Parent Coach


What does a Parent Coach do ?

When you think about coaching, your mind probably first lands on the idea of soccer, tennis or other sporting activities. It is quite normal to have a coach when you want to play a better game. Nowadays, there are a huge amount of personal trainers available to you if you wish to improve your physical fitness levels and get into good shape, to lead a healthier life.Coach

Business or life coaches have been emerging as an ever growing profession for the past 10 years or so, more and more people are recognizing that having a coach to hold you accountable, to listen to you, to keep you “right” is a really valuable way to help you achieve your goals, recover from a difficult time in your business or life, and to bring you to a place where you really love who you are and what you do.

And so comes to ask for coaching in the area of family life, of parenting, It’s sacred territory, where we are most vulnerable. I’ve spoken with business men who are happy to wheel and deal with courage and determination all day. Then when they spend a few days with their children, they loose the will to live. They don’t understand why they don’t get it. And it’s painful. They go back to their job with a sense of loss or failure, often numbed out with alcohol, shopping, the internet or eating. Many of them unaware of the great potential of discovery available when really taking the plunge into the parent child relationship.

I’ve met mothers who were successful career woman and who didn’t know their biggest challenge in their whole life would be dealing with a little tiny baby, and a ghost of post-natal depression. Or mothers who dreamt of having a child and being at home with them, and then didn’t cope and began to shout and get angry at the children and the world.Worried Mother Holding Baby In Nursery

A lot of the parents who come to me want to find more meaning in their lives, they want to explore if they are doing all the “right” things with their kids. Because they feel deep down – on a soul level – their family life is not bringing them the joy or happiness they wish for. Modern life for all the conveniences it offers families, in my opinion has many silent threats of breaking them apart. Today more than ever parents and children feel more and more disconnected.

And yet most all parents I have met would go to the ends of the world for their children. Most elderly people I meet tell me the most important thing to them in old age is family. And sadly, for many of those old folk it’s too late, the relationships that went awry when their children were younger are beyond repair now.

Parent coaching can be a way to admit where you are at, to come to terms with your current reality and see it how it is without numbing it away. To accept the conflicting feelings, the challenges and the muddling through and start to see what an amazing set of life lessons can be learnt through parenting consciously. Parenting with awareness. Parenting with connection.  Taking a leap into the unknown and daring to parent differently.

Celebrate Tadhg 0-7 (125)So for me, calling myself a parent coach is tricky on one hand, because I am in danger of being seen as some kind of expert. Ridiculous really – for who really knows how to raise children ? Just watch Super Nanny and cringe… it’s so awfully prescriptive, as if children come out of a printer all uniform and the same. Children are unique, individual, full of potential and it seems to me their job is to be constantly challenging us adults to grow with them. We are all making messy, chaotic attempts to get life “right”, and we fail a lot of the time, in fact everyone; parents and children alike are just learning along the way.

So as a parent coach I claim as many mad, bad and sad parenting moments as anyone. I really try to avoid being the one who knows. And the name Parent Coach is perfect on the other hand, because all I am encouraging my clients to do is “play a better game” with their kids… All I can ever share is my own experiences as a parent and how they have transformed with help I have found. I can share some of the stories I have heard along the way from other parents who have turned their parenting around. Working with a parent coach helps create a space and time for the parent to explore this vital, ever changing and important relationship that will last all of your life.

  • So how can you play a better game with your children?
  • How can you turn your parenting around?
  • What stories do you tell yourself about the kind of parent you are?
  • Are those stories serving you?
  • Do you ever let images tell your story as a parent?
  • What history do you carry from your own childhood?
  • How does your childhood affect how you are with your children today?

These are just a few of many questions you can explore with a parent coach.

There are many parent coaches out there today. All of them will offer their unique wisdom and particular skills and so it’s important that you resonate with who they are as a person.

If you wish to explore the possibility or working with me as your coach, I’d be honoured to listen to you share about your family, and the ways you are looking to turn around your family life.  Just drop me an email via our contact page.  #parentingadvice