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PARENT, TEEN AND FAMILY COUNSELLOR

Welcome to Life Upgrade!

Life Upgrade is founded on the belief that our family home needs to be a safe, supportive, and healthy environment.
I work with parents to help them to build and maintain healthy, loving, and meaningful relationships with themselves, their partner, and their children.

WHY PEOPLE TRUST US

How many times have you thought...

"Parenting wasn't supposed to be this hard."

You knew about the sleepless nights, you heard about the terrible two’s, and the teen years, well you figured they would be rough. But the tantrums of a six year old? The power struggles with your ten year old? Your teen’s ability to go days without looking up from their phone to acknowledge that you exist? No one prepared you for that.

The yelling matches and arguments you have with your school age child are exhausting. The stress, guilt and sleepless nights from trying your best at parenting are exhausting.

Perhaps your teen is struggling in ways that you don’t know how to deal with? Anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, self -harming, addiction, isolating themselves, these are just a few of the challenges that parents are experiencing and they’re overwhelming.

You may have a child with complex needs (ADHD, ODD) or perhaps other challenging issues that cause you to doubt yourself as a parent?

No matter what your situation is, parenting is the hardest job you will ever have and most of us haven’t been trained or educated in the most effective ways to parent.

It’s hard to acknowledge that we need help, but think about this:

What other job will you ever have that is as important as this one, but you don’t need training for it?

Fact: We all need education and support to become the best parents that we can.
Fact: You love your child
Fact: You are doing the best you (currently) know how to do as a parent
Fact: Your child misbehaves and has challenging behaviors at times.
Fact: You’ve tried everything (that you’re currently aware of)
Fact: You are not a ‘bad’ parent and your child is not a ‘bad’ child
Fact: PARENTING IS HARD
Let me tell you another fact, your child is ‘misbehaving’ because they need your help, not because they want to disappoint you or want to fight with you. They need you to effectively respond to them in a certain way and to teach them certain skills they are lacking to be able to follow expectations, limits, and rules.

Leading Specialist

Michael is an experienced counsellor with a long standing career of more than 15 years.

Supportive Environment

By witnessing the challenges parents face and the struggles children can experience, Michael offers a unique approach to counselling in various situations.

Professional Treatment

Teen, Parent and Family Counselling through in-person or virtual sessions 60 minutes in length.
How do you effectively respond? How do you teach these skills and effectively meet your child’s needs?
This is where I come in, I can help you to Upgrade Your Life.

My fifteen years of extensive experience allows me to teach you the effective skills, tools, and strategies that you need as a parent; to be able to address these challenging behaviors confidently and effectively, while strengthening your parent-child bond at the same time.

I know, it sounds impossible but it is absolutely possible (the word impossible says that itself: I’m possible) and it’s not as hard as you may think.

This does require you to do things a little differently though.

So, first thing’s first – I want you to start here:

“I’m a good parent who is willing and able to try something new”.

“I am willing to work with someone to create and maintain a healthier and happier home”

“I want to learn the effective parenting strategies to create and maintain a healthy parent-child relationship”

“I am not a ‘bad’ parent and my child is not a ‘bad’ child.

The reality is that we all need at least one person that we can turn to for constructive and non- judgmental support and advice. This is the reason that Life Upgrade was created.

Free Consult Call
“There are no individuals in the world, only
fragments of families” – Carl Whitaker
This quote really resonates with me after working with children and Teens since 2006. Unfortunately, the reality is that there are many things that can happen to us in our lives that causes emotional pain for us.

Typically, we can remain resilient in the face of life’s challenges but only when we have a safe, supportive, and helpful parent/caregiver to come to when we are feeling stressed out and emotionally overwhelmed.

The hard part as a parent is to know how to effectively respond when we become emotionally overwhelmed ourselves. It is really challenging when we see our children experiencing emotional pain or when they are exhibiting the behavioral signs of trauma, anxiety, depression or when they have a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

Trust me, a lot of us parents have experienced trauma in our own lives, and this interferes with our ability to show up as the best version of ourselves in our parent-child relationship.

REMEMBER, YOU ARE A NOT A BAD PARENT, YOU JUST NEED SOME HELP, WE ALL DO.

Family is important because  this is the place that children receive their foundation for their life’s journey. Every single child craves belonging, acceptance and connection within a family. This is what your child needs, they need a healthy parent-child relationship and a safe, supportive, and healthy home environment.

Our brains are wired for connection. We need to feel loved, safe, and cared for to be able to thrive in our daily lives.

It has been scientifically proven that when we feel connected, we live longer, healthier, and happier lives.

Unfortunately, we often experience fractures and ruptures within our families and relationships. Although this is quite common, when they go un-repaired this results in disconnection within our relationships and ourselves. When we feel disconnected, we go into survival mode and simply attempt to get through life.

At Life Upgrade, I will help you, your children and your family move from surviving to thriving in their relationships and thus their lives!

A BRIEF LOOK AT THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTACHMENT (PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP)
We all know how babies are made and we all know that when babies are born, they are completely dependent on their parents for survival.

In a lot of cases, it is the mother, but it can also be another primary caregiver who initially provides food, comfort, and love, whom the infant develops a primary attachment with.

An infant also receives a sense of safety and wellbeing when their primary caregiver can also provide a consist and predictable response to when the baby cries to show that they need something.

The baby is saying ‘help me’, and the way the primary caregiver responds and helps will determine what kind of an attachment this baby will have with this primary caregiver.

This attachment can be healthy or unhealthy and is determined by the parent’s actions when their child is an infant and can change as the child gets older and older based on the interactions between the child and their parents.

Attachment research has shown that the parent-child relationship will determine and impact the following factors for the child:

– How a child decides to explore the world around them (confidently or anxiously)
-Social skills
-Emotional regulation
-Brain (Cognitive) development
-Resilience to stress
-Ability to make sense of their life and the world around them
– Their ability to create and maintain meaningful and healthy relationships with other family/friends

We have often heard the debate of Nature vs Nurture and the truth is that this debate is misleading.

Nature (genes and their regulation) requires nurture (experience) for a child’s optimal development. It is not one or the other. Genes and experience interact with each other to shape who our children will become. Certain genes could remain dormant or be activated based on experiences.

Essentially, what this means is that how we choose to nurture our children and the experiences we provide for them will be determine how the brain develops for a child.

For parents, an important message from this research is that the human brain is designed to be ready for healthy and normal development and its never too late to hit a giant reset button as a parent because Neuroscience has proven that the brain can re-wire itself with new, positive, and consistent experiences.

We have a lot of power and control over how our child will be, so remember before you blame your child for the behavior, you must realize that you have played a role in this as well.

When you become an EMPOWERED PARENT, you can provide a secure attachment and a healthy parent-child relationship for your children, to best optimize their chances to have a happy life.

With a secure attachment a child will feel connected and safe in a way where they realize that their parent unconditionally loves them, no matter what they do.

I can help and support you along your parenting journey which will allow you to change your parenting style, your attachment style, and how you provide a parent-child relationship to help your teen or child to overcome their struggles.

Yes, there are other factors such as other parents, family members, siblings, friends, and peers, but you cannot control other people, you can only control yourself.

Uncontrollable Factors vs Controllable Factors –
We want to focus our energy on what we can control.
I will teach you how to parent yourself, to be able to effectively  parent your child in healthy ways.
I will teach you how to create and maintain a healthy parent-child relationship.
I will help you learn to effectively parent, instead of emotionally parent.

“You don’t have to do it alone”

How many times have you said, “I’m doing the best that I can!”? And while you probably are doing the best that you can, have you tried doing something different?

We are often presented with challenges throughout our lives and while we can get through it alone – to thrive, we all require some help.

Reaching out for help does not mean you’re weak or incapable, it means that you’re being brave in trying something different… and that takes strength.

Live A Happier Life, Get Started Today .

Connect with Michael Larson

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WHAT WE OFFER FOR YOU

Counselling Service

Addiction

Is your child obsessed with their devices?
Are you or your child using drugs, alcohol, or food to numb out and suppress emotions? Is addiction impacting your ability to parent?
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Anger

Are you constantly yelling at your kids? Are you getting mad at the people around you? Is your child threatening you, breaking things or hitting you? Does your home feel unsafe?
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Anxiety

Is your child consumed by worries and fear?
Do you and/or your child frequently think about worst case scenario? Does anxiety negatively impact your parenting ability? Are you and/or your child missing out on what life has to offer?
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Co-Parenting/Divorce

Are you dealing with a challenging Ex-Partner? Do you require conflict resolution? Looking for ways to emotionally support your children? Looking for ways to emotionally support yourself? Are lawyers, legal bills and the courts stressing you out?
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Diagnosis

Does your child have a diagnosis of some kind, and has complex needs? Does your own diagnosis impact you ability to parent the way you want to?
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Depression

Are you and/or your child diagnosed with depression and this is impacting your parent-child relationship?
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Stress

When you’re stressed… Do you engage in “fight” such as yelling, arguing, punishing your child? Do you find yourself going into “flight” by avoiding and ignoring an issue with your child? Do you “freeze” and end up giving in to their demands?
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Trauma

Has your family endured an unexpected tragedy, a death in the family, a divorce?
A traumatic incident or incidents can lead to ‘scary’ and ‘challenging’ behaviors. Often our children’s challenging behaviors are a result of unprocessed and unhealed Trauma. Often, we cannot parent the way we want to because of our own childhood trauma and emotional triggers.
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