7 Ways Therapy Can Make You a Better Parent

If you are a parent, you likely want what is best for your kids in every situation: at school, among their friends, in the future. But what about at home? How are the ways you act as a parent affecting your children? The way you deal with your own mental health challenges can affect your children and change the way they interact with the world for decades to come. But this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Here are seven ways individual therapy can make you a better parent.

There has been a lot said recently in the news and online about how a parent’s anxiety, depression, or other mental health issue can translate into adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) for their children. The idea of ACEs is often used as a way for adults to explain their learned behaviors from their own childhood. But it applies to looking forward too. The way that you interact with your children and model mental health now will make an impact on your kids, for better or worse. That is why engaging in therapy can make you a better parent, and improve your kids’ futures as well as your own mental health.

1. Establish a Safe Space to Process Parenting Stress

Being a modern parent is hard work. It can be taxing when your child is having behavioral issues, you are under stress from balancing the demands of work and parenthood, or you are trying to manage your own mental health. All too often, parents allow that stress to affect the way they interact with their children. Engaging in therapy with a trained psychotherapist gives parents a safe space to express and process the strong emotions that come with parenting. It provides a dedicated time and place, away from your children, to unpack the concerns of the day without judgment or negative consequences. By giving you time to look inward, therapy can make you a better parent, making it easier to focus on your children during other parts of your week.

2. Develop Better Parent Self-Awareness 

When you get mad at your kids for their behavior, you may not always realize the role you are playing in the family dynamic. For example, if you are tired of your kids pestering you when you get home from work, it could be because your negative feelings about your job are putting you in a poor position to be receptive to their need for connection and support. Psychotherapy can help parents identify their own feelings and their causes through improved self-awareness and mindfulness. By becoming more aware of your own unconscious patterns and the external influences affecting you, you can be better able to respond to those stressors and be more present for your children. 

3. Improve Emotional Regulation to Avoid Lashing Out at Your Kids

As a parent, the way you allow your emotions to affect your behavior can significantly affect your children’s development and mental health. Parents who have trouble with emotional regulation may lash out in anger or break down crying when the pressures of parenthood get too overwhelming. Learning emotional regulation strategies like breathing techniques, meditation, visualization, and grounding exercises can help you keep your calm, and model healthy ways to respond to challenges for your kids, making you a better parent. 

4. Improve Communication with Your Kids

So many parents are concerned that their kids won’t talk to them, or listen to them, for that matter. One of the most common benefits of therapy is improved communication skills. Developing a strategy of speaking to and listening to your children in a way that establishes clear boundaries while at the same time invites transparency and vulnerability can help you and your children interact on a deeper, healthier level. Your psychotherapist can help teach you new communication tools and provide practice in using them. 

5. Learn Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

If you find yourself feeling like you just can’t understand your children (and not just because they’re using new slang), it may be because you have not developed a strong sense of empathy or emotional intelligence. These skills can be taught and developed with practice. They allow parents to anticipate, understand, and respond to the way children (and other adults) feel about a situation, even when the parent is partially responsible. For example, an emotionally intelligent parent may recognize a toddler’s temper tantrum at a restaurant as a fear reaction to being in a new place, rather than an uncontrolled outburst that ruins the family dinner. By developing empathy and emotional intelligence, you can get better at responding to why your children feel the way they do, even if they can’t explain it themselves. 

6. Interrupt Inter-Generational Disorders

While therapy can help anyone be a better parent, it is especially effective if you are struggling with a mental health disorder like depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is believed that many of these mental health challenges have both genetic and environmental factors increasing the likelihood a child will experience symptoms during childhood, adolescence, or later in life. Since you and your kids share some of your genes and your environment, one of the best things you can do to improve your kids’ mental health outcomes is manage your own disorders to break the cycle of emotional distress, trauma, and related mental health issues. Using therapy to regulate your own condition will also help you build tools you can teach your kids if you see familiar patterns in their behavior. 

7. Develop New Skills to Be a Better Parent

It is an old joke that “kids don’t come with an instruction manual.” Many parents struggle because before their children are born they had no need to learn or practice the skills it takes to facilitate a new human’s growth and development. Therapy will not replace a parenting class, but at its core therapy is about building stronger relationships. That includes the relationship between parent and child. By working with a therapist to develop these skills, you can become a healthier adult, a better parent, and a more well-adjusted human being. 

David Stanislaw is a psychotherapist with over 35 years of experience. He helps adults, parents, and couples identify and address stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues, and develop tools to build stronger relationships. Contact David Stanislaw to get help being a better parent today.