When Parenting Accounts Aren’t Helping
Parents often tell me in our first conversation that they’ve been following conscious parenting accounts for some time. There are some brilliant resources out there - you’ll find a handy list here - and as a parent myself I’ve gained so much from that daily drip feed of positive parenting.
What often brings people to coaching is feeling unable to apply everything they read. Maybe something works for a day or two but then old patterns take over again.
I’m not here to bash parenting accounts (including my own!), but to help us recognise when we might need other kinds of support as well.
You find the content helpful but a little idealistic.
If you’ve ever thought, “That’s all well and good but my kid still needs to brush their teeth!” then coaching can be a bridge between positive parenting principles and the realities of daily life.
The tips work if you’re cool and collected, but you don’t feel calm!
A significant part of parent coaching is growing your ability to de-escalate yourself. It’s very, very difficult to learn how to stay calm from reading alone. I have a clear process for managing your triggers and keeping calm in stressful moments. Clients often tell me this is the most useful part of our work together.
You tried some of the tools and they didn’t work.
It can be disconcerting to try a new approach and for your child to not respond in the way you were hoping. Changing habits takes more than testing new phrases (kids see through everything don’t they?). It takes confidence, preparation and commitment, which are all core takeaways from the coaching process.
You forget what to say and do in the moment.
If you’re struggling to remember tools when conflict arises, it might be because your stress response is taking up too much brain space. Coaching gets right to the root of the problem by building your calming skills so you can access when you need them. Having me in your back pocket also helps make parenting more intentional when life is so busy.
My child is different and these one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work.
Parents often tell me their highly sensitive, spirited, persistent, emotional children fall outside of common advice. Some of my clients have children with diagnosed or suspected additional needs. The beauty of coaching is we can consider the broader context - personality traits, sensory preferences, neurodivergence, trauma, disability - so you feel really confident in an approach that works with your unique child.
I don’t quite buy into some of the messages; they feel too permissive.
Maybe you’ve read things about letting children take the lead on saying please and thank you, or ‘dropping the rope’ on certain boundaries and that feels like a step too far for you. It can be hard to know what your version of conscious parenting looks like if you don’t want to go ‘all in’.
Coaching is not consulting - I never tell parents how to parent. Instead we get curious about your beliefs, expectations and wishes for your children and work out how to apply them in a way that empowers you and your kids.
These accounts don’t consider what it’s like to parent while experiencing systemic challenges like marginalisation, racialisation and oppression.
Speaking from a position of privilege, I’m working hard to build my awareness of the freedoms I hold that make conscious parenting so much easier to reach for. I feel a passion and responsibility to support parents who, by virtue of their race, citizenship, single parent status or ethnicity, are at a systemic disadvantage in this country.
I’m currently working on launching a limited number of coaching scholarships that will be published in early 2022. To register your interest, please get in touch.
If you are part of a community that might benefit from a free talk on positive parenting, I’d love to hear from you. My skills lie in child development, positive discipline and managing anger.
