Parenting counselling for the hard stretches of raising a child
Parenting counselling gives mothers and fathers a calm space with a psychologist to work through stress, conflict with a child or teen, discipline, screen time and school pressure. Come alone or as two parents. Online, in Malayalam or English, with the option to pay after a single session.
64 Google reviews
What our clients say
I had tried several therapy sessions in the past without seeing any noticeable changes in my thought patterns. Then, I decided to give Ello Mind a try. My therapist, Teresa, is very friendly, and I was able to connect with her perspective right away. She has already helped me make a positive change during one of the lowest points in my life.
Dhanya James
11 months ago
Taking therapy at Ello Mind is one of the good decisions I have taken so far, and it has helped me a lot.
Krishnapriya G
4 months ago
Experienced team of clinical psychologists who provide excellent services. I’d highly recommend anyone who’d wish to seek help in need, be it something in your personal or professional life. Sessions are flexible, they provide online and offline services, information shared is kept extremely confidential.
Irene James
10 months ago
Ello Mind is a really good centre for mental health and wellness. From the very first session, they created a safe and supportive space where I felt comfortable opening up. I highly recommend Ello Mind and Ms Teresa to anyone looking for compassionate, professional, and effective therapy.
Sree Gouri Soman
a year ago
I had a great experience with Ellomind. I worked with Teresa and she is a wonderful therapist. Helped me get my thoughts sorted and gave some effective exercises that helped me on my mental wellness journey. I am giving this feedback a few months after my sessions ended and still feel great. The effects of the therapy are long lasting.
Aswathi T P
2 years ago
Teresa was able to correctly identify that I had issues with confidence and assertiveness using the right questions and exercises. She then taught me CBT frameworks and techniques that helped me improve my self-image. Teresa is very open to receiving feedback and integrating it into subsequent sessions.
Sidharth Praveen
2 years ago
I’ve been taking sessions at Ello Mind since 2023, and Teresa has helped me overcome many things. She doesn’t just give advice — she helps you understand yourself better. She listens patiently and really tries to understand what you’re going through. I genuinely appreciate her work and highly recommend Ello Mind.
Mohammed Althaf
a month ago
10/10 experience. Really good place, I felt super comfortable opening up here. Ellomind gave me a safe space to talk and feel understood. The therapists are kind and supportive, I always leave feeling lighter. Honestly the best decision I made for myself this year.
Gayatri Nair
5 months ago
Starting couple therapy with Teresa has been one of the best decisions for us. Therapy helped me calm down, reflect on my own patterns, and recognize how both of us were struggling and growing together. It truly brought more clarity, understanding, and peace into our relationship.
Kavya Das
3 months ago
What is parenting counselling?
Parenting counselling, sometimes called parental counseling, is therapy for parents. You meet a psychologist to talk about what is happening at home, understand the patterns behind it, and plan what to try next. The focus is on you as a parent: what you notice, how you respond, what wears you down, and what you want family life to feel like.
Parents spend more hours with their children than any professional ever will, and small changes in how the adults at home respond can make a real difference, so working with parents directly is often a practical place to start. Because this is parent counselling online, you can join from home once the children are asleep. Sessions are 50 minutes over a private video call, and you can come on your own or with your partner.
What parents bring to sessions
You do not need a crisis to start. Most parents come because something keeps repeating.
How parenting counselling helps
Conflict, discipline and calmer evenings
Your psychologist helps you understand what sits underneath the repeated fights, then plan consistent limits you can hold without shouting, threats or guilt afterwards.
One thing a parent might try: A homework-time plan agreed in the afternoon, not in the middle of the fight: a fixed start time, one task at a time, and a rule that when voices rise, you both step away for five minutes and come back to the same task.
Screen time and phones
Rather than a rule handed down, you work out family agreements that fit your child's age, are realistic to enforce, and that you are willing to follow yourself. With teenagers, the focus shifts to negotiating rather than policing.
One thing a parent might try: A written phone agreement that your 14-year-old helps draft and signs: phones away at dinner, charging outside the bedroom at night, and the same rule for the adults. You agree in advance what happens when it is broken, so nobody decides in anger.
School and exam pressure
Many parents carry their own fear about marks, entrance exams and the future, and children feel it. Sessions help you support your child's effort without adding to the pressure, and handle results calmly, whichever way they go.
One thing a parent might try: Swapping "how many marks?" for "what was hardest today?", and agreeing with your child before results come out how you will talk about them, including what you will say to relatives who ask.
Your child's anxiety or behaviour, from your side
When a child is anxious, withdrawn or acting out, the way adults respond shapes a lot of what happens next. You learn ways to respond that help, and how to look after yourself while you do it.
One thing a parent might try: When worry makes your child want to skip school or a class, naming the fear out loud ("you are scared about the test, that makes sense") and agreeing one small step forward together, instead of either letting them stay home or pushing them out of the door.
Co-parenting
Whether you live together or apart, parents who agree on the basics give children a steadier home. Sessions help you settle the big decisions, present a united front, and keep disagreements between the adults.
One thing a parent might try: Three house rules both parents enforce the same way, written down, and a habit of settling disagreements about them later, in private, rather than in front of the children.
Is this for you?
Every evening ends in an argument
Homework, phones, bedtime: the same fight, every day, and you are tired of being the one who shouts.
Your teenager has gone quiet
You want to stay close without pushing them further away, and you are no longer sure what to say.
You and your partner parent differently
One is strict, one is soft, and the children have noticed. You need a plan you both stand behind.
You are doing most of it alone
You are a single parent, separated, or your partner works in the Gulf, and every decision and every hard evening lands on you.
Your parents or in-laws parent differently
A grandparent undoes the bedtime rule, comments on your discipline in front of the children, or the children have learned to go to them when you say no.
You are worried about your child, and about yourself
Anxiety, school refusal or angry outbursts at home, and the worry is starting to wear you down too.
Sessions for you, and support for your teen
Parenting counselling at ElloMind is for parents. If your teenager would like a space of their own, our therapy for teenagers aged 13 to 19 gives them private sessions with a psychologist, while you keep working on your side here. The two fit together well: your teen works on what is going on for them, and you work on how home responds.
For a younger child who needs their own assessment or therapy, your paediatrician can refer you to a child psychologist. Parenting counselling can run alongside that, so you have support while you help your child.
If your child has, or may have, ADHD, autism or a learning difficulty:an assessment is the first step, and it sits with a developmental paediatrician, a child psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist who assesses children. Your paediatrician or your child's school can point you to one. Alongside that, parenting counselling gives you a place for your side of it: the worry while you wait, disagreements at home about what to do, comments from relatives, and your own tiredness.
When you and your partner disagree about parenting and it has started to strain the relationship itself, couples counselling can help with both. If you are parenting through a separation, see divorce counselling and co-parenting support.
Parent counselling in a Kerala family
Grandparents and discipline.In many Kerala homes, grandparents live with the family or nearby and help raise the children. That help is real, and it can also mean two sets of rules: the phone that is allowed at a grandparent's house, the scolding you are told is too harsh, the child who goes to a grandparent whenever you say no. In sessions you work out which rules matter most to you, and plan a calm, respectful way to say so, for example agreeing with your mother or mother-in-law who has the final word on bedtime and phones.
When a parent works in the Gulf. When one parent is abroad, the parent at home often carries every rule and every hard evening alone, while the parent abroad parents through a video call. Visits home can unsettle things: the returning parent may want to make up for lost time with treats, or arrive as the strict one who sorts everything out. Sessions help both of you agree on the same few rules, and plan how the parent abroad stays involved in ordinary days, not only in decisions and discipline. Because sessions are online, the parent abroad can take part too.
Exams and comparison. Tuition from early classes, entrance coaching, and relatives who compare marks at every function all reach the child through the parents. You can work on what you want your child to hear about exams at home, and how to answer the relatives without passing the pressure on.
What your first parenting counselling session looks like
The first session is a 50-minute video call, on your own or with your partner. Your psychologist asks about your family: your child's age, who lives at home, what a hard day looks like, what you have already tried and what happened. They will also ask how you are coping yourself, because that matters as much.
You do not need to arrive with the right words or a diagnosis. Towards the end, you agree on one or two priorities, such as calmer homework time or a plan for phones, and you leave with one specific thing to try at home that week. Later sessions look at what happened when you tried it, what worked, and what to adjust.
Looking after yourself as a parent
A parent who is exhausted, anxious or constantly on edge has less patience to give, and that is human, not a failing. Some parents find that their own stress is the first thing to work on, and that includes new parents for whom the first year with a baby has been harder than anyone said it would be. A short stress self-check can help you notice how much you are carrying, and our article on stress and how it shows up explains the signs. If worry has started to take over your days, our page on anxiety treatment describes how one-to-one sessions help, and individual therapy is always open to you on its own.
If you are worried about safety
If your child talks about wanting to die or hurting themselves, or anyone at home is in danger, act now rather than waiting for a session. If someone is in immediate danger, call Emergency Services on 112. Tele-MANAS offers mental health support on 1800-89-14416 (24/7), for you or for your child. More options, including ways to reach out without speaking aloud, are on our crisis and support helplines page.
Simple, transparent pricing
Option to pay after a single session
Parenting counselling is booked as a regular session, with no package to commit to. See session fees and plans for current prices.
Parenting counselling: frequently asked questions
Parenting counselling is talk therapy for parents. You work with a psychologist on the parts of raising a child that feel stuck: repeated conflict, discipline, screen time, school pressure, a child's anxiety or behaviour, or disagreements between parents. The sessions are about you as a parent and what you can change at home.
These sessions are for parents. If your teenager, aged 13 to 19, would like their own space with a psychologist, therapy for teenagers is a separate service. For a child under 13 who needs their own assessment or therapy, your paediatrician can refer you to a child psychologist, and parenting counselling here can still support you alongside that.
Yes. Both parents can attend the same session, which helps when you want to agree on rules and responses. One parent can also come alone, and many do.
No. Parenting counselling is non-judgemental. Most parents who come are already trying hard. The work is to understand what is happening and find approaches that suit your child and your family, without blame.
Yes. Screen time is one of the most common topics. You work out realistic limits for your child's age, how to introduce them without a battle, and how to keep talking with your teen while you hold them.
Yes, sessions are private and confidential. Nothing is passed to your child's school or to other family members. Confidentiality has one important limit, which applies to every psychologist: if what you share suggests that a child, you or someone else is at serious risk of harm, your psychologist may need to act, or share information with the right people, to keep them safe.
Yes. Sessions are available in Malayalam and English, and many parents use a mix of both. It is easier to describe what happens at home in the language you speak at home.
Often a few sessions are enough to plan a new approach and try it out, with follow-up sessions to adjust. Your psychologist suggests a sensible number with you, and there is no package to commit to.
Yes. Sessions are online, so parents in the Gulf or anywhere else can attend, including when one parent is abroad and the other is at home in Kerala.
Who you will talk to
Parenting counselling at ElloMind is with Teresa James, a Consultant Psychologist (MSc Psychology, Clinical Psychology) who works with parents of children of any age, from toddlers to teenagers, in Malayalam or English. When you book your first session, tell us a little about your family. You can also meet our psychologists first.
A calmer home starts with one conversation
Bring what is happening at home, and leave with something concrete to try this week.