Hidden Beliefs

In frustration, Emma turned to her sister and grabbed the last puzzled piece. “I wanna do it!” Elaine, their mother, had been listening to the girls as they were playing. She recognized a pattern. Jenna would choose an activity, and Emma would join in. As the older sister, Emma knew that her little sister couldn’t do many things she could. Elaine had been coaching the girls, now 4 and 7, to choose solitary play unless they could agree on something they’d like to do together. She’d also put the onus on Emma to walk away if she couldn’t work things out. The challenge was that Emma couldn’t ‘just’ walk away, and didn’t know how to work things out. 

As busy parents of elementary school-age children, we can easily slip into a faulty belief that our children should know how to manage their anger or frustration and ‘work it out’ or walk away. Yet, without support, modelling, and coaching, Emma (and Jenna) would not gain access to the skills they needed to navigate their feelings and engage successfully in social play.

Here at Coaching Next Steps, we empower parents to identify their family values, goals, and beliefs to create a practical framework, a system in the home, that guides their everyday interactions, priorities, decision making, and learning goals.

For Elaine and her husband John, they recognized a hidden belief that was getting in the way. Emma and Jenna were not going to manage their anger and frustrations alone. As parents, they wanted to ensure they had a system with the tools and support they needed, aligning their shared family values of respect, empathy, and cooperation. With a few tools, a collection of calming and alerting strategies, a plan of what to do when you don’t know what to do, and an adult caregiver nearby who is open, curious, empathetic, and responsive, their daughters could learn new skills. It was their best next step!