Summer Parent Coaching for Parents in the Thick of It

Parent coaching is a skill-building process. Your coach will teach you specific strategies, model them for you, and help you practice real-life responses to your child's behavior. It's structured, goal-focused, and time-limited — not open-ended emotional processing. Therapy, by contrast, involves diagnosing and treating underlying conditions. Coaching assumes you're a capable parent who wants better tools, not a patient who needs treatment.

This program may be a good fit for parents who feel caught in ongoing struggles around routines, limits, or transitions; whose child has strong emotional reactions that are hard to manage; who find themselves unsure what to do in the moment, or feel that what they’re trying isn’t working; and who are looking for concrete tools and guidance rather than longer-term therapy. No prior IFC relationship or diagnosis is needed. If you or your child are currently in crisis or need clinical intervention, our intake team can help connect you with the right level of care.

Parent coaching can help with a wide range of everyday challenges, including: managing meltdowns or emotional outbursts, navigating homework battles and school routines, supporting a child through transitions (new school, divorce, a new sibling), building better communication between parent and child, responding calmly and consistently to defiant or oppositional behavior, and helping a child with anxiety, worry, or social struggles. If you’re not sure whether coaching is the right fit for your situation, our intake team is happy to talk it through with you.

Each session is one hour. Your first session is focused on getting to know your goals, your child, and your family’s specific dynamics — your coach will ask questions, listen, and help you identify the most important areas to work on. From there, sessions follow a structured but flexible format: your coach will teach a skill or concept, demonstrate it, and then practice it with you through role play or guided exercises. You’ll leave each session with something concrete to try at home before your next appointment. By the end of your first session, you and your coach will also have a sense of what’s next — whether that’s scheduling sessions one at a time or a multi-session bundle.

Yes — parent coaching is available to families who have a child in therapy at IFC, with one important boundary: your child’s therapist will not be your coach. To protect the integrity of the therapeutic relationship and maintain appropriate clinical boundaries, coaching is provided by a separate IFC clinician. If you’re an existing IFC family interested in coaching, just let us know on your intake form and we’ll make sure you’re matched with the right person.

Parent coaching sessions are designed for parents and caregivers — your child does not attend. The focus is entirely on you: the skills you’re learning, the strategies you’re practicing, and the confidence you’re building. That said, your coach may occasionally ask you to walk through a real scenario or role-play a situation that involves your child, so the work always stays grounded in your actual day-to-day life.

If it becomes clear during the coaching process that you or your child would benefit from clinical support — therapy, assessment, or another level of care — your coach will let you know directly and help connect you with the right resources. In many cases, coaching and therapy can complement each other, and your coach will work with you to figure out the best path forward. IFC’s full range of clinical services is available if a higher level of support is needed.

Yes — both parents, partners, or co-parents are welcome to attend sessions together, and in many cases we encourage it. Consistency between caregivers is one of the most important factors in how well new parenting strategies work at home. If co-parents are attending from separate households or have different schedules, your coach can help you find a format that works. Let us know your situation on the intake form and we’ll plan accordingly.

After your intake is complete and payment is collected, a member of our team will reach out to help you schedule your single first session. From there, you and your coach will map out a plan together — most families find a weekly or every-other-week rhythm works best — frequent enough to build momentum, with enough time between sessions to practice what you’ve learned. There’s no fixed number of sessions or expiration window, so we’ll help you build a schedule that fits your family’s pace.

We ask for at least 24 hours’ notice if you need to cancel or reschedule a session. Cancellations made with less than 24 hours’ notice, or missed appointments without notice, will be counted as a used session. Life happens — if something comes up unexpectedly, please reach out to your coach or our front desk as soon as possible and we’ll do our best to work with you.

Sessions are available both in-person at our office and virtually via a secure video platform — whichever works best for your schedule and preference. You can mix and match formats throughout your time in the program, so if one week virtual is easier and the next you prefer to come in, that’s completely fine. Just let your coach know when you schedule.

This program is private pay only, and rates can shift over time. Sessions can be booked individually or as a multi-session bundle at a reduced rate — reach out and we’ll confirm your exact cost before scheduling. Many families use FSA or HSA funds to help cover the cost.

Parent coaching is not covered by insurance and is a self-pay service.

If you’ve booked sessions one at a time, there’s no bulk payment to refund. If you’ve booked a multi-session bundle and need to stop early, reach out to your intake team and they’ll help you figure out the best next step.

Your coach is a trained clinician on the IFC team with specific experience in parent education and family dynamics. When you submit your intake form, you’ll share information about your child’s age, your goals, and your situation — we use that information to match you with the coach who is the best fit. If for any reason the match doesn’t feel right after your first session, let us know and we’ll make a change.

What you share in parent coaching is kept confidential within the IFC team. Like all clinical and coaching staff, your coach is a mandated reporter — meaning they are legally required to report any reasonable suspicion of abuse or neglect of a child. Outside of that legal obligation, the content of your sessions will not be shared without your consent. If your child is also receiving services at IFC, your coach and your child’s therapist may coordinate at a high level to ensure consistency of care, but only with your knowledge and agreement.

There’s no set number of sessions or end date. You and your coach will decide together how many sessions make sense and how often to meet. This summer program runs June 1 through September 1, so reach out to our intake team if you’d like to continue coaching beyond that.