TO COACH OR NOT TO COACH:
THE LINE BETWEEN HELPING AND HINDERING
Parents planning
to coach their children to social and emotional success need more
than tools, such as Parent Coaching Cards, to get the job done. Along
with the virtues of patience, determination and insight, is the need
for an often overlooked, but key coaching ingredient: support for
autonomy. In this context, I define autonomy as the child’s
capacity to independently achieve healthy and desirable goals in life.
Among these goals include completion of homework, satisfactory resolution
of a peer problem, or choosing a sensible course of action from a
variety of options. The ability to attain these goals without parental
involvement allows children to take complete ownership of the pride
that flows from them. This pride translates into fuel for the developing
sense of autonomy, a critical building block to self esteem.
The dilemma for many parents begins with the fact that children’s
path towards autonomy doesn’t take place without our help. As
we strive to guide our children towards independence we must provide
some of the necessary “scaffolding” within which they
can grow. Some of these external supports include rules, expectations,
consequences for misbehavior, and so on. Coaching is also included
within this framework since it helps children develop self-management
skills. Each parent shares a similar goal: for their child to develop
the skills to be self-sufficient in a challenging and unpredictable
world. Yet, the goal is much clearer that the individual steps we
must take in assisting children in reaching this destination. As we
provide “parent coaching” we must be mindful of the need
to step back and allow our children the chance to venture forth on
their own.
The delicate balance between coaching skills and supporting autonomy
was recently epitomized by the mother of Kenny, a seventeen-year-old
boy with AD/HD, “There’s a real fine line between coaching
and not coaching. My husband and I are not sure which side to be on.
Sometimes we get it right and Kenny accepts our help but a lot of
times he rejects it. This confuses us because we’re not aware
of doing anything different each time; it’s more like he’s
the one who feels differently about receiving our help. And when we
blow it, and try to force our help upon him, it’s liable to
backfire.” This astute mother’s comments highlight several
issues that parents are wise to consider when approaching their child
with coaching help: children’s mood, parents’ presentation,
and the potential for coaching backfires.
Mood acts as a filtering mechanism, coloring a child’s internal
experience of external events. Therefore, it plays a pivotal role
in how children interpret help. If a child’s mood is on a downturn
due to a recent disappointment, or even on an upswing after a success,
a parent’s help may be perceived more like a hindrance than
a help. For the parent, the child’s rejection of help is confusing
and frustrating, emotions that don’t peacefully combine with
the child’s fragile mood. In the exchange of verbal crossfire,
parents may get easily sucked into the role of attempting to enforce
“help” upon the unwilling child. This coaching backfire
results in distance and distrust between parent and child, leaving
both feeling wary of offering or asking for help.
To minimize these backfires, I recommend that parents “take
their kid’s emotional temperature” before being generous
with help. This means asking open-ended questions or making nonthreatening
observations to find out how receptive the child may be towards help.
Comments such as “Maybe we could talk about that since I think
we could both learn a thing or two,” doesn’t present the
parent as the one with all the answers. Instead, it places parent
and child in the same role of learning from events. Of course, some
kids don’t offer a lot about what’s happening in their
lives, but they may demonstrate how they’re feeling about those
events. Angry expressions, attempts to discredit parents’ help,
and/or rampant justifications for why they don’t need help,
suggest that the coaching bridge between parent and child may be closed
for the time being. Parents are wise to back off in the face of these
barriers to help, but they should stress that help remains available
should the child be ready at some other point.
The importance of how parents present their offers of coaching can
not be overestimated. It’s much easier to send a child reeling
away from our offers than it is to establish a safe dialogue within
which to receive it. Comments such as, “I want to give you some
help with that,” or even “Let’s talk about that,”
can quickly send a child into a defensive mode. Some children are
so sensitive to having their autonomy threatened that they experience
a parent’s coaching as the imposition of control. When the child
sounds off with protests such as “You’re pressuring me!”
or “Stop pushing so hard!” this signals the need for some
preliminary groundwork. The groundwork can be likened to preparing
soil for cultivation; don’t expect a child’s self-management
skills to grow and flourish without the proper environment. The proper
environment for coaching considers the whole child, not just their
areas of need. A forthcoming article addresses the many concerns inherent
in the “whole child” concept. For the purposes of this
column I will continue to confine my comments to autonomy.
Cultivating acceptance of coaching in a child whose feelings of autonomy
are easily threatened is a daunting task. One of the first steps is
to establish a dialogue wherein the two of you can safely discuss
what coaching is supposed to be and what it isn’t supposed to
be. It may even be helpful to write down two headings, such as “good
coaching” and “bad coaching” and then start placing
examples under each heading. For example:
GOOD
COACHING BAD COACHING
1.
When Mom prepared me in the car for 1. When Dad didn’t ask if
I wanted
some of the things that happened at the help, barged into my room,
and then
sleep-over. expected me to say, “Hi, father dear,
are you ready to help me now?”
The “bad coaching” example is offered to underscore the
point that a little self-effacing humor on the part of the parent
can go a long way towards helping to cultivate a more receptive mood
in your child. Humor can also effectively set the stage for parent
and child to reflect upon some of the coaching backfires in the past,
and unearth what went wrong and why. For instance, in the “bad
coaching” example, it provides the parent with the opportunity
to suggest that in her zeal to help, she actually made the child feel
controlled by her approach.
Another important step in “coaching cultivation” is to
talk about every child’s need for autonomy. Many children experience
relief to hear parents say something like the following: “Being
a kid who needs help every once in a while but also wants to be able
to do without it, is not an easy position to be in. And sometimes
when you need help the most, you want it the least! That’s because
a lot of kids reject help when they’re feeling touchy about
not knowing something as well as they think they should.” These
words convey a parent’s empathic understanding of the Catch-22
that kids find themselves in.
Once a child acknowledges that this is true of them, parents might
follow with a comment such as this one: “Maybe you could tell
me a way that I could let you know that I’ve got some help to
offer without you feeling like I’m trying to take control away
from you?”
Such a comment diminishes the child’s feelings of being controlled
by placing them in the advice-giving role.
Apart from the various factors that parents can weigh in considering
their “coach approach,” there is the option of not offering
help. Sometimes this choice is made by default because circumstances
require it, while other times it can be voluntarily determined by
parent and child. If a particular situation arises that lends itself
to a child “going solo,”
parents can highlight that perhaps this time the child might want
to handle things on their own from start to finish. For instance,
in the case of a child who has always relied on the parent to format
a study plan for upcoming tests, the parent might suggest that this
time they do it alone and give themselves the directions that they
have relied upon the parent to give them in the past. In fact, the
expression, “Give Yourself The Directions,” may be the
only coaching advice the parent offers in those situations that lend
themselves to such tests of autonomous functioning.
Much more can be said about supporting our children’s needs
for autonomy. As Kenny’s mother put it, parents must walk that
“real fine line” that tends to keep moving
as the child’s mood and surrounding circumstances shift it’s
position. Parents are advised to pay particular attention to the balance
between coaching and supporting autonomy by not emphasizing one side
to the exclusion of the other. Many factors will help you stay abreast
of where the line is, especially an open communication channel between
you and your child.
Dr.
Steven Richfield is a child psychologist in Plymouth Meeting, PA.
He has developed a child-friendly, self-control/social skills building
program called Parent Coaching Cards now in use in thousands of homes
and schools around the world. His new book, The Parent Coach: A
New Approach To Parenting In Today’s Society is available
through Sopris West (sopriswest.com or 1-800-547-6747) He can be contacted
at director@parentcoachcards.com or 610-238-4450. To learn more about
Parent Coaching Cards, read more parenting columns, or review the
press kit to The Parent Coach, visit http://www.parentcoachcards.com.
