Why Parents Are Hiring Coaches To Help Them Raise Their Kids

With the amount of parenting books, therapists and overbearing mothers out there in the world, you'd think that parents would have all the information needed to feel confident about raising their kids. However, there's an increasingly popular industry known as parent coaching that suggests this might not be the case.

A parenting coach is someone who helps parents develop skills to better raise their children and offers support during tough parenting moments. Celebrities like George Clooney, Emily Blunt and Jessica Biel have all reportedly hired parenting coaches in the past, though it's not only A-listers who have been turning to the professionals for help.

When parenting coach Michelle Carlson became a parent, she realized that not everything came as naturally as she'd expected. "When I became a mother, I was under the impression parenting would come easily to me, because of my background as a teacher and high school counselor," she writes. "I was well thought of as a teacher and always loved being around children. What I didn’t realize is parenting is a very difficult job, one [for which] we receive no preparation."

So she hired an expert."When motherhood became arduous and my daughters began to fight, I was at a loss. I hired a coach to help me learn tools that I had no idea were effective. I learned how to be empathic, listen to feelings, set kind limits and become better connected to my girls," she explains.

Carlson says she became a parenting coach herself because she was so captivated by the impact of her sessions. "I wanted to help others find more peaceful ways of parenting; ways where they could enjoy parenthood," she said. So she participated in a 10-month training program to ultimately become a certified parenting coach.

According to Carlson, life coaches differ from therapists because they don’t diagnose or try to find "issues" with their clients. They only support them and encourage them in their parenting journey, which is something we can all use more of these days.

Still, is the pressure to have the perfect child causing parents to doubt their own parenting instincts too much?

At a coffee shop the other morning, I ran into a friend Meghan Covington who just a third child and has her parenting hands full, literally. I asked her if she would consider a parent coach to help her out.

She says, "In extreme cases having a parenting coach would make sense, but in so many ways we are over-parenting. We over-schedule. We helicopter. We can’t even let our kids play out in the backyard alone. It sounds like parenting coaches are another step in that direction. We can’t trust our instincts anymore, and we are expecting perfection from our kids and ourselves as parents."

I question my actions as a parent every day, and sometimes I need to stop and just flow with what's going on with my child. Yes, my boy can’t sleep without me in his bed either. I know, it’s a shanda (Yiddish for "a shame"). But I also can’t end those nighttime cuddles just yet.

Covington says, "When it gets challenging, I stop and breathe for a moment but I never question if I’m doing the right thing. Trusting yourself goes a long way. My grandma gave me some good advice during my first pregnancy. I was nervous and unsure about being a good mother, and she said, 'Just love them and everything else will fall into place.'"

No judgment if a parenting coach can help you and your family thrive, but as for me, I think I like Covington's grandma's advice the best.

Photo: Shutterstock