Support for parents and caregivers

Blackbird Health offers support for parents from coaching, to therapy, to regular progress updates for kids in care.

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Getting support for yourself is one of the most effective ways to help your child.

When a child is struggling, the instinct is to focus entirely on what's happening with them.

But home is where treatment either takes hold or doesn't.

When families come to Blackbird Health, one of the first things our clinicians look at is what's happening around the child, not just inside them. And that’s because a lot of the most important work for children happens between sessions.

WHAT WE OFFER

Meaningful support for parents

Individual therapy for parents

Parent therapy is for when your own stress, anxiety, or patterns are becoming part of what’s keeping things stuck at home.

This is individual therapy focused on you. Using evidence-based approaches, you’ll build skills to feel more regulated, supported, and in control, so you can show up the way you want to for your family.

These sessions can help you:

  • Refill your energy so you’re not running on empty

  • Recognize patterns (like anxiety, perfectionism, or over-accommodating) and how they show up at home

  • Stay calmer and more consistent in difficult moments

  • Build practical tools to manage stress in real time

  • Work through your own triggers that get activated in parenting

  • “I finally felt like I had a plan for how to respond to my child.”

  • “Now I know what to say during a meltdown”

  • "We're on the same page now and aren't fighting about what to do"

Parent Coaching

Get tools for the real moments when you don’t know how to respond.

These sessions can help you:

  • Break down real-life situations like homework battles, tough transitions, or setting routines

  • Understand what's driving these behaviors

  • Identify whether sensory or executive function factors may be contributing

  • Identify specific strategies to try right away

For parents with kids receiving care at Blackbird Health, your first session is covered by insurance. All other sessions are $150 for 60 minutes.

For families of current patients: to request a coaching session, log into your Blackbird Health portal and click ‘Request an Appointment’.

Ongoing progress updates and support while your child is in care

Based on your your child’s age, your child’s care team will regularly touch base with you to update you on their progress and how you can support them at home to reinforce skill building.

3-5x

When a parent struggles with anxiety, children are 3-5 times more likely to have an anxiety disorder.

Helpful guides for parents and caregivers

  • Mom with young daughters

    How Parent Mental Health Affects Kids

    If you’ve asked yourself whether your stress is affecting your child, the answer is yes. But maybe not in the way you think. Read more

  • young adult looking sad

    Failure to Launch

    What It Really Means When Your Adult Child Is Struggling—And How to Help. Read more

  • three kids on a couch

    Support for the Whole Family

    How Blackbird helped three boys and their parents reach mental health goals together and as individuals. Read more

Frequently asked questions

  • You don't have to be in therapy yourself, but being involved in your child's care makes a real difference. Research has found that parent-only interventions can be quite effective and in some cases, working with parents alone produced outcomes equal to direct child therapy. At Blackbird, we build parent involvement into treatment from the start.

  • Yes, and the research on this is consistent. Children regulate their emotions partly through the adults around them. When a parent is chronically stressed or anxious, a child's nervous system picks up on that. That doesn't mean stress causes problems automatically, but it does mean your emotional state is part of your child's environment in a real, physiological way.

  • Stress is temporary, like a hard week, a difficult stretch, a season that lifts. Burnout is when the depletion stops lifting. It shows up as a shorter fuse than you used to have, less capacity to absorb your child's big emotions, more reactivity in moments that used to feel manageable. If you've been running on empty for a while and can't quite remember what it felt like not to, that's worth paying attention to.

  • That recognition matters and is a good place to start. Treating your own anxiety or depression may be one of the most protective things you can do for your child — a 2022 study in JAMA Network Open found that having a regulated same-sex parent in the household was associated with substantially lower rates of anxiety in children. If you're not sure where to begin, our Care Navigators can help you figure out what kind of support makes sense, whether that's through Blackbird or somewhere else.


  • If you're noticing that your own anxiety, depression, or burnout is affecting how you're showing up at home — more reactivity, less patience, trouble being present — that's a reasonable signal. You don't need to be in crisis to deserve support. A focused session with a clinician, or even a few targeted conversations, can shift patterns that are hard to change on your own. You can reach out to Blackbird Health directly for parent therapy or caregiver support options.

  • No. You can get therapy at Blackbird Health as a parent even if you child is not in care. We accept insurance just as we do for child mental health appointments.

  • Yes. We have clinicians who specialize in supporting adults and are experts in many of the challenges faced by parents and people later in life.

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We’re in-network with most major insurers

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