Parent Coaching: Uncovering Influences and Promoting Change

Therapy with adults or couples with children frequently presents opportunities to help parents understand and improve parent-child dynamics. Parenting reveals implicit and unconscious expectations about raising children that are often culturally determined, and based on each parent’s own childhood experiences. This seminar draws on theories from systems, object relations and the parenting literature to show how unconscious factors get played out in the parent-child relationship. Therapists can help parents identify ways that their own childhood experiences, and aspects of the marital relationship, are played out in the parenting process. Through presentation of theory, and case examples, participants will be able to understand how to raise and explore parenting dynamics in the therapy session, and help parents find new ways of relating to their children and each other. This is particularly import in work with highly conflicted couples, even those who have divorced but have difficulty co-parenting.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this seminar, participants will be able to:

• Identify the ways that culture and extended family can influence expectations and parenting practices.
• Become familiar with the concepts of identification, dis-identification and projective identification, and the way that childhood experiences are revived in the parenting process.
• Define a parenting-team approach that allows couples to recognize and accommodate each other’s strengths and differences.
• Identify how power and triangulated conflict affects parenting, particularly in families with high levels of conflict.
• Identify ways to point out how unconscious processes are impacting parents.

CONTENT

• Factors that affect parenting

The influence of culture

The influence of respected others

Power dynamics within the couple

• Unconscious factors (identification, projective identification, and disidentification)
• Creating a safe space to explore parenting
• Engaging parents (exploring judgment, shame, and ambivalence)
• Interventions and Case
• Examples Identifying emotions that get triggered in parenting
• Exploring the parent’s view of the child and expectations
• Helping parents identify the differences between them and the ways this may complicate parenting Creating an effective parenting team Parenting in Highly Conflicted/ Divorced couples

FOR WHOM

Psychologists Social Workers Counselors Therapists Psychiatrists Nurses Course level: Intermediate

TRAINING METHODOLOGY

The training methodology combines lectures, discussions, group exercises and illustrations. Participants will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of the topics. The emphasis is on the practical application of the topics and as a result participant will go back to the workplace with both the ability and the confidence to apply the techniques learned to their duties.