When You and Your Co-Parent Cannot Agree on the Hard Stuff
Free 15-Minute Consultations • Online Therapy Across 42 PSYPACT States
(512) 240-2633
You woke up this morning still carrying the fight from the night before. The kind of fight that does not really end, just pauses. You can still hear the sharpness in his voice. You can still feel how your own voice sounded, defensive, tight, trying to hold a line you were not even sure how to explain anymore.
It is the same fight. It keeps being the same fight. How to handle your son's anger, or your daughter's anxiety, or the homework battles, or the screen time, or the consequences, or the college kid who is struggling and you cannot agree on how to help. He thinks you are too soft. You think he is too hard. And there is your kid, somewhere in the middle of it, the very young person you are both trying to help.
You love your kids. You love your partner. You used to feel like the two of you were on the same team, even when things were hard. Now it feels like you are on opposite sides of something, and your kid's behavior keeps being the thing you cannot stop pulling at. Each of you so sure you are right. Each of you a little less sure with every fight.
The stress is everywhere now. It is in the air at dinner. It is in the way you brace before you bring something up. It is in the way your kid has started watching the two of you, learning that something is wrong, even when no one is yelling. The whole family is feeling it.
Underneath the fights, something else is still alive. The fact that you both still care this much. The fact that you are both fighting because you love this kid, not because you do not. The fact that you are reading this means some part of you still believes the two of you can find your way back.
You can.
Little Dove Psychology is a small group practice. The work described on this page is provided by our three clinicians: Dr. Kristin Kroll, Dr. Meghan Kraenbring Comerford, and Antonette Anuwe. Meet our team →
The work is grounded in evidence-based approaches: parent coaching, behavioral interventions tailored to your kid's specific needs, family communication work, and skills-based tools. In practice, that usually looks like:
This is not about deciding who was right. It is about getting both of you back to working with each other instead of around each other.
Our team works with families of kids from elementary school through college. The dynamic between parents matters at every developmental stage.
Yes. This is one of the most common reasons families reach out at this stage. College kids hit hard moments, and parents often disagree about how much to step in. The work is just as relevant for parents of an 18, 20, or 22 year old as it is for parents of a younger child.
Not in the traditional sense. What I do is parent-focused work for couples who are co-parenting and have hit a wall on a specific issue with their child or college student. The work is centered on the kid.
This happens. The work can still start with one parent and shift the dynamic at home, sometimes meaningfully.
Yes. The work is just as relevant for separated, divorced, or never-married co-parents who are trying to align on how to handle a shared child or college student.
If there is any concern about safety in your home, please reach out to a domestic violence hotline (the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233) before scheduling therapy. If your fights are tense and frequent but not unsafe, that is exactly the kind of dynamic this work is built to shift.
Yes. Online sessions can actually make scheduling easier when both parents are working and the family is busy. They also make it possible to include a college student who is away at school.
Family therapy is a clinical approach that treats the family as a system rather than focusing on one person in isolation. Sessions can include parents, kids, or the whole family depending on what the family needs. The work focuses on communication patterns, conflict dynamics, and how the people in a family affect each other — instead of treating the symptoms one person is carrying as if they exist in a vacuum. Family therapy is often used for divorce transitions, co-parenting conflict, blended family adjustment, and situations where a child’s struggles are connected to what is happening at home.
Teenagers rarely open up on demand or during direct interrogations. What tends to work better: low-pressure environments (car rides, side-by-side activities, walking the dog), patience with silence, asking specific small questions instead of big general ones (“how was the test?” rather than “how was your day?”), and not reacting strongly when something hard finally comes out. If your teen has been pulling away for weeks and your small attempts at reconnecting are not working, family therapy can help. Sometimes the issue is not that your teen will not talk; it is that the pattern between you needs a third party to help reset.
Some signs that family therapy in Austin could help: the same arguments keep replaying with no resolution, one or more family members has gone silent or emotionally withdrawn, a major life transition (divorce, blending, relocation, illness) has changed the family dynamics, your child is showing behavioral changes that you suspect are connected to family stress, or you find yourself walking on eggshells around certain family members. You do not need to be in crisis to benefit from family therapy — preventive family work is some of the most effective.
A first family therapy session usually involves all the participating family members together, with a focus on understanding the family’s current dynamics, history, and what each person hopes will change. After the first session, the structure varies — sometimes everyone meets together, sometimes parents meet alone, sometimes a single family member meets one-on-one. At Little Dove Psychology, family therapy in Austin tends to alternate between parent coaching sessions and full family sessions, depending on what is most useful in any given week.
Most families work with us for 3-6 months on a specific transition (divorce, blending, school crisis), or 9-12 months for deeper systemic patterns. We track progress with measurable outcomes — usually you will feel real shifts within the first 4-6 sessions, and at 8-12 sessions, the family’s overall communication patterns start to look different. Family therapy in Austin is not open-ended; we are working toward specific goals, and we will discuss with you when the work is approaching natural completion.
Sometimes, briefly. Family therapy often surfaces conversations the family has been avoiding, which can feel intense in the short term. The clinician’s job is to make those conversations productive rather than destructive — naming patterns, slowing down reactions, modeling skills, and giving each family member room to be heard. Most families report that arguments at home feel less explosive within 4-6 weeks because the underlying tension is being addressed rather than ignored.
Yes. We frequently work with families where parents are post-divorce and not on speaking terms. The work in these cases focuses on (1) building a co-parenting communication system that does not require warm conversation (often through written communication tools or parallel parenting structures), (2) helping the kids navigate two households without becoming messengers, and (3) coaching each parent separately on what is age-appropriate to share with their kid about the family’s transitions.
We can still help. Often we start with the willing parent in parent coaching, building skills they can use at home and in their interactions with the other parent. As family dynamics shift — usually they do — the second parent sometimes becomes more open to joining. We can also work directly with the child or teen separately, and many families find that the kid’s clinical work eventually pulls both parents into the picture. Family therapy in Austin meets the family where they are, not where they should be.
We are a virtual practice — all family therapy sessions are online. Many families find this works better than in-person because it eliminates childcare, transportation, and missed work. Each parent can join from where they are (especially helpful in two-household custody situations after divorce), kids often feel safer in their own space, and we can include people across distances when needed (a college-age sibling, a grandparent, a step-parent in a different city).
Little Dove Psychology is a private-pay practice. We do not bill insurance directly, but we provide superbills you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement. Most PPO plans reimburse a portion of family therapy fees. Coverage levels vary — typically 40-70% of session cost after meeting your out-of-network deductible. We help families navigate the superbill process and can answer questions about coverage during your free 15-minute consultation.
Every family looks different, and these answers cannot cover every situation. The simplest next step is a free 15-minute consultation with our team. We can talk through what is happening in your family, what family therapy in Austin would actually look like for you, and whether Little Dove Psychology is the right fit for the work you need to do. No commitment, no sales pitch — just a real conversation about what might help your family move forward.