Parenting: Is It Always About The Kids?

When I began my career as a parenting coach over six years ago, my aim was to share my expertise and 20 years experience in parenting and child development.  I’d learned so much throughout my years of study, working with children and being a parent, I wanted to share what I knew with other parents.  Parenting, as far as I’m concerned is the most important job you’ll ever have.  As Virginia Satir tells us, “Parents teach in the toughest school in the world, the school for making people.” 

Prior to becoming a coach, I had spent 20 years as a workshop presenter, teaching parents about democratic parenting. That is parenting that provides clear, concise boundaries but allows children a voice, within those boundaries. I expected that when I began coaching privately I would be sharing the same strategies, only one on one.  My clients would present an issue to me and together we would discuss alternatives to punishment and more democratic approaches to parenting.  My training in life coaching has given me the skills to ask provocative questions and listen to not only what a client says, but what they don’t say.

Throughout my years coaching parents, I’ve learned that the majority of the time problems with the kids stem from issues with the parents.  What do I mean by that?  My instincts have guided me to always look deeper into the context of the “problem” behavior. What’s going on in the home?  How much attention is the child receiving?  What is the quality of the relationship between Mom and Dad?  Is there a need for control on the part of one of the parents that the child is reacting to?  Are one or both parents reacting against their own upbringing?  Often parents who were brought up in an abusive environment are determined their kids won’t experience the same thing, so they become permissive and don’t establish clear boundaries.  Kids who have inconsistent boundaries will constantly test to find out what the boundaries really are.  Often parents are consumed with guilt because of the number of hours they spend at work so they try and compensate by spending more money on their kids than they would if they were at home more.  These are just a few of the issues parents present that can be major contributing factors to their children’s problematic behavior.  When we address our own issues, we almost always see a dramatic change in our kids’ behavior.