Parental guidance and family therapy is designed to assist children, adolescents and families to manage and overcome challenges. The role of parenting can be incredibly challenging as it requires parents to constantly adapt and change their responses to the child’s needs, which are also changing as the child develops. In addition, it requires the parents to sometimes let go of their own experiences as children and how they were parented and treated in the past.
We tend to see the entire family – parents and children – as operating in one holistic system or web in which one’s actions impact all the others in the same system. If a parent struggles with a challenge or approaches a challenge in a certain way, this will then influence how the children – who are part of this system – will act in a similar incident. Or if a parent responds in a certain way to a chid then this will impact how other children or the other parent act. In the same way, if a child experiences a challenge then this will impact the other children and the parents who are members of the same system. In families, parents and kids are all part of an interdependent system. When a child or adolescent struggles with a problem, the other family members are naturally affected. Also, the family’s response to the problem will greatly influence how the child or adolescent deals with it and processes similar occurrences in the future.
 
A collaborative and respectful approach works with families to build from their strengths and move them through difficult and challenging times. The goal is to empower and guide thefamily in becoming a resource to help children to overcome their problems.