Coaching Your Child to Play Better
Effective coaching is a way of being with and communicating with your child.
HE CORE PRINCIPLES of effective parent coaching for social skills are based on proven strategies and techniques that support positive behavioral change. You don’t have to be some superparent with all the answers. You don’t have to fix your child or fix everybody else to accommodate your child. Set aside every discouraging assumption you’ve ever had about your child and remind yourself: If they could, they would. If they had the executive function skills to connect with others and make friends, then they would. The way your child’s brain is wired makes it harder for her to connect socially with other children. Your coaching and the Play Better playbook is about to change that.
Effective coaching is more than an attitude or a superficial style. It is a way of being and communicating with your child—a positive predictability and problem-solving approach in the way you listen and respond to your child. Positive predictability means that you reliably respond in ways that encourage, illuminate, engage, and empower your child, cultivating his innate capacity to change and grow. “How would you like things to be different?” “How would you rather be in that situation?” “What would you like friendship to look like?” You want to give your child the roadmap for change by asking where she wants to go, rather than simply telling her to change or even telling her what she needs to do to change. A problem-solving approach means leading your child through the process to help her develop problem-solving skills—not trying to solve the problem for her.
Your child needs direct experience in the step-by-step brain-based processes that develop social awareness, self-awareness, self-regulation, and positive social behaviors. Your coaching, using the following simple techniques and the Play Better lessons, coaching tools, and skill-building activities, creates those learning experiences for your child.