Family Therapy in Austin for Parents Who Disagree
Free 15-Minute Consultations • Virtual Sessions Across Texas & 42 States
(512) 240-2633You 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.
I'm Kristin, a licensed psychologist and the founder of Little Dove Psychology in Austin, Texas. I work with families where the parents love their kid fiercely and have ended up in a tug-of-war about how to help her, whether she is six, sixteen, or in her first year of college.
In my work with families in Austin, I help parents stop fighting about the kid and start working as a team again. What makes my approach a little different is that I take both parents seriously. The soft one is not soft because they are weak. The hard one is not hard because they are mean. Each of you is responding to your child with everything you know, everything you grew up with, and everything you fear most. My job is to help you understand why each of you is doing what you are doing, and how to build a parenting plan that actually works for the young person in front of you.
Many parents tell me what shifts first is not the kid, but the conversation between them. Once they stop being on opposite sides, the young person starts settling. That is the part that gets me every time.
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.
I work 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. Virtual 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.