Parent Guidance

Ambivalence about the Child’s Growing Up

Parent guidance work is focused on parenting challenges experienced with adolescent and young adult children. My perspective assumes that the developing child consciously or unconsciously experiences ambivalence toward growing up and becoming independent, i.e., a part of the child desires psychological and emotional autonomy, while another part of the child is anxious or feels insecure about the emerging demands of adulthood. The child simultaneously wants to grow up but, also, remain young.

Further, the child’s ambivalence about growing up mirrors the ambivalence of most parents regarding this developmental transition, i.e., parents want their kids to grow up and launch, but this wish is accompanied by fears, worries, and anxieties about the child’s capacity to tolerate and overcome the challenges they will likely face, including the disappointments, mistakes, failures and rejections that typically accompany entering and existing in the adult world.

In the presence of these co-occurring and mutual ambivalences on the part of both parent and child, numerous parenting styles and child problems may emerge. Parent guidance work attempts to identity what issues exist in the family system and determine what they mean about the child’s transition to young adulthood. If whatever ambivalences that exist can be addressed and mitigated, developmental progression for both the child and the family-as-a-whole can be mobilized.

The Four Modes of Parental Engagement with the Child

In my clinical work, I have come to realize that most parents parent in the ways they have been conditioned or programmed to based on millions of years of evolution, i.e., the parent is driven instinctually to protect the child from harm or distress by directly entering, and acting upon, situations in which the child is vulnerable or endangered.

This instinctual tendency is an entirely appropriate parental response in most instances during early and middle childhood. However, as the child moves into adolescence and young adulthood, the primary parental response mandated by evolution must be suppressed; this is because protection of the child is less essential than the promotion of the child’s emerging autonomy. If the parent does not suppress instinctual responses as the child progresses developmentally, “over-parenting” usually results.

Consequently, the parent must learn how to shift into new relational modes with the adolescent, and parent guidance informs parents of these other modes. In my practice, I present parents with three additional modes of relational engagement (“mirroring,” “observing,” and “sharing”) that are organized in a graded and sequential developmental framework. Parent guidance work helps parents gain mastery of these relational modes, including the attitudes and competencies each requires, and also advances the parent’s ability to identity when, and under what circumstances, specific modes should be implemented based on the child’s immediate needs.

Brain Integration and Synthesis

In my parent guidance approach, I also integrate the latest scientific findings on adolescent brain development. I have been influenced by recent work on brain integration and synthesis, especially the groundbreaking perspective of Daniel Siegel, M.D. His position is that emotional and psychological autonomy is supported by the neurological development of certain brain regions and the overall synthetic architecture of the brain. For him, a highly functioning brain features a vibrant emotional capacity (organized in the midbrain) that is linked to, and modulated by, the thinking center of the brain (organized within the prefrontal cortex).

A brain that can feel and then think about these feelings, and ultimately use these feeling-thinking links to formulate sound decision-making and take meaningful, productive action, is an invaluable framework for helping parents be more effective in their parental role.

The four modes of relational engagement I utilize sensitize parents to an awareness of how any interaction with their child is an opportunity to promote neurologic growth and synthesis in their child’s brain. In my view, this orientation is so much more clarifying and productive than other views of how to respond to children that are based on presumptuous ideologies lacking scientific evidence; these are generally misleading approaches that leave most parents feeling as if they are just “spinning their wheels in the sand.” Directing parental responses to specific regions of the child’s brain with well-defined relational strategies buttresses the child’s ability to think and to feel, supporting theses foundational components of mental health across the lifespan.

Visit Dr. Tobin's Office

15615 Alton Parkway
Suite 450
Irvine, CA 92618

Hours
Monday: 8am - 8pm
Tuesday: 8am - 8pm
Wednesday: 8am - 8pm
Thursday: 8am - 8pm
Friday: 8am - 8pm
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed