Parent Coaching Therapy

What is Parent Coaching? 

Parents may have difficulty in their relationships with their children in different ways. When a child experiences unexpected challenges, it can be difficult for a parent to know what to do. Developmental milestones often bring new situations that parents and their children must learn to navigate. Mental health issues in our children also create problems that parents must learn to navigate. Parents may endure challenges with younger children and also emerging young adults. In both types of situations, parent coaching strategies can be helpful.  

Parent coaching can help parents to discuss and understand their values. Parent coaching strategies can focus on modifying or improving parental relationships with their loved ones. They can also learn more about healthy boundaries and behavioural consequences. Through parent counselling, individuals can learn essential strategies to help develop healthy and satisfying relationships with loved ones.

How Do I Know If I Need Parent Coaching?

Parent counselling begins with an assessment with your therapist. This will allow you to discuss your situation and treatment plan with your therapist. We will do collaborative treatment planning to ensure that you feel comfortable and confident in the work you will engage in. Learning parent coaching strategies and implementing them takes time. During your parent therapy sessions, you can discuss and troubleshoot what seems to be working for you and what does not. This will help focus the work and allow you to achieve meaningful goals.

Parent counselling begins with an assessment with your therapist. This will allow you to discuss your situation and treatment plan with your therapist. We will do collaborative treatment planning to ensure that you feel comfortable and confident in the work you will engage in. Learning parent coaching strategies and implementing them takes time. During your parent therapy sessions, you can discuss and troubleshoot what seems to be working for you and what does not. This will help focus the work and allow you to achieve meaningful goals.

Parent coaching might be a good match for you if:

• You want helpful communication strategies to support a loved one as they experience mental health issues.
• You want to learn more about creating an open dialogue with your children as part of your parent coaching strategies.
• You want better relationships with your children.
• You feel you are inappropriately supporting a loved one’s mental health issues, and you want adaptive strategies. 
• You have a child (younger or older) with interfering psychological issues, and they do not want treatment; you need to learn how to manage this. 
• You want to ensure you have a healthy relationship with your child and want to learn from parent therapy sessions how to do this. 

Parent coaching might be an excellent match for you for all these reasons. You can begin transforming your parent-child relationship by learning skills, strategies, and communication tools. Parent counselling can help you to begin this journey. 

How Can Parent Coaching Help When a Loved One Has OCD Symptoms?

When our loved ones are experiencing mental health issues, we might often accommodate (i.e., support) those issues out of love and concern. However, unfortunately, we maintain our loved one’s mental health issues and perpetuate their ongoing struggles. Families often engage in these behaviours when one member has symptoms of OCD. 

Family accommodation can arise in many ways when a loved one has OCD; a family member might participate in a loved one’s rituals, support their avoidant behaviours, or make significant changes in family routines. All of this is done to decrease the stress and anxiety of the loved one. However, this strategy is problematic because it maintains the OCD cycle. 

Parent coaching sessions can help decrease the amount of family accommodation that understandably occurs when a loved one is experiencing complex mental health issues. During parent counselling, you will learn strategies to reduce these behaviours. Research has found that decreasing family accommodation is associated with decreased OCD symptoms. It has also been shown to be associated with increased overall functioning once treatment has ended as well. 

Parent coaching for families with OCD encompasses different strategies. We often start with providing education on OCD to family members. Then we work towards decreasing accommodation and learning ways to address the OCD behaviours. We work with families whether or not their loved ones are also seeking our help. This type of parent counselling can improve communication, set boundaries with the OCD and decrease any participation in ritualistic behaviours by family members. 

Parent coaching can also be beneficial when parents want to coach Exposure and Response Prevention work that an individual is engaging in. By understanding the tasks an individual is working on, parents can help support that individual and further their success and recovery. 

Parenting coaching strategies can also be developed that can benefit each unique family situation. As mentioned, enhanced communication is an important skill set to grow within the context of parent coaching. In addition, power struggles and challenging parenting dynamics that have developed are also addressed.

Finally, parent coaching can also happen as part of general family education to ensure that everyone uses similar language to address challenges that individuals are working on. This can help a loved one feel supported as they do the hard work of therapy daily.

Parent coaching can be conducted as standalone sessions or in an ongoing manner. Parents might seek this out independently of any therapy work their loved ones do. Parent counselling sessions can also be conducted as part of therapy sessions already being done with youth or adolescents. You can ask your therapist more about this!

Does FTPS offer parent counselling near me? We provide it throughout Ontario and BC, so please get in touch with us if you live anywhere in those regions!