Each and every day we are surrounded with opportunities for growth, learning, cultivating deeper character and shaping our values.  Embracing a Pro-Active Parent Coaching approach will assist you in helping your child make the most of these opportunities as they grow and mature in decision making and responsibility.    

As you ‘do life together,’ be observant and watch for the many moments your child will experience which have potential for greater impact.   These situations will vary from day to day, they could be as simple as your child coming and asking for advice on a decision they’d like to make, or an injustice they observed taking place toward another. 

In these moments, resist the temptation to default to a ‘typical telling posture’ where you, as the parent, wax eloquent telling them what to do and/or explaining and applying the learning lesson for them.  Instead, make a conscious decision to be a ‘parent coach’ and engage in conversation with your child through active listening and the use of powerful questions, and observe the depth of learning that can take place. 

The discipline of asking questions engages your child to process these experiences at a deeper heart level, which greatly impacts their long term ability to process, learn from, and make application to their own lives.   If we withhold this opportunity for learning, it breeds an inability to apply learning from similar situations in the future, but engaging our children in processing ‘these everyday experiences’ prepares them to apply learning from their experiences throughout life.    

The following are some sample questions to get you started as you begin engaging your child in learning from everyday experiences.  (Please feel free to change and/or add questions that fit your life and situations.)

Engaging experiences your children have observed or experienced. 
Put yourself in their shoes, how do you think that impacted them?  Made them feel?
If that had been you, how do you think you’d feel?  What do you think you’d do?
How else could someone handle this?
If you could ‘start all over’, what would you do?
If you had it to do over again, what would you do?

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When they are considering a course of action:
What are the possibilities?
If you had your choice, what would you do?
What are some possible solutions?
What will happen if you do and what will happen if you don’t?
What options can you think of?
Is there anything else?
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Thinking toward the future of their decisions:
As you move forward with that decision, what are some possible outcomes?
Who could be impacted by this decision and what could that do for them? 
What benefit might that bring to them?
How do suppose all of that will work out?
What will that get you?
Where could this lead?
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Until next time,
Your friend and Pro-Active Parent Coach
Greg

*Gregory and Lynn Bland currently reside in Nova Scotia, Canada and are actively coaching, writing and developing a course to train parents in Pro-ActiveParentCoaching.  Additionally they are providing interim pastoring for the Maritime District of the PAOC.  For more information check out Pro-ActiveParentCoaching or write to greg@pro-activeparentcoaching.com.

Copyright 2010 Gregory Bland | Pro-ActiveParentCoaching | Nova Scotia | Canada | greg@pro-activeparentcoaching.com