Life Coaching: Life Coaches Can Help Parents Help Children after Divorce
Getting a divorce can feel like your own personal train wreck. You can lose your home and your financial security. Sometimes, family and friends take sides. You can’t just blink twice and make all the confusion, loneliness and pain go away. Now imagine what your kids may feel like.
“Children are caught in the crosshairs of a marriage breakdown, especially if there’s a lot of anger or strong emotion between mom and dad,” says Carolyn Ellis, a Harvard-trained Ph.D. and certified spiritual divorce coach.
According to the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts, every year more than one million American children and more than 36,000 Canadian children find their lives disrupted by their parents’ divorce.
When Ellis’ 20-year relationship ended, her heart broke as she watched her children, then three, six and nine, grapple with the fall-out. Eventually, she turned to a life coach to help her family cope. Getting around the guilt At the time my marriage ended, I was on a very successful career track. “There was a lot of information out there about how to thrive in your profession, but I couldn’t find information on how to help my children thrive after my divorce,” Ellis said. The advice she did get didn’t move her forward. “When you’re in a place of distress, you try to glom on to someone else’s solution but no one knows your life like you do,” Ellis said.
Like many parents, part of Ellis’s distress was struggling with guilt over the idea that her divorce would wreck her children’s lives. She was aware of the statistics. Fatherless homes account for 63 percent of youth suicides, 90 percent of homeless/runaway children, 85 percent of children with behavior problems, 71 percent of high school dropouts, and 85 percent of youths in prison.
Fatherlessness also accounts for more than 50 percent of teen mothers, according to U.S. divorce statistics. In fact, University of Chicago sexual behavior researcher Dr. Edward Laumann has found that, unlike before 1970 when the greatest deterrents to early sexual activity were being a Catholic or having a college-educated mother, today the greatest deterrent is living in a home with both parents through the age of 14.
Ellis reached a turning point one day when she screamed at one of her children over a trivial matter. “When I saw the pain in my child’s eyes, I realized I needed a whole new skill set to handle my new life,” she said.
Ellis turned to a life coach to help her develop those skill sets. Ellis’ coach helped her disengage from her ex by teaching her how to communicate with him in what coaching calls charge neutral language. That’s communication that helps you speak the truth of what you are thinking without making the other person wrong for their way of thinking.
The communication skills her coach taught her also helped her talk with her children about what was happening in their lives without feeling guilt over her divorce. Her coach also taught her healthy ways to work through the grief about the end of her marriage and create a new vision for her life. As her coach helped her rebuild her own personal foundations, she was able to help her children rebuild theirs.
Today, seven years later, both Ellis and her children are thriving. Recently, as she was saying goodnight to her 16-year-old daughter, Erin, her daughter gave Ellis a hug and said, “Wow, mom, I feel like we are so much closer than we ever were before, and our relationship is so much better than it ever was!”
MORE PEOPLE LOOK FOR LIFE COACHING
“Society is increasingly recognizing coaching is worth both the commitment of time and the financial investment,” said Kay Cannon, president of the International Coaches Federation. With more than 11,000 members in 80 countries, ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
“While coaching began as way to help high-level executives meet professional goals, more people today are using coaches to help them succeed in their personal lives, too, Cannon said.
“Working with a personal coach is definitely a trend,” said Natalie Tucker Miller, president of the 10,000 strong International Association of Coaching. Miller has worked with a number of parents and finds they often feel guilt about how the divorce is affecting their children. The children are experiencing disruption in their foundation. “They may be suddenly acting out in school, fighting with their siblings or becoming reclusive. The parents think ‘Oh my God, my child has never done this before. What does this mean? I must really be screwing the kids up.’ Meanwhile, you’re struggling so much just to survive,” Miller said.
Miller helps her clients step back from their emotions and see a different perspective. “We look to see if the behavior might be part of the child’s grief process and whether they need some therapy to help them with that,” she said. Miller helps her clients learn advocacy skills so they can go to the school counselor and their children’s teachers for help with issues that surface in school. “I also help them learn how to just be present with their kids, which helps with behavior that’s just about wanting attention,” she said.
As she works with her clients, Miller looks for patterns in language and behavior that are getting in the way of creating the life they want. She also helps them think through processes for getting their needs met so they can have more energy for their children. The results are more relaxed parents and less stressed kids. “Coaching is a vehicle to understand yourself and your relationships so you can navigate life more joyfully,” she said.
HELPING FAMILIES MOVE THROUGH PAIN
Often, those going through or recovering from divorce feel like they can’t get from the pain to the enjoyment of each other’s company. That’s because, according to experts, we all think families ought to function like the ones in the 1950’s television program “Leave It to Beaver” or Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series. Trouble is, during and after a divorce, families function more like the Simpsons.
Enter a personal coach. Working with a good coach allows the client to set goals and achieve them using their own strengths. This is done in a series of requests, which the client is free to accept or not, and which will help them reach their goals.
According to Cannon, “Coaching is not about telling you what to do. A coach is your objective partner to help you see things more clearly, expand your perspective and identify your options so you can move from Point A to Point B more quickly and easily.”
Coco Fossland first learned the value of personal coaching from her stepmother, Joeann Fossland, who is a life coach. “I admire her tremendously. She’s the reason I have the relationship I have with my father,” Coco said.
Years later, when Coco’s five-year relationship with her fiance ended six weeks before the wedding, she hired a personal coach. She picked Carolyn Ellis. Talking by phone for an hour every other week, Ellis took Coco through a program designed to help her move through the issues of her dying relationship and move forward.
Ellis also helped Coco take responsibility for her life. “Where I had felt powerless, Carolyn helped me see I wasn’t a victim. She helped me see how I had helped create what happened and where the blessings were. I was able to forgive and feel grateful for the relationship, and for the fact it had ended the way it did,” she said.
Seven months ago, Coco, met another man, who has a seven-year-old daughter. Now, she is using her own stepmother’s example and Ellis’ coaching to be a positive part of her stepdaughter’s life and help her relate to her stepdaughter’s mother. “First, coaching helped me heal my heart,” said Coco. “Then, it helped me focus on the possibilities of a wonderful new future. Now, it’s helping me create a new family. It’s a whole life cycle.”
“Part of balancing client’s lives is clearing away their roadblocks, both the internal stuff such as limiting beliefs and stinkin’ thinking,’ and the external stuff, such as toxic jobs and really bad relationships that they’re holding on to. Once the roadblocks are cleared away, really wonderful things happen,” Schoen said.
In addition, Schoen helps her clients learn how to focus on what they have to offer the world. “Dating again makes you feel the insecurities you felt the first time around. Well, back then, you were just a kid,” said Schoen. “People need to learn to see all they have to offer now. Instead of thinking I’m not this and I’m not that, they need to start saying BUT I am this and I am that.”
Her clients find their ideal romantic relationships in their own time. One client took two years. However long they take, Schoen’s program seems to be working. So far, six of her clients have married and one more is engaged. Plus, she has a number of clients who are in long-term committed relationships. “Once you learn how to see your own magnificence, others can surely see it,” she said.
About the author: Laurie Moison is an author and freelance journalist who lives in Delaware.
