Can A Coach Help Me Understand My Children?

Clearly third parties can play a valuable role in helping to build bridges in dysfunctional parent-child relationships. It’s just that our society is no longer set up to respond in that way. This is where a coach comes in: the impartial observer, providing an objective view of the situation and helping to put a rebuilding plan in place.

Common issues

The relationship between parent and child shares many similarities with a marriage. Its closeness can be its undoing, giving us the slack to take the other person for granted, say hurtful things that we don’t mean, act in ways that we don’t really want to – but always feeling we’ll be forgiven because, well, they’re always there, aren’t they?

The common issues between parent and child arise from the parent being in the wrong frame of mind to give the child what they need. In most cases, all they need is your time. But you come home from a long day at work and the last thing you need is to muster the energy to play with or talk to your kids.

You get annoyed at them bouncing on the sofa, irritated by their incessant questions. You want to shut them out and have the space to unwind. But deep down you know that that is not the kind of parent you want to be, so you feel guilty, which only winds you up more.

Self-labelling

It’s not hard to visualize the kind of parent you want to be. If you’re struggling to fulfil that ideal, a coach will make sure that, rather than feeling guilty, you resist the temptation to label yourself as a bad parent and instead recognise what is actually going on.
By taking a business-like approach to the situation, a coach will help you see the causes of the tension in the relationship and you can start addressing those causes logically. Perhaps the problem is that you’re too tired. So why is that? And what can be done to change it?
There are always logical steps you can take towards building bridges in any relationship, it’s just that they’re often hard to see from inside the relationship. The objective view that a coach brings can open your eyes in a way that is quite remarkable.

The presenting problem

The problems that arise between parent and child often spill over from other issues. For example, you might have anxiety issues around work, which are giving you stress, making you tired and draining you of the energy you need for your child. While you see the child and their behaviour as your bugbear, this is often merely what’s called the ‘presenting problem’ – the one that takes centre stage. The real problem lies elsewhere.

It can be something of a ‘eureka!’ moment when a coach opens your eyes to this truth. You can quickly begin to take the steps required to resolve the real problem and start rebuilding your relationship at the same time.

If this sounds like a simple solution to what feels like a very complex problem, that’s because it is. Thanks to the objectivity and knowhow of the coach, it is often easy to unravel the complexities that sabotage a parent child relationship. And provided both parties are committed to rebuilding the relationship – which they almost invariably are – you can quickly re-establish the affection and joy of being in each other’s company that is, indeed, what nature intended.