Many of us have experienced coaching our child’s youth sports teams. Coaching youth sports can be rewarding, but it’s often confused with parent coaching. Parent coaching doesn’t involve barking out directions to pass the ball or play defense. It’s a style of parenting that involves asking questions of your child so they become aware of situations and can make their own decisions. Parent coaching is a simple approach that provides powerful benefits for your child that can last their lifetime.
Parent Coaching Doesn’t Involve Swarm Soccer
As my son was growing up, I enjoyed coaching his little league baseball teams. It was a great way to connect with my son…while trying to get him from picking dandelions in the outfield. Most of my time coaching the team was spent providing directions and instructions. Parent coaching involves more listening and asking questions.
Ask More Questions and Do Less Demanding
As a parent coach, you use questions to help your child gain awareness of their emotions and situations. Instead of quickly resorting to giving directions, which most of us parents are prone to do, you engage your child with some simple questions to help them understand the situation and arrive at their own decision. This approach encourages children to take responsibility for their own actions, which brings about change in your child more rapidly.
Benefits of Parent Coaching
By helping them make their own decisions, their commitment to the decision increases and their performance improves. Parent coaching helps to develop good judgement, build confidence, and create a sense of independence with your child. Studies have shown that parent coaching can improve your child’s social and emotional development early in their childhood and can be used throughout their teenage years as their decisions become more complex and involved.
“It’s not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings”
– Ann Landers
How To Become A Parent Coach
Parent coaching can be easily learned and practiced while integrating it into your existing parenting approach. You don’t need a degree or special certification to be an effective parent coach. You don’t need to hire a professional parent coach and pay them $$/hour…although this seems to be gaining in popularity. You can follow a simple approach to become a parent coach.
An awareness of your current parenting style is a good place to start as you move toward using a coaching approach with your child. Research has identified four widely accepted parenting styles:
- Authoritative
- Authoritarian
- Permissive
- Uninvolved/neglecting
The studies are clear that authoritative parenting is the preferred parenting style. Authoritative parents have rules, and they use consequences, but they also take their children’s opinions into account. They set clear boundaries but also encourage children’s independence within those limits. Discipline in such families may be more supportive than punitive, and as children get older, their independence increases. Often parents don’t fit into just one category, so don’t despair if there are times or areas where you tend to be permissive and other times when you’re more authoritative.
Moving From Authoritarian to Authoritative
A coaching approach can help you move from a controlling, authoritarian style to a more authoritative style. Most of us parent primarily through directing…”do this, don’t do that.” Do you always find yourself providing instructions and directions? Giving firm directions is a necessary part of parenting…but start noticing how often you ask your child questions about various situations. Do you ask how they are feeling? Or how someone else might feel when something happened to them? Start engaging your child in some simple questions to help them become more aware of situations and guide them in decision making. This simple approach can help develop happy, confident, and independent children. If you’re interested in learning more about parent coaching, check out The Parent Coach: A Site for Proactive Parents