Parent Coaching Cards: Helping Our Children Develop the Emotional Skills to Succeed
by: Steven A. Richfield, Psy.D.
Chapter C.H.A.D.D.E.R.
The Newsletter Of CH.A.D.D. of Upper BuxMont

In February of 1995, I was invited to submit an article to Chapter C.H.A.D.D.er about a Parent Training model that I had developed for use with parents of ADHD and oppositional children. I had just delivered a framework of the model to an audience at Northwestern Institute. Many of those attending asked if my ideas were available in manuscript form. Unfortunately, I couldn't offer any "take home" materials at that time.

The model is called Parent Coaching. It is based upon my belief that one of the fundamental jobs of parenting is to provide our children with the necessary skills to succeed in life. This notion of being a life skills coach that seeks to translate problem behaviors into opportunities to intervene with corrective strategies is a product of my personal and professional experiences.

Although I have continued to train parents in my private practice to become effective Parent Coaches, I have not been able to invest the necessary time to expand the model into a book. Yet, I have searched for ways to provide hands-on tools to parents and children when they need it most. Of course, the most urgent times don't occur during therapy sessions but during the day to day events in children's lives.

Approximately one year ago, I was conducting a school consultation for a ten year old girl experiencing a host of ADHD related behavior problems. Peer conflicts, oversensitivity, and protracted emotional outbursts were among the major deficits she struggled with at school and home. The teachers looked to me for answers. My answer was the product of careful listening to my patient as she had recently told me about how difficult it was for her to escape the traps of interfering feelings and behaviors. Only days earlier she had pointed out that during the sessions she could realize her mistakes but that she could not translate this awareness into behavior change when she felt gripped by the force of her intense emotions. She asked if I could give her something to take to school. This led to my suggestion that she and I develop written messages for her to take to school and review from time to time. She liked this idea and we drafted what she referred to as her coaching cards. The cards contained short descriptions of the "traps" she must look out for and strategies to employ in order to self-manage the interfering feelings.

The teachers, as well as administrators, were very receptive to the notion of offering my patient the opportunity to review her cards rather than simply responding in a punitive manner as had been the case. It was clear to me that the "heavy handed" approach was only making things worse. Once the teachers backed off a little, and my patient could freely rely on her coaching cards, her behavior began to change for the better. Within a couple of months she was rarely in need of "time out for card review" and had committed most of the relevant coaching points to memory. The intervention was a huge success.

The success of the coaching intervention at school led to the use of similar cards at home. In keeping with the Parent Coaching philosophy, it freed up the parents from their "parent" cop role by inserting a corrective strategy into their parenting repertoire. Rather than threatening to punish or resorting to other intimidation tactics her parents were better able to "team up" with their daughter against the interfering feelings and behavior patterns.

Parent Coaching Cards, as they are now called, offer specific instructions to parents as to what to say to your child when certain behavior problems emerge that require an enlightened parental response. The cards are designed to be used as an immediately available reference tool when parents find themselves in the awkward position of not knowing what response will in the long run help their child better cope with the behavior problem at hand.

Unlike the example of my patient, it is usually the parent who weaves the language of the cards into the relationship with their child. This is made easier by the kid-friendly terms that portray some of the most typical experiences off school-aged children. The language captures their concerns for acceptance, sensitivity to failure, vulnerability to peer pressure, tendency to oppose authority, and other important developmental issues. Each card is written with a particular skills lesson in mind and divided into two sections; the first explains when the skill is needed and the second offers a self-talk message that reinforces the assimilation of the skill.

Younger children, between ages five to ten , will especially benefit from parents verbally modeling the skills in their own life such that the child will better learn how the cards apply. Older children may be willing and able to benefit from the cards on a more self-instructional basis, with perhaps a little help from parents to get them started.

Parent Coaching Cards are designed to be but one component in a parents' multimodal approach to ADHD. But perhaps more than most other resources, these cards hold the promise of diminishing parent-child conflict by establishing a path of collaboration and problem solving between parent and child.