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Have you ever felt like you had to choose between understanding your child and actually holding the limit? Between empathy and authority? Between connection and correction?
Allison Zangari Arnett — Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and certified Emotionally Focused Family, Couple, and Individual Therapist with over a decade of experience — is here to tell you: you do not have to choose.
In this episode Allison and Michelle explore one of the most powerful reframes in Emotionally Focused Family Therapy — that you can validate your child's feeling without validating their behavior. That connection before correction is not softness — it is strategy. And that what looks like a screen battle is almost never really about screens.
Allison also brings something rare to this conversation: she is a brand new mom of a 6-month-old, which means she is navigating this work personally in a whole new way — and her honesty about her own reactivity, her own fear of getting it wrong, and her own need for support makes this one of the most human and relatable conversations on the podcast.
In this episode you'll learn:
- The core EFFT reframe — you can validate your child's feeling without validating their behavior — and what that sounds like in a real screen moment
- What connection before correction means in practice — and why front-loading with connection before you correct changes what your child can actually hear
- Why your child's screen battle is almost never really about screens — and what it is actually about underneath
- What to do when your child does not trust your repair attempts — and why that mistrust is actually a sign of healthy vulnerability
- Why rejection from your child is one of the hardest kinds of rejection there is — and how to resource yourself through it
- What repair actually sounds like — keeping your side of the street clean without making it about your child's behavior
- Why it is never too late — not at 12, not at 17, not at 30 — and why Allison would have to become an accountant if repair was not possible
Topics: Emotionally Focused Family Therapy · EFFT · EFT for families · EFCT · connection before correction · validate the feeling not the behavior · screen time and limits · parent-child repair · blended families · divorce and parenting · high-conflict families · parenting teens · limit setting with empathy · gentle parenting · peaceful parenting · conscious parenting · attachment parenting · parent emotional regulation · repair after yelling · family therapy Tampa
Guest: Allison Zangari Arnett is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She is a certified Emotionally Focused Family Therapist, Couple Therapist, and Individual Therapist. She has over a decade of experience working with individuals, couples and families who are struggling to communicate and reconnect in their relationships. She specializes in divorce/blended families, navigating parenting concerns, boundaries and limits for children, high conflict families, and increasing closeness in family relationships. She owns a private practice in Tampa, Florida, and is a wife and mother of a 6 month old baby girl.
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This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health treatment. Compassionate Heart Parenting does not provide psychotherapy services.
Join me each week for a tail from the trenches of parenting burnout and how I (and you) can use mindfulness, mediation and self-compassion to find your inner calm and a little more sanity in your parenting.
You’ll get a story from my heart and a quick win you can use the same day.
A free gift for you: the RAGE Break, a free guided audio pause for when you are about to lose or have just lost it with your kids and you need a moment to regroup. Find the audio download in the links. I created the Rage Break because it is exactly what I needed when I was struggling with anger and yelling in parenting.
This story was brought to you by “Yelling to Connecting.” If you or someone you know struggles with yelling at your kids, losing it, or being constantly on edge this course will be a helpful tool.
A reminder: This content is intended for educational purposes only and should not be used as a replacement for private psychotherapy services. Compassionate Heart Mindful Life does not provide psychotherapy services in any capacity.
I am a therapist but I am not your therapist and this is not therapy and should not be a substitute for mental health treatment. If you need mental health treatment please find a qualified professional in your area.
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