FOR PARENTS
No, You Are Not Losing Your Mind - Raising Teens Can Be Tough!
Is this you?
You love your teens, but lately you don’t seem to recognise them. Your daughter is acting, dressing, and talking like a total stranger. Your son has lost all interest in engaging with you. You tiptoe around them, trying but failing to overcome the sudden distance between you. You wonder what happened.
You are not alone
Please know that you are not alone. Situations like this are normal, even in families that appear to have it all together. Parenting skills that work with young children are no longer effective when they are going through the turbulent years of adolescence.
Parents require a new approach and focus when it comes to their teens. Your teens making mistakes and breaking rules is normal. This is what teens do. Don’t interpret your teen’s mistakes as a reflection on your parenting.
Is mum losing her cool?
Mums, are you losing your cool more than you'd like? Does your teen’s behaviour sometimes aggravate you? You might be experiencing parenting triggers. Gaining an awareness of your triggers may significantly improve your parenting stress levels. It seems that worry is the love language of mums.
Mums worry about their teen’s grades, their feelings, their friends, what they are doing on their phone, and their future. Mum needs to take a step back so that her teen can step forward, and bloom.
This is achievable if mum learns to let her teen walk their own path and experience life’s bumps and bruises. Long-term, mums need to realise that their teens need the capabilities, mindsets, and work ethic that adults have.
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What was one of the biggest takeaways that you’ve gotten?
I learned that I need to make time for myself each day in order to function as a parent and a business owner. Prioritising exercise helped me develop a routine, as well as calming my mind to enable me to be more effective in all other areas of my life. The conversation with Kanchana helped me to give myself permission to prioritise myself.
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Mental Health
Are you and your teen being hijacked by anxiety? Or even more serious, you discover your teen is self-harming, or is thinking about suicide – or both. This isn’t cause for panic. However, it is time for you to seek support.
What can be done?
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I can provide tools and strategies to help you navigate these tricky times. I can help you to seek help and support for your teen’s mental health. I can coach you on how to be heard by the Mental Health team and the Crisis team. The magic is in learning to see your teens through a different lens.
To have the confidence that they have what it takes to fend for themselves and thrive. The adolescent years are about practising independence and preparing for the future.
This requires you to let go of parenting from a place of fear and control, and to learn new ways
to dialogue with your teens that invite connection. Learn to ask good questions, build strong relationships and help your teens to think responsibly.
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What I will do
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I have practical tools and strategies to help you strengthen your parenting skills. I will coach you to parent and problem solve from a place of here and now, in the present moment, and NOT in what happened in the past or what you think might happen in the future.
I will help you to find your calm and gain mastery over your emotional world. This will increase your ability to think strategically and with intention and purpose.
I will help you to recognise your thoughts, feelings, and actions and how they contribute to the dynamic of your relationship with your teen. From this insight, I can help you to use dialogue to establish a method of action for positive change.
The Result
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In the end, you can try all sorts of ways to improve the dynamic with your teen and your teen remains unchanged. The crazy-making teenage antics might continue, because they are teens. BUT now you have tools and strategies for creating a more harmonious relationship with your teen.
You will know how to unhook yourself from your teen’s negative behavior - attacking, rude, sarcastic, uncommunicative, critical, angry, withdrawn. Instead, you will develop curiosity about what might be going on in your teen’s inner world.
“THE SIGN OF GREAT PARENTING IS NOT THE CHILD'S BEHAVIOUR.
THE SIGN OF TRULY GREAT PARENTING IS THE PARENT'S BEHAVIOUR.”
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ANDY SMITHSON
About me
I know what it is like to feel stuck. I used to worry excessively. I used to constantly worry about my children’s well-being and their future. I used to experience major anxiety before
my children sat their school tests and exams, fearing that they might fail.
I know that familiar feeling of apprehension. I experience self-doubt and second-guess how I parent my teens. I have had screaming matches with my daughter. I can sometimes sound crazy.
I know too well that urge to jump in and fix or rescue my teens when I see them hurting. I worry when they want to go out all the time and I worry when they don’t want to go out. I know what it feels like to be a mum, to love your children so much that you want to protect them from experiencing the inevitable bumps and bruises that are part of life and being human.
I have credentials in Psychotherapy and Life Coaching. I am a mum of two teens. I know about attachment, about the stages of human development, about defences and coping strategies, I know about human behaviour when feeling threatened or unseen and unheard. I know that the teenage brain is under construction, and how important it is to factor this in when parenting teens.
I can help you to handle crises in your household, to understand the behaviour of your teens, and to differentiate between what is a phase and what is actually a signal for help.
My influences
Many authors influence my work, I trust their advice because it is backed up by scientific evidence, common sense and compassion. Books written by these authors challenge me to be a better mum. They influence the way I parent. They have helped me as a mum to recognise where many of my own limitations stem from and to avoid passing the same issues to my children.
Diane Levy | Ian Grant| Nigel Latta | Yvonne Godfrey | Celia Lashlie | Dr Shefali Tsabary | Eckhart Tolle | Carol S Dweck | Gary Chapman
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How do we meet?
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Session are via Zoom or phone at a time that works for you.