About Mindful Parenting

Parenting is the most important, challenging, demanding and confusing job we will ever have. We strive to do it perfectly, yet we receive no training.

Over the past 30 years, I have worked with children, adolescents and their parents in a wide variety of settings. All parents strive to be the best they can be; yet they frequently repeat negative or ineffective interactions with their children, often inadvertently, making things worse.

What gets in the way? Anger, worry, fear, stress, unrealistic expectations, disappointment, and resentment can be very powerful emotions. We are influenced by our childhood experiences, the way we were raised and our hopes and dreams for our children. I have come to believe that understanding and working on ourselves is essential to being an effective parent.

I see mindfulness as a key skill in this process. Using mindfulness techniques, I help parents remain calm, identify what emotions are getting triggered inside, slow down their reactions, and develop a compassionate understanding of themselves and their child. This allows them to thoughtfully choose how they want to address any given interaction or behavior.

In addition to teaching and practicing mindfulness, I help parents:

•  Understand their children’s unique temperaments and the parenting strategies that best meet their needs.
• Develop clear strategies and goals to deal with acting out or other difficult behaviors.
• Learn how to successfully use limit setting, positive reward, skill building, and logical and natural consequences.
• Improve communication skills.
• Guide their family through times of transition such as loss, moves, divorce, blending families, and educational difficulties.

Mindful Parenting

My practice is located in  Katonah, Westchester County and midtown Manhattan. I provide adult psychotherapy, child psychotherapy, and adolescent psychotherapy as well as parent coaching and parent counseling.  I have a holistic approach using variety of mind-body techniques including EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy as treatment methods for trauma.