How Neuroinclusive Coaching can benefit teenagers and young adults
As teens and young adults work towards independence, challenges related to executive skills become pronounced, creating tensions and blocking progress. Executive skills refer to the cognitive processes required to plan and organize activities, including task initiation and follow through, working memory, sustained attention, performance monitoring, inhibition of impulses, and goal-directed persistence.
Harmonic Divergence defines neuroinclusive coaching as a journey we embark together (client-coach) where we uncover strengths, allocate and identify resources, and untap potential. In the process we create a connection, a partnership.
A coach can support the development of strategies and skills to work toward autonomy and independence, helping remove barriers and easing family relationships. Coaching facilitates the transition from a kid relying on their parents/guardians to manage (or micromanage) them, to a young adult who learns how to be more autonomous.
Key features of coaching teenagers and young adult:
Coaching has to be voluntary. Those who feel pushed into coaching tend to sabotage the process, so we find it helpful to establish up front that the client is a willing participant.
It is the client who sets coaching goals and not the parents/guardians. A primary goal of coaching is to help teenagers become autonomous. The only way this can happen is for the client to make key decisions, particularly around the goals they want to work toward.
The client identifies the strategies that work for them as they pursue their goals. In this way, the coach acts as a guide—if the client wishes, we may offer advice and suggest strategies, but always leaving the final decision in the hands of the client.
Parents/Guardians role in coaching:
Be willing and able to step back.
You may own the car, but you have to allow your child to drive it.
Be patient.
New habits are not acquired overnight. We often say with respect to executive skill development, progress is measured in years and not months.
Be open.
What works for your kid is not what works for you. They are the ones building the systems that match their neurotype.
Be coached.
Parents/Guardians are encouraged to solidify the partnership with their child and coach by participating in Support System Coaching, this provides a space for parent/guardians and the coach to work on strategies on how to support their child. We can work on things like setting up structure within the home, creating routines, and understanding their child's individual challenges and strengths.
The following are examples of questions coaches may ask:
What changes do you want to make in your daily life?
What small steps can you take today in the direction of your goals?
How can you motivate yourself to take action towards this goal?
When must this action be completed?
What steps have you taken already, and when will you take the remaining steps?
How will you evaluate the impact of your plan?
Coaching is not:
Tutoring. Tutors help students finish their homework on time. In comparison, coaching guides and empowers the students in goals like establishing a routine to improve executive functioning skills, while setting up environments that will help them succeed.
A substitute for counseling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, or other professional advice by legal, medical or other qualified professionals.
Source: CHADD
