What is Parent Coaching?
As parents we are critically positioned to have a powerful impact on the lives of our children. Even though it doesn’t always feel true, the power and influence we hold is extraordinary. Everything we do, and don’t do, everything we say, or don’t say, every subtlety in our tone or voice, body language, etc., it all matters and always has. Yet as the parent of an adolescent, young adult, or adult-dependent who is struggling with mental health or substance abuse, it can feel as though just the opposite is true. As though we have no power and that nothing we do matters. Overwhelmed, unsure of where to turn or whose advice to take, it is quite common for parents of children who struggle with these issues to be left feeling angry, helpless, and afraid.
That is where we come in!
The Beauty of Guidance
Parent coaching is NOT family therapy. Parent coaching is providing parents with information, direction, and support when they need it most!
The Goals of parent coaching are simple. They are to,
develop concrete tools, strategies, and solutions that motivate your child towards recovery, social interaction, and ultimately a successful future.
understand the science of what their child is going through.
identify the unhelpful patterns that contribute to the “same old” cycle.
desensitize oneself to outbursts, provocations, and tantrums.
learn to shift from a “crisis management” mindset to one of goal setting, deliberate focus and intention.
learn how to set, hold and maintain loving, supportive, healthy and positive corrective boundaries and how to stick to them.
learn to take ownership of emotional reactions and to model corrective behaviors.
improve one’s overall relationship(a) with their child while also inching them closer to taking action towards change.
The Science Of Adolescence, Young Adulthood, and Mental Illness
Unlike decades past, today we have loads of science today to help us understand why teens, young adults, families, and those who struggle with mental health issues are behaving the way they are.
While our children and our family circumstances are unique, with their own strengths, challenges, and history, as it turns out there is great predictability too! There are realities of adolescence, young adulthood, family dynamics, and mental illness - regardless of one’s diagnosis. It is for this reason that we are able to guide, and support so many families towards a better, brighter, healthier future.
As mental health professionals who have worked with parents and their children for many years, the biggest problem we see with parents of children who struggle with mental health or substance abuse is the love they have for their child. Often overwhelmed, and unsure how to help, a parent’s love triggers a desperate fear. Fear that unintentionally drives us to say and do things that only makes matters worse.
Without professional guidance, parents almost universally resort to the same “tactics” to try and motivate their child to change. They resort to nagging, pleading, yelling, bribing, threatening, and most commonly of all, using logic and reason to try and motivate their child into action, into making a change. Failing to grasp how their child is experiencing the world, or how motivation works, without knowing it, this effort does more to escalate the problem than it does to help. In the end, it is the combination of a lack of information, and fear of what will happen if their child does not change, that can result in perpetuating a seemingly never-ending struggle.
What to Expect?
Working with a parent coach begins with a simple conversation. A 30-minute consultation to determine whether we can help. After an assessment we develop a strategic plan to help parents determine their target objectives, and what the steps will be to achieve those objectives. Parents work with their coach 1:1, as often as needed, have 24/7 text access, and receive an information packet, as well as access to our optional online Strategic Parenting and Parenting Addiction Course(s).
“First, no part of the adult brain is more shaped by adolescence than the frontal cortex. Second, nothing about adolescence can be understood outside the context of delayed frontocortical maturation. If by adolescence limbic, autonomic, and endocrine systems are going full blast while the frontal cortex is still working out the assembly instructions, we’ve just explained why adolescents are so frustrating, great, asinine, impulsive, inspiring, destructive, self-destructive, selfless, selfish, impossible, and world changing”.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst. New York, NY: Penguin Press.