Navigating adolescence: Support for parents
(12 sessions)
Connecting and communicating with teenagers through crisis and change
Parents of adolescents may feel really worried or overwhelmed when their teenagers suddenly become distant or go through a crisis. They can feel at a loss what to do, worrying about their adolescent’s future and wellbeing.
Drawing on my experience as an adolescent psychotherapist, I offer a 12 week programme for parents, mainly online, where I help them better understand and support their teenager, and be clearer about the sources of stress and what’s going on in their family. Adolescence is a transitional, quickly-changing, interesting and exciting time for young people and families. But it’s also a time when doubt and worry can emerge for parents (and for adolescents!) Through this work, I hope that parents can regain some trust and confidence in their role, feeling more hopeful about their ability to manage crises and changes that come up, and, ultimately, feel better connected with their teenager.
Each family is different and parents – as well as adolescents – have their own beliefs and values about how they want to communicate. My way of working centres on what makes sense to each parent (or couple), and their own particular family and I will be guided by you to think through what is needed together. My hope is that, through this work, there can be improvements in your teenager indirectly too, through the shifts you as parents make.
It may be that this work is enough to support you in your parenting, or we can think together about additional sources of support for your teenager or you as parents as our work progresses.
Themes
In contrast to psychotherapy with adolescents, or longer term parent support, these 12 sessions are more focused. We will explore themes such as adolescent development and parental expectations, communication, handling conflict and intense emotions including difficulties such as adolescent anxiety and low mood, screentime, friendships and relationships, and finally recognising and preventing risk-taking behaviours and supporting a teenager through a crisis.
Questions parents may bring to this work:
- Is my son depressed or anxious?
- My daughter struggles with obsessional / compulsive rituals but doesn’t want help from me.
- I worry that my relationship with my teenager is breaking down.
- Things are worsening with my child: I want to address things now before they deteriorate
- Is my daughter self harming?
- I keep getting phone calls from school about my son’s behaviour.
- I feel stuck. I want to help my child but don’t know how to: whatever I try makes things worse.
- My son never talks to me: he always stays upstairs in his room.
- Is my daughter taking drugs?
- My teenager doesn’t listen to what I have to say, he σε me.
- I am really scared whether my daughter is suicidal.
- We have struggled as a family with the pandemic and its impact on our teens’ school life and friendships.
- My son doesn’t want to attend school.
- I worry my daughter has no friends.
- We are so stressed at home: we argue with our teenager continuously, and our own moods are completely linked to our teenager’s moods.
- I want to talk through a difficult situation that affects my teenager (parental separation, terminal illness, a move to another location).
I work both in English and Greek. Feel free to either book a Zoom call directly through this website, or get in touch via the contact form.