What Is a Parent Coach?      In addition to being a parent educator, Lisa Greene is also a parent coach- it really all fits together nicely! Parent educators focus on teaching a pre-determined set of skills to a group.  Parent coaches work with individual families on their specific needs. Lisa can help you understand and change the parent/ child dynamics which may be impacting your relationship with your child.  Lisa has completed her parent coach certification through the Academy of Coaching Parents including the specialty niche "Special Needs." See www.acpi.com for more information about this program.

Lisa focuses heavily on helping parents learn and apply Love and Logic tools with their children but also brings in other helpful parenting resources. The goal is to support you to move forward and make positive changes in your family.  So, then, what exactly is parent coaching?

Coaching is a professional relationship that enhances your ability to learn, make changes, and achieve desired goals.   Your parent coach helps you get clear about what you want to accomplish with your family, set specific goals, make an effective action plan, stay focused, and eliminate obstacles, In a coaching relationship, you and your coach prioritize, plan, analyze, troubleshoot, and brainstorm. Your coach provides structure, feedback, perspective, skill-building techniques, and smart questions. Together, you evaluate options, make decisions, track your progress, and celebrate achievements. Coaching is not teaching, although it is educational.    While teaching can fade, coaching reinforces learned concepts and skills until they become second nature. Your coach often provides skills training in the “need-to-know” moment that formal teaching missed. She will also help you to discover how much you already know. You learn more by discovering answers than by hearing them.   Coaching is not therapy, but it is therapeutic.   The focus of coaching is on taking a hard look at what a fulfilling family life looks like, and then identifying specific plans, actions steps, and ways of thinking that will move you toward achieving your desired goals. Coaching is focused both on who you want to be as a parent and then on taking action; it is not focused specifically on creating healing. And yet, an outcome of coaching can be that healing takes place. It looks at the future, not the past. Why you are the way you are doesn’t matter. What matters is how you want to be.   Coaching unlocks a person’s potential to maximize their own performance.   The structure of coaching is flexible. You and your coach design a coaching arrangement that meets your individual needs and schedule. The basic design consists of:    - An initial session to create a coaching strategy    - Regular on-going coaching sessions (in person or by phone)   Coaching sessions are usually a weekly 50 minute session. Sessions may be focused on one specific parenting challenge you are facing, or on a much broader set of family issues. Coaching relationships generally last from three months to several years depending on your needs. The nature of your goals and the changes you wish to make will determine the length of time that makes sense for you.

As the co-author with Foster Cline MD of the book Parenting Children with Health Issues and mom of two kids with cystic fibrosis, Lisa is uniquely qualified to work with parents of children with special healthcare needs.  She understands the many challenges families face when dealing with special needs and has spent many years on developing a "tool box" to help reduce the parenting frustrations that special needs families face. Coaching works!    Contact Lisa to find out what parent coaching can do for you and your family!

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