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Parent Coaching
The Value of Having Someone on Your Side
By Tracy McGinnis
Judi Bartle's daughter Emily suffers from Transient Migraine with Atypical Aura – which means she lives with daily headaches that are sometimes mild and often excruciatingly painful. To help treat her illness, Emily visits a headache clinic frequently and is on constant medication.
Emily has missed a great deal of school and because this is such a rare condition, the school wasn't sure how to deal with it – which left mom Judi feeling frustrated and unsure of how to help her daughter. She had to make changes with the school but wasn't sure how to make it happen.
Your child may not suffer from the same condition as Emily, but chances are, as a parent, you've found yourself in a situation where you knew something needed to change. Maybe your kids need motivation with schoolwork or you are dealing with siblings that argue or those difficult teenage years. Perhaps you're a new parent that needs to feel more confident in raising your baby or an adoptive or new stepparent trying to find your place. All share the same goal of wanting to raise children in the best way possible with the right solutions available.
More parents, like Judi Bartle, are reaching out to parent coaches to help them build a plan that will work for their families. "My coach helped me figure out what my priorities and goals were that ultimately helped me make good decisions about my daughter's future and find ways to navigate a public school system to get results in a way that a therapist and attorney were unable to help me," says Bartle.
"Some parents come to coaching as a proactive measure, to re-define their parenting values to re-discover the joy of parenting or to build up their reserves so they don't have to get to the point of feeling overwhelmed with the many demands of parenting," says Mary Scribner, a certified parent coach with Sound Parent Coaching