Parenting as Partners, Couples Support for Parents, Fredericksburg, Virginia
Couples therapy for parents navigating it all — together
— in Fredericksburg, and online across Virginia.
You can be good parents who love each other — and still miss each other.
That ache isn't a sign you're failing. It's a sign your relationship needs care, too.
You love your child. You are doing everything you can for them. And somewhere in the middle of all of it — the appointments, the school meetings, the late nights, the disagreements about what to do next — you and your partner have started to feel more like co-managers than partners. This is one of the most common and least talked about relationship struggles there is. When a child is struggling — whether that is a diagnosis, a mental health challenge, a behavioral difficulty, or simply the ordinary complexity of raising kids in a demanding world — the relationship between parents quietly absorbs the weight of it. Different approaches to parenting. Different emotional responses to the same situation. The exhaustion of carrying something heavy together without a space to actually talk about it. Parenting as Partners was built for exactly this.
What is Parenting as Partners Couples Therapy
Parenting as Partners is couples work — focused specifically on the relationship between two people who are navigating the experience of parenting together. This is not family therapy. Your child does not attend. We are not assessing your parenting or working directly with your child's challenges. We are working with the two of you — your relationship as partners, your communication as co-parents, and the ways that parenting stress is showing up between you. It is a dedicated space to put down what you are each carrying long enough to actually see each other again.
Who is this couples work best suited for?
A New Diagnosis
Your child has received a diagnosis (developmental, behavioral, or mental health), and navigating it is creating distance between you.
An Unequal Load
One of you carries more of the responsibility for managing your child's needs, and resentment has quietly built.
Different Approaches
Different philosophies about how to handle things have become a source of ongoing conflict.
System Overwhelm
Coordinating school, IEPs, therapy, or medical care is overwhelming your relationship.
Depleted and Disconnected
The demands of parenting a child with higher needs have left you both depleted and disconnected from each other.
You Miss Each Other
You're good parents who love each other — and somewhere along the way, you lost each other.
You don't have to be in crisis to come to Parenting as Partners.
Many couples come because they can feel the distance growing and want to address it before it becomes harder to repair.
What this work addresses
In Parenting as Partners sessions Beverly works with couples on:
✓Getting on the same page about your child's needs — and meeting them as a team
✓Naming how parenting stress shows up between you — the arguments, the distance, the resentment — and understanding what's underneath
✓Building communication tools that hold up even when you're exhausted and overwhelmed
✓Redistributing the emotional and practical load more equitably
✓Reconnecting as partners — not just co-parents — so your relationship is a source of support, not strain
✓ Navigating the grief that can come with a child's diagnosis or ongoing struggles — together, rather than separately
Beverly Lemmons, LCSW · EFT-trained · Couples & Family
60 min — $175 · 90 min — $262.50 · 120 min — $350
Why Beverly Lemmons
Parenting as Partners is couples therapy by Beverly Lemmons, LCSW — whose background makes her uniquely suited for this work. Beverly brings a combination that is genuinely rare in one clinician. She holds training in both Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples and Emotionally Focused Family Therapy — giving her a deep understanding of both the couple relationship and the family system around it. She also brings years of experience as a school social worker, a background in psychiatric settings with children and families, and extensive parenting support work across developmental stages.
Beverly understands IEPs and school-based mental health. She understands what it means to navigate a system on behalf of a child while also trying to hold your relationship together. She understands the particular exhaustion of parenting a child with higher needs — and what it does to the people doing that parenting together. This is not a clinician who will need you to explain the context. Beverly already understands the world you are living in.
Questions about parenting as partners
-
No. Parenting as Partners sessions are for the two of you as partners and co-parents. Your child does not attend. This is couples work focused on your relationship — not family therapy or therapy for your child.
-
No. Parenting as Partners is for any couple where parenting has become a significant source of stress or disconnection between partners. A formal diagnosis is not required. If raising your children together is straining your relationship — this work is for you.
-
Family therapy works with the family system — often including the children — to address relational patterns and improve family functioning. Parenting as Partners is couples therapy focused specifically on the relationship between two parents. We are not working with your child or assessing your family system. We are working with you as partners.
-
Yes — and it often works best that way. Parenting as Partners can run alongside individual therapy at Thrive Counseling for Healing and Connection, or alongside general couples therapy if you are also working on other relational issues. Beverly can help you figure out the right combination for your situation.
-
We Thrive Together is a private pay practice. Parenting as Partners sessions are not covered by insurance. Superbills are available for couples therapy sessions for possible out-of-network reimbursement. See our FAQ page for full information on fees and insurance.
-
That is one of the most common reasons couples come to Parenting as Partners. Different parenting styles are not a problem to fix — they are a dynamic to understand. Beverly helps couples find the shared values underneath the different approaches and build a collaborative parenting relationship that draws on both partners' strengths rather than creating ongoing conflict between them.
-
Both partners need to be willing to attend — but they do not need to feel equally ready or equally motivated. Many couples begin with one partner more hesitant than the other. Beverly creates a space where both partners feel heard and respected from the beginning, which usually shifts the hesitant partner's experience quickly.
Come back to each other.
Your relationship deserves support too. Not just your child's wellbeing. Not just the family system. Your relationship — the one that holds all of it together — deserves a dedicated space and a skilled guide. Parenting as Partners gives you that space. Reach out and tell us where you are. Our team responds within one business day.