Emotion Coaching

Emotion Coaching for Parents and Carers

We are so excited to share this strategy with you as we have seen the benefit of this for our own children and the children of lots of families we have worked with. Emotion Coaching is an approach to support parents to help their children when they feel distressed. It works for the little things and the big things. Emotion Coaching is a naturalistic parenting approach which has been observed in research to have a beneficial impact on children’s emotional and physical health, their capacity for empathy and their social relationships. The amazing thing is that we can learn this approach and adapt our parenting even if it isn’t our natural style or how we were brought up – we don’t even need to get it right all of the time to have a beneficial impact for our children.

Emotion Coaching was originally identified through research by Dr John Gottman and you can find out more about the approach from Emotion Coaching UK Emotion Coaching – United Kingdom (emotioncoachinguk.com)

What does the programme cover?

The programme covers some background psychology and neuroscience – which helps us to understand how children’s brains develop and how they function at different stages of development. We explore the emotional range and reflect on how we feel about different feelings, acknowledging that some are more comfortable for us than others. We think about how we as grown ups experience emotions and how we can soothe our feelings. We reflect on the emotions which our children experience and how these can be shown through different behaviours. We explore strategies together for identifying emotions and co-regulating our children’s emotions to help them to feel safe, secure, seen and soothed. We explore limit setting and think together about some useful scripts to help in these moments and we move on to think about how we can work together with our children to solve problems and help them to put right what might have gone wrong when they were distressed.

These are the key steps in emotion coaching and it is fundamentally about emotional and behavioural co-regulation and will help our children to develop more empathy and take more responsibility over time.

What programmes are available?

We offer the programme in two different styles:

  • A virtual group programme over 5 weeks in the evening, each session is around 50-60mins
  • A one day group programme face to face
  • Both the virtual programme and the face to face day are preceded by an assessment call and we then offer up to 3 coaching sessions which are 1:1

Who is the programme for?

Emotion Coaching is for everyone! Every child can benefit from this approach and it will support increased harmony, cooperation, calmness and togetherness in every home.

The group programme provides an ideal opportunity for families to learn from one another and share ideas and strategies and the 1:1 coaching sessions which follow up mean we can support you to think about how you apply the approach in real life and listen to your real lived experiences and help you to make tweaks that suit you.

There are some circumstances in which we would suggest a 1:1 approach may be more suitable, we will explore some of your family’s needs and experiences during the assessment call and if you would be better off with a 1:1 approach we will advise you and support you to access this from the 0-19 Service.

How to access the programme

Complete the referral form via the link below – we action referrals on a weekly basis on a Friday morning and will email you with choices of dates and venues for the next available programmes.

Click here for the referral link

Click here for the Privacy Form

If you interested in finding out more about the programme please email sclarke@youthworksnorthamptonshire.org.uk or ring Sam on a Friday morning on 01536 428543