Emotion Focused Parenting

As a child therapist I have taught mindfulness and emotional regulation to hundreds of kids, and I have learned that the most important factor in any child’s emotional learning is not what  I tell a child, but who I am modeling to be through my own emotions and actions.  Modeling clear emotional mindfulness and regulation is the most powerful, and often least understood, teaching tool we have in guiding children toward emotional resilience.

Through Emotion Focused Parenting I will teach you to speak directly to your child’s nervous system to bring them back in connection with their emotional regulation, and back in connection with you.

What you’ll learn

Through Emotion Focused Parenting, I will teach you how to support your child by practicing self-awareness and emotional regulation, allowing even emotionally heightened situations to be tools for self-exploration and reflection. You will learn to help your child identify and deescalate their own overwhelm, and empower your child to build greater self-esteem, increase internal attunement and express their vulnerable emotions.

Through parent consultation and coaching I will guide you toward helping your child better regulate at home, giving you the tools to shift your child’s behavior, reduce the meltdowns, and bring greater connection and harmony to your family system. Parent coaching is conducted virtually, and we will discuss your child’s brain development, a model toward regulation, and specific strategies to help your child with mindfulness and regulation during moments of overwhelm.

Emotion Focused Parenting is based on modern research in neuroscience, and recognizes that children’s developing brains are inherently “emotion-centric”. By learning to identify, understand, and respond to a child’s emotional state before engaging in discipline, guidance or problem-solving, parents can dramatically reduce their child’s emotional meltdowns, and enhance self-regulation skills in the future. Emotion Focused Parenting teaches specially tailored language and non-verbal cues that allows parents to communicate directly with their child’s nervous system, transitioning feelings of anger, fear and overwhelm, into a state of validation, safety, and calm.

This parenting philosophy is centered around the following key principles:

Emotional Awareness

By attuning to a child’s internal state, we recognize and name emotions and accompanying sensations felt in the body. Through encouraging open and honest discussions about emotions, we can teach children to identify and express what they are feeling with openness and vulnerability.

Empathy and Validation

By offering children empathy and validation we can let them know that it’s okay to feel a wide range of emotions, and that these feelings are natural and normal.

Responsive Communication

By tailoring our response to directly communicate with a child’s emotional brain we can offer the comfort and support needed to quickly deescalate dysregulation and enhance a child’s emotional awareness.

Teaching Emotional Regulation

By teaching children regulation strategies, body awareness, and healthy emotional expression we can significantly reduce meltdowns while promoting self-regulation in the future.

Setting Healthy Boundaries

By recognizing that empathy and boundaries can be woven together and are not mutually exclusive, we can learn to validate our child’s emotions while at the same time providing guidance on appropriate ways to express and handle those emotions. Only by providing emotionally present empathy and boundaries simultaneously can we create a felt sense of safety for our children.

Parental Modeling

Children’s brains are designed to mirror the emotions and behaviors of parents, and parents serve as highly influential role models any time they are within their child’s field of experience. By parents demonstrating their own emotional mindfulness and self-regulation, children are much more likely to learn these skills themselves.

Secure Attachment

As parents we can promote a secure parent-child attachment relationship, whereby children will feel more secure and confident, and are better equipped to handle emotional challenges.
Emotion Focused Parenting promotes the healthy emotional development of children, enabling them to become more empathetic, resilient, and capable of managing their feelings throughout life. It fosters a strong parent-child bond, encourages open and honest communication, and creates a supportive and emotionally nurturing family environment.

Know exactly what to do when your child experiences:

Tell me what to do

Frequent emotional outbursts

Sad and disconnected behavior

Difficult life transitions

Trouble connecting with others

There is no ongoing commitment for parent consultation, and parents are welcome to try one virtual parent session to see if you find it helpful, and then schedule additional sessions as needed.  Often parents gain a lot of benefit from 3-6 virtual parent sessions

Schedule a session today