Every Stage of Parenting Brings New Questions

Parenting doesn’t come with a roadmap.

Every stage of childhood brings new questions, challenges, and changes. You may be wondering whether a behavior is developmentally typical, struggling to know how to respond to big emotions, or trying to support a child who is experiencing anxiety, ADHD, trauma, grief, friendship difficulties, or another challenge.

Sometimes parents simply need a place to ask questions, better understand what their child may be experiencing, and develop practical ways to support them.

At Calvert + Associates, parenting support can be incorporated into your child’s counseling or provided separately for parents who would like additional guidance and support.

What Can Parenting Support Help With?

Parenting support begins with better understanding your child, their development, emotions, behaviors, and individual needs. From there, it can help you build practical ways to support them while also giving you space to ask questions, share concerns, grow in confidence, and care for yourself along the way.

Understanding Behavior

Better understand what may be underneath your child’s behaviors, emotions, and reactions.

Big Emotions & Regulation

Learn ways to respond to anger, anxiety, meltdowns, shutdowns, and emotional overwhelm while helping your child build regulation skills.

Boundaries & Behavior

Develop realistic expectations, healthy boundaries, routines, and responses that fit your child and family.

Connection & Attachment

Strengthen communication, trust, connection, and emotional safety within the parent-child relationship.

Understanding Your Child’s Needs

Learn more about your child’s development, temperament, mental health, neurodivergence, or unique needs and how these may influence their behavior and experiences.

Life Changes & Difficult Experiences

Learn ways to support your child through divorce, grief, moves, trauma, medical experiences, school transitions, and other significant changes.

Your Child Is In Therapy. Where Do You Fit In?

You are still an important part of the process.

Children and teens need a therapeutic relationship where they can feel safe expressing themselves, but they also return home to the people who know and care for them most. When appropriate, our therapists work collaboratively with parents and caregivers to help carry what is being learned in therapy into everyday life.

Depending on your child’s age, needs, and treatment plan, this may include:

Parent intake sessions
Periodic parent check-ins
Parent-only sessions
Psychoeducation about your child’s development or concerns
Strategies to practice at home
Support with communication and emotional regulation
Family or parent-child sessions when appropriate
Guidance for responding to difficult behaviors or situations

For teens, we are mindful to balance parent involvement with the important privacy teens need to build trust with their therapist. Your therapist will discuss what communication and involvement may look like for your family.

How Parents Can Support Their Child in Therapy

What happens between sessions matters, too. Parents can support the counseling process while still allowing their child to have a therapeutic space that feels safe and their own.

Give Them Space to Share

Show interest without asking your child to repeat everything that happened in their session. Let them know you are available if they want to talk while allowing therapy to remain a space that feels like their own.

Validate Before You Fix

When your child shares something difficult, try listening and acknowledging their feelings before offering solutions. Feeling understood can help children feel safer bringing things to you.

Support Skills at Home

Your child’s therapist may introduce coping skills, routines, language, or strategies that can be reinforced at home. Practicing these outside of sessions helps children use what they are learning in everyday life.

Communicate With the Therapist

Let the therapist know about significant changes, concerns, behaviors, or stressors they may not see during sessions. This can provide helpful context while still respecting your child’s therapeutic space.

Be Patient With the Process

Progress may look different for every child and is rarely perfectly linear. Give your child time to build trust, develop new skills, and work through challenges at their own pace.

Create Consistency & Connection

Predictable routines, clear expectations, and regular opportunities for connection can help children feel secure and supported as they work through challenges in therapy.

Children may hold themselves together at school or around others and release difficult emotions once they are somewhere they feel safe. Behavior at home can sometimes reflect overwhelm rather than intentional defiance.

Emotional regulation is a skill that develops over time. Children often need help from a calm, supportive adult before they can manage big emotions on their own. Through repeated experiences of co-regulation, children gradually build the skills to recognize, manage, and recover from strong emotions more independently.

Sometimes children don’t know themselves. They may feel upset, overwhelmed, worried, or “off” without understanding why or having the words to explain it. Children often communicate what they are experiencing through behavior, play, physical symptoms, or changes in routines before they can put their feelings into words.

As teens develop their own identity and become more independent, the way they need and connect with their parents often changes. They may want more privacy, turn to friends more often, or share less than they once did. This doesn’t mean parents are less important. Teens still need connection, support, boundaries, and a safe place to return to, even as a parent’s role begins to shift from directing more of their world to supporting their growing independence.

No! Parents have emotions too, and your child does not need you to respond perfectly every time. What matters is learning to notice your own emotions, regulate when you can, and repair after moments that do not go as planned. Children can learn important lessons from seeing that relationships can handle hard moments, mistakes, reconnection, and repair.

Sometimes Behavior Is Communication

Children and teens do not always have the words to explain what they are feeling or why they are struggling. Their behavior can offer important clues about what may be happening beneath the surface. Understanding the “why” behind a behavior can help parents respond with greater connection, confidence, and support.

Supporting Your Child Doesn't Mean Forgetting Yourself

Parenting a child who is struggling can bring worry, frustration, guilt, exhaustion, uncertainty, and a lot of questions about how to best support them. It can also bring up experiences or emotions from your own childhood and past. Supporting your child doesn't mean ignoring what comes up for you.

Parents Need Support, Too

You don't have to be your child's therapist. You are their parent, and you deserve support in that role too.

Parents can work with their child's therapist for parenting support, and parents may also see their own therapist at Calvert + Associates. Having separate therapists can give both the parent and child their own confidential space while allowing each person to receive the support they need.

find support for me

Looking for More Structured Parenting Support?

Parenting Through the Stages

Led by Michael Hoye, MS, ALC, APTT

Parenting Through the Stages helps parents better understand child development, the needs behind behavior, and how their own experiences may influence the way they respond.

Designed to be flexible and scheduled based on your needs, parents can choose from individual consultations or more in-depth 4-, 8-, or 12-session options.

Individual • Couples • Small Group When Available

Parenting Through the Stages Workshop

Support For The Whole Family

Families are connected, and sometimes more than one person needs support. One of our goals at Calvert + Associates is to provide a team with a wide range of specialties so each member of the family can have their own therapeutic space when needed. A child or teen may have their own counselor, a parent may work with a different therapist, and couples can receive support for their relationship, all within the same practice.

Our team works to help families find the right fit for each person while respecting the individual therapeutic relationships and privacy of everyone involved.

Meet Our Team

Michelle Jennings | LPC, CSAT, APTT

Helps individuals and couples heal from betrayal trauma, addiction related wounds, and relationship pain using trauma informed care and brain based approaches

Michael Hoye | MS, ALC, APTT

Helps teens and adults with ADHD testing and supports men navigating betrayal, anger, trauma, and relationship challenges through psychoeducation and practical strategies

Ella Walker | LICSW

Helps young children with anxiety, behavior challenges, and big emotions through play therapy in a safe and supportive environment

Brad Brown | MA, MDiv, LPC, ASAT, CMAT

Helps individuals and couples navigate sexual and other addictions, trauma, and relationship challenges with compassion and clarity

Adam Calvert | LPC-S, CSAT-S

Helps individuals struggling with sexual addiction, pornography use, and betrayal work toward healing, accountability, and restored relationships

Mandy Calvert

Helps students and young adults gain clarity and confidence in career direction and life decisions while supporting clients and families in connecting with the right services at Calvert and Associates

Kathryn Morris | LICSW, APTT

Helps individuals and couples strengthen relationships, navigate betrayal, and build secure emotional connections

Adair Hill | M.Ed, NCC, ALC

Helps children, teens, and young adults navigate anxiety, identity, and life transitions in a supportive and creative environment

Taylor Wood Nichols | M.Ed, ALC

Helps teens and adults heal from trauma and grief, rebuild self worth, and navigate complex family dynamics

Donna Hannum | CPC, CRC, CBEC

Helps individuals and couples navigate betrayal, grief, and relationship challenges and move forward with clarity and hope through coaching

Anne Mattingly | M.Ed, NCC, ALC

Helps children, teens, and young adults navigate chronic illness, anxiety, and emotional challenges through play and trauma informed therapy

Anthony Evans | MA, M.Ed, ALC

Helps adolescents, adults, and athletes build confidence, manage anxiety and depression, navigate life transitions, and strengthen mental performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Parents can seek support whether or not their child is currently in counseling. Parenting support can focus on understanding your child, navigating specific challenges, strengthening your relationship, or helping you feel more confident and supported in your role as a parent.

Parent-only sessions or check-ins may be incorporated into a child's counseling when appropriate. These conversations can provide an opportunity to share concerns, receive guidance, better understand your child's needs, and discuss ways to support progress at home.

Parent involvement depends on your child's age, needs, treatment goals, and individual circumstances. Younger children typically require more caregiver involvement, while adolescents may benefit from greater privacy and independence. Your child's therapist will discuss what involvement may look like for your family.

Therapists work to balance appropriate caregiver involvement with the privacy children and teens need to develop a trusting therapeutic relationship. Rather than providing a report of everything discussed, your child's therapist can help you understand treatment goals, ways to support your child, and important concerns when appropriate. Confidentiality and its limits will be discussed with you during the intake process.

Yes. Our goal is to provide support for the whole family when needed. Children and teens can have their own counselors, parents can receive individual support, and couples can work with another therapist on their relationship. Our team can help connect each family member with an appropriate therapist or service.

Yes. Parenting support can include psychoeducation about your child's development, mental health, or neurodevelopmental needs and help you identify practical ways to respond and provide support at home. The specific approach will depend on your child's needs and your therapist's areas of expertise.

Yes. Understanding child and adolescent development can be an important part of parenting support. A therapist can help you consider your child's age, development, temperament, circumstances, and individual needs while identifying when additional support or evaluation may be helpful.

Different expectations, backgrounds, and approaches to parenting are common. Counseling can provide space to better understand these differences, improve communication, and work toward greater consistency while respecting each parent's perspective.

This is more common than many parents realize. Parenting can bring up memories, emotions, relationship patterns, or experiences from your own childhood. You may choose to explore these experiences through individual counseling while also receiving support in your role as a parent.

You don't have to figure that out before reaching out. Tell us a little about what your family is navigating, and our team can help you explore the available options and connect each family member with support that may be a good fit.

Find the Support Your Family Needs

Every family’s needs look different. Whether you’re seeking support for your child, yourself, your relationship, or multiple members of your family, we’re here to help you take the next step.

Parenting Support