Today I had the pleasure of coaching an amazing parent. She had become stuck as to what to do as her eldest's school grades aren't great. I asked her about her current approach and how her child was answering her questions. All she gets is 'it's hard'! My next question was 'what does your child mean by hard?' and she struggled to answer the question. We spent time unpicking how catch all words like 'hard' can stop us from truly understanding what is going on for our children. We really unpicked potential definitions and worked through scenarios on how to approach each response. Nobody tells us that as our children move into teenagehood that our tried and tested style of parenting may need to change and adapt to meet the changing needs of our children. At the end of our session she felt re-invigorated and could see a different path to walk with her child. She now will move into more of a coaching stage of parenting and with the added understanding of why it is important to unpick the catch all words they may use. Will everything we talked about today work with her child - NO but she now has the skills and confidence to adapt her parenting style to meet where her child is.
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