Parenting
Our children: we love them SO much.
There is nothing that compares to parenting when it comes to being so wonderful and so maddening at the very same moment.
Twenty years ago, Kerry founded Head & Heart Parents to guide parents through this complicated maze of raising children who grow into healthy adults. Kerry’s parenting classes have helped thousands of parents calm the chaos and bring more emotional well-being to their families. She and her entire team are passionate about parenting.
Everyone on the team offers coaching and therapy for parents to help families become more connected, more peaceful, and more emotionally intelligent.
Set up a free Discovery Call today
From babies…
From cradle to college, Kerry helps parents walk the tightrope of lovingly meeting children’s needs for secure attachment while preparing them for a world of cause and effect.
… to teens
As children morph into adolescents, parents must evolve their parenting model to prepare youth for independence while maintaining strong, loving connections.
Parent Coaching
We work to help parents improve their parenting skills, read cues from their children, build secure attachments, and create close, warm families. We talk about behavioral challenges and discuss strategies to support children in an effective, emotionally healthy way. We incorporate ideas from a wide variety of parenting models to help you meet the needs of your children, keep your own sanity and sense of humor, and create a healthy family that is good for all of its members.
Parent coaching is different from therapy in that it specifically targets behaviors and what parents can do about them. Therapy for parents goes deeper and can address personal and relationship issues in addition to the behavior of the children.
Our core values are:
Systems Oriented: We believe that the ways that a person functions, relates, feels, and defines themselves is deeply intertwined with the complex relationships in their past, present, and future, as well as with one’s circumstantial realities, resources, and health.
Attachment-Focused: We have a core belief that people are designed and wired to be in connected and emotionally safe relationships with other people.
Inclusive: We believe that ALL people deserve the highest quality of support without fear of judgment or exclusion. We will do our best to serve you or help you find another resource that will better serve your needs.
Neuro-Focused: We are dedicated to using approaches and information that are up to date with current neuroscience research and the science of interpersonal neurobiology.
Solution-Focused: We believe that all therapeutic and educational work should be goal-focused and produce experiential change.
Fun: We believe that the best learning and growth happen when we are feeling joy and connection.
Stepfamily Therapy
Yes, blended families are complicated. But they’re also rich. They have surprising things to tell us all about marriage, gender relations, parenting, and the intricacies of family life. Contrary to myth, stepfamilies have a high rate of success in raising healthy children. What trips stepkids up has little to do with stepfamilies per se. The biggest source of problems for kids in stepfamilies is parental conflict leftover from the first marriage. Stepfamilies experience most of their troubles in the first two years.
Stepfamilies are not just make-do households limping along after loss. All members experience real gains, notably the opportunity to thrive in a happier parent relationship.
The needs of people in stepfamilies are the needs of people in all families:
- to be accepted, loved, and cared about
- to maintain attachments
- to belong to a group and not be a stranger
- to feel some control by maintaining order in their lives.
Parents and children don’t get divorced. Stepfamily functioning improves dramatically when participants know which problems are normal, which are temporary, and that it takes time for people to integrate themselves and feel comfortable in a stepfamily. A strong couple relationship is necessary to the success of the stepfamily, but it cannot hinge on whether the stepparent likes the kids.
Every stepfamily is different. Stepparenting is not for wimps. Stepfamilies require a lot of relationship skills. They can be painful and they can be wonderful.
“What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.”
