

The entire gamut of parenting struggles and issues that could come up is impossibly long. This is only a taste of some of the issues parents have to approach while raising their children.

Inner Balance Counseling does not offer family counseling, but we can help parents process their feelings and thoughts in order to move forward with confidence and clarity..

Decision Paralysis 

While raising a child, there are a lot of decisions to make. What should they wear today? What are we having for breakfast? Do I need to put an AirTag in my child’s jacket cause oh my goodness they forget it at school just about every day? Everything from small to large decisions becomes a heavy mental load.

After dealing with work, chores, or whatever else you do in your day, it’s hard to make decisions about discipline, conflict resolution, etc. Decision paralysis is a common problem most parents face daily.

Mom Guilt and Dad Guilt

The impossible standards placed on parents cause major issues for parents. So much so that it has its own name. Mom guilt and dad guilt are used to describe the feelings of guilt parents feel thanks to the expectations of the people around them.

• Mom Guilt: Most often associated with feelings of guilt for taking care of yourself, not spending enough time with children, not spending enough time on yourself, not being able to prepare healthy meals, not being able to keep children well-behaved in public, and not being able to do it all.
• Dad Guilt: Most often associated with feelings of guilt for not spending enough time with family due to trying to provide financially for the family. Stay-at-home fathers are also faced with misunderstanding from others who find it strange that he’s the one taking the kiddos to the library on a weekday.

Mom guilt and dad guilt are not exclusive to gender. For example, male fathers may experience guilt that they can’t comfort their children the same way a female mother could.

It’s common to hear people talk about these two kinds of guilt as being an issue with the mother or the father, but that’s not the case. Mom guilt and dad guilt are created externally from societal standards and norms. But here’s the catch, these norms aren’t only harmful, they aren’t possible.

Break free of dad-guilt and mom-guilt by attending parental therapy and learning more about what true parenting looks like.

Related Article: Mom-Guilt

Combating The Unachievable Expectations of Parenting

Having children isn’t all cuddles and raspberries. It’s hard work most of the time. And the quick change to long nights and stressful outings is a lot to handle. Not only that but the pressures from society and family can press down parents to a pulp, but that’s where parent counseling comes in.

At Inner Balance Counseling we recognize that parents have a lot to deal with and a lot to process and we’re hopeful that we can create a safe space for you to process through the difficulties of parenting. If you’re sick of mom-guilt, are grieving, or just need a break, request a consultation today.