Reflective parenting sessions are designed to assist parents in understanding their child's behaviour by exploring the underlying reasons behind it. These sessions aim to encourage parents or caregivers to reflect on how they can respond supportively to their child's needs, fostering a constructive and nurturing parent-child relationship.

The aim of reflective parenting is to encourage parents to develop the ability to reflect on their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences, as well as those of their children, in order to better understand their child's perspective, promote healthy relationships, and respond more sensitively to their child's emotional and developmental needs.

At the heart of reflective parenting work is the concept of Mentalization. Mentalization is the ability to understand and interpret one's own and others' thoughts and feelings. This process plays a crucial role in emotional regulation and interpersonal relationships.

I work directly with the parent(s)/carers or in small group with other parents/carers. Although I always prefer to work in person with parents/carers, I do offer online reflective parenting sessions. However, group work is only in person.

Reflective parenting is usually 10 sessions over 15 weeks. The first 5 are weekly and then it’s fortnightly for 10 weeks. As parenting is an ongoing process, after then initial 15 weeks, there is also the opportunity to arrange ad-hoc sessions when needed. Although reflective parenting is not psychotherapy, you will be asked to think about your own childhood and how you were parented which can bring up all sorts of emotions.