A Coaching Model: Find Your Peace

A Coaching Model By Maryan Cabdi, Parents Coach, UNITED KINGDOM

How to Find Your Peace

There is so much emphasis on the importance of parents’ well-being and self-care and how that can affect their parenting skills and their relationship with their children. Becoming a parent means the responsibility to attend not only to your own needs but also to the child’s needs. Therefore to succeed in fulfilling parenting responsibilities, parents must meet their needs as well. 

Parent coaching gives the opportunity to parents to do inward self-improvement work. It supports the parent to have the space for a deeper understanding and reflections on what they need for their parenting journey, it helps them raise self-awareness about what parenting tools they need to flourish, and what self-care strategies are in place for coping with difficult times in life.

The coaching journey with the FIND YOUR PEACE Model helps the client parent to nurture themselves by starting with inward self-improvement, and as a result of that, they will increase their resilience and peace in their parenting journey.

 The dynamic human experience of well-being consists of four main components: the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions.

Physical: Implies cultivating bodily awareness, healthy habits, and positive attitudes about our bodies. In many cases, parents due to multiple responsibilities tend to forget about their physical health healthy diet, good sleeping hours, and exercise.

Emotional: This includes raising awareness of one’s emotions, the ability to differentiate between them, to understand their triggers, especially with a strong emotion like anger. Parents, who can self-regulate their emotions will be more able to cope with parenting challenges. As the author of 15-Minute Parenting Joana F said

Self-regulation and the capacity to self-soothe are cornerstones of developing a capacity for intimacy and emotional closeness in relationships as we grow.

 Mental: It includes developing clarity of mind, including reflection, paying attention, and seeing objectively, also using information effectively to plan, communicate, manage, and solve problems.

 Spiritual: This includes finding the core values that give everyone their unique characteristics and also recognizing a connection with life beyond the material dimension. Parents with a nurtured spiritual dimension are more able to experience values such as the joy of service and expressions of mindfulness and lovingness toward their children and all beings.

So for a well-rounded parent; it’s important to be balanced in all these areas so they can become the best vision of themselves.

 However, every parent has different needs so it’s important to address that using this coaching model. This coaching model is a process model where the client will go through a self-awareness and self-empowerment journey. This coaching journey is divided into three stages as follows :

FIND YOUR PEACE Model

The First Stage:

 F.I.N.D  stands for Find  Intent, Needs, and  Develop

A – This stage addresses inward self-improvement and that starts with intent. So the coach supports the client in finding the intent,  this helps the client to know the purpose and drive behind doing actions or wanting to achieve specific outcomes.

 questions at this stage include:

• What’s meaningful about addressing this issue?
• What is important about this outcome?

So for example a  client who wants to work on improving their interpersonal and communication skills, the intent behind this outcome is the desire to be a calm and collected parent.

B – Find your needs: So much parenting has to do with meeting the needs of the children, so it is important to find out their own needs. Every parent client is unique so having a discussion about their needs helps the coach understand more about how to support them.

 Questions to ask during this stage :

• What are your needs?
• What do you need to achieve?
• What is important to you to achieve?
• What are your priorities?

The Second Stage:

PEACE: Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual Needs Assessment.

The client gets the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of what is missing in regard to Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual needs.

Assessment: This is about raising self-awareness and knowing your current situation in regard to where you’re at with meeting your needs. The following questions will help to deepen the client’s understanding of their well-being in different areas. 

Physical Self-Care Assessment:

• Do I eat healthy food?
• Do I exercise?
• Do I get enough sleep?
• Do I rest when sick or tired?

Emotional Self-Care Assessment:

• Do I express my emotions in a healthy way such as by journaling, creating art, or talking?
• Do I talk about my problems?
• Do I take off responsibilities and do my hobbies?
• Do I recognize my strengths and achievements?

Emotional Self-Care Assessment:

• Do I set aside time for thoughts and reflections?
• Do I participate in a cause that is important to me?
• Do  I act in alignment with my morals and core values?
• Do  I  pray or meditate?

Mental Self-Care Assessment:

• Do I have stimulating conversations?
• Do I seek knowledge to improve my parenting skills?
• Do  I manage my priorities and time?
• Do I   ask for support when I need it?

Third Stage

At this stage of the coaching journey FIND YOUR PEACE Model the coach supports the client with the following:

Commit to Actions:

The coach supports the client to move forward and develop positive perspectives and mindset on what matters for them, for example, it can be about how to accommodate all their emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental needs.

Also, the coach supports the client to find inspiring and motivating action steps without feeling judged. Questions that can be asked in this stage:

• What energizes you?
• What would you like to commit?
• What would support you in achieving your goals?
• What would hold you back from achieving your goals?
• What does your action plan look like?

Evaluation and Facilitating Growth:

At this stage the coach will support the client with summing up, weighing up and analyzing, and solidifying main learning. Also, the coach supports the client to find out if there are any barriers or blocks. Questions can be asked in this stage:

• What would support you in achieving your goals?
• What would hold you back from achieving your goals?
• What are you learning about yourself in this session?
• What are your main takeaways from this session?

References

Fortune, Joanna. 15-Minute Parenting 0-7 Years: Quick and Easy Ways to Connect With Your Child (The Language of Play).
Ica Forum
Centre for Parenting Education Website