When a child acts out, shuts down, or becomes difficult to reach, it's natural to focus on the behavior itself — and to want it to stop. Maybe you have found that traditional behavioral interventions simply aren’t working anymore for you and your child. Parent coaching offers something different: space to slow down and consider what your child might be feeling, thinking, or needing underneath the behavior you're seeing.
Parent coaching is not therapy for your child — it is dedicated, one-on-one time for you. The process is reflective, and at times deeply personal, as we explore not only what your child may be experiencing but also what gets stirred up in you as a parent. The goal is to strengthen your capacity to understand your child's emotional world and to respond from a place of greater clarity and connection.
Parent Coaching
A Mentalizing Approach to Parenting
Parent coaching at the Center for Reflective Functioning draws on parental mentalization — the capacity to understand behavior in terms of the thoughts, feelings, and intentions that drive it. Developed within attachment research and refined through decades of clinical work, mentalizing is one of the most well-supported frameworks for understanding how relationships shape emotional development.
In parent coaching, mentalizing is applied practically: when your child's behavior feels confusing, frustrating, or overwhelming, we work together to consider what might be going on for them emotionally — and what might be getting activated in you. Over time, this reflective process strengthens your ability to read your child's cues more accurately, respond rather than react, and repair the moments that don't go the way you'd hoped.
This is not about getting parenting "right." It's about developing the capacity to stay curious about your child's inner experience, even when their behavior makes that difficult. As that capacity grows, most parents find they feel calmer, less reactive, and less weighed down by the emotional intensity of parenting.
What Parent Coaching Looks Like
Parent coaching sessions are one-on-one meetings with Dr. Adkins, typically held on a regular cadence — weekly or biweekly depending on needs and goals. Sessions may focus on:
Making sense of patterns in your child's behavior and your responses to them
Building reflective capacity — the ability to pause and consider what your child might be communicating through their behavior
Understanding how your own attachment history and emotional responses shape your parenting
Navigating specific challenges such as emotional meltdowns, defiance, withdrawal, school difficulties, or transitions
Strengthening the parent-child relationship as the foundation for your child's emotional development
Parent coaching can be helpful whether your child is currently in their own therapy or not — and whether or not you are in individual therapy yourself.
Who This Is For
Parent coaching may be a good fit if you:
Feel stuck in cycles of reactivity with your child and want to understand why
Have a child whose behavior feels confusing, intense, or hard to reach
Want to support your child's emotional development but aren't sure what they need from you
Are looking for guidance that goes beyond behavioral strategies and addresses the relational and emotional dimensions of parenting
Have been referred by your child's therapist, your own therapist, or another clinician