Meet Brooks Witter of Wise Roots Parenting in Boulder County

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brooks Witter.

Thanks for sharing your story with us, Brooks. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Wise Roots Parenting was a dream born from my experience in working with struggling teens and young adults. The more experience I got in this field, the more starkly apparent was the fact that the extent to which parents were able to get flexible, grow and change their response patterns to their kids was the single biggest factor for promoting the therapeutic goals for the kid.

In my years of working with these families, there emerged some basic practices and principles that, once the parents understood and incorporated these into their repertoires, were lynchpins for family success and connection. Wise Roots Parenting is an offering to provide these practices and principles to parents of struggling teens and young adults. The “fix my kid” approach of sending youth into therapy or treatment does not work. Parents are fundamental to promoting positive behavior in their kids, largely because the bulk of treatment issues we see with youth can be conceptualized as “connection deficit” issues. If we can help the parents learn how to connect more effectively and more consistently with their kids, we see a marked decrease in “acting out” or “acting in” behaviors in the kid(s).

My hope is to help people develop greater clarity, acceptance and skillfulness in relating to the challenges of the human condition. By reaching parents, Wise Roots Parenting seeks to support people in developing greater confidence, competence and connection in what is, I believe, our most important and vulnerable role in life.

Has it been a smooth road?
While I’m still very much in the opening phase of the journey, so far the road has been interesting, to say the least. We launched in May and immediately after launch were beset with a challenge to our identity in the form of a cease and desist due to our original name. It was like running a marathon and getting to mile 26 and being told “you’re almost there! You’ve just got a few more miles to go!” Once we sorted that out, we were back on track and then the work of selling began.

As a therapist and educator, sales have been a new role for me to learn here. Fortunately, I am fully passionate and committed to what we’re doing, so helping people connect to the value and vision of what we offer comes pretty natural to me. I’ve been excited and challenged by learning the ropes of building a predominantly online offering and am super grateful for the supportive friends, colleagues and other trailblazers who have generously shared their wisdom and expertise with me.

Please tell us about Wise Roots Parenting.
Wise Roots Parenting was created to provide parents with best practices, skills and information to help them parent for successful young adult launch. Our target audience is parents who have teens and young adults who are struggling in some way, whether the kids are in therapy for emotional or psychological support, in treatment for substance use disorders, or simply demonstrating issues that are challenging the parenting status quo. When our kids struggle, we as parents feel the pressure to intervene. When a kid is in crisis, parental interventions need to promote physical safety. When the crisis has passed, parenting interventions need to promote connection, growth and a sense of emotional safety and belonging.

We provide parents the tools they need to parent with greater confidence when the parenting path is difficult to navigate. We do this by providing online digital streaming media that coaches parents to develop more flexible, values-driven repertoires that are oriented towards promoting a sense of connection and emotional safety in the family system. Our information is derived from our decades of work in the field and from three bodies of science: third-wave behavioral science, human attachment theory and affective neuroscience.

What drives me in this work is to address the “fix-my-kid” approach to treating our youth. When we see the problems of our youth abiding primarily within them, we deny ourselves agency in addressing the situation and we abdicate our own accountability in being players within a system that is demonstrating maladaptive tendencies. As parents and members of the generation above our kids, our job is to work to promote adaptive skills in our kids that set them up to navigate the challenges they face and ultimately thrive in the world they are inheriting.

I think what sets us apart from so many other parenting resources is this focus on the parent’s role in taking accountability for ourselves. While many parent coaches and resources will tell you its about the growth of your kid, we focus on the growth and development of the parent. We support you in developing more strength, equanimity and resilience so that you can be more strategic, loving and supportive as a parent to a struggling teen.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I work and live in Boulder County, where the culture of self-help is almost pathological. The upside of this is that there are many people and resources here to learn and grow within this field. People give a lot of thought and consideration to processes of human growth and development. The downside is that it can be difficult to stand out as an agent of change in such a crowded field. Our business model is cloud-based, so our audience and market is across the English-speaking world. That being the case, being connected to so many inspiring peers here in the area is an advantage for collaboration and creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wiserootsparenting.com
• Phone: 720-340-5260
• Email: brooks@wiserootsparenting.com

Image Credit:
Jenny Bundin

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