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6 July - Working Mums and Coaching Your Kids Part II
A couple of weeks ago we had a lively webinar with The Kids Coach Naomi Richards about how to prepare your kids for when you return to work. In the hour’s discussion with Naomi we spoke about some of the techniques and simple approaches that we parents can use to help our children adjust to changes in the home as a result of both parents going out to work. Click here to access the free replay of the discussion between Naomi The Kids Coach and Majella Wilkins Founder of Return2WorkMums.
Naomi is a very experienced coach working exclusively with children for the last 6 years helping them to address situations in their lives – situations such as parents separating/divorcing, friendships, bullying, moving schools to name but a few of the daily issues Naomi helps her young clients work through. Her work and one of her success stories working with a young girl who had endured some friendship problems at school featured in an article by The Daily Mail and the introduction of life coaching services into schools. The article was informative and featured a number of experts some of whom saw considerable merit in the use of coaching services in schools whilst others questioned them suggesting they were the latest middle class parenting fad.
What surprised me, in particular, were the vitriolic responses from those commenting on the article. The majority disagreed with the use of coaching services in schools. The general view appeared to be that the use of a coach was a failing on the part of parents and teachers. These adults were shirking their responsibility asking for the support of an experienced coach. Some of the commentators felt that parents and teacher were not doing what should be a core part of their roles in society and for their children.
I speak from personal experience of co-managing a branch of Relate – the relationship counselling charity - for nearly 2 years. Sadly given the rates of separation and divorce in the UK our service was much in demand. One of the counselling programmes which was particularly oversubscribed was the one counselling young people who were struggling at home and/or at school as a direct result of their parent’s relationship problems. We were increasingly being asked to run sessions in local schools so that we could make our counselling service more accessible for children. As a co-manager of the charity, I did not have enough resources to meet all the demand and we therefore worked alongside private counsellors and coaches in order to support as many young people that we could.
The demand for our services was most definitely not confined to just middle class families – it affected all families and we worked in a cross section of schools and socio-economic groups. Nor was it a fad. Divorce and separation rates are not improving in the UK – this too crosses all socio economic groups. The knock on effect can be considerable on our young people and their self esteem, sense of well being and how they mature and learn to develop positive relationships of their own. Added to this asking for support for your child was most definitely not considered fashionable! In fact many parents were embarrassed and viewed themselves as failures that they needed to ask for help.
My thoughts and response, therefore, to the Daily Mail article and all the negative and short sighted comments are that it takes great courage as a parent to ask for help with parenting matters. We love our children and want to be the ones that help them solve their problems. We want to be the solution provider not the problem maker. We want to be their hero/heroine/role model – someone they look up to. When adult relationships breakdown, however, it is difficult to retain emotional control when we are hurting so much ourselves and it takes a strong, caring, loving parent to ask for help.
I, therefore, applaud the work of charities like Relate and fellow professionals like Naomi. Keep up your great work and parents please do not be afraid to ask for help – you are being the best parent you can by doing so!