Dallas area Moms!!  Join the New Leaf Clinic Parenting Group specifically designed for moms.  Guilt Free Parenting Group Begins Monday February 8, 2010 from 10-11:30 located at the Dallas North Tollway and Frankford.

As a counselor, the feeling of guilt is one I frequently confront on a professional level. Personally speaking too, I know the feeling of guilt… and by feeling I mean that sinking sensation in one’s gut. 

As I was considering a blog topic for this week, I decided to look up ‘guilt’ in the dictionary. I wanted specific, professional words to describe that deeply emotional sensation. Here’s what I found, “feelings of culpability especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). Reading this I had an ah-ha moment- one followed by that feeling in my gut.  What specifically spoke to me was the ‘for imagined offenses or a sense of inadequacy.’

As a professional parent educator and in my own personal parenting, I am in touch with that  repugnant feeling… guilt. I know what it means and where it comes from. It’s that sense of inadequacy that feeling of flying blind, crossing your fingers, or praying desperately that your choices will have positive effects on your children’s lives.  As a professional parent educator, I am blessed to apply my many years of education, training, clinical experience and research to my own parenting. I definitely struggle less with feelings of inadequacy and am so thankful. However, this is the number one feeling that leads parents to seek my services. Inadequacy that sometimes turns into crippling fear and familiar words during our initial conversation, ” I think I’m really messing up my kid.”

So if the feeling of guilt stems from a sense of inadequacy what can be done to curb that feeling. The underlying feeling of inadequacy that feeds the guilt. Education and support! That is what our group, Guilt Free Parenting, offers. In a supportive environment led by two professional counselors and joined by moms with real worries and wisdom, we will teach specific skills. By skills I mean, teach how to communicate with children, especially young children who communicate so differently than we do. We will teach how to reflect your children’s thoughts and feelings so you can communicate you hear them, you care about them and you understand them.  Having said that, this does not mean that just because you hear them, care about and understand them they get everything they ask for. Instead we will teach you how to communicate this messages while simultaneously instilling boundaries and discipline. We will provide a specific strategy for setting limits and tolerating consequences. By tolerating consequences, I mean for both you and your child. I mean really, isn’t that where the guilt gets really bad? When you set a limit you never intended to adhere to and feel sick about the consequence (leaving the restaurant, playgroup, donating a favorite toy). We will teach you how to live with the discipline you wish to instill in your child… so they can too.

We will confront that feeling of inadequacy head on through training and education and allow a safe environment for talking about your perceived inadequacies and the guilt trip you are paying way to high a price to take!