Parent Express for 21-Feb-2006

Welcome to Parent Express, the PCI e-zine! Here you will find updates on the Parent Coaching Institute, along with ideas and practical tips for the parenting journey.

We are so fortunate at the PCI to do the fulfilling work we do. Recently we received an affirming letter from a single mother who experienced 14 sessions of PCI parent coaching. The changes she made due to the coaching were awesome. She loved the process and highly recommends it!

Gifts of the coaching relationship are the feelings of being fully listened to, appreciated, and respected. The authentic relationship developed between coach and client feeds the positive change process and both coach and client are fed by it! Helping parents feel more joy in their parenting is so rewarding! It feels wonderful for us coaches!

Speaking of feelings, PCI Certified Parent Coach™ Cathy Adams from Chicago wrote the article below that gives highly useful ideas for talking about feelings with children. Check out the end of the article and what her three-year old daughter self-prescribed to feel better.

With each new day, I wish you increasingly positive feelings!

-Gloria DeGaetano, Founder and CEO

Applications are being accepted now for Spring Quarter. (Application deadline, March 1.) If you are a forward-thinking professional with an undergraduate degree and a deep calling to work with parents, welcome home. We seek the “best of the best” for our acclaimed distance-learning Parent Coach Certification Training Program™ . Please click here for more information. As a PCI Certified Parent Coach™ you’ll have the opportunity to create a parent coaching practice, working with moms and dads who want to take their parenting to the next level. Call today for an application packet: 425-401-1519 or email: info@thepci.com.

You are going to be amazed at what a PCI Parent Coach can do for you and your family!

PCI Certified Parent Coaches™ are caring, thoughtful professionals with years of experience working with parents. PCI Certified Parent Coaches™ have successfully completed the PCI Parent Coach Certification Training Program™ — a comprehensive academic one-year, graduate-level program in collaboration with Seattle Pacific University.

Through a series of coaching conversations that can be either by telephone or in person, PCI Parent Coaches help you re-discover your dreams and design your life for more joy and satisfaction.

To find a PCI Parent Coach in your area, please click here, or call 425-401-1519 for a referral to a PCI Parent Coach selected especially for you.

Moms and Dads, tune in every Saturday morning at 11 a.m. on 1150 AM for true understanding, authentic affirmation, and real-world solutions to parenting challenges while sharing laughter and conversation. We want to hear your stories too! So call us on Saturday!

In the Seattle area, call 425-373-5527. Out of town, call 888-298-5569. Listen to us on the web: www.1150kknw.com

Upcoming topics and guests:

Talking About Feelings

by Cathy Cassani Adams, LSW, PCI Certified Parent Coach™

Cathy, the mother of two young children, is a speaker, educator, and parent coach who lives in the Chicago area. To receive her free e-mail newsletter, Intentional Parenting, contact her at cathycadams@sbcglobal.net

My daughter loves to play games, but she dislikes putting them away. Sometimes she whines as she picks up game pieces and cards off the floor. She often struggles as she tries to fold the game board correctly. To express how she feels, she throws a card and puts her head down on the table. I use this as an opportunity to talk to her about her feelings. I tell her that she seems really frustrated, and she tells me more about what she is experiencing. Together we talk about different tools she can use to calm down and feel better. Maybe she could ask for help, take some deep breaths, or she could walk away for a few minutes. This discussion helps to alleviate some of her frustration, and my hope is that she understands that she has the ability to move herself through this experience.

Identifying feelings
My daughter is only three so she often needs help identifying what she is feeling. Young children may have a hard time identifying and discussing emotions because the words have not yet entered their vocabulary. A feelings poster or mood magnet (www.feelingscompany.com) in your child’s room or somewhere in your house is an easy way to identify emotions. It contains many different faces with the emotions listed underneath. If your children are unable to give you a word to describe how they are feeling, they can just point to a face. One of my clients had her children practice different “feelings faces” in the mirror. Once they identified what each face represented, she took pictures of them and created a personalized “feelings sheet” with their photos. This was a creative and fun experience for the family, and the result was a wonderful resource for her children.

Expressing feelings through behavior
I suggest to my clients that they talk to their children about feelings after a behavior episode (hitting, tantrums, or inappropriate language). Inappropriate behavior often signals that your child is dealing with a strong emotion and they are not sure how to deal with it.

Read More

Local Folks, watch KOMO, Channel 4 News at 5PM on February 23 for a feature on PCI Parent Coaching!

Chess for Children and The PCI are pleased to announce their recent collaboration! With our joint energy, we can provide the benefits of chess to more schools nationwide. Since mindless entertainment is on the rise, schools who offer a chess program give a much-needed, mind-enriching alternative. They may also find themselves ahead in the testing game as the cognitive and developmental advantages of chess have been well-known for decades. It is the primary focus of Chess for Children, partnered with The PCI, to offer their enrichment programs to as many children as possible. A fun, interactive, yet structured curriculum focuses on the many positive attributes of chess; sparking a child’s learning curiosity. Chess for Children can begin as early as kindergarten. For more information on how to begin a chess program at your school, visit, www.chessforchildren.net or call 866.800.7980.

Seattle’s Child and Puget Sound Parent now include Gloria’s syndicated column, Your Parenting Coach. This is an interactive column. Parents can email their questions to gloria@thepci.com or to nweditor@seattleschild.com.

The PCI completed a very successful Parent Coaching Pilot Project, conducted in collaboration with Snohomish County Office of Children’s Affairs. Fifteen of our parent coaches in training from all across the country took part. The moms and dads coached were very grateful for our assistance. So many commented on the graciousness of our coaches and how much they learned about themselves and their children in this process. The research data will be compiled and shared with county agencies for expansion of the project so the PCI can reach more parents with our very effective coaching model! If your agency is interested in linking with the PCI to offer parent coaching services and to assess its effectives, call the PCI today, 425-401-1519.

Meridian School is sponsoring Gloria DeGaetano’s popular presentation to parents, Parenting Well in a Media Age, on March 2, 6:30-8:30PM at the new theater at the The Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, WA. Parents will learn the most recent research, along with practical tools and techniques for supporting children’s optimal development. If you are going crazy with media’s impact on your kids, weary of always saying, “No” to them, and feeling isolated on the parenting journey in today’s screen saturated culture, come to this workshop to meet like-minded parents and to be inspired to continue your wise choices on behalf of your children. There is no fee for this event. If you are not a parent at Meridian, you would need to pre-register by contacting Joan Reynolds as Meridian School: 206-632-7154.

To engage Gloria DeGaetano for a keynote or workshop, contact her at 425-401-1519 or 1-888-599-4447.

Remember no TV or video for children from birth though age two. In the last issue of Parent Express, we recommended some great sources for educational videos. One of those sources was http://www.kidsfirstinternet.org. Kids First lists videos for children from birth through age two. The PCI does not endorse the use of any screen technology when children are under two. We agree with the American Academy of Pediatrics that use of TV and video for that age range should be highly discouraged, as the doctors urge in their Position Statement on Children, Adolescents, and Television.