Behavioral Issues
Are You Having Challenges With Your Child’s Behavior?
Is your child having tantrums when things don’t go their way or when you ask them to do something? Are they not listening? Perhaps they hit family members or are consistently mean to a sibling.
Maybe you cannot get through important daily routines like:
getting out of the house in the morning;
getting them to do homework;
cleaning up after themselves, or
settling down at bedtime.
Maybe your child is so unruly that you are not able to take them to public places.
Perhaps your child has been diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and they act without thinking, they can be noisy and disruptive, and they don’t follow household rules.
You have trouble getting your child to follow through on any of their routines. They do not listen to you and they can be unpredictable. You worry about them being reckless with their bodies — that they may get hurt or hurt others.
You have tried asking them nicely, repeating yourself over and over, taking things away from them, and yelling and none of these have helped.
When an issue comes up, you don’t know the best way to handle it. You take shots in the dark and nothing seems to work. You feel upset and out of control when this happens and you try to come up with a solution in the middle of a chaotic situation. You end up not being consistent in your reactions to your child’s behavior.
You and your parenting partner do not agree on how to handle tricky situations with your child(ren). You both agree that something needs to be done, but one of you has become overly strict, and the other has become overly lenient.
You’re not sure when to step in and when to step back in your parenting.
You Would Like To…
Go from your child being in control of your household to your regaining control of your family
Go from yelling and parenting by the seat of your pants to having a plan to calmly manage problematic behavior
Lower the level of negative emotion (raised voices, negative comments) in your interactions with your child and also in your household as a whole
Reduce problematic behavior so that you can enjoy your child’s wonderful qualities and have fun together as a family
Learn strategies and interventions that take into account the other children in the household so they can all move forward in their development
Strengthen your parenting team so that you work in tandem towards your family goals
If you and your parenting partner* have concerns about your child’s behavior, have tried strategies that do not work, and are not happy with how things are at home, you are in the right place!
*Of course, I work with single parents and other family configurations.
Uncertainty About How to Manage Your Child’s Behavior Does Not Have to Be the Norm.
It may seem unlikely or even impossible now, but you can understand what your child needs and provide it for them. I can help you get there.
Therapy will help you do these things:
Learn about what your child needs to be able to meet daily expectations
Create age-appropriate rules, routines, and expectations for your child(ren) so that your household runs smoothly
Learn how to enforce the rules, routines, and expectations without losing your cool and yelling
Teach your child the skills they need to be able to ‘go along with the program’
Set your child up to feel good about themself for not getting into trouble
Coordinate with your parenting partner to provide consistency – a key to managing problematic behavior
Learn how to stay calm and keep the level of negative emotion low in your home in order to break the cycle of negativity
Family Therapy can help you solve your parenting concerns by giving you:
An understanding of which everyday tasks your child should be able to accomplish at their age, along with why these are important for their self-esteem
This way, you won’t stress your child with expectations they cannot meet, and you will both feel good about the big kid tasks they can accomplish
Strategies to manage the everyday routines – like getting out in the morning, getting homework done, and bath/shower and bedtime – that you and your child are having trouble moving through. Your day will run more smoothly with less arguing, nagging and yelling.
Specific ways to set limits and boundaries both when you are home and when you are out
Parents need a set of tools to manage their children’s behavior — it’s not one-size-fits-all. Different settings and circumstances require different strategies.
You will gain a number of strategies to use as needs arise.
We will work to remove behaviors like hitting, saying mean things, not telling the truth, and taking things that are not theirs from your child’s behavioral repertoire.
Family therapy will give you the skills you need to feel confident in your parenting and to help your child thrive.
Therapy for Behavioral Concerns Will Help You Go From This…
Feeling exhausted from repeating yourself many times before your child listens
Feeling unmoored from switching strategies when one doesn’t work, but not ending up with anything that works
Not knowing if you are coming or going when one parent addresses the issue one way (strict), while the other parent does the opposite (lenient)
Doing everything for your child when they refuse to do it for themselves
Wishing that your child would listen without your having to raise your voice
Feeling resentful of your parenting partner for being too harsh/lenient with your child
Worrying about how one child’s behavior affects your other children
Dreading attending events where you know your child will not behave well
Feeling sad that you spend so much time in conflict with your child that you cannot enjoy their wonderful qualities
Wondering and worrying about what is best for your child
To This…
Your child listens and complies fairly regularly
Having consistent routines, rules, and consequences that are easy to enforce
Keeping calm when things do not go well, knowing that you have a plan for how to handle it
Your child developing age-appropriate home-life skills, and feeling proud of themself
Your child feeling more willing to accept new challenges
Parents working together as a team to move children through daily routines and obligations
A calmer, more peaceful climate at home
Feeling more confident in your abilities to not only manage your child’s behavior, but to help them thrive
Enjoying family outings
Who Is Therapy With Me For?
Therapy with me is a good fit for you if:
Both parents want to actively participate in learning new parenting strategies for their child
A single parent needs help understanding and managing their child’s behavior
The child about whom you are most concerned is between 4 and 12 years old
An amicably divorced parent wants help understanding and managing their child’s behavior in their own home
Parents are willing to try new strategies at home
Parents are interested in learning strategies backed up by the latest scientific evidence
Therapy with me is NOT a good fit for you if:
Only one parent in a couple will attend sessions
Either parent is not willing to learn about and try new strategies at home
The child’s parents have been through a contentious divorce
Frequent Questions and Objections
Does family therapy actually work?
Yes! Family therapy is a powerful and often quick way to see change in your household. The strategies and methods used have been shown to be successful in reaching parents’ short term goals of having more peace, calm, and better behavior in their households, and also in developing healthy resiliency in their children for the long term.
Why do both parents need to attend? Couldn’t one just come and report back to the other?
In the decades I have been doing this work with families, I have been very pleased with how willing both parents have been to participate in this important work. The Dads (sorry, but they are usually the ones left out of this process!) that I have worked with have universally been invested: in their parenting, in their children, in coordinating with their parenting partner, and in making necessary changes in their parenting. It’s been a pleasure and a delight to witness fathers’ knowledge about and investment in their children.
This work is much more powerful when both parenting partners add their perspective, personalities, and skills to the therapeutic process. Sharing the burden of parenting a child with challenges gives great comfort to both parents.
We don’t want our child to take medicine.
I am not a physician and cannot prescribe medicine. The work we do together will center on learning new techniques and strategies to help you manage your child’s behavior and to have your parenting skills better fit their particular needs.
There will be cases in which my professional judgment dictates that I inform you about the potential benefits of medicine for your child. Early in my career I made sure we exhausted all options before exploring the possibility of medicine for my child clients. However, after seeing how well their child responded to medicine, many parents expressed regrets that they had waited so long to try medicine, and felt that their child had lost important time.
I will suggest an evaluation for medication when I note that a child may not be able to achieve their parents’ goals for them without it. That said, parents are free to decide for themselves what treatment options they choose to pursue.
We just want our child to be happy. Is that a reasonable goal?
In a perfect world, happiness would be a reasonable goal. But in our world, life will present everyone with challenges. My goal for your child will be resilience – the ability to manage themselves in good times and in adversity. To me, resilience is the closest you can get to happiness and is a powerful quality to foster in a child.
How do we get started?
Getting started is easy! Just contact me to schedule a free initial consultation call. During that call, we will decide if I am the right therapist for your family. If I am, we will schedule our first session. If I am not the right therapist for you, I will point you in the direction of someone who can help.