Present Moment Parenting

Parent coaching is a customized-to-your-family a opportunity to understand your intense child’s behavior and learn what to do to help it improve dramatically. You’ll learn ABC of  Parenting with the support of a coach who will not pass judgment on you but will stand by you as you gain new skills. There’s no diagnosis from your coach, just solid, usable tools for bringing out the best in your intense child. How do we define “intense”? If you have a child with whom typical parenting methods don’t help and even make the situation worse, you’ve come to the right spot.

What type of needs do the kids have?

Our parent coaching clients have children of all ages who have ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, giftedness, adoption or foster care issues, and even those with no diagnosis at all.

For children whose lives involve the child welfare system, particular attention is paid to helping parents navigate their sometimes overwhelming grief and loss.

The aim of “trauma-informed parent coaching”  is to educate parents on specific relationships between unwanted behavior and deep, enormous unexpressed feelings.

Once those relationships are understood, parents will learn how to approach the child in a way that heals them rather than re-traumatizes them. It’s remarkably easy to re-traumatize a child who has suffered physical or sexual abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment.

The more parents understand that typical parenting techniques fuel the fire of unexpressed grief and rage, the more they can bring out the best in these children.

Biological, adoptive, foster, and kinship parents are in the perfect position to undo some of the damage inflicted on the children in their homes. They care the most about the children, they are with them the most, and they have the most invested in their well-being. Equipped with insight into the effects of trauma on the child’s body and the equally positive effects of nurturing communication on the same child’s body, parents and caregivers can immediately see results.

When children’s behavior is not only under control but indicative of a child’s sense of self in healing mode, they can stay put. They avoid the defaulting judge, blame, and punish cycle that creates havoc in their lives and causes them to overreact to what parents think is normal parenting. The result is a peaceful, permanent home.

What about the parents’ past issues?

Will parents raising children who have been traumatized sometimes start to get in touch with the traumas they experienced as children?

It does happen. Parent coaching is not therapy, and our coaches will refer parents to appropriate services, such as psychotherapy and EMDR, even biofeedback, to learn ways to heal their own trauma. In the meantime, our coaches support the parents in interacting with their kids in the present moment, where all healing takes place. This two-pronged approach of parents receiving the help they need for their past upsets while supporting their parenting is a powerful combination.

 Both processes can occur simultaneously.

Children who have been traumatized don’t have months to wait for their parents to heal their childhoods. That’s why parent coaches are available by phone, email, and Skype to provide weekly or bi-weekly encouragement on changing their interactions with the kids. We even have between-appointment trouble calls, where parents are free to call their coaches for on-the-spot support. When a mom or dad is about to lose it with their child, they can get help on the phone instead of yelling. This is the intensive support needed for creating positive behavior and strong family relationships with the outcome of permanence for children.

Book a free 20 min consult and let us help you through you parenting troubles.