Accepting your child for who he or she is

Psychologist Fay Van Der Kay-Levinson, PhD, shares advice for parents on how to accept your child as he or she is in life
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Accepting your child for who he or she is

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When a parent does not accept a child the way they are, it sets up a cascade of disasters. Disappointment leads to depression. And you have a child who forever tries to fit a mold that they cannot fit. And so what you hope for is to educate that parent that who they have is actually quite exciting and wonderful. It's like, I call it the fruit bowl theory of life. When you have an apple, that apple can be phenomenal. But maybe you wanted an orange. And no matter how hard that apple tries, it will never be an orange. It would be a second-rate orange. So the job of the parent is to say, maybe, "I got a kumquat." Maybe your child is a little bit quirky. Yet your task is to make it okay to be a kumquat. And the minute you do that, your lives shift dramatically.

Psychologist Fay Van Der Kay-Levinson, PhD, shares advice for parents on how to accept your child as he or she is in life

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Fay Van Der Kar-Levinson, PhD

Psychologist

For more than 30 years, Dr. Van Der Kar-Levinson has helped parents to navigate the maze known as parenting. She acts as both a guide and a resource for parents as they deal with the joys and challenges of raising children.

Dr. Van Der Kar-Levinson’s passion is to help parents to help their children thrive at each stage of development. She works to identify each child’s unique temperament and learning style in order to create and implement effective behavior strategies. Dr. Van Der Kar-Levinson is an expert at helping families deal with life changes such as birth of siblings, changing schools, divorce, and death.

Dr. Van Der Kar-Levinson also guides parents through the process of determining the best school for their children, and has co-authored two books on that topic, Choosing the Right School for Your Child and Secrets to School Success.   

For the past three decades Dr. Van Der Kar-Levinson has lectured and consulted at private as well as public schools. She has served as an adjunct professor at both the University of California at Los Angeles and Pepperdine University.

Dr. Van Der Kar-Levinson earned her PhD and MA at the University of California at Los Angeles where she studied and trained with some of the nation’s top researchers and clinicians in the fields of child development and clinical psychology. She is a lifetime member of the American Psychological Association.

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