Parenting Advice / Family Therapy
Hello and welcome! I'm Pete Brown and I am a qualified Family Therapist / Systemic Psychotherapist offering parenting advice and systemic family therapy.
Parenting Advice:
- I offer practical and positive advice to parents and carers with the aim of helping to make family life calmer, more positive and happier. I also work with separated or divorced parents who wish to co-parent more effectively.
- As the saying goes 'kids don't come with instructions' and parent advice helps when children / young people find it difficult to cooperate with family rules and routines. Without being too simplistic, I often think of children as having two main types of temperament. Children with a mainly 'type 1' disposition, can be described as mainly easy-going and generally cooperate. Children with a mainly 'type 2' disposition, are usually stronger-willed and more easily irritated. They also often reject or constantly rise up or question family rules and values.
- The tools and techniques that I recommend come mainly from the NVR parenting approach. NVR has a good track record for improving the wellbeing of children with more challenging attitudes and behaviour, including when additional challenges are present (e.g. Autism and / or ADHD).
- NVR stands for Non-Violent Resistance. This is not meant to imply that parents are violent to their children; the name comes from the non-violent resistance struggles of pioneers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. These political resistance
ideas have been adapted to help with parental resistance
- effective ways to 'resist' being drawn into unhelpful patterns of relating to children who find it difficult to play by the usual family rules.
Family Therapy:
- As the name suggests, family therapy involves thinking about everyone in the family. The aim is to help improve communication and to provide a space where family issues can be talked about in a neutral setting.
- Some or all family members may come to these sessions.
- I also work with families who are all adults to help improve communication by providing a neutral space to discuss difficult issues.
- I do not offer individual work with children, although sometimes I may see children for a portion the session without parents present, if this seems helpful.
More Information:
- I offer appointments on-line via zoom. I do not offer in-person appointments at present.
- I am registered with AFT (Association for family therapy) and UKCP (UK council for psychotherapy).
