How to Empower Parents as a Parent Coach

Marissa Goldenstein • June 5, 2025

How Parent Coaching Empowers Parents to Raise Confident Kids

Imagine this…

You’re the parent of a child who is currently in the middle of throwing a tantrum. They are flailing their arms and making a scene, and you are in the middle of a public area.

Now let’s explore two scenarios for how you may respond to the moment.

Scenario 1: Responding with Reactivity

You’re triggered and upset by your child’s emotional outburst. This is humiliating. Not to mention, you are so overwhelmed. This is the last thing you need right now. Your heart is racing, and your temperature is rising. “This is so dramatic! Why are you crying right now?” you yell. But the crying doesn’t stop— it gets louder. You get more flustered. You feel helpless. And now you have guilt on top of it all for how you just responded. You start shaming yourself in your head: “Why did I just yell? I am such a bad parent”. Maybe you even start crying, too.

Have you been here before? (We all have).

Scenario 2: Responding with Empowerment

Now let’s reimagine this scenario with an empowered response. You see your child’s tears, and you know that this tantrum is totally normal for their age. They are just having a hard time. You take a deep breath. You put your hand on your heart. You feel your body calming down, and you notice your empathy rising. These emotions are part of life, and you both can handle this hard moment together. You feel grounded and ready to respond. You turn to face your child and say: “Yeah, honey, this is so hard. I am right here with you.” They cry more, but you don’t let this surprise you. You know that it takes time to settle, so you wait patiently, radiating love and calm towards your child. Eventually, they crawl up into your lap and melt into your arms. You hold them in your arms while humming a sweet melody. Their crying slowly stops. They sit up. They wipe their tears. They say, “Mama, I love you. Can we go play?” and just like that, the emotional wave has passed, and they are ready to move on. You feel proud and confident.

This empowered reaction is possible, and it’s the vision we hold here at Jai Institute for Parenting. We have seen so many parents transform in their parenting in countless ways with the support of a parent coach.

Parenting will always have hard moments, but confusion and self-doubt don’t have to be front and center.

Parent coaching empowers parents with skills, self-awareness, and tools to help them raise children who are emotionally mature, resilient, confident, and secure. Coaching helps you unlock moments with your kid where you can finally rest and feel proud of how you are parenting.

The Role of Parent Coaching in Building Parenting Confidence

Let’s be honest. Parenting brings up doubts sometimes. For some, the doubt is often.

“Am I doing enough?”

“Am I failing?”

“Are my kids going to be okay?”

These are thoughts every parent on planet Earth has wondered at some point in their parenting journey. And it’s common during these moments of doubt to turn towards our family and friends to get some advice and reassurance. And when we do, we are often met with an overwhelming flood of information—various different pieces of advice about what we should and shouldn’t do. This can sometimes leave us feeling worse and more confused than when we started.

Enter a parent coach.

Parent coaches don’t hand out quick fixes or opinionated advice. They hold space. They ask powerful questions. They help parents turn inward, toward their values, their strengths, and the relationship they truly want with their child.

Through this process, coaches help parents build a deep sense of trust in themselves.

They do this by offering:

Self-awareness – Supporting parents in uncovering their patterns, triggers, and strengths
Skill-building – Teaching tangible tools for emotional regulation, conscious communication, and boundary-setting
Validation – Offering compassionate presence in the midst of parenting challenges
Empowerment – Celebrating growth, even in the messiest moments

Many of our graduates share that what surprised them most about Jai's parent coaching program was how their own confidence as a parent grew simply by learning how to support others. When we learn to hold space for another parent’s uncertainty, we often find new compassion for our own.

If you’ve ever felt a quiet knowing that you’re meant to walk alongside others in this work, you’re not alone. This is the kind of transformation we train for.

Strategies Parent Coaches Use to Support Families

Coaching is not a one-size-fits-all model, and it is adapted to meet your family’s unique needs. However, certain strategies have helped create profound shifts across many families. Here are some of the strategies Parent Coaches use to support families:

Parent coaches help parents create a coherent narrative around their past. When parents look back on their upbringing and understand what happened to them in their childhood and how it affected them today, they have more compassion for why they are the way that they are. They also have more compassion for their kids as they see similarities between what their kids are going through now and what the parents went through when they were kids. This compassion helps parents to be more open to learning new strategies and skills for showing up for their kids.

Parent coaches help parents define their visions and develop a roadmap for how to get there. In the coaching process, parents get to assess their values and strengths. Coaches help parents uncover what values are shaping their parenting strategies. When parents take the time to slow down and get in touch with their parenting visions, they begin to feel inspired to take action towards their visions. Coaches help parents build the skills and take small steps toward their parenting goals while also providing compassion, forgiveness, and encouragement all along the way.

Parent coaches help parents make connections between the past and the present. Having a coach is like having a mirror, reflecting back to you the patterns that are hard to see by yourself. Coaches reflect back on what they hear you say, ask important questions, and help you see yourself and your family with a clearer vision. Parents often express how ‘seen, felt, and heard’ they feel when they are working with a parent coach.

Parent coaches help parents practice skills that align with a parent’s goals. Whether role-playing and reimagining a challenging moment with their kids, learning about specific tools and techniques specific to their needs, or defining where to go and what steps would be best to take next, a parent coach helps parents develop skills to meet their unique family goals.

Parent coaches also help parents develop regulation tools so that parents can radiate confidence and calm leadership to their kids. This shows parents how to set loving, warm, and confident boundaries. They help reframe and shape mindsets that will support parents in having more connection with their children, even in the hard moments. So many actions and behaviors we take are rooted in stories we believe about the moment. Learning how to shift these stories is a superpower!

Additionally, parent coaches help parents to learn how to communicate consciously and maturely. Coaches are trained in communication skills like non-violent communication and how to lead empowered conversations. These tools help parents practice expressing needs and longings in a way that others can hear and understand.

Parent coaches are trained to use these strategies in a personalized way to ensure that parents get support that is relevant and useful to their unique family.

Setting Boundaries and Nurturing Independence

Some of the most important skills (and probably most challenging) are learning how to set boundaries with love and sturdiness, as well as how to nurture independence while strengthening connection and preserving interdependence.

Many parents are used to setting boundaries from a place of power over, which means utilizing authority to set boundaries from a place of “I am the adult and you are the child”. But research shows that the types of boundaries with the best outcomes are ones that are both warm and direct and strong. Learning how to set these boundaries proactively, creatively, and spontaneously is an area that takes time and support.

Warm, clear boundaries send an essential message to our children:

‘You’re safe. You’re not alone. You can handle what you're feeling.’

Parent coaches help parents discover any blocks or areas of resistance that may be in the way of setting boundaries in this way. Oftentimes parents are believing stories that come from fear and are in activated nervous system states that bring forth stories like “my child is being disrespectful” and “I need to show them how harsh the world can be”. Parent coaches help to uncover these stories, make connections with the past, and begin writing new stories so that parents have less patterned reactions and more empowered choices with more freedom to choose.

Nurturing independence is a key part of the parenting job, but many of us parents don’t know when it’s appropriate to let our kids lean on us versus when we might want to encourage them to develop their independence. Many parents have never been taught anything about child development or how the brain matures over the years. Parent coaches educate parents and help them meet their children where they are in their development and their unique individual needs. This helps empower parents to show up for their kids with less hesitation and confusion, and more confidence.

Encouraging Positive Communication in the Family

As parents, we spend a lot of time in a monologue - speaking at our kids with lectures and “shoulds” and word-filled lessons. We can shift to more dialogue, collaboration, and mutually respectful relationships through co-creating with our kids. We can do this through learning skills like:

Reflective listening. Reflective listening is when we repeat back what we hear from our kids. Saying words like “I hear you saying…” and “Tell me more about…” signals to our kids that we see them and we want to understand them more deeply. This creates more connection and trust between us.

Getting curious. Asking open-ended questions is another great way to open dialogue in our families. When we notice jumping to conclusions or assumptions, we can sit back and invite more curiosity. When parents learn the skills of how to ask great questions, they are often surprised by what they learn and how their assumptions were limiting their interpretations.

Connecting before correcting. Before we ‘correct’ our kids on something that they have done, it’s helpful to first connect with them to make sure they feel our warmth and love.

Allowing emotions. One of the best ways to open positive communication in the family is to allow emotions to be expressed healthfully. We parents get to learn how to welcome all emotions while building skills for how to express them without harm and destruction.

Positive communication isn’t about never raising your voice. It’s about creating a home where feelings are welcome, our kids feel seen and heard, and mistakes become opportunities for connection. Parent coaches can help develop these skills and make these goals more possible.

Real-Life Success Stories of Parent Coaching

With parent coaching, it’s not that the struggles disappear completely. It’s that parents now know how to meet them differently. That’s the beauty of Empowered Parenting. Parent coaching doesn’t give families a perfect script—it helps them write their own stories, with resilience, trust, and deep connection at the center.

The parents we support don’t walk away with perfect children or flawless days. They walk away with a deeper trust in themselves and a blueprint for raising resilient, connected kids.

Here are some real-life success stories showcasing the impact of parent coaching:

#1 A mom of two children, ages 10 and 12, was frustrated with her own yelling. She wanted and intended to parent with attachment parenting and compassion. When her kids disrespected her by name-calling or not listening, she was quick to anger. Remembering that her mom used to yell and knowing how that affected her, she desperately wanted to break the cycle. She could see that her yelling was now affecting the relationship with her children, and she felt like a failure. The kids were anxious most of the time, and she wandered between being too lenient and being too hard on them. Beyond the anxiety, her son had mood swings and showed belligerent behavior. She wanted to understand her kid’s behavior so she could react with compassion instead of taking everything so personally.

Through the process of coaching, this mom learned how to shift her thought processes, how to use compassion, how to apply listening techniques, and how to understand her child’s challenging behaviors. She felt confident as she moved forward with making decisions and setting limits. Now, there is much less yelling in the household. This mom now understands where her triggers come from and no longer takes her kid’s behavior personally. She works with her son and other family members so they can communicate with feelings and needs and understand each other better. She feels secure and confident that she will get both of her kids to adulthood while maintaining a close and trusting relationship.

#2 A father with a 2-year-old daughter was a frustrated parent. He had been yelling at his daughter to calm her down, and he felt frustrated because it “didn’t work”. He had only spanked her twice, but one of the times, he saw how scared his daughter was. He realized “I am going to end up being my father,” and he didn’t want to be a father who was feared. So he found a parent coach.

Through the process of coaching, he learned how to transform his discipline style. He learned how to work with his emotions and rewrite his mindsets. In reflection of his experience, he said, “I am a different parent.” He now carries the confidence that “I will be friends with my daughter and she will love me”.

#3 A mother with an adopted son who found herself in the darkest place she’d ever been as a parent. It was during the lockdown, and her adopted son was lashing out in terrifying ways - screaming, hitting, breaking things. The mom was stuck in survival mode, constantly on edge and trying to just make it through the day. None of her training in child development or experience working with kids seemed to help. She felt like she was failing and like she was alone.

Then she started the coaching process. She began to learn about her nervous system and how dysregulation fueled both her son’s outbursts and her own reactions. She learned about attachment science and what it really means to feel safe and connected. She learned about Nonviolent Communication. Through this process, she stopped reacting and started responding with presence, intention, and compassion. Her home began to shift. She shared that the coaching experience “didn’t just save my relationship with my child - it helped me find myself.”

Parent coaching isn’t about fixing—it’s about remembering. Remembering that connection is always possible. That children are doing the best they can. And so are we.

Whether you’re a parent seeking deeper confidence or someone considering the path of becoming a coach yourself, this work changes lives, from the inside out.

Curious about becoming a certified parent coach? Or looking for someone to walk alongside you on your journey? Join Jai’s 7-months Parent Coaching Program and start your own unique journey of transforming your family and many others.

Meet Your Author, Marissa Goldenstein

Marissa Goldenstein, a Jai Certified Master Parent Coach, is devoted to guiding parents toward mindfulness and joy in their parenting journey. Marissa demonstrates a proven commitment to innovative education, having a history as a co-founder of a visionary elementary school that focused on cultivating changemakers through curiosity, connection, and community. Leveraging her MBA and an MA in Experimental Psychology, she seamlessly integrates both business and human development insights into her coaching practice.

Beyond coaching, Marissa embraces mindfulness in her own parenting alongside her partner and their two sons, engaging in family dance parties and adventurous learning experiences whenever possible. http://marissagoldenstein.com

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What’s Actually Happening Inside Your Child’s Developing Brain

By Maggie Pouplis • June 3, 2026

Almost every parent experiences this more than once. Your child changes, and suddenly, you feel like you no longer fully understand them. The toddler who melts down over the “wrong” cup. The once easygoing school-aged child who suddenly becomes more sensitive, withdrawn, or reactive. The teenager who pulls away just when you feel the strongest urge to protect them. And somewhere in those moments, most parents begin searching for explanations. “Something changed.” “Someone is influencing them.” “They’ve become difficult.” “Social media is ruining this generation.” As parents, we naturally try to make sense of behavior. We look for causes because uncertainty feels uncomfortable, especially when it involves someone we love so deeply. But many times, what changes first is not the child’s character. It is the child’s developing brain. One of the most important things I learned during my training with the Jai Institute for Parenting was that behavior cannot be fully understood outside the context of relationship, nervous system development, and emotional safety. That perspective stayed with me and eventually led me to dive even deeper into developmental neuroscience and brain development. Because once you begin to understand how the brain develops, it stops looking like defiance, manipulation, laziness, or attitude. The behavior begins to look like development. In the early years of life, especially between ages two and four, children experience emotions intensely while still lacking the neurological maturity to regulate them independently. The areas of the brain responsible for impulse control, emotional regulation, planning, and perspective taking are still under construction. In other words, young children often feel enormous emotions inside very small nervous systems. This is why a toddler can completely fall apart because their banana broke in half or because you gave them the “wrong” spoon. To the adult brain, the reaction may seem dramatic. To the child’s nervous system, however, the distress is real. This does not mean children should grow up without boundaries . It means that in moments of emotional flooding, connection and regulation often need to come before teaching. As Dr. Daniel Siegel often explains, an overwhelmed brain cannot effectively access logic, learning, or problem-solving. The nervous system must first return to a state of safety before true learning can happen. This is where co-regulation becomes incredibly important. Children borrow our nervous systems long before they can consistently regulate themselves. They learn emotional regulation through repeated relational experiences with calm, connected adults. Of course, this does not mean parents must remain perfectly calm all the time. Parents are human beings with limits, stress, exhaustion, responsibilities, and their own nervous systems. What matters most is not perfection but repair, awareness, and the overall emotional climate of the relationship. As children move into the school-age years, something else begins to happen. Around ages five to seven, the social brain expands significantly. Children become increasingly aware of how others see them. Acceptance, belonging, comparison, fairness, and peer relationships begin carrying much more emotional weight. This is often the age when parents say things like: “They suddenly became more sensitive.” “They take everything personally now.” “They worry more than before.” And they are usually right. At this stage, children are not simply reacting emotionally. They are beginning to build a deeper social identity. Their brains are becoming more aware of social evaluation and emotional meaning within relationships. Then comes a stage I personally believe is one of the most misunderstood of all: roughly ages eight to ten. Many parents expect things to stabilize by this point. Instead, some children become quieter, more introspective, more emotionally reactive, or seemingly disconnected. Others become easily bored, frustrated, or emotionally overwhelmed. And naturally, adults begin creating narratives around those changes. “They’re lazy.” “They’ve changed.” “They don’t care anymore.” But very often, what we are witnessing is neurological reorganization rather than deterioration. During this period, the brain begins a major process called synaptic pruning. Neural connections that are not frequently used begin to weaken, while frequently used pathways become stronger and more efficient. At the same time, children develop more complex emotional awareness, deeper thinking, and a richer internal world. Many children at this age begin asking bigger questions about themselves, relationships, fairness, identity, and belonging, even if they cannot fully articulate those thoughts yet. Sometimes what adults interpret as withdrawal is actually cognitive and emotional expansion happening internally. And then adolescence arrives, perhaps the stage that activates the most fear in parents. Teenagers begin separating psychologically from their parents as part of healthy development. Their need for autonomy increases while the emotional and reward systems of the brain become highly sensitive. Peer relationships become deeply important, emotions intensify, and risk-taking often increases. To many parents, this can feel frightening or even personal. But adolescence is not a broken relationship. It is a developmental transition. Teenagers still need boundaries, guidance, and emotional safety. Perhaps more than ever. But they also need space to develop identity, autonomy, and a sense of self outside the parent-child dynamic. And maybe this is one of the biggest challenges of parenting today: learning how to remain emotionally available without trying to control every stage of development out of fear. Modern parenting often places enormous pressure on parents to react perfectly at every moment. But children do not need perfect parents. They need regulated enough adults who are willing to stay curious about what behavior may actually be communicating. Because many times, children are not trying to give us a hard time. They are trying to organize a developing brain and nervous system inside a very overstimulating world. And perhaps the question we need to ask more often is not “How do I stop this behavior?” , but “What might this developing brain be trying to communicate through it?”