Parent Coaching

In response to requests for parent coaching during their student’s high school and college years, I am now formally offering coaching directly to parents interested in more successfully parenting their emerging adult children in becoming self-sufficient, fulfilled adults. This requires a shift in the nature of your relationship with your young adult from an active, hands-on, managing parent (do this, don’t do that!) to that of a supportive, curious consultant who asks a young adult what they need to do to govern themselves. It can be challenging to transition from parenting a child to parenting a young adult!

Julie Lythcott-Haims’s an excellent book, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success, serves as something of a manifesto for parents. Lythcott-Haims, the former first-year-student dean at Stanford University, wrote the book as a call to parents to stop “manufacturing” their children through carefully curated activities and removing risk/failure from their experiences. Preparing high schoolers and college students for genuine success includes the sort of consulting or coaching approach to parenting that I work with clients on: recognizing your young adult’s autonomy and becoming a supportive resource who maintains boundaries instead of serving as a task master and someone who solves their children’s problems for them. 

Parent Coaching is done one-to-one with me. One or two parents, guardians, or parent-figures can attend the sessions. Coaching can be done once per week or twice per month.

Send an inquiry to be contacted about parent coaching.