Parent Express for 19-Jan-2011

Welcome to a Special Edition of Parent Express!

At the request of many readers to "tell them more about what the Parent Coaching Institute does," we devote this issue to our two key activities:

• Training professionals such as teachers, counselors, social workers, and parent educators in our year-long, graduate-level, distance-learning program for Parent Coach Certification®
• Providing parent coaching services to savvy moms and dads who know that PCI Certified Parent Coaches® are their best companions on the parenting journey

Professionals interested in the parent coach training program will find an informative article at the bottom of this column: "Appreciative Inquiry: A Significant Tool for Effective Parent Coaching." For those interested in applying for Spring Quarter, join an upcoming Telephone Information Session:

January 26, 8AM Pacific Time
February 1, Noon, Pacific Time
To register please contact Leona McQueen, PCI's Program Manager, (425) 401-1519 or Leona@thepci.org.

Parents interested in knowing more about the process of parent coaching will be energized by understanding some of the basic concepts of PCI Parent Coaching in the article on the right-side column: "Parent Coaching—A Creative Re-Discovery Process."

If you would like to learn more, please give me a call at (425) 401-1519. I would be happy to share a PDF of a few selected stories from our book, Parent Success Stories, so you can read more about the inspiring work of PCI Certified Parent Coaches®.

Wishing you and yours much joy and many blessings throughout 2011.

Warmly,

Gloria DeGaetano, Founder and CEO

Apply now for Spring Quarter 2011 Parent Coach Certification® Training Program.

Apply before February 15 to receive a $450 tuition discount. Begin Course 1 phone classes the week of March 21, 2011. If you have been thinking about entering Parent Coach Certification® Training, now is the time.

Please send in the basic application as the first step. Download the application here. Once we receive this document, we will contact you for a phone interview. Transcripts and reference letters can follow the basic application by a few weeks.

Please note: Phone classes are in the evening time, usually at 5PM or 6PM (Pacific Time) to accommodate the work schedules of our students.

The final application deadline for Spring Quarter is March 4.

Questions? Please call (425) 401-1519 or email info@ThePCI.org.

Appreciative Inquiry: A Significant Tool for Effective Parent Coaching

by Gloria DeGaetano
PCI Founder and CEO

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) has been researched and used successfully in corporations, community organizations, and in some school settings. It has a wonderful track record because the AI process supports positive, long-term change, offering much hope and unleashing new levels of creativity, innovation, and inspiration. The Parent Coaching Institute adapts AI to parent coaching conversations, using its principles (which are in alignment with living systems principles) and its methodology as a basic structure for those conversations. Instead of jumping in to solve the problem directly, AI employs a four-stage process for coach and client to co-create exciting and sustainable solutions:

• Discovery—finding out through well-crafted and careful questions what is presently working in the situation. What is currently giving life to the parents, the children? The family?
• Dream—helping parents articulate a clear vision of what it is they want and to feel the positive emotions and qualities that living in that preferred future with their child would evoke.
• Design—encouraging strategies, ideas, behaviors, parenting practices, reflective exercises, and other applications to help parents design both external and internal activities that would best support fulfillment of their dream.
• Destiny—as a parent's dream emerges into actual lived experience, the role of the coach is to point out the "evidence indicators" that show this is happening, to help the parent gather the qualities and resources to make sure the emerging dream is sustainable, and to acknowledge that deep change has occurred and that the parent is a primary cause of this change.

Each phase may take one to four coaching sessions within a series of weekly coaching sessions lasting over a period of three to four months. In this way, parents begin to value the process they are involved in and come to understand that in living systems such as families, many changes will occur when they are seeded properly and nurtured over time.

Read the Rest of the Article…

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Find a PCI Certified Parent Coach®

Our Web site is continually updated with new PCI graduates ready to meet you. Working with a parent coach who has received Parent Coach Certification® through The PCI™ is giving yourself a valuable gift as well as a sound investment in your family's future.

PCI Certified Parent Coaches® are caring, thoughtful professionals with years of experience working with parents. They 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 Certified Parent Coaches® help you re-discover your dreams and design your life for more joy and satisfaction.

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

The Parent Coaching Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and welcomes donations from individuals, organizations, and corporations who want to support its mission To transform the world by revitalizing parenting through prevention and possibility.™ For more information, please click here or contact The PCI™ at info@ThePCI.org or (425) 401-1519. Visa and MasterCard are accepted.

Parent Coaching—A Creative Re-Discovery Process

by Gloria DeGaetano
PCI Founder and CEO

Our society is at a critical crossroads—so many children struggling; so many parents pulling their hair out not knowing where to turn. A child born today has a 30% chance of having a learning difficulty. Research is showing that most moms and dads of elementary school age kids are spending less than ten minutes a week in actual conversation with their children—yes, that's not a typo—ten minutes a week! Parents are stressed and overwhelmed, yet well-intentioned and wanting to do their best. It's not their fault that our fast-paced culture makes parenting the hardest job they'll ever do.

In the mist of this exhaustion, what if parents could work with a parent coach, a well-trained compassionate professional whose credentials are impeccable?

Wouldn't stressed parents begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel working with such wonderful professionals? Absolutely.

Research over the past six years on the Parent Coaching Institute's coaching model demonstrates that it reduces parental stress, gives important resources, and most important helps parents see and use theirs strengths, their inner wisdom, and come to appreciate themselves and their children in profound ways. The parent coaching process is energizing and draws forth the highest, creative expression of the entire family.

There will always be challenges in life. How we address those challenges is what is most significant.

Read the Rest of the Article…