FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ's)

1. What is Family Coaching?
2. How Will Your Family Coaching Make A Difference In Our Family?
3. How Does Family Coaching Differ From Family Therapy?
4. What Kinds Of Families Do You Work With?
5. Do You Coach Families From Different Generations?
6. What Do You Mean By A Makeover?

What is Family Coaching?

The overall purpose of Family Coaching is to increase happiness and connection within the family. Family Coaching works for couples and families who recognize that while there is nothing seriously wrong with the family, they realize they need someone outside of the family to help them find practical solutions to ongoing problems. Family Coaching is a practical process of discovery and growth based upon your willingness to (1) be coached and (2) take action consistent with your family's values, commitments, dreams, and goals.

As your Family Coach, this means that I commit myself to support and guide you to create the home environment you truly desire. And you and your family commit to try on new, sometimes uncomfortable, ways to be with your family. Every Family Coaching Meeting includes a Purpose and Outcomes (Goals) - which you and your family members choose - as well as new ideas, concepts, practical tools, agreements, target dates, and an agreed-upon method of support from me until the next Coaching Meeting.

Yes! This is exactly what our family needs.

Click here to schedule a Complimentary 30-minute Coaching Meeting with Robin

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How Will Your Family Coaching Make A Difference In Our Family?

You need help seeing yourselves clearly. Whenever we begin a journey, the first thing we need to know is our starting point. Your values are your starting point: they're the foundation of your family. As your Family Coach, we will carefully explore where your foundation is strong and where it needs shoring up. Most families will find it almost impossible to do this by themselves. I'm here to hold up the mirror so your entire family is able to "see" yourselves from all sides, above and below, front and back.

You don't have to do it yourself. I guide you, and each of your family members, on a journey to learn, experience, and practice the fundamentals of family leadership. When the journey is rough, and any one of you begins to experience fear, doubt, worry, or resistance, I'll be there. When you experience successes, I'll be there.

You will spend quality time together, getting to know each other at a deeper, more authentic level. One of the major complaints in the families of today is that "We don't spend enough quality time together." By participating in Family Coaching, you'll not only be with each other when I coach you (face-to-face or over the telephone), but you'll engage with each other as you hold discussions, create arts and crafts projects, lead your own Family Meetings, interview each other, plan a family outing, set individual and family goals, and more.

You will benefit from a ruthlessly committed professional who keeps you on track. I provide you with what's missing from all the parenting tips and books you've read: accountability and follow-through. When you make a promise or an agreement to me or to anyone in the family - you will be amazed at how often you follow through. Or, if you run into obstacles, we'll explore what's getting in the way of your ending old behaviors that no longer serve you and your family, and you'll begin to practice new choices, new ways of being together.

Your family members will learn tools for living that last them their entire lives. What you learn, experience, and incorporate into your current home life will benefit your family now and well into the future.

You'll experience more peace and quiet as you learn how to reduce the number of fights, arguments, and family dramas. Your family learns communication tools for making requests, negotiating, expressing upsets - all without the usual "you're wrong and I'm right" rhetoric. Instead, family members shift from "win/lose" to "win/win."

Yes! This is exactly what our family needs.

Click here to schedule a Complimentary 30-minute Coaching Meeting with Robin

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How Does Family Coaching Differ From Family Therapy?

Family Coaching focuses on evolving and manifesting potential through taking action and finding solutions to external issues. While you will examine your internal motivations, thoughts, and feelings, healing is a side effect. Family Coaching is perfect for today's typical "functioning dysfunctional" family. It is very practical, and anyone in the family will be able to apply most of the tools and techniques immediately, thus easily and quickly experiencing the joy of success through taking small steps. New habits are practiced over time and begin to take over the old ones.

Your family will benefit from seeing a Family Therapist or counselor when issues such as depression, grieving, abuse, raging, or alcoholism are predominant in the family dynamic. Therapy techniques focus on these types of issues through a process of understanding, catharsis, communicating, and healing, working mainly with our internal issues. Accountability is not commonly a part of the healing process, although it can be. The possibility of tremendous healing exists in the therapeutic model, and I will not work with a family that requires Family Therapy rather than Family Coaching.

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What Kinds Of Families Do You Work With?

My clients come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and varieties. If you consider yourself a family, you are eligible to be a potential client.

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Do You Coach Families From Different Generations?

Absolutely. Here are some examples of generational problems I address with my clients:

• Baby Boomer parents (born 1944-1962) quietly suffering from their choice to resign themselves to a long-time estrangement from their adult children.
• Sandwich Generation parents - Boomers stressed by the demands of caring for their own elderly parents as well as their Generation X children (born 1963-1981).
•  Well-meaning Generation X parents who unknowingly undermine their Millennial children (born 1982-2000) by indiscriminately praising them and protecting them from the normal disappointments of life.
  
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What Do You Mean By A Makeover?

I believe that in order to find solutions to the problems families and youth face today, a Family Makeover is needed. We love makeovers! We love the before and after pictures! With a Family Makeover, your family gets to create a whole new approach, a new language, and a new possibility for who you are and what you might become. The moment each of you commits to participating in this goal of transforming the family, you begin to experience some of the juicy benefits of a close, connected, purposeful family you so deeply desire.

A few years ago, we in the United States were introduced to a new television show that took off like wildfire and spawned all sorts of other similar shows. In Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Ty Pennington and his crew choose a deserving family for an extreme home makeover. They essentially destroy the old so they can build an entirely new home for the family to come home to.

Those of us who have seen the show see the caring crew discover the family's story, carefully examine the inside and outside of the house, ask them questions about how things don't work for the family in the current home, what they want to be different, and what are each family member's favorite colors and hobbies/interests. Then the crew treats the family to a week's vacation while they, the crew, create a design, invite others in the neighborhood to chip in with the labor, tear down the old, put in the new, and invite the family back to move into their new home.

I do something very similar with families. Hiring me as your Family Coach is somewhat akin to your hiring an architect to re-design your existing home. First you tell me what you want - and don't want - in your new home environment. We look at what's currently working and what's not working. I guide you in discovering your vision for how you want to live together in your new home environment.

But unlike the families on Extreme Home Makeover, you don't get to go on vacation while I hire a crew and build your home environment for you. You and your family build your new home environment, with me guiding you every step of the way. Each member of your family participates. Each plays a role in the process, recognizing when they make choices that either add to, or subtract from, the family unit. Each member of your family learns how to take responsibility for ensuring that they do their part to ensure that the home environment will not collapse.

One of the cornerstones of Family Coaching is that you "own" your own experience, your own choices, your own resistance, your own fears, and your own fatigue. And you "own" your own accomplishments, your own breakthroughs, and your own pride with each success.

You need to go through the process yourselves; I can't do it for you. And the beauty of it all is that by the entire family going through Family Coaching together, the family becomes closer, becomes that dream team you've secretly wished they'd become. You bring your family back to the table.

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