Parent Coaching and Relational Aggression: Case Study Part Four

Discovery into Dream

Our goal today was to finish up the discovery phase, continuing to flush out the family strengths. 
If time, we'd start to create Celia's dream.

One exciting part of my work with Celia is that our coaching sessions paralleled her daughter's start to high school.    As we went along , we both could see Elaine's growing maturity.   It was pretty cool to bear witness to this transition.  

Elaine enjoyed her first day of high school!   One of the girls who had been mean to her happened to be in her art class.   Celia proposed that Elaine keep an open mind, perhaps the girl had changed and matured.   Elaine basically said,  "no way."   But Celia still felt that she had planted a seed.   It was important to Celia that Elaine not feel resentful and filled with revenge.  Rather, she wanted Elaine to focus on her own happiness.   (By the way, it isn't a given that I would support a child befriending a bully, but in this case it was important to Celia.  Celia felt that high school was a fresh start).  

Because Elaine is great at art and loves it, Celia hoped that this class would build her confidence.   On the other hand, she worried that having a girl who had bullied her in the class might hamper the joy her daughter felt while doing art.

There were so many family strengths that we had a rich and lively discussion!

I decided to move into the dream stage with a visualization.   (Again, I wouldn't do this with every parent, but it seemed a nice transition in this particular case and I felt Celia would enjoy it).  I had Celia close her eyes and imagine a time that Elaine had felt unfiltered and pure joy.  

Little was I to know, this visualization would become one of the pillars of our coaching together.   Celia visualized  Elaine doing art and also the joyful feeling that she gets right after a horse race.   Celia imagined Elaine transferring this feeling of joy to her general joy of school and life.