Some new parents are fortunate enough to have come from happy, healthy families where parents respected each other, managed their children with love, respect, and clear expectations and rules, and who had the resilience and skills to handle the life crises handed to them. New parents from backgrounds like these generally have absorbed a solid internal compass to guide them in their own parenting. When they get stuck, they have memories of times past as well as a network of loving older relatives and friends to guide them. They feel free to ask questions, knowing that they will get helpful advice, not criticism or blame. The older generation continues to provide practical help and emotional support.

Sadly, not everyone has such luck. Many new parents feel very much on their own – only because they are. Many young parents live far away from family, don’t have positive family connections, or feel that the way they were raised has become irrelevant to the demands of today’s life. Many are single parents, struggling to maintain jobs and still have the energy to manage a home. Because most two parent families are also two paycheck families, many young parents feel overstretched as they try to attend to their children’s needs on top of over-full work days. Women home on maternity leave often find themselves alone on the block. All the other moms are at work. Parenting children (especially very young children) has become a lonely and isolating experience. Young parents often need some help knowing what they can do to raise their children to be successful adults in a changing world.

Parent education programs, counseling, and family therapy are all sources for help when natural supports are either unavailable or inadequate. Which one you choose depends on the level of help you think you need. Although they often overlap, there are basic differences. Parent education classes offer practical parenting tips. Counseling provides more individualized advice and coaching. Family therapy supports people in doing the in-depth personal work required to resolve old hurts and to develop the courage to do things differently. It’s not at all unusual for families to utilize more than one of these supports over the course of raising children. Although the differences between them often blurs, each does have particular strengths:

Parent Education

It’s true. Babies don’t come with an instruction manual. Neither do children and teens. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, there’s a new age and stage with new developmental challenges and accomplishments for parents and child alike. Instincts are often not enough. If parents didn’t get experience managing kids while growing up, if their own parents weren’t particularly good at the job, or if they did have good parents but their own circumstances are radically different, they may just need some help figuring out how to go about the important job of raising another human being.

Parenting books and websites and parent education programs simply provide information. When offered in classes, support groups, or online chat rooms, they also provide the comfort and support of talking with others who are also working hard at being the kind of parents they want to be. Online parent communities offer much needed support to parents who live in isolated settings, who work third shift, who are too shy to meet face to face, or whose time is so fragmented that getting to a regular parent study group meeting is impossible.

In some communities, parent drop-in centers have become a new kind of “neighborhood”, bringing young parents together to meet one another, to learn new ways to handle children, and to provide mutual support. What used to happen over back fences or at the park when more parents were at home is now happening in church basements, in elementary school cafeterias, at the local Y, or in more organized parent centers. Programs at such centers focus on skill building and support.

Parent study groups are most often run by laypeople but may also be offered by professional parent educators, or licensed counselors, social workers, or psychologists who are interested in the field.

Most parent education is either free, on a sliding fee scale, or nominal in cost. Health insurance generally does not pay for parent education, although some Employee Assistance Programs will.

Counseling

Counseling is simply advice (although the advice isn’t always simple). When parents have already sought out information and have done their best but a problem is becoming either chronic or a crisis, it’s time to reach for some help. Sometimes good advice from experienced older family members, friends, or fellow members of a parent study group is enough. It’s almost always a good place to start. But if that doesn’t work, or if there are good reasons why it’s not a good idea for a young family to turn to its informal network, there are professionals who specialize in family problems.

Professional counselors have seen it all (or at least most of it) before. They are trained to listen in a non-judgmental way to everyone involved. They are educated about child development and have learned helpful ways to meet the challenges of each age and stage. Children and their families are unique. Counseling reaches beyond the one-size-fits-all information offered by parent education and provides advice that takes into account the specific needs and resources of a particular family. Counseling often includes skill building. Sessions might focus on building better communication between parents or between parents and teens, how to set good limits, or how to give a particular child the attention he or she needs.

Another form of counseling is provided by “warm lines”, phone lines staffed by trained counselors who listen compassionately, offer some advice, and make referrals to someone locally who can help. Warm lines are available for advice about what to do about specific issues like teen drinking, eating disorders, domestic violence, depression, etc., and for advice about parenting children with various disabilities or challenges. National and/or state phone numbers can be located on the web.

Counseling is often provided by school guidance counselors, clergy, family services workers, nurses and pediatricians, as well as by licensed counselors, social workers and licensed psychologists who have a special interest in helping families.

Some counseling is offered free or on a sliding fee scale at human service agencies, churches, schools, or pediatric practices. Sometimes counseling occurs at private practice offices as well.
Health insurance may pay for some sessions, depending on the license of the provider and the issues being addressed.

Family Therapy

When good advice has failed to make things better, it may be time to look into getting some family therapy. There are lots of reasons why otherwise good people can’t seem to cooperate enough with each other to be effective partners in child rearing or can’t seem to handle the demands of being parents. Maybe having a child has triggered old hurts and unresolved anger for a parent. Perhaps the parents can’t get past some of their own issues when confronted by a challenging child. Perhaps a parent is in too much personal pain to put aside his or her own needs at times for the sake of the larger family. Maybe there is covert or overt fighting going on between the adults that gets expressed through the kids. Multi-generational conflicts may be making it difficult to parent well. Divorced parents may still be fighting or be overwhelmed by the complications of sharing custody, blending families, and managing schedules. Additional issues like addiction, mental illness, chronic medical problems, and destructive secrets complicate things further. Where counseling might teach a skill like limit setting, therapy helps a parent take an honest look at why it is so difficult for him to set limits and what makes it hard to do what is needed to make family life run more smoothly.

Complex family conflicts are tough but not impossible to resolve. However, such issues probably won’t be adequately addressed with a parent study group or visits to a counselor. Parent education isn’t intended to provide individualized in-depth psychotherapy. Parents who need therapy, not counseling, will often find ways to sabotage either themselves or each other if they manage to work with the counselor’s advice at all. They somehow can’t find the time or energy to do what a counselor advises or are so wrapped up in either blaming each other or defending themselves that they can’t focus on solving the problems at hand.

Like counselors, family therapists are familiar with child development and work with many, many different kinds of families. Family therapists listen respectfully and compassionately, help people recognize the internal and interpersonal conflicts that are getting in their way, and provide support for making change.

Family therapy is a specialized form of psychotherapy. It is provided by licensed marriage and family therapists (LMFTs), by licensed independent social workers (LICSWs), and by licensed doctoral level psychologists as well as psychiatrists who have specialized in family therapy.

Health insurance will often pay for at least some of the therapy sessions, depending on the license of the provider and the issues being addressed.

The Right Help at the Right Time

In real life, the distinctions among these alternative types of help are often not so clear. Often family therapy includes education as well as the advice and skill building of counseling. An experienced counselor will often help families gain insight into what is going on. And both parent education classes and counseling, although not intended to be therapy, can often be quite therapeutic. With the help of the professionals involved, and with good information gleaned from supportive family and friends, parents make the choices that work best for them at various points in the family’s life.

Making a successful family and raising children well are among the most difficult challenges of adult life. Needing help now and then is neither a character flaw nor an indication of personal failure. People who are help-seeking and who work to solve problems instead of avoiding them generally do better in life. For that reason, recognizing the need for help and getting it is itself an important skill to model for our children. Even more important, getting the right kind of help at the right time can substantially improve family life and sometimes rescue a family from falling apart.

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 8 Jun 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.