Parenting Styles

A note on disclosures. It is possible that you may get a disclosure in this session of previous abuse experienced by the parent, and you should be prepared to deal with this sensitively. It will be helpful to have some local counselling services to hand to help the parent with some of these experiences, if they wish to. You can discuss their right to make a formal complaint about any experiences that constitute abuse, but you must not under any circumstances try and persuade the parent to do this, as this is disempowering and counterproductive. 

This session can be very emotive for the parent and for this reason you may wish to end the session with a positive exercise to avoid leaving the parent thinking about negative experiences from the past.  Something simple like engaging the parent in some gratitude journaling would work.  The practice of gratitude is well established as a means of promoting optimism and increasing happiness. These skills will also help bolster the parent in difficult times with their child. You can provide a jotter for this task if your service has the resources to and encourage the parent to document the things that have happened that make them feel grateful.  It could be that they had a nice meal, that the sun was shining that morning, that their child was polite and well- mannered when meeting a friend. Really get them to think about everything and anything positive that has happened recently. Doing this daily, will help them to see that it’s not all bad and also encourage the habit of positive thinking.   It is also a good idea for the parent to think about coping mechanisms for when you have left the session, they could call a supportive friend or visit relatives for example.