South Orange County Parenting Counseling – Healthy Parenting Raises Healthy Kids

Counseling empowers parents to handle challenges with patience and confidence.

Raising children presents a unique set of joys and challenges. As parents we are faced with some of the most difficult and critical decisions we will ever have to make.  We are not given a guidebook on how best to make these decisions. I offer compassionate south Orange County parenting counseling to help parents through parenthood. 

Kids don’t come with instructions. Often, despite our best efforts, we often feel as though we’re two or three steps behind, just trying to keep up with the demands of parenthood.

As a parent who has been there, I work with mothers and fathers to set up healthy systems for their children. I help parents take charge of their children in positive ways. By providing guidance on how to be authoritative, not authoritarian—and not permissive—in how you treat your children. Every family is different, and I enjoy working through differing developmental stages.

Counseling for Parents of Infant and Toddlers

New parents face unique challenges as they transition from being a couple to being a family. Parenting requires a significant shift in perspective, and it can be difficult to adjust to the new challenges that come with having a child.

Parenting Counseling for the Middle Years

The middle years of childhood are full of new challenges of their own, including school adjustments, working with teachers, homework management, extra-curricular demands, and helping kids deal with friends. Each of these stages of growth puts new pressure upon your child and upon you. During these years, we need to focus on helping kids incorporate self-discipline and develop good values, positive character traits, and respect.

Parenting Counseling for the Tween Years

The tween years are some of the most difficult years for children. At this age, kids are suddenly faced with new choices and pressure from their peers to explore drugs, alcohol, sex, and other negative influences. They need guidance but are often resistant toward it. The tween years require parents to shift their perspectives yet again and adopt new ways of guiding and disciplining their children in a way that tweeners will respond to and respect. As parents, we\’re often very good at establishing and enforcing negative consequences for bad behavior, but we\’re not very good at coming up with positive consequences for good behavior. The difference is critical when raising children through their tween years.

Parenting Counseling for the Adolescent

Adolescence is a confusing and difficult time for children, but it is equally hard for parents. Consider it this way. To parent your adolescent well is to provide him or her with everything he or she needs to leave home and function successfully as an adult. The idea, when guiding and disciplining a teenager, is that he or she will emerge from beneath your wing at the appropriate time, fully prepared to take on the challenges of adulthood. Parenting the adolescent is about teaching personal responsibility and instilling a sense of healthy independence.

Independence does not mean that your child should be allowed to do anything he or she wants to do (even though they often think it does!). This isn’t how the real world works. Though boundaries change dramatically during adolescence, they are still absolutely necessary.