Online therapy can be a useful source of advice to parents who want to improve their parenting skills.
Parents want their best for their children; however, parents normally face a number of demands and distractions coming from a variety of sources in life: nontraditional, around-the-clock work schedules, electronic device distractions, information overload, and higher expectations from society, as well as the increased desire to compete with other parents for “ideal” children, and more. All this spells out stress and this certainly does not help for great parenting.
This is where online therapy can help meet the challenges of a technologically evolving and more demanding society where parents want to excel. Keeping in mind all the challenges that parents need to overcome, the following are the exceptional advantages of online therapy:
- Online Assessment tools – Online therapy software has the potential to offer the most comprehensive and advanced tools for determining requirements and best approaches for parenting therapy. Assessments can be easily scaled, updated and administered as often as needed to ensure completeness, accuracy and validity of reports for therapists to treat parents.
- Response times – Online therapy allows parents to receive quicker responses, if not immediate responses, to their questions and answers. In cases where there is a time urgency, but not emergency, online therapy is ideal.
- Communication methods – Online therapy allows parents to choose and to change electronic communication methods as needed. Parents can communicate via messaging (synchronous or asynchronous) and videoconferencing. Advantages of electronic communication may include allowing parents to record sessions for purposes of reinforcement and review.
- Accessibility – Online therapy offers the greatest accessibility for everyone including, but not limited to, persons with disabilities. Online sessions can be scheduled anywhere, anytime, and in a number of electronic communications methods for the physically or mentally impaired parent or parents. This includes applying voice and text conversion software to sessions that converts voice to text or text to voice. Moreover, online therapy welcomes participation by one or more parents from one or more locations.
- Training modules of behavioral change – Online therapy enables therapists to administer online training “courses” for behavioral change. This can significantly help parents change their behavior and also reinforce behavioral change.
- Facilitating acquisition of information – Online therapy allows a therapist to see parents in their home environment, and possibly meet children and learn aboutother mitigating factors. This can be informative and ensure all measures are addressed.
- Cost – Online therapy saves money for parents. There are no expenses for traveling to an appointment. There are fewer expenses with losing time for travel, having to pay for a sitter or daycare provider, and both parents having to take time off from work to participate in a session. Therapists themselves often are willing to charge less for online therapy sessions, because it makes them more efficient in managing their patients.
While eTherapi also allows clients and therapists to book “traditional” in-person visits, the point-and-click convenience offered by eTherapi’s online therapy features reduces conflicts associated with coordinating schedules and with not being able to leave work, the risk of being seen at a therapist’s office by others, and the potential cost associated with childcare (in the case of parents).
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