Parenting is the ultimate mirror. Your child's behavior often triggers deep parts of your own history. This can be an opportunity to work through your past to help regulate your child.
At Brooklyn Qi, I approach parenting support through the lens of Co-Regulation. A child takes their lead from you. If you are authentic, and able to receive as opposed to react, your child will feel safe to express themselves. My work focuses on stabilizing your internal environment so you can act as a steady "thermostat" for your child, transforming conflict into communication.
Reexamining Yourself.
Often, the things that trigger us most in our children are the things we were not allowed to express as children ourselves.
- Shadow Work: Identifying why specific behaviors trigger intense rage or anxiety in you.
- Breaking the Cycle: Consciously choosing different responses (that are new and learned coping skills) than the ones you were raised with, without falling into guilt or shame.
Managing the Meltdown.
- Sensory Awareness: Understanding if your child (or you) is overstimulated or seeking stimulation, and how to adjust the environment.
- The "Pause": Somatic tools to drop your own blood pressure in the heat of the moment so you can respond rather than react.
- Repair: Learning how to repair the rupture after you lose your cool (because you will). This is where resilience is built.
Common Questions
What is co-regulation and why does it matter?
Co-regulation refers to the process by which a regulated adult nervous system helps calm and organize a dysregulated child's nervous system. Young children do not yet have the neurological capacity to self-regulate — they depend entirely on the adults around them to provide that function. When a parent can stay grounded in the face of a meltdown, the child's nervous system borrows from that stability. When the parent is dysregulated, the child's state typically escalates. This is not a moral judgment — it is neuroscience. The work of parenting support is helping you build that regulated ground to stand on.
Is this therapy for my child?
No. The work at Brooklyn Qi focuses entirely on the parent, not the child. The premise is that the most effective way to support a child's development and behavior is to work on the adult's own nervous system, triggers, and patterns. Liz does not assess, diagnose, or treat children. If a child has clinical behavioral, developmental, or mental health needs, she will refer to appropriate specialists.
My child has big emotions and frequent meltdowns. Can this help?
Yes — though not by directly addressing the child's behavior. By helping you become a more regulated, less reactive presence, you change the relational field your child is operating in. Many parents report significant reductions in the frequency and intensity of their child's meltdowns after working on their own regulation — not because the child changed first, but because the parent did.
How is this different from the New Family Coaching page?
New Family Coaching is focused on the identity and relational shifts of the first one to two years after a child is born — matrescence, partnership strain, the loss of former self. Parenting Support is focused on the ongoing daily practice of raising children of any age — managing triggering behavior, building communication tools, doing shadow work around the patterns you inherited. The two often overlap and can be combined in a single coaching engagement.
Serving Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Gowanus, Kensington, Fort Greene, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Sunset Park, Downtown Brooklyn, and neighboring communities in Brooklyn and NYC