The parents who hire me have families in which behaviors, emotions, abilities, and/or sensitivities, go beyond expectations. Often their children are showing signs associated with or diagnosed as ODD, ADHD, ADD, and/or anxiety. Many have explosive or implosive reactions to challenges of living. Some parents know there is giftedness and twice exceptionalities involved, others don’t. All of my clients want to figure out and create customized mindsets and tools that work well – short term and long. They are looking to:

• Find effective parenting solutions that combine reliable information with the family’s unique personalities, dynamics and circumstances
• Alleviate feelings of being overwhelmed, alone, frantic, inadequate, discouraged, exasperated, worried about their children’s prospects
• Put joy back into their lives and family relationships
• Work better as a team with their spouse/partner and/or other supports
• Know and struggle with consistently making self-care a priority as a necessity for parenting well
• Create a calm, nurturing, connected family life for all to thrive

My area of concentration is supporting parents of children who are “more” – with heightened emotions, thoughts and behaviors.

I provide individual and couples parent coaching; group parent coaching; workshops and presentations.

In Individual and Couple Coaching

Topics Often Covered:

• Self-nurturing as the foundation for parenting well
• Consciously clearing our inner landscape to create clean energy in our interactions
• Setting boundaries that work, incorporating the valid reliable research along with parents’ values, concerns and goals, and the specifics of family members’ unique contexts.
• Parenting Styles, Children’s Learning Styles and the Meshing of the two
• Ages/Stages of Development for understanding behaviors in context
• Creating connected relationships and communication
• Collaborative Problem-Solving (CPS) to build trusting relationships and lifelong interpersonal skills
• Sibling relationships to nurture mutual care, support and considerate interactions
• Life transitions as opportunities for profound positive growth
• Motivation Development to inspire self-direction and perseverance
• School Personnel and Parent Relationships, enhancing the effectiveness of the collaboration for the benefit of the child
• Technology and Media, effectively using both to enhance life

Group Parent Coaching, Workshops and Presentations

I customize the content, format, location and number of sessions to the composition and needs of the groups.  Group coaching, workshops and presentations are often privately sponsored. To learn more, read on. To register or to retain me for sessions, workshops, or presentations for your group, please contact me  here.

Workshops are:

• Interactive, eliciting creative participation
• Informative, providing relevant knowledge and perspective
• Inspiring, renewing energy, hope and confidence
• Practical, guiding participants to write a plan for using new approaches for existing challenges

Informal Groups / Workshops include sessions with:

• Pre-existing parent groups, such as playgroups, Girl Scout troops, book clubs, close friends
• Parents of children of a particular age
• Parents concerned with particular issues

Institutional / Organizational sponsors and venues include:

• Corporations
• Schools
• Pre-schools, Elementary, Middle Schools, High Schools
• Parent Coordinators
• School Administrations
• PTOs/PTAs
• Executive Directors, Boards
• Public, private
• Hospitals
• Physicians’ Practices
• Community centers and organizations

See a sampling of Sheryl’s workshops and institutional clients.

Specifically, parents hire me to help them with many issues, including:

• Transitions, i.e. entering a new phase of development, school, life
• Misbehaviors, i.e. power struggles, defiance, back-talk
• Children’s life-skills, i.e. cooperation and independence relative to sleep, hygiene, chores, family life, school, homework, friendships, siblings
• Personal growth as a parent, i.e. learning how to appropriately balance tendencies to fix, control, manage, and be everything for everybody
• External and internal pressures to have it all, do it all, be the smartest and best at everything, now
• Management of technology, media and peer influence

A PCI Certified Parent Coach® is a professional trained to expertly guide parents to refine their parenting approaches in ways that effectively address challenges and enhance each family member’s short and long-term well-being.

These coaches are certified upon completion of The Parent Coaching Institute’s yearlong intensive graduate-level program, a program that was developed in conjunction with Seattle Pacific University.

The PCI coaching method enables clients to:

• identify and build on what already works well for them
• learn parenting approaches proven to be effective through evidence-based research
• gain clarity about their vision for their family
• effectively customize their parenting approaches to meet their personal vision
• benefit from the professional and personal experience of their PCI Certified Coach®

PCI Parent Coaching is not mental health therapy. It is not designed to heal deep emotional wounds. It is designed to benefit healthy parents dealing with parenting challenges. This may include parents whose children and parents who are under the care of therapists and/or psychiatrists. With the client’s consent, The PCI Certified Parent Coach^® can confer with those professionals to work as a team for the well being of the whole family.

2E stands for twice exceptional. It is a term that aims to capture the disparities within one person in terms of the depth and breadth of their abilities, capabilities, learning processes, and developmental evolution. Most simplistically, it refers to people whose measured “ability” in at least one area is at the gifted high/right end of the bell curve, while their measured “ability” in at least one other is at the far low end of the bell curve. The term 2E can be misleading since any one person is often exceptional in multiple directions and degrees on multiple dimensions. A more accurate term might be Multi-E.

While asynchronies are often evident in people with twice-exceptionalities, it is a separate term. Asynchronous development refers to when one or more area of developmental progression is out of sync with the progression and level in another area. For example, a child’s cognitive ability in conceptual thinking may be years above his or her chronological age, while that same child’s social awareness – or mathematical understanding -may be typical or lag behind what is the norm for her age. That child experiences asynchronous development.