1. a controversial therapeutic procedure used to provide a client with missed childhood experiences. The client, who typically has severe problems, is treated as a child or infant; for example, he or she may be fed with a spoon or bottle, hugged, sung to, and provided with other forms of nurturance. Reparenting has been unethically used to justify recreation of the birth process by wrapping a client in a blanket and having him or her struggle to get out.

2. in self-help and some forms of counseling, a therapeutic technique in which individuals are urged to provide for themselves the kind of parenting attitudes or actions that their own parents did not provide.