Supportive Parenting Counseling Program

This group is designed to help parents during difficult times. It’s our mental health that affects the behavior of our children and vice versa. Getting support for yourself offers help to your children.

This group also helps you learn and practice skills for managing difficult child behaviors. Topics to be covered include setting and enforcing reasonable limits, giving effective instructions, managing daily routines and play skills for relationship development. Parents will have opportunities to identify, and problem solve specific issues they are experiencing at home with their children. In group you can get support and the answers that help with:

• Social problems including withdrawal, loneliness, loss of confidence, school problems, learning disorders, anxiety, and depression
• Alcohol and drug abuse (particularly associated with mental illness), suicide or self-harming, theft, and criminal behavior
• Discipline problems including selfishness, defiance, unstable behavior, recklessness, deceitfulness, violent behavior, and disruptive behavior
• Educational problems including disruptive behavior, bullying and decreased learning ability, and academic achievements
• Family conflict and discord: lack of structure and discipline, disagreement about child rearing
• Parental control that is too tight. Overprotection is a risk factor for childhood anxiety
• Marital conflict, divorce, or separation: most of the negative effects are caused by disruption of parenting. The parents’ ability to cope with the changes may be reflected in the child’s ability to cope.
• Involvement of the father; the emotional and social outcomes are significantly improved for children whose fathers play a visible and nurturing role in their upbringing. Father involvement is associated with positive cognitive, developmental, and socio-behavioral child outcomes, such as improved weight gain in preterm infants, improved breast-feeding rates, higher receptive language skills and higher academic achievement
• Maternal depression, including postpartum depression. Young children of depressed mothers have an elevated risk of behavioral, developmental, and emotional problems

• Parental mental illness
• Parental physical illness
• Parental alcohol and substance abuse
• Re-marriage/stepfamilies

• Poverty
• Neglect and/or abandonment; adopted children or children from foster homes
• Residential instability
• Houses with addictions (alcoholism/drug use/gambling addiction), mental illness, and or domestic violence that affect children
• A chronically ill or disabled child
• Undiagnosed psychological or developmental problem – e.g., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autistic spectrum disorders

• Difficult temperament of a child and a clash in parenting style
• Fragile emotional temperament of a child
• Peer pressures
• Large families
• Family stress: working parents, job dissatisfaction, fatigue, stress and time, household chores
• Violence within the home
• Child sex abuse
• Trauma

Getting to the bottom of parent-child relationship problems can be difficult because there can be many different underlying issues. The possible outcomes may also vary depending upon individual families, religion, culture, attitudes, ethnicity, and resources available.

ABS Supportive Parenting counseling Program has a family-focused approach and is helpful in assisting clients who are facing many family stressors including caring for children with autistic spectrum disorders, drug dependence, intermittent explosive behavior, anger issues or any one of the childhood mental health issues such as: