Are you struggling as a parent and are afraid to get help? The reason we don’t get the help and support we need with our parenting challenges is our fear of being judged. “Am I a bad parent” is one of the questions I hear on a daily basis from the parents and families I work with. My answer is “Absolutely no” because we are all trying to figure out the parenting thing as we go. We did not receive any parent training or education on how to raise children while trying to co-parent with a romantic partner so we are all going to have parenting challenges and that is nothing to be ashamed about. Not getting support when we need it should be the question that keeps us up at night!

Parent coaching is the process of supporting parents in navigating challenges with their co-parent and children. Parents that don't share the same parenting vision with typically one parent wanting to be nurturing and being viewed as too easy as the other parent over compensates by becoming the disciplinarian and strict which confuses the children resulting in unexpected behaviors. Anger, rage, verbal and physical aggression, lying, stealing, low-self esteem, oppositional defiance, depression and anxiety are some of the behaviors a parent will see when their children’s needs are not met. Our children are still developing and they are telling us that something is not write in their world with their behavior and once we acknowledge this we can start doing the work to best support you and them.

I have been working with parents and families for several years through my clinical work and with the organization Parents Helping Parents. What I have seen in my clinical work is that when parents (co-parents or divorced parents) are not on the same page the child will struggle 100% of the time and they usually blame the child’s behavior. A child that loses a parent through divorce will engage in unexpected behaviors in an attempt to get attention or to get their parents back together. That is how their brains work no matter what we tell them or what we believe. I have worked with many divorced parents where one parent has rules, expectations and consequences and the other parent let’s the child do whatever they want which pits the parents against each other because one is seen as the bad guy and the other the best parent in the world. This back and forth between the parents will leave their child angry, confused and conflicted and will typically behave in a way to tell their story which most parents can’t see or hear.

In order to help our children we need to provide them with three essential things. Structure, Guidance and Nurturing. If we miss one of the three it can lead to devastating consequences such as emotional abandonment and neglect and most of the time it is because one parent is putting their own needs before their child’s because of the anger they have towards the other parent. For parents that are co-parenting and are not divorced I typically see these parents with typically some relationship challenges of their own that we can work on as well if the parents want to. Their relationship dysfunction is seen and heard by their children which results in unexpected behaviors. If dad is disrespectful to mom than the child will model the same behavior and also disrespect mom.

Our children are always watching us and if you are on this page all you need to ask yourself is one question.
What are my children seeing and how is this affecting their world and their place in it?

With my parent coaching I let all my parents know that most of the time their is a solution to their parenting challenges. We develop plans and follow through with them after every session and measure the progress as we go. As a parent coach I will provide advice and support and we will throw a lot of things against the wall until we find the key to getting that shift we need to move forward. However, when one of the parents will not engage in counseling (because they believe it is the other parents fault the child is behaving the way they are) and coaching that makes thing a lot harder and the parent that is engaged in the process will unfortunately have to do all the lifting and parent for the one that minimizes everything and has abandoned the child’s three core needs of structure, guidance and nurturing. But it can be done and I always let parents know that it will get a lot harder before it gets better and it typically does for most families even when one of the parents is not engaged.

Our goal as a positive parenting role model is to model the behavior we want our children to adopt. Yelling at them when they are yelling is not positive parenting. Also most parent’s egos prevent them from being the parent their children need and this results in the parents need to be relevant in ever aspect of their child’s lives which can result in trying to control our children instead of providing them the autonomy they need to grow into the person they are supposed to become! So it is relevant to become irrelevant and a parents goal should be to raise our children so they don’t need us which will allow them to develop the skills to be resilient, survive and thrive into adulthood.