For Parents of Teens
My Campbell parenting counseling service area includes Willow Glen, San Jose, and Los Gatos.
Many families struggle with the challenges of raising teens. With teens, peer pressure, time pressure, school pressure – during the teen years relationships that were once solid and mostly satisfying often seem to falter.
Being a teen can be tough. And, being the parent of a teen can be tough. How can people who seem to not understand one another or have much at all in common, learn to get along reasonably well?
The answer is: COMMUNICATION!
During the years of early childhood, parents are Managers. That role gradually changes, during the teen years, to parents as Coaches. And, from college forward, parents act as Consultants. Why is there a need to change that role? Because from infancy forward, one of a parents’ most critical jobs is to prepare their child to move out into society as an independent adult.
Parents will not always be there to smooth the path. Teens need to be allowed age appropriate responsibilities and freedoms, to make choices and experience and learn from their consequences.
It is hard to watch their mistakes. Sometimes it is so hard to let them go, that parents struggle to hang on while teens struggle to become independent.
At certain points in the process, parents may feel they are no longer needed or wanted, and they withdraw. Teens still want and need parents — but in a different way. Teens are changing – and parents need to change, too.
Working with parents and teens in therapy means identifying the beliefs and family dynamics that are roadblocks to a strong relationship, and helping everyone to communicate in ways that work. That usually means sessions with parents, sessions with teens, and often sessions with parents and teens together. This is the nature of teen and parenting counseling.
Call me at (408) 566-3119 or email me at JM@judithmcfarland.com and let’s talk about working to change your parent-teen relationship to one that works.
Campbell Parents and Teens Counseling and Therapy
My services include parenting counseling and parent and teen therapy. My service area includes San Jose, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Monte Sereno, Los Gatos, Cupertino, Mountain View, Campbell, Willow Glen and Milpitas CA.
