Being a parent coach can be challenging, yet so rewarding. There isn’t another career path where your work improves your parenting, and your parenting improves your work. By becoming a parenting coach, you not only have the tools to improve your family dynamic and create a deep connection with your kids, but you also get to change the lives of parents and kids, whether you work 1-1 with clients in your community or build a global platform for parents all over the world. 

Being a great parent coach doesn't mean you need to be a perfect parent. Who would want to be coached by someone who is “perfect”?? It’s our own journey, vulnerability and imperfections that allow others to trust us. Being aware of areas where you can keep growing as a parenting coach will make room for your continued personal growth, not only in your coaching practice but also in your parenting.

In this article, we'll cover 9 helpful tips to improve your coaching skills, become a better support for parents, and how to make an incredible impact on the families you work with.

Tip #1: Acknowledge Your Strengths and Growth Opportunities

As parents, we often wear many hats. We juggle our work, home life, social lives, and every other aspect of our life – all while trying to be the best parent we can be. As coaches, we bring our own set of strengths and weaknesses to the table.

Being honest with yourself about your strengths and growth opportunities (some may call these weaknesses… not here though. We all get to keep learning!) is one of the most important things you can do as a parent coach. This level of ongoing awareness will help you to better understand how you can most effectively support parents, what type of coaching style suits you, and where you need to focus on your own growth as a parent.

The most important element of parent coaching is empathy. How can we support parents in their challenges and struggles if we haven’t been there ourselves? There will always be areas where you continue to walk your talk. It makes you a stronger parent and parenting coach when you’re able to use your experiences to be transparent and help your clients and community. 

Tip #2: Be a Supportive Listener

As parents, (and people!) we’re so used to wanting to fix or solve our loved one’s problems and we’re the first ones to step up to the plate to offer what we think others should do. We want to help, and sometimes what we think is best isn’t actually the best option for others. That’s why, as a parent coach, your role is primarily centered around listening. 

When it comes to parenting coaching, the best thing to do is listen and be supportive of your clients so that they can find their own way towards what feels authentic and true to them. 

There is nothing wrong with offering your parenting expertise when it’s requested, in fact this is one of the elements clients are seeking when they hire you. Part of your role is being able to differentiate between when your clients just need a listening ear and an open heart or when they could use your input or suggestions.

When parents come to you for help, they're looking for someone to listen, empathize, and understand what they're going through in a supportive, understanding, and non-judgmental way. Your clients need to know that you're here for them, no matter what.

Tip #3: Offer Practical Solutions

While it's important to be a supportive listener, offering practical solutions is also a necessary part of the transformative support you provide in your coaching practice. As a parent coach, it's your job to help parents find actionable steps to reduce the challenges they're facing in their parenting.

When you offer practical solutions, you help parents feel empowered and capable of solving their own problems. This builds trust and establishes you as a helpful resource that they can come back to time and time again.

Tip #4: Provide a Safe Space for Your Clients

As parents, we often have to make tough decisions – and it's important that we're allowed to make these decisions without judgment. As a parenting coach, it's essential that our clients feel accepted and understood in the choices they make for their families, even if you don’t necessarily agree with their decisions.

It's important to remember that you're not there to judge or criticize parents, or to convince them of your personal methodology. As coaches we create a safe space for our clients to explore and consider their options from all angles. We can then support them in finding what choice works best for them. 

Parents often come to coaches for help because they're feeling overwhelmed or stuck. By holding empathy as the highest priority, you're able to provide support and guidance that allows parents to find their own solutions.

Tip #5: Emphasize the Importance of Self-Care in Parenting

As parents, we often put the needs of our children before our own – but this isn't always the best thing for us or for our kids! As a parent coach, it's important to remind parents that when they take care of themselves, they’re able to serve their families better.

We can’t pour from an empty pitcher. And when we do, we aren’t able to be there for our children. We yell or say things we don’t mean, which just makes us feel so much worse. 

Encouraging our clients to take time to re-energize, do something that they love, and make space to regulate from their busy lives will improve their wellbeing as well as the relationships they have with their children. We’re all in need of the reminder to take care of ourselves, you can be the one to provide that to other parents.

Tip #6: Have Your Priority Be Empowering Parents

In your coaching practice, you may have parents coming to you that want to repair a damaged connection they have with their teenager, stop yelling at their toddler, or simply find a better way than the old model of dominant parenting.

Whether your clients fall under the power-over or power-under models of parenting, they are in need of empowerment. With your support, guidance, and knowledge, parents who follow the power-over or -under models of parenting can begin to soften their fears and lean into a more empowered model of parenting.

Parenting with empowered, peaceful parenting changes lives. As a parenting coach, you get to gently provide that shift and transition for families.

Tip #7: Encourage Parents to Seek Help

When it comes to trauma or difficult childhood experiences, there are matters that at times go out of bounds of our expertise as parenting coaches. We are not mental health professionals or licensed therapists, we are coaches. 

It is crucial as a parenting coach to understand the difference between coaching and therapy. A parenting coach’s job is not to be a therapist, it is to be a coach. Coaches provide advice and action plans for moving forward, instead of delving too much into the past. While the past will naturally come up as it relates to the present, if there is a lot of history to work through, that work is best done with a therapist.

Tip #8: Find Ways to Bring Your Work to Your Community

As a parenting coach, you have endless opportunities to bring this work to parents in your community. Whether you belong to a church where you can share your work, provide talks at your local PTA meetings or offer a workshop at your neighborhood yoga studio, you are not limited in how you choose to share what you do. 

You can choose to work with parents one-on-one or in small groups. You can work in-person or hold sessions online where geographic location is no barrier to the clients you can serve.

Tip #9: Rise Above Impostor Syndrome

It's easy as a parenting coach to experience impostor syndrome in your coaching practice. When parents look to us for guidance, it's easy to recall the tough time we had with our children that morning, or the time we yelled at our kids even though we told ourselves we wouldn't.

You're human, and your clients aren't asking you to be anything other than that.

You don’t have to be a perfect parent to become a parenting coach. Demonstrating your willingness to continue to grow is much more powerful for your clients. 

Lean into the knowledge, skills and tools you've gained through your coaching certification program, hold empathy and support as the highest priority in your coaching sessions, and trust that you can change the lives of families for the better. More confidence will come with time and practice.

If you have not yet entered into the world of parent coaching and wish to dive in, apply to become a parenting coach today!