Parent Coaching
in English in Berlin
There are no perfect parents.
But there are happy parents!
Raising children and teenagers requires a lot of love, patience, time and attention. As a result, the needs of parents are often pushed to the back burner. Months can go by in which a parent feels unseen, their own needs ignored, and alienated from themselves.
My parent coaching is designed to encourage you to reconnect with your own wishes, dreams, and boundaries and to lovingly acknowledge and respect them. Even if it’s not always possible to meet everyone’s needs, they deserve to be seen, heard and understood. So that everyone can have a better life: happier parenthood means happier childhoods.
How do I become the parent I would like to be?
Few relationships shape us as profoundly as the ones with our children. No other person in our life changes so quickly or challenges us so intensely. This applies to babies, children, and teenagers alike. My coaching for parents in Berlin and online offers gentle support, especially during challenging times. It’s a valuable resource when it comes to…
- solving conflicts,
- improving communication,
- identifying solutions which work for all,
- making important decisions,
- voicing emotions and acknowledging needs,
- living your values in the relationship with your child.
Each stage of our children’s lives presents parents with unique challenges. My counseling services are divided into different age-specific offerings.
Coaching for Parents of Babies
When a baby comes into your life, your life changes radically. It’s almost as if you’d been living underwater and have suddenly been moved to land! You gasp for air: the world looks different, your priorities shift, your sleep patterns change, your body, the behavior of the people around you – nothing is as it was before. Parents need time to find their bearings in this brand new world.
At the same time, a tiny being is there – always present, completely dependent on your knowledge and skills. And on your love. As a parent, you are aware that you are shaping the beginning of a lifelong relationship. You want to always be strong, joyful, and balanced. But the exertions of pregnancy and childbirth often have a lasting effect. Stress, exhaustion, worry, insecurity, or grief can lead to feelings of helplessness or inadequacy. How do you manage to build a strong bond with your baby? How do you succeed in staying connected to your inner voice, your values, your own needs and goals during this time? And how do you create space and time for other people who are important to you?
As your parenting coach, I’m here to support you during this intense time and help you learn to make good decisions. Good for you, good for your baby, and good for your family!
Coaching for Parents of Toddlers
The Terrible Twos – who hasn’t heard of that? Your baby suddenly develops fascinating new character traits and a wonderful temperament. They express their need for autonomy: self-determination, a love of discovery and experimentation, testing boundaries, and creating chaos.
As a parent, you might feel a growing need for security and stability during this time. Alongside all the new things your baby is so excited to learn and explore, they also need structure. You want to encourage them to discover and explore the world – but at the same time you want to teach them to recognize and respect boundaries and rules. What a balancing act!
How can you foster your child’s healthy development into a self-confident individual while simultaneously teaching them to follow sensible rules and respect important boundaries? What can you do for yourself during this intense parenting time to maintain your own inner balance?
My coaching work for parents of toddles focuses on these questions. In a safe, quiet and calm environment, I offer you support in the areas of parenting, development, and dealing with changes and challenges.
Coaching für Parents of School-Kids
Starting school is a big step for a child – and for you as a parent, as well. Suddenly you’re part of the school system once again. Teachers and educators, other parents, other children: new people are coming into your life, people you didn’t choose, but with whom you and your child will embark on a yearlong journey.
How can you best support your child during this time? How involved should you be at school? How much influence should others have on your child’s upbringing? When do you need to intervene in processes or relationships – and how can you do that skilfully, avoiding unnecessarry conflict?
As your parenting coach I support you through all of these questions, covering topics such as parenting, boundaries, processes and relationships in everyday school life. As it is true for any other system, so it is for school: every problem contains a potential solution.
Coaching for Parents of Teenagers
Just a moment ago you were such a great team. You and your child had already overcome so many challenges together – and now? Your teenager ignores you, withdraws, or screams at you. You seem to no longer have the ability to cheered them up, calm them down, comfort or help them.
The adolescence is a time in the life of a child that makes us, as parents, question everything. Suddenly, there’s so much uncertainty where there was once clarity!
Adolescents change. It is their job to change: puberty is an important time in our development. And it’s also a time of saying goodbye. A teenager gradually leaves their childhood behind—and with it, their old relationship with you as a parent. Sometimes it can feel as if your child is abandoning you, too. But on the other side of puberty, a wonderful new relationship awaits you—the relationship with a grown-up child.
It is more than worth persevering. As your parenting coach I am there to support you in developing good strategies which will help you through this difficult time – together we’ll get through it!
Coaching for Parents of Grown-Up Children
When teenagers become adults, they begin to manage their own daily lives. And yet, they may not be entirely independent. How much support do they still need? How much help do they actually want? And how much help are you, as a parent, still willing to give? Where are the new boundaries, and how do you point out that they exist?
How can you offer your help as a parent – observations, advice, and experiences – in a way that doesn’t seem patronizing? How can you signal that boundaries negotiated during puberty still apply? How can you ensure that your support is accepted? And what do you do if it isn’t?
Coaching for paernts of grown up children is designed to lay the foundation for or to redefine your new relationship – which is still a relationship between a parent and child, but now also between two adults. The goal of the coaching is to redefine your own needs, to perceive your boundaries anew, and to communicate them in a way that fosters trust and open communication.
Other people in our lives come and go – being a parent is forever!
Parenting-Topics
Parenting counceling? Relationship counceling.
Contemporary daily life is dynamic and constantly changing. There are many situations where parents can benefit from a calm conversation, clarity, empathy, understanding and guidance. That’s precisely what I offer in my coaching. Parenting topics are diverse and not limited to the following examples.
Work and Parenting
Especially in creative professions, leadership positions, or for the self-employed, the work-life balance is a recurring topic. It’s often suggested that one must sacrifice one to do the other properly. And yet, many of us live both – and want to live both. Because only then do we feel whole.
If you’re juggling work and parenting, you’ve probably developed different, highly individual strategies for each situation. These might work well during calmer times. But you’re still just one person. A conflict with your child can affect your work life. Conversely, a stressful period at work makes it difficult to stay relaxed as a parent. Sometimes, maintaining inne balance is truly challenging.
But there’s good news! The interpersonal and emotional skills you’ve developed through your relationship with your child will also benefit you in your professional life. Conversely, your professional skills can also be the key to solutions in family life. Both areas can truly benefit from each other. What modern parents need in their daily lives isn’t balance, but rather agile mobility, a flow: I call it the work-parenting flow. Strengthening this flow is a key focus of my coaching – and it involves working on both your personal and professional development.
Intercultural Family
As much as an intercultural partnership enriches a couple’s life, it also brings challenges. Joyfully embracing the other person’s cultural differences while simultaneously maintaining one’s own values and needs isn’t always easy in everyday life. And bringing children into the equation doesn’t necessarily make it any easier.
Whether it’s language, cooking and food, upbringing, or family traditions: as parents, you probably wish to give your child easy access to both cultures. At the same time, you also want to protect them from being overwhelmed by too much ambivalence, complexity, or contrasts.
You wish to share the beauty, value, and importance of both cultures and languages with your child and hope they will be proud of their heritage. You yourself may sometimes feel uncertain or frustrated. Perhaps the families of origin, your own and the one of your partner, with their differing expectations or customs, also interfere in the child’s upbringing – or the environment reacts with pathologic behaviors such as xenophobia or racism.
How can you, as an intercultural family – and as two individual personalities – find enough space and freedom for yourselves? And how can you support your child in becoming stronger, freer, and more self-confident through their intercultural background?
As your parenting coach, I help you develop strategies and solutions for yourself and your family and strengthen your individual personality. Every family is unique – an intercultural family even more so!
Patchwork Family
In patchwork, your family expands to include people you didn’t choose. Different lifestyles, parenting values, communication and relationship patterns collide. Sometimes even different languages and cultures.
Family members watch each other, compare, evaluate, discuss, laugh, negotiate, argue, remain silent, and ignore. There are differing opinions about what is “normal” and what is “right”—from what and how to eat breakfast to when and how to go to bed.
Biological and patchwork parents do not have the same rights when it comes to children in patchwork families, but they are similarly affected. Everyone involved is influenced by one another. All those involved are interdependent, and need shared rules and rituals – a common family language.
As you parenting coach, I help you recognize patterns and automatic behaviors and find ways to influence them so that you retain enough space for yourself, your values and needs – and for what is important to you as a parent – within your patchwork family situation.
Separation of Parents with Children
Hardly any separation occurs without disagreements, conflicts, and negotiations when children are involved. The romantic relationship is over, but the shared responsibility of parenthood remains. How can you stay true to your values during this time? How can you keep your own needs and wishes in mind and communicate them effectively? What compromises are acceptable for you, and where do you draw the line?
And most importantly: How can you best help your child get through this time as gentle as possible while staying attuned to their confused feelings and their new needs?
Separation is a change that brings uncertainty for everyone involved. But it’s also an opportunity to reorganize old patterns and routines in a new and better way. It can be a new freedom – also in your relationship with your child.
Gifted Children
Parents of gifted children face particular challenges. On the one hand, they want to provide appropriate support for their child’s cognitive abilities and talents. On the other hand, they also wish to provide solutions and strategies for developing balanced relationships with peers and a happy life in society. The anxieties and concerns of parents of gifted children often find little support in their social environment: the blessing of having a gifted child is not always perceived as a challenging parenting task.
As a parent, how can you communicate your gifted child’s specific needs to their teachers in a way that ensures they receive the necessary support without being labeled as different—especially by other children? How can you protect your child from excessive self-expectations and perfectionism, and help them have a happy, silly and playful childhood? When is an IQ test appropriate? And what is its purpose? When does it make sense to transfer your child to a higher grade, and what other alternatives are there?
As you parenting coach, but and also as a person with two decades of parenting experience in this field, I help you find the right solution for yourself and your child.
Frequently asked questions about Parent-Coaching
Do I need a parenting coach?
There are situations or phases in the family life where parents need a calm conversation and understanding support. For example, when you’re guiding your child through a difficult or turbulent phase or if you feel a lack of clarity and confidence to make good decisions. Perhaps you’re dealing with changes in your own life or feel you’ve lost sight of your own needs. In all these situations, coaching for parents can be helpful and beneficial.
Can I bring my child to parent coaching?
My coaching sessions are designed to be a space where you can freely discuss even ambivalent or difficult feelings in your relationship with your child. Therefore, these sessions are primarily intended for parents.
Can both parents come together to parenting coaching?
Yes, that’s certainly possible and beneficial. However, I also recommend separate appointments, as each parent also has their own relationship with the child.
What does parenting coaching cost?
A single 60 min session costs 90€. If both parents decide to attend the consultation, a longer session for both together (90 minutes) costs 120€.
I offer family discouts on individual sessions if both parents wish to attend separately.
My parenting coaching is not a medical treatment. Therefore, the costs are not covered by health insurance.
Is parenting coaching also suitable for grandparents?
Yes. Grandparents are also parents – and they too have their own feelings, wishes and needs.
"As a mother of two, my main concern was finding balance in family life. I felt very well supported and found surprisingly clear and simple solutions through my conversations with Ava. Ava is gentle, constructive, empathetic – and persistent when necessary. Although I was nervous at first, it turned out to be really enjoyable and truly helped me move forward!"
L.R.