Gloria DeGaetano, founder of The Parent Coaching Institute (PCI) and author of Parenting Well in a Media Age, talks with PCI Certified Parent Coach® Rhonda Moskowitz. Rhonda, a mother of three, has been working with parents for over 30 years—as a special education teacher, early childhood administrator and currently as a PCI Certified Parent Coach®. Rhonda works with parents who are overwhelmed and say “I just don’t know what to do any more!” Parents find Rhonda when they have tried many things, but nothing has changed. She helps moms and dads create practical solutions for their parenting concerns. In fact, her parent coaching company is called: Practical Solutions Parent Coaching. Rhonda works with parents who have children between the ages of birth and 18 and she also works with parents who have children who have been diagnosed with ADHD. Like all PCI trained parent coaches, Rhonda helps moms and dads focus on what is working. And then from there client and coach create a picture of what they want things to look like. Once that is attained, the coaching centers on practical solutions to get parents to the life they want to lead.
“Fortune favors the well-prepared.”
This popular saying gives the essence of this podcast. We want parents to prepare their children well before they let them loose to roam the digital landscape!
Gloria and Rhonda center their discussion on three important key parenting strategies:
1. Understand the capabilities of what we are giving kids when we give them those devices. Rhonda says, “We are giving them the keys to the kingdom—access to the whole, wide world.”
2. Set rules and limits—having a contract agreement—yes—write your rules down, discuss them and have the kids sign. Now they not only know them, they have signed and agreed to follow them.
3. Adjust our own use of devices—modeling is so powerful. Talk a lot about rules that adults follow, too!
With these three focal points, we prepare our kids and certainly empower them to be in charge of their devices. Learning to live with screen technology, not for screen technology is after all, that what it’s all about!