Behavior worksheets
This article on parenting worksheets provides mental health therapists with a brief overview of parenting therapy skills and examples of how to use parenting skills worksheets with clients.
We’ve also included free downloadable parent-child communication worksheets to save to your electronic health record (EHR) for repeated use.
What is parenting therapy?
Parenting therapy involves supportive counseling to help families strengthen their parenting skills and learn specific behavioral strategies to improve their relationship and communication with their children.
Therapists may use a combination of person-centered therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and psychoeducation to work on specific parenting skills and strategies, including:
Boundary setting: Learning to establish healthy boundaries with their children.
Positive parenting: These skills involve modeling a loving, kind, and warm approach to guide children and positively and gently reinforce good behaviors. Therapists might use tools like the PRAISE model or encourage strategies such as a time-out, modeling, and collaborative problem-solving.
Improving communication skills: Parents may learn to enhance their communication skills to promote safety, encourage open dialogue, and foster trust in having difficult conversations.
Self-reflection: Identifying personal strengths, triggers, and past experiences and how they impact parenting.
Emotional regulation and distress tolerance skills: Therapists might teach techniques to help parents manage their stress and frustration and gain insights into how that may affect the family unit. By working on their own emotional regulation and distress tolerance, the parents also model these skills for their children.
Conflict resolution strategies: Parents learn how to deal effectively with conflicts within the family unit.
Support for specific challenges: Therapists may provide help and practical support to the family to better understand unique challenges, like teenage difficulties, ADHD, autism, trauma, handling life transitions, and processing grief and loss.
Psychoeducation: Clinicians might also provide psychoeducation about child development. Teaching parents about the stages of development can help them better understand their child's growth and adjust their expectations to meet their child’s needs.
Examples of parenting worksheets
The list below includes specific parenting worksheets and activities, including parent-child communication worksheets, positive parenting worksheets, parenting in recovery worksheets, and more.
The PRIDE model
The PRIDE model (praise, reflection, imitation, description, and enjoyment) encompasses five techniques for supporting childhood development. Parents are encouraged to use a loving and kind approach to guide children to act how they want.
Through this behavioral strategy, parents learn to notice and praise social and learning skills, encourage good behaviors, and emphasize taking time to play.
Child-parent communication worksheets
Guiding children to use tools like an emotion faces worksheet or a feelings wheel can help them enhance their emotional awareness and communication skills by using a visual aid to understand how they feel.
Behavior chart
A behavior chart or log can be used to motivate, encourage, track, and reward positive behaviors.
Boundary settings worksheets
These worksheets provide psychoeducation to parents about different types of boundaries and how to set them with each other and their children.
Token economy chart
This parenting worksheet teaches parents how to create an effective token economy system to reward their children by meeting certain expectations and achieving their goals.
ADHD worksheets
These parenting skills worksheets educate parents on supporting kids with ADHD with neurodivergent-affirming strategies and tools.
Parenting in recovery worksheets
These parenting worksheets help parents who are in recovery from substance use disorder or other mental health conditions by promoting self-reflection, skill building, and relationship-building activities to strengthen parenting skills.
How to use parenting skills worksheets with clients
Therapists can download and use the parenting worksheets in several ways:
In session to demonstrate specific behavioral or parenting skills
To empower parents to choose specific parenting skills worksheets and strategies to try at home and then debrief at their next therapy appointment
To collaboratively design a realistic behavior chart for the family
Therapists can use the parenting skills worksheet as a psychoeducational prompt and reflection tool
Sources
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Positive Parenting Tips.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Board on Children, Youth, and Families; Committee on Supporting the Breiner, H., Ford, M., & Gadsden, V. L. (Eds.). (2016). Parenting matters: Supporting parents of children ages 0–8.
UC Davis Health. (n.d.). The power of positive parenting.
National Institutes of Health. (2017). Positive Parenting: Building Health Relationships With Your Kids.
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