What's a Family Coach, and how could that help my family?
These days, parents, caregivers and young people, are struggling more than ever. They're struggling to stay connected, maintain healthy boundaries, and have strong interpersonal relationships with one another. Not to mention they're keeping food on the table, a roof over their heads, balancing social lives of themselves and their children, and hopefully also finding time for personal ambitions. Often times, additional support and collaboration is needed to help every member find and use the tools to bridge the gaps. We actually can't do it all alone! As people in relationship, we know that we can't feel the safety and security of a home if the foundation is blown out. We get burnt out at work, and we can get burnt out in our parenting life too.
Family Coaches work to help build or rebuild that foundation and give you solid tools for shifting burn out to delight. We pull from strengths that are already in existence and identify obstacles that have been keeping you from being able to use the skills that you already have effectively, while empowering you to practice new skills in new ways too. Every member of your family unit has similar needs, but you all might receive those things in very different ways from the next person. A Family Coach can help you identify where the gaps are inside of your family unit and help you to start laying a new foundation for secure and sustainable relationship.
At times, Family Coaching may include every member of the system. Other times, it may include just the primary caregivers or just the children in the scenario. Family Coaching has the capacity to help families of all shapes and sizes, with the upmost flexibility. Inside coaching, we have the capacity to explore issues related to the overall goal such as marital conflict and co-parenting issues. While these areas may seem like worlds away from the overall skills that you're looking to develop in your relationship with your coach, they absolutely play a role, and a Family Coach uses their flexible role to address all of these areas of significance.
Emily Smith of Woven Wholeness Services bases her coaching approach with families on the belief that all members of a family unit should feel empowered through their relationships. Caregivers should feel empowered to make decisions in their parenting, even the hard ones, because they know they are guided by their values. Children, teens, and young adults should be empowered to make decisions in their lives and external relationships, even the hard ones, because they are also guided by values. This process involves a medley mentoring, consulting, educating, and counseling to help families identify needs and communicate those needs. In the end, this is what security boils down to.
Your family's work with a Family Coach could be the pivotal component that you've been looking for to help you identify tangible skills for laying that foundation, and laying that foundation now could be the factor that shields your family from fractured relationships in the future. While the list of potential benefits is ongoing and truly unique for every family dynamic these are a few of the most significant benefits:
Improved Parenting Skills
This might seem like the most obvious. It's probably why you're here on this page now. At the end of the day, it's the overall goal for Family Coaches to empower and equip families with the skills to not need our services anymore. We help caregivers develop strategies for supporting their child's behavior, communication and development, no matter the developmental age and stage of that child. This is the number one ingredient to improved relationships and successful outcomes for families.
2. Personalized Guidance
There might be a lot of similarities, but families are not one-size-fits-all. Family Coaches provide tailored guidance to meet the unique needs of individuals and their families, and address the specific challenges that they are facing. This personalized approach can be particularly beneficial for parents who are struggling with specific challenges, such as supporting difficult behavior, setting boundaries, or navigating through the ups and downs of developmental stages.
3. Sense of Empowerment and Increased Confidence
In anything we do, we want to feel confident in
it. We want to feel a sense of empowerment in the work that we do. This is why parenting and caregiving can feel like such a daunting and exhausting experience when we aren't equipped with the skills to do it effectively. When caregivers are working through their difficulties of parenting with a coach, there is less room for self-doubt and shame.
4. Third-Party Perspective
You know the old saying, "It takes a village?" Well, it's true. Unfortunately though, sometimes you've got an opinionated village that is all contradicting one another and you aren't sure if it's in alignment with your own values and beliefs and you wind up feeling more blame, shame and guilt. A Family Coach can help you see things through an objective lens, which can be especially useful for parents who are feeling overwhelmed and stuck. The objectivity can lead to helping parents identify patterns and behaviors that are leading to disconnection. It's always easier to see the details when we're out of crisis mode, can take a step back, and see what's going on without the blur of chaos.
5. Support
Sometimes, parenting can feel isolating. For parents that are overwhelmed and don't know where to turn, it can feel like you're on an island at times and it's a lonely place to be. Your Family Coach is a part of your village, offering encouragement and understanding during the hard and the easy.
