Introduction to Parent Coaching with Mindfulness

Interactive, reflective and experiential, facilitated in a group coaching style, experience and embody exercises that you can use when coaching parents (see outline below). Practical exercises, strategies resource suggestions and coaching questions provided each workshop for you to practice, read and reflect upon between workshops.

Outcomes:

• Aware of appropriate psychoeducation tools and resources to bring into coaching sessions with parents
• Able to support parents to develop practical, mindful strategies to emotion coach their child to build emotion regulation.
• Know when to refer a parent/child to a specialist
• Able to support parents to improve their communication and connection with their child/teen and build a secure attachment.

Facilitated by:

Sara Phillips, working with parents since 2008, parent coaching since 2016, working with teens and young people since 2018, specializing in supporting parents to reduce their child/teen’s anxiety, build their child/teen’s resilience and confidence while improving their connection and communication with their child/teen. Sara is a parent of 4 teens/young adults and entered the world of mindful parenting when she was desperate for new parenting strategies for her own children. Sara is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with ICF and a Family Counsellor registered with ACA & PACFA. She is an accredited facilitator of Cool Kids Anxiety Program. No Scaredy Cats, Bringing Up Great Kids, Positive Discipline & How to talk so kids will listen.

Workshop Outline:

1. Secure Attachment: A brief look at attachment theory and how to support parents to form a ‘good enough’ secure attachment with their child/teen, being kind & firm as they support their child/teen’s feelings and needs for independence and connection.
2. Emotion Coaching: Exploring a child/teen’s feelings & needs further, understanding the needs of a healthy brain, and how a parent can teach emotion regulation and emotional intelligence.
3. Communication & Connection: The need to overcome negativity bias and confirmation bias, focus on the positives (5:1), praise vs encouragement and how to engage cooperation.
4. Problem Solving with Children/teens: exploring alternatives to punishment, building independence & resilience, building optimism, focusing on long term values and strengths,
5. What is anxiety?: Exploring and understanding anxiety, the mind-body connection, the anxiety avoidance dance, when to refer on, focus on early intervention, focus on values (both sides of the coin)
6. The CBT Model of anxiety: understanding the anxiety spiral, exploring perfectionism as a form of anxiety, rigid forms of thinking vs flexible thinking
7. Mind-Body strategies to reduce anxiety: including changing thinking, changing bodily sensations, visualisations, etc
8. Creating a fear step ladder: exploring gradual exposure, rewards, smaller steps, encouragement,
9. Putting it all together: looking at case studies, Q and A.

This course will commence on 10th October at 7.30pm AEDT (Sydney time) for 9 weeks and each session will be 90 minutes in duration.

Cost for this course is $600 payable upfront or with a deposit of $200 and two equal monthly payments of $200 each.

Please contact us at info@lifecoachingacademy.edu.au if you are interested in participating in this workshop and wish to receive an enrolment form