The Importance of Parent Coaching in Child and Teen Mental Health
Parents are the key to their child’s mental health treatment. Decades of child intervention research highlight the importance of the caregiver’s role in the mental health setting. Most evidence-based treatments for children and teens involve parent coaching. Parent coaching is a component of child treatments for acting out (e.g., defiance and aggression) and internalizing (e.g., anxiety) problems. Some interventions are focused solely on sessions with the caregivers. Even evidence-based treatments that are child-focused include parent sessions as a crucial component.
Parent Coaching Approaches
Among evidence-based treatments for child problems, there is substantial overlap in the approaches. Whether learning to calm defiant behavior or how to support an anxious child, these skills tend to show up in the treatment literature:
Routines and Predictability
Positive Behavior Supports
Relationship Building
Healthy Limit Setting
Reducing Parent Accommodation of Problem Behavior
Routines and Predictability
Consistency is the foundation of evidence-based parenting strategies. Routines provide comfort and help us to keep our stress levels down. Predictable routines are also a great way to maximize the chances that kids will be cooperative. The same goes for discipline. It’s easy for caregivers to fall into the trap of coming up with punishments on the fly. This never works! Discipline needs to be seen by kids as reasonable, predictable, and delivered by a calm parent.
Positive Behavior Supports
Positive Behavior Supports reflect various strategies to support a child’s success. At the core of this component is an understanding of how a difficult behavior might function for the child. The most common reason why children act out is to escape a demand or something unpleasant. Another reason is to access something that they want. Children might act out just for attention, but this is less common than reasons related to avoidance or escape.
For example, a child might become defiant when it’s time to do math homework. There is a good chance that math is difficult or aversive for this child. In this case, Positive Behavior Supports might involve breaking the assignment down into smaller parts. It might also involve finding ways to address learning gaps in the school day. Or, a reward system might help ease the defiance and increase motivation.
Healthy Limit Setting
A crucial aspect of any parent coaching program includes limit-setting strategies. All kids, especially those who struggle with impulse control, need limits. Limit setting should almost always be considered to address:
Aggressive or destructive behavior
Defiance/ not listening
Screentime access
“Off limits” violations
Aggressive or destructive behavior almost always requires limit setting. Kids can learn to cooperate and listen to their parents through limit setting against defiance. Through parent coaching, parents learn to be more effective in their choice and timing of demands placed on the child or teen. Screen time access is a special category for limit settings. It typically involves both creativity and advanced planning. “Off limits” violations refer to holding the line when a child gets into something that is off limits. Examples of things that may be off limits, depending on the family, include climbing on top of tables or getting into mom’s purse.
Many parents are uncomfortable with limit setting. There are mixed messages in the popular media about limit setting, which creates confusion for caregivers. Limit setting is one of the most potent ingredients to a successful parenting program. Limit setting might involve a carefully administered time-out protocol. For older kids and teens, limit setting involves removing access to privileges. This removal of privileges is temporary until the teen completes a corrective action. Contrary to some claims in the media, these approaches tend to improve the parent-child relationship. They also can foster an improved sense of security in youngsters.
Relationship Building
There is no parenting program that will help if the relationship tone is negative and conflictual. Effective parent coaching will always involve ways to reduce conflict. Communication and problem-solving skills are central. Validation skills, praise, affirmations, and shared enjoyment are also key!
Reducing Parent Accommodation of Problem Behavior
"Parent accommodation of problem behavior" is a natural caregiver response to a distressed child or teen. Parent accommodation refers to when a parent alters their own actions or routines to avoid distress in their child. Parent accommodation often involves reducing demands on a child. It may involve parents doing things for their child that the child can do for themself. This is an understandable parental response and can feel like the right thing to do. Parent accommodation may need to be addressed when the child’s growth might be hindered by being protected from the challenges. A common example is when an anxious child feels too shy to speak up, so the parent speaks for the child. Another common example is when parents avoid enforcing expectations out of fear that the child will escalate.
Addressing parent accommodation is a nuanced process. Parents need support and thoughtful guidance from a skilled parent coach so they can shift this dynamic in a direction that will support the child’s coping skills and resiliency.
Special Topics That Parent Coaching Can Address
When young children struggle with toileting or bedtime/ sleep problems, parent coaching is often a great starting point. Anxiety, emotion dysregulation, ADHD, and Autism Spectrum Disorders are all issues that can be addressed through parent coaching at Child and Teen Solutions.
Support Your Child’s Mental Health With Parent Coaching in Seattle, WA
Parent coaching at Child and Teen Solutions provides you with practical tools and compassionate guidance to navigate challenges and support your child's mental health. Whether you're addressing conflict or helping your child manage anxiety, our tailored approach empowers you to create a nurturing and understanding environment. Discover the confidence to guide your family through these tough moments with care and connection. Follow these three simple steps to get started:
1. Send us a message and we will get back to you to gather information and answer your questions.
2. Our Client Care Coordinator will walk you through the steps for scheduling and preparing for your first appointment with a skilled CATS therapist.
3. Start supporting your child’s mental health!
Additional Mental Health Services Provided by Child and Teen Solutions
CATS is here to support you and your family through a variety of services designed to address the unique needs of each family. In addition to helping you support your child with parent coaching, we also offer services to young individuals that can help with self-regulation, ADHD, autism/ PDA, emotion regulation, defiance, or anxiety. We also offer Theraplay to families of young children who are looking to have sessions together with their child. For youngsters who are interested in working directly with a therapist, we encourage you to read our child and teen service pages. In some cases, the therapist who is working with you for parenting can eventually shift to focusing on working with your child. Alternatively, it can sometimes be best to assign a separate CATS provider to the child or teen who is seeking their own therapist. We also offer neurodevelopmental evaluations when more information about a child’s or teen’s developmental and learning profile would be helpful. We work with a wide range of family constellations and identities, and all of our services are LGBTQ+ Affirming.
