Becoming a parent or a step-parent can be challenging and brings us up against ourselves. It can stimulate painful memories of our own childhoods as we see our children going through particular phases.

If you would like to speak to a therapist about your parenting challenges, you can explore the therapists below.

Professional Standards

All psychotherapists and counsellors on the City Therapy Rooms website are independent, self-employed specialists who manage their own appointments. Every practitioner must provide verified evidence of:

Professional Registration: Active membership with a leading UK regulatory body, including the BACP, BPS, BPC, UKCP, HCPC, BABCP, SEAUK, COSRT, NCS, BAAT.
Clinical Credentials: Fully verified professional qualifications and comprehensive indemnity insurance.
Supervision: Be in ongoing clinical supervision. Their supervisors have confirmed the accuracy of the content of their profiles on this website.

Challenges of Parenthood:

Whether you are about to become a parent for the first time or you have been in the world of family life with children going through the pre-teens, teens and beyond or maybe now you are actually ‘parenting your parents’, juggling your own life, the relationships you have with your children and perhaps, as a result, the issues and stresses this may put on your relationship with your partner can, at times be very challenging.

Becoming a parent can feel overwhelming, ‘am I ready?’, ‘how will I cope?’, ‘how will my life change?’, ‘will I stop being ‘me’?’. Whatever the situation, expecting your first child or perhaps following the birth and first few years you are now settling into a new way of being, you may have hit a point where the challenges and changes are now becoming evident and you need to talk through how you are feeling.

If you are a parent with one, two or more children, your life may well have settled into a family routine, you’ve negotiated the early years and your children are all becoming the unique individuals that you hoped that they would, but perhaps they are now pushing boundaries and you need to work out how to respond to the new situations and challenges that are developing. Perhaps your children are struggling with their own challenges and you are struggling with your responses to these.

Are you now parenting your parents? This is often one of the most challenging of parenting roles that we face. It isn’t something we plan for. When you start to realise that your parents need the care and support that you once received from them, it is quite a turning point in the relationship you have with them. Negotiating all the necessary decisions around money, health, long-term care and also somehow not taking away your parent’s independence and keeping from taking over, can feel like a minefield. Add into this your own emotions around seeing those strong independent people become less so, more frail and vulnerable.

Parenting Issues counselling is a safe, neutral space to discuss the challenges, struggles and frustrations that can arise for anyone who parents, co-parents or step-parents.

How can Parenting Issues counselling help?

We can find ourselves behaving with our children in a way that we don’t like.

Getting counselling support with parenting issues can help us be the parent we want to be rather than repeating how we were parented without questioning it.

In parenting counselling you will look at what did and didn’t work for you as a child and how what you bring from your family of origin is affecting your current family.

Blended families can be particularly challenging. Living with your partner’s children from a previous relationship or finding a way for children from different relationships to cohabit can also bring its strains. Having the support of a therapist through this process can make it more manageable and provide you with an outlet for the feelings that will no doubt arise. It is not always easy to share these feelings with our partner so a therapist can be ideal for getting the support you need during this challenging time.

Take the first step to tackle the challenges, struggles and frustrations with Parenting Counselling

Take a look at the profile pages to find a therapist to work with at City Therapy Rooms.

If you would like to speak to a therapist about your parenting challenges, you can explore the therapists below.

Useful help and advice for parents, single parents, step parents and blended families

Gingerbread.org
Gingerbread offer support and advice for single parent families

Parenting Tool Kit
Though this is an American website it offers great ideas and advice on every area of parenting. Some of it won’t be so relevant to the UK parent e.g. Education resources, however the advice on emotional parenting is universal. Parenting Tool Kit