Frequently Asked Questions about Parent Coaching
1. What is a parent coach?
A parent coach is a professional trained to guide, support, and enable you to discover the answers to your most pressing parenting dilemmas. A skilled parent coach listens and helps you identify and analyze the roadblocks that may be holding you back from the relationship you desire with your child. Coaching allows you to attain the clarity you need in order to strengthen your bond with your child, and find practical, concrete solutions to your communication issues. Parent coaching is about empowering you with the self-confidence and skills needed to lovingly support and guide your child into successful adulthood.
2. What is the difference between coaching and therapy?
Life coaching and therapy are both based on support, trust and complete confidentiality. They also make equal use of listening skills and non-judgmental attitudes toward the client. That is where most of the similarities end.
Therapy:
Therapy:
- deals primarily with the past
- involves analyzing the roots of current behavioral issues and managing emotional pain
- therapist often seeks to gain insight and understanding of a person’s psyche
Coaching:
- focuses on the future, rather than assigning blame for past wrongdoings
- emphasizes choice and personal responsibility
- builds positive self image in both parents and children
- offers concrete tools to facilitate healthy communication
- seeks to devise action plans toward specific personal goals, and in so doing alleviate emotionally painful situations
Many families who have pursued therapy have found that although therapy helped their child deal with important issues, it did not necessarily give children and families the immediate problem-solving skills and perspectives to find solutions to their day-to-day struggles. In this sense, parent coaching can be a good complement or alternative to therapy.
3. How are coaching sessions conducted?
Coaching sessions can be conducted through a variety of methods, either in-person, over the phone, email or online video conferencing, such as Skype, depending on what feels most natural and comfortable to the client.
4. My child has been diagnosed with behavioral conditions such as ADD, ADHD, OCD etc… Can our family still benefit from parent coaching?
Absolutely. As a parent of a formerly troubled teen who had been diagnosed with a myriad of behavioral conditions, I know that diagnoses may provide insight into some of the “why’s” of your child’s actions, but do not grant children and parents the knowledge of how to deal with out-of-control behavior and restore positive self-esteem. To remedy these situations, parent coaching can be especially helpful.
5. How soon will I see results?
The difference between parent coaching and other approaches is that rather than treating the symptoms of negative behavior, coaching helps parents create a life-long meaningful relationship with their child. Although individual results may vary from family, parents who choose to implement new perspectives and strategies will see immediate results in their relationship with their child, and an overall easing of tension in the family dynamic.