What is Parent Coaching?
Many professionals seek out coaching to help them appreciate what they are doing well and what they need to work on to become more effective in their chosen field of work – whether they be athletes, physicians, business people, musicians or star performers. Parents do some of the most important work on the planet and benefit from coaching, too!
Parent Coaching with Amy Behrens will give you weekly or biweekly opportunities, either in person, on the phone, or via Zoom or Skype, to reflect on what is working in your family, discover the strengths in your family members, articulate your dreams as well as your fears, and move powerfully towards becoming the parent you want to be over the course of just a few months.
You will be amazed at how little shifts in focus and behavior can transform challenging moments into connecting moments that bring you and your child or children closer together. You will gain confidence and increase your sense of well-being as you learn to take better care of yourself and find that you have more energy for parenting well.
How does Parent Coaching work?
Deep Listening – Being able to share and talk about challenges with a highly trained professional who listens deeply with compassion and without judgment gives you a sense of relief and comfort at having a partner to help you face your particular parenting challenges.
Thought-provoking Questions – I will ask you questions that help you think about things in new ways and discover ideas that increase your understanding of a person, dynamic, or situation. Parents experience wonderful “A-ha!” moments of insight and wisdom that shed light on next steps through our coaching conversations. These moments will give you energy and enthusiasm you might not have thought possible.
New Information – You will receive relevant and practical resources that help you think about “problems” in new ways and feel more knowledgeable about ways to support your child. Many spontaneous ideas surface during our coaching conversations that will surprise, inform, and energize you with new possibilities and solutions.
Creative Collaboration – Every parenting experience is unique and you are the true expert on your child, so working with me as your parent coach gives you the space and time to collaborate with a professional to come up with ideas and plans together. Parent coaching is a co-constructive process in which both parent and coach participate, igniting creativity, sharing humor, and building a supportive relationship which allows parents to work out strategies that are suited to one’s own unique family and “preferred reality.”
How much time does it involve? – Parent coaching usually takes place over 10-12 one-hour sessions that help you address concerns, consider strengths, identify goals, and design actions that will help you move towards your vision for your family. I also offer smaller packages for people who want to work on one specific issue.
Once you have completed a set of parent coaching sessions, “tune-up sessions” are available as you continue to practice what you’ve learned through the coaching and evolve as a family. These can be tailored to your individual needs as a parent.
Through the whole coaching process, Amy was the very definition of committed. She was completely focused and engaged, took copious notes, asked highly relevant questions, engaged in dialogue for the sake of discovery and clarification, and then took the time to compose a very detailed and thorough email summary of every single session. I felt supported, heard, and understood every step of the way.
Amy reminds me to pay attention to and move toward what lights me up and what makes me feel most alive. This helps me to focus on what is most important in my life.
Amy helps me prepare. She helps me think through questions to ask my children to initiate difficult conversations, then role-plays with me so I feel confident in having those conversations.
What has stayed with me are the new ways of thinking, of seeing a situation, of approaching a tense situation, and of recognizing when I’m falling into my old patterns. I was also surprised to see in how many other areas of my life I was able to apply these insights—not only in my family, but also at work and my community.
Amy is a highly intelligent, passionate and dedicated person who is genuinely concerned for parents and the position of the family in the current social and political climate. Her intelligence and passion are complemented by a deep fountain of intuition and also her own experience as a parent raising three girls.