Ep. 118 My Best Tips for Parent Coaching in Therapy
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Why do many therapists feel imposter syndrome when coaching parents?
Hello, hello, Neurofirm world. Super excited to be with
you today to talk about one of my favorite things, which is parent coaching. So today I will be breaking down my framework for parent coaching. I have been coaching parents for a long time since my very first job ever in this field when I was an SLP assistant. This is before I had kids of my own and I was coaching parents. And I remember being so intimidated by it because I was thinking, here I am, I'm going this 22-year-old with no kids, practically no life experience, and here I am telling parents how to raise their children. And how are they possibly going to take this well for me? So I just remember so much imposter syndrome when it came to coaching parents and what I have learned that if you can get a framework in place so that you know exactly what to do, how to do it, how to present it,
It becomes something you can be confident about. And I never one time, if this makes anyone feel better, I never one time had a parent question me about the fact that I didn't have kids, okay? So that actually was never an issue. It was only an issue in my head. And then I can tell you now as a parent who has had kids in therapy, there is some, I have never once thought, oh, well, this swimming instructor isn't good enough for my kids because she doesn't have kids yet. This music teacher isn't good enough for my kids because she doesn't have kids yet. Like that doesn't even cross my mind ever, right? The only thing you care about is they're working with someone who cares about them, someone who is helping them achieve the things you want them to achieve.
Okay, so I just wanna say, get that out of your mind if it happens to be in your mind like it was in mine. And know that you are going to learn a framework today that is going to make you feel confident walking into a room, regardless of your level of experience and how many years you've been practicing and all of that, because that's how step-by-step this process is going to be. We know that parent coaching is an incredibly important part of our job because we spend a very small amount of time with our kids every week compared to their caregivers. So 168 hours is how many hours we have in the week. And we are lucky to spend one hour a week with kids. I know some of you do two hours a week. Some of you do 30 minutes a week with kids, okay?
So 168 hours and we're lucky to get one. That is why it is so important that...
How important is parent coaching compared to direct child therapy time?
We are talking about coaching. And today, I use the word parent a lot. This could be any caregiver. In our clinic, we train a lot of nannies, grandparents, siblings even. We'll have siblings come in and include them in the session. So this is a framework that you can use with any kind of caregiver that you have in your clients' lives. I will say... It's hard to coach parents. It is easier to say bye-bye in the waiting room, leave them and bring the kid back in 30 minutes. And I'm not saying we never do that because it completely depends on the kid if we're gonna do that or not and the parent and all of the dynamics, okay? But it's hard, right? It's way easier just to be like, peace out. We'll be back in 30 minutes.
Okay, he did great today, bye. Okay, so if bringing parents back for your full sessions is not something that's necessarily possible, you can consider breaking it up. And so for some kids who parents would rather sit out and parents do better with their parents, kids do better with their parents sitting out, having them even come in for the last 10 minutes of the session or something like that. So we might say, oh, we're going to get started and then we'll come grab you and we could go over what we did today and I could show you some stuff. Okay, so it doesn't have to be the whole session. It can just be part of a session. And it doesn't have to be every session. It could be every few sessions. It's just whatever flow works for you and your families.
So one of the most important things I can't stress enough is how important it is to be straightforward about what therapy is going to look like to set family's expectations from the beginning.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do many therapists feel imposter syndrome when coaching parents?
0:07–2:42
2
How important is parent coaching compared to direct child therapy time?
2:42–4:36
3
What’s the best way to set clear therapy expectations with families from the start?
4:36–6:37
4
What are the five steps of the parent‑coaching framework?
6:37–8:45
5
How should you introduce a new concept to parents during a session?
8:45–10:28
6
Why is modeling the strategy before coaching more effective?
10:28–12:03
7
How do you coach parents through the activity without over‑explaining?
12:03–13:56
8
What questions help parents create a realistic home‑practice plan?
13:56–16:05
Speakers
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