SOS For Parents
We are here to help each other.
Polar Eskimo Saying
There is not greater challenge and no greater gift than parenting our children. Like a garden, each family must be tended to and fed the very best nutrients in order to thrive. The best news is that is is never too late to do a little weeding and seeding, so that you are able to create the unique garden you wish to have. I can help you develop a plan, as well as the tools to get you there.
Would you like to:
Cultivate win-win situations with your kids?
Feel more confident in your decisions, responses and overal parenting?
Feel that you are steering the ship rather than the ship steering you?
Feel less frustrated wtih yourself and your children?
Respond with less anger and resentment?
Honor your each child’s unique differences and perspectives?
Develop a clear understanding of different developmental stages and how to use this information to create expectations of yourself and your kids that make sense?
Naturally seek to spend more quality time with your children engaged in activities that go beyond the dutiful aspects of parenting and move you foward int the pleasures of parenting?
Become more aware of your own childhood history so that you can make connections between then and now, understanding how that history impacts your particular parenting style?
Maintain a greater sense of well-being with your children more of the time?
I can help you learn about the many skills that are the foundation for healthy, happy families. Discover non-shaming discipline and how to know and implement appropriate limits, while creating positive interactions that enhance your children’s self-esteem. Develop routines and find new strategies for working with your child’s unique temperament, creating more ease in your interactions. I can answer your questions about child development, helping you to understand and make sense of what is in and out of the range of ‘normal.’
I can guide you to make connections between the historic roots of your own childhood and the ways in which you think and parent your kids. Your personal history and exccperience impacts and informs the degree to which you are fully present for, and helpful to, your children and teens. When you come to understand what drives your own decisions and reactions, you are free to shift whatever is no longer working for you.
Together we can implement the the appropriate use of boundaries that empower all family members. Becasue many parents struggle to know and understand what good boundaries look like in their personal lives, they can be found shifting the lines in the sand with their own children, never really communitcating clearly and holding firm to exectations. In turn, kids are often confused and unsure of what are truly the rules of the house, and will behave accordingly. Children feel better and do better when there is clarity, constancy and predictability. Therapy is a great way to help you get there if you struggle in these areas, so that you can be a healthy model for your children. Everyone wins!
The Transformation
One day a kind man was out walking and discoverend the cocoon of a butterfly.
After several days of observation, a small opening appeared.
The man sat and watched the butterfly for several hours.
He was fascinated to behold the butterfly as it attempted to
squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
But suddenly the emerging butterfly stopped, as if it could not go any further.
The kind man became a bit panicky!
He so wanted to help this poor butterfly’s apparent suffering.
He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
Yay! The butterfly emerged easily.
But alas. The man saw that the butterfly had a swollen body
and shriveled wings. He could barely move once he ‘escaped.'
Was this normal, he wondered?
The man continued to watch the butterfly.
How exciting it would be to see the wings enlarge
and expand enough to support its body and FLY!
But this did not happen, as the kind man expected it to.
In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life never able to fly.
What had gone so terribly wrong?
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand:
Growth is often a process that requires discomfort and even some stuckness to
emerge more whole and ready to ‘fly.’ In the case of the butterfly, the process
of struggle is nature’s way of helping to force the fluid from the body and into
the wings , which is what is needed for flight.
What is needed for your own unique little critters to soar?!
