Parent-Child Coaching is something that many parents do without thinking about it. It involves guiding the child towards undersatnding and skills that you know will be useful and helpful to them in their lives. I Matter Parent-Child Coaching has many similiarites. There are also 5 key differences: i) In comparison to everyday parent-child coaching I Matter Parent-Child Coaches start out with a much clearer map or guide to help you decide what to coach and why. Parenting can be very challenging with so many decisons to make. It really helps to have a map that explains how lots of ideas fit together. ii) Parents who are learning about I Matter Coaching are provided with some easy to understand assessment tools. These easy to understand developmentally informed tools are designed to make it very clear what key skills are important and why. They are also designed to highlight when further assessment is needed. iii) Due to the advanced training involved, I Matter Parent Coaches find that they are much more aware of what is happening and have much greater understanding of what they are seeing during the everyday challenging incidents of life with their child. This helps them to have clarity and focus. iv) I Matter Coaching places a very high emphasis on the role, skills and well-being of the adult coach themselves. The special thing about this approach is that it is very clear from the outset that in order to be effective and appealing you have to do the work that supports your own well-being first! Blaming others doesn't take you where you want to go. v) I Matter Parent-Child Coaching provides parents with a framework for a longer-term approach founded on strengthening the security and effectiveness of the adult-child attachment relationship that can join together other learning that parents access in other places. vi) I Matter Parent Child Coaching is suitable for all children where there is a concern to support social-emotional development. Children may be very typical, or they may present with some complex challenges. They may have a formal diagnosis of ASD or ADHD or ODD or something else, or they may have no clear diagnosis. This is a framework that focusses on primarily on the adults undesstanding and skiills. If you would like to learn more take a look at our courses
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Just because your child is 10 years old, does not mean that your child is functioning like a 10 year old In my work I meet a lot of families of children who have developmental delays. Some of these developmental delays are VERY easy for an uninformed observer to miss and it is these more subtle delays that often lead to the greatest confusions for families and for teachers. Developmental immaturity is one of the key reasons for that common experience of feeling that your child is like 'Jekyll and Hyde' - wonderful and loving one minute and then in aggressve meltdowns the next. Does that sound familiar? Here are some key ideas: i) Child development is hierarchical - what this means is that you have to develop key skills first for other skills to develop. Therefore mature graded flexible thinking replaces black and white thinking only if a child has enough support to master the foundations of self-awareness. Failure to master early reflective thinking steps is like building a very shaky wall with very poor foundations. It can be considered a hidden disability. ii) Child development is comprised of several different key strands. These strands include physical development including gross motor and fine motor skills, language and communication development, social-emotional development, play skills and thinking skills development. These can develop at different rates. So your child may be physically and even verbally quite skilled but still have key social-emotional delays/ iii) One absolutely fundamental requirement for healthy social-emotional and the emergence of more mature thinking skills development is a strong, supportive and effective adult-child relationship. So if you want to see mature behaviour and thinking emerging, you have a very key role to play as the adult figure. iv) Children can have gaps and subtle delays in their development which make it difficult for them to manage the age-typical situations that they find themselves, in leading to much more rapid and easily triggered states of overwhelm and challenging behaviour. If you see your child as just 'naughty' or 'difficult' you will exacerbate their difficulites. They need your support to learn new thinking skills. v) The age at which a child is functioning can vary over time. Under stress children and adults will regress developmentally, displaying the needs of a younger child. Children who have experienced early disrupption or trauma are much more sensitive and much more likely to be functioning like a younger child and therefore need the care and pace that a younger child needs. If you have a child who is displaying challenging behaviour it is vitally important to learn more about child development and the impact of trauma and about your own role. It is vital to think about whether your child may be finding some things much more difficult than you are realising. If you over-estimate what your child can manage you may find that you are living with a child who feels impossibly difficult. Slow things down - start watching carefully - make time for reflection and for connection. This is what will deliver long-term results. Developmental thinking is really interesting and really helpful! Click here for more information about the i Matter Project Coptyright CBetoin 2016 All rights reserved |
Dr Cathy BetoinClinical Psychologist, Teacher and Parent Archives
September 2016
I Matter Parent Blog
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