The Art of Parenting

By Amy Bebergal, LCSW

Parenting is a lifelong journey. We do our best to nurture our children through developmental stages as they learn what it means to be a me, a you, and an us. When our kids face challenges, it can test our strength, skills, and patience. How can we best respond to a child having big feelings they can’t manage, or if they are being bullied or are bullying others at school, or if they get a diagnosis we don’t fully understand, or if they are being targeted or discriminated against for their gender, ethnicity, or cultural identity?

A felt sense of safety and belonging in the world is a basic human right. While we do our best to validate and support, how can we be empowered as parents to feel confident in our skills, to know our rights, to share and teach our values, to connect with support, and to better understand what our children are going through?

At ARTrelief, we work with children and families of all age. We partner with parents to support their critical role on the path to the child’s adjustment and well-being. We consider the whole child in their environment.

Cécile Rêve, ARTrelief co-founder says: At ARTrelief we view parenting as a work of art. Each child, each parent, each family, each community is unique. Our team is here to support you in developing and strengthening a parental identity that will feel authentic, sustainable and effective.

"Like any identity, parental identity can be experienced differently at each developmental stage, as well as with each child. Parents have not always received healthy parenting themselves, or they may have but find themselves at a dead-end while raising a child whose needs they do not know how to meet.”

We recently launched an initiative to empower parents through professional development for our mentors and clinicians, as well as offering a parenting workshop. Gabi Kotliar, ARTrelief co-founder, teaches methods, skills, and approaches, but the workshop also creates community to share the sometimes-isolating experience of parenting children who might have challenging behaviors. For more information on this offering visit our parenting webpage at https://www.artrelief.info/parenting-together.

We know that on the parenting journey, we can learn as much from our children as they learn from us, but we all need support.

Below are some resources and some of our favorite subject matter experts in the field. You can seek out their books or find them on the internet.

• Dr. Becky Bailey researches social emotional learning and combines mind/body brain science with mindful discipline practices.

• Dr. Ross Greene helps us understand and respond to a child’s challenging behavior. His approach helps us understand that challenging behavior occurs when demands and expectations exceed the child’s capacity to respond adaptively. He focuses his support in skill-building and problem solving.

• Dr. Bruce Perry’s work shows how traumatic stress can change the biology of the brain and the overall health of the child.