Centre for Coaching, London, UK

INTRODUCTION
Parenting is one of the most important and complex relational roles adults undertake, yet many parents receive little structured support in navigating its challenges. This two-day Primary Certificate introduces a coaching-based approach to supporting parents and carers, combining coaching psychology with evidence-informed principles from developmental psychology, Adlerian approaches, Positive Discipline, behaviour change and relational communication.

The programme equips practitioners to work collaboratively with parents around common challenges such as routines, boundaries, emotional outbursts, motivation, transitions, school-related stress, sibling or family tensions and digital life. Learners practise moving from expert-led advice giving towards curiosity, formulation, encouragement and respectful problem solving, while retaining clear ethical boundaries where safeguarding, significant mental health concerns or specialist family intervention are required.

AIMS
•    To develop a psychologically informed framework for parenting coaching.
•    To build practical coaching skills for supporting parents and carers with everyday family challenges.
•    To integrate developmental understanding, relationship-based approaches and behaviour-change principles into coaching practice.
•    To support parents’ confidence, agency and reflective capacity while maintaining appropriate professional and safeguarding boundaries.
 

OBJECTIVES
•    Define parenting coaching and distinguish it from parenting advice, psychotherapy, family therapy and clinical treatment.
•    Use a collaborative coaching process to clarify goals, identify patterns and formulate parenting challenges in context.
•    Apply developmentally informed principles to expectations around attention, executive function, emotion regulation, motivation and autonomy.
•    Use Adlerian and Positive Discipline principles such as encouragement, belonging, firm-and-kind boundaries, respectful consequences and collaborative problem solving.
•    Recognise common interactional cycles and power struggles and help parents generate alternative responses.
•    Use coaching questions that support reflection, self-efficacy and practical experimentation.
•    Work sensitively with different family structures, cultures, parenting beliefs, developmental stages and neurodivergent needs.
•    Support parents to develop realistic routines, boundaries and family agreements while avoiding perfectionistic standards.
•    Recognise safeguarding, risk and mental health concerns that require consultation, referral or a different professional response.
•    Develop a structured plan for integrating parenting coaching into the learner’s existing professional practice.

 

SKILLS PRACTICE
The programme is strongly experiential. Learners practise contracting, goal clarification, pattern mapping, encouraging questions, boundary conversations, collaborative problem solving and action planning using realistic parenting scenarios. Case examples span childhood and adolescence and include routines, homework, emotional overwhelm, gaming/digital transitions, school-related stress and family conflict. Participants should use appropriately anonymised material and follow normal confidentiality expectations.

PROFESSIONAL & ETHICAL POSITIONING
Parenting coaching is positioned here as a collaborative, non-clinical approach to supporting parents and carers with goals, relationships, confidence and behaviour-change processes. It is not a substitute for psychotherapy, family therapy, clinical assessment, safeguarding intervention or specialist parenting services where these are indicated.

Practitioners should contract clearly, work within competence, maintain safeguarding awareness and know when to seek supervision or refer. The programme also emphasises a non-blaming approach: parenting behaviour is understood in relation to family context, stress, culture, resources, developmental needs and reciprocal interaction patterns.

 

POST PROGRAMME REVIEW & CERTIFICATE
A CPD certificate is provided for all attendees. Learners wishing to obtain a Certificate of Achievement need to submit a 750 word Post Programme Review. 

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PROGRAMME RECOGNITION
The programme is Approved by the International Society for Coaching Psychology and can be used towards becoming ISCP accredited coaching psychologist. 

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TRAINERS
Dr Gisele Dias is an Associate Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at UCL Institute of Education, a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the International Society for Coaching Psychology. Her work integrates coaching psychology, educational and developmental neuroscience, positive psychology and evidence-informed approaches to wellbeing and behaviour change.

Dr Liory Fern-Pollak is an Associate Professor in Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience at UCL Institute of Education, a Chartered Psychologist and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her interests span children's cognitive, social and emotional development, with a particular focus on attention, learning and self-regulation. She is passionate about making research accessible and translating insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical approaches that support children, parents, educators and practitioners.

The programme builds on the trainers’ joint development of brain-informed and coaching-psychology approaches to parenting, including the ENCOURAGE framework and practical work on connection, boundaries, power struggles, emotional regulation and parent agency.
 

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