PARENTS

PARENTS

PARENTING

Parenting is certainly one of the most challenging and intense journeys an adult can embark on. If we look at books and texts we can find on the Internet or social networks, parenting is still quite idealized and it's not very popular to talk about difficult times. For some reason, there is an idea that if we talk about the difficult feelings we associate with parenting, it means that we don’t love our children enough or that we are an unsuccessful parent.

But what we do know for sure is that it’s impossible to be a good parent and not to wonder, not to doubt at least occasionally, not to feel helpless, sometimes even lost. These difficult places are an integral part of parenting, it is only a matter of letting them come to our consciousness or suppressing them with the idea that they make us bad parents or that they will resolve themselves. Sometimes, which is the most damaging thing for a child's development, we don't look at ourselves and our parenting but blame the children by describing them as "bad", "spoiled", "ungrateful", "hard'', etc.

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Many times a sentence can be heard: "Parenting is the hardest job in the world, and the only one which doesn't require going to school”. Although parenting is much more than a job, there is also some truth in that sentence. Indeed, no one has to go to school to be a parent. Most often, the only school is our own experience of being a child in the family we grew up in. Through many years of practice by working with parents, we have often had an opportunity to hear one of two views: either the idealization of own parents and childhood and the desire to be exactly like them, or the experience of a traumatic or at least difficult childhood with a statement - I want to be a completely different parent.

Both of these sentences can lead us to the wrong direction with our children because what we needed may not be what our children need. When we give our children what we needed, we are in danger of not seeing them, instead we see ourselves. Then we actually do what our parents did to us - we give our kids too much of what they don't need and too little of what they need.

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WORKING WITH PARENTS

Experience has taught us that it is rarely possible to provide quality and comprehensive, optimal, professional help and support to children unless we include parents in the treatment procedures. Parents are the most important people in their children's lives, their primary helpers, and children are rarely able to be well if their parents are not. For example, both research and clinical practice show that parental emotional response and their coping after a traumatic event more strongly predict the outcome of treatment for the child than the type and choice of treatment techniques. That is why in our Center we pay great attention to working with parents and providing support in the parental role.

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INDIVIDUALLY OR IN GROUPS

Parents have the opportunity to come to counseling together or alone and get a space in which they can talk about the difficulties they are experiencing, either in a relationship with the child or with other parent as well as in the parenting role in general. In addition to individual counseling for parents, we also offer group treatment and work, as it is sometimes very helpful to be aware that they are not alone in their problems, as well as to have an insight into their own behavior that provides feedback which we can get from others in a safe and confidential closed group environment.

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PERFECT PARENTS DON'T EXIST
(AND THAT’S OK)

The best and most you can do for your child is to receive and take seriously the messages you are receiving from them, as well as the reactions and feelings you have about parenting and look at yourself in search of change, if it’s needed. It doesn't mean to be a perfect parent because they don't exist, it means to be a responsible person, for yourself and for your child. Sometimes we can decode the messages we receive from children and the feelings that arise in us and find their starting point. Sometimes close people and partners in parenting are enough of a support, and sometimes these messages are too complicated or difficult or go far and deep and require the support of experts to understand them. We will be happy to accompany you along the way, for you and your children.

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