Welcome Home: Nurturing Relationships with Extended Family Connected Family Therapy

Serving Parents Across California

At Welcome Home Family Therapy, I often remind parents that “home” is more than four walls. It’s the relationships that ripple outward—between parents and children, and across the larger web of extended family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws all influence a child’s sense of belonging. Yet those relationships can also bring stress, conflict, and difficult choices for parents who are already stretched thin.

From my perspective as a therapist providing online parent therapy in California, I help families find balance in extended family dynamics—so that home feels like a place of welcome, love, and safety, even when challenges arise.

Why Extended Family Relationships Can Feel So Complicated

Parents tell me they feel caught in the middle: wanting their children to enjoy meaningful relationships with grandparents or cousins, while also needing boundaries to protect their own energy. Common struggles include:

• Distance and disconnection – When extended family lives far away, contact can fade, leaving parents feeling alone in raising their children.
• Unclear boundaries – Visits from extended family can spark tension if expectations aren’t clearly set, leaving everyone feeling resentful.
• Family disputes – When relatives argue or ask you to “take sides,” it can place parents in an impossible position, especially when children witness the conflict.

All these experiences can undermine your sense of home. But with the right tools, extended family relationships can become a source of connection instead of stress.

The Welcome Home Perspective

In my practice, welcome home is more than a phrase—it’s a guiding principle. It means helping parents and children come back to each other after moments of rupture and extending that same sense of belonging to relationships with extended family. Through therapy, we explore how to:

• Establish healthy boundaries with compassion.
• Reconnect with distant relatives in ways that feel sustainable.
• Model repair and respect for your children, even when extended family is complicated.

These relational practices are rooted in neuroscience and co-regulation: when you, as the parent, create safety, your children learn that “home” is always a place they can return to emotionally.

How Extended Family Ties Intersect with Parenting Challenges

Every parent comes into family relationships with their own history, wounds, and stressors. That’s why extended family conflicts often stir up old patterns or intensify the challenges you already face at home.

• Parents of neurodivergent children often tell me they feel judged by extended family who don’t understand ADHD or autism. That’s why I offer Family Counseling for Parents of ADHD and Neurodiversity, to give you strategies to handle outside criticism and stay grounded in your parenting.
• Parents of gifted or twice-exceptional children share that relatives often misinterpret their child’s intensity or asynchronous development. In Family Counseling for Gifted/2e, I help parents reframe those moments so they can advocate for their child while keeping extended family relationships intact.
• For adoptive parents, extended family may struggle with boundaries or attachment dynamics. Post-Adoption Services provide guidance to protect your child’s sense of security while building understanding with relatives.
• Co-parents who are divorced or separated often feel the extended family web is even more tangled. Co-parenting Therapy Near Me offers tools to handle communication challenges and reduce conflict that children might otherwise absorb.
• If extended family relationships bring up past trauma or unresolved pain, Online Family Trauma Therapy can help you process those triggers so they don’t spill into the present.
• And if you’re simply feeling burned out from juggling work, kids, and family dynamics, Parent Coaching Grounded in Brain Science helps you recognize stress patterns and return to connection with both your children and your wider family.

My Motto: I help parents become the healers in the home.

How do I get started?

We will have a brief screening phone call and if it feels right, we will schedule an hour-long, free phone consultation to see if we are a good match for therapy. This is my offering to you, at a time when you are struggling the most.

Book a free Discovery Call: click here

FAQs

How do I handle extended family who ignore my parenting boundaries?

 Boundaries are a form of love. In therapy, we practice clear communication that protects your child and keeps you from being pulled into cycles of resentment.

What if my child notices family conflict?

 Children are sensitive to tension. We explore ways to talk about conflict openly, in age-appropriate language, so your child still feels safe at home.

How do I manage guilt about not visiting family more often? 

Distance doesn’t have to mean disconnection. We identify realistic ways to stay connected while honoring your own bandwidth.

Can extended family relationships ever improve if things have been strained for years?

 Yes. Repair is always possible. It may take small steps, but demonstrating respect and compassion over time can shift dynamics.

What can I do while wait for therapy to start?

I invite you to listen to “The Baffling Behavior Show” podcast by my mentor, Robyn Gobbel. Her words will give you more a sense about how we will be working together and what we might focus on. You can listen to her podcast here.

You Deserve Support 

We will have a brief screening phone call and if it feels right, we will schedule an hour-long, free phone consultation to see if we are a good match for therapy. This is my offering to you, at a time when you are struggling the most.

Book a free Discovery Call: click here