On The Internet! Take the Self Improvement Tour
Jean Walbridge MA, MSW, ACSW, LCSW
Jean Walbridge Quick Facts
Main Areas: Helping parents understand the developmental tasks of adolescence that lie behind their teens' seemingly crazy and objectionable behaviors, and helping teens understand what their parents are coping with as they try to parent them.Best Sellers: Jean has completed manuscripts on parenting adolescents and on residential treatment.
Career Focus: Psychotherapist, Speaker, Author
Affiliation: Jean is a member of the National Association of Social Workers and the International Association for Self Psychology. Jean's psychotherapy practice is sole-ownership. Her web site is ParentingAdolescents.com, and she does business as Parenting Adolescents.
Jean Walbridge has worked with children, parents, and teens/preteens for more than 25 years. For fifteen years, Jean served in increasingly complex clinical positions at a premiere residential treatment center for disturbed children and adolescents, eventually finishing as Assistant Director/Clinical Director. She has been a consultant to the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services. Jean currently has a private psychotherapy practice in Highland Park, Illinois. She has been trained in psychodynamic Self Psychology and uses the understandings gained from this training to inform her work. Jean's web site, ParentingAdolescents.com, draws thousands of visitors. Both parents and teens/preteens send in questions about understanding and coping with each other. See the Question of the Week for her latest response(s) to a parent/teen.
Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Jean Walbridge
"An adolescent's job is to become his/her own person by achieving gradual separation from the parents (both physical and psychological) and establishing his/her own identity. This is a tough job because adolescents are (unconsciously) scared of both the separation process and the exploration needed to establish an identity and because these are experienced as new--and compelling--demands, and they don't know how to meet them.
"A parent's job is to understand what the adolescent is trying to do, why it's compelling to him/her, and how to get out of the way, on the one hand, and provide structure where it's needed, on the other. This is why I say that parenting adolescents is a balancing act."
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"One reason a teen's lies upset parents so much is that the parents realize that the teen is choosing not to 'let the parent in' on everything that is going on in the teen's life. This is a necessary exclusion--part of the separation process--but it can feel agonizing to the parent." (See my article on lying in adolescence under the articles section of ths page.)
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"Your job as a parent is not to control your teen's behavior, but to facilitate your teen's increasing ability to control his/her own behavior."
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"Never devise a consequence that you can't enforce."
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"If it's not broke, don't fix it--set limits only in areas that are proving problematic. If your kid is doing okay, leave him/her alone."
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Getting Started With Jean Walbridge
Jean Walbridge is glad to receive inquiries regarding her services.
To contact Jean Walbridge:
phone: 847 926 8328
postal address:
Jean Walbridge, LCSW
1803 St. John's
Highland Park, IL 60035
USA
email:
jbridge@parentingadolescents.com
You can visit Jean's web site at http://www.parentingadolescents.com .
