At a glance
- A free school and parent support website and mobile app for family wellbeing and parental engagement
- Resources mapped to the the DfE’s statutory RSHE guidance
- Over 130 hours of free resources covering a wide range of parenting topics
- Expert help for every parenting challenge
- Trusted support from experienced coaches and behaviour specialists
- Practical help and strategies covering every stage of a child’s development
Reviewed by John Dabell
Parenting is inherently messy, intense, exhausting and full of Motherland moments.
Every parent can feel that they’re the only parent in the world who doesn’t seem able to parent effectively. Children don’t come with a manual, and their inner workings can be hard to fathom.
But help is at hand with My Family Coach – a free parental responsiveness website and app service that will help parents in your school understand more holistically the behaviour and emotions of their children, as well as their own.
This is a resource that cleverly brings home and school together by fostering collaboration, providing insights and sharing pastoral information support that relates to an array of personal, social, emotional and life skills.
It will help parents learn how to observe, listen and talk with their children, avoid power struggles, deal with misbehaviour, connect/reconnect and help children develop their emotional resilience and self-responsibility.
My Family Coach recognises that effective parenting is the cornerstone of positive childhood development, and thus serves up a range of inspiring ideas and practical tips to make parenting less fraught and chaotic.
So, what do you get? Well, you get a lot!
The website itself offers in-depth, expert advice on school life; relationships; bullying and friendships; healthy living; mental wellbeing; communication; at risk behaviour; managing screen-time; improving listening skills; calming down; transitions; coping with the loss of a public figure; divorce and separation; OCD and more besides, with support for every age and stage of a child’s life.
It does this by presenting a magnificent collection of curated resources, including videos, quick-reads, blogposts, podcasts, an information hub, webinars, classes, courses, coaching and a journal for recording patterns of behaviour.
These are all professionally produced and serve to a provide a deeper understanding of the many different challenges parents can expect to encounter, alongside simple and effective tools parents can use to make their children’s lives and their own more enjoyable and fulfilling.
My Family Coach also offers access to the free My Family Journal app that tracks behaviour and spot triggers. This brilliant tool helps parents better appreciate how challenges can present opportunities for learning and growing as a family, rather than always being stressors or negative events.
The website and app further ensure that parents and schools are on the same page and speaking the same language by helping schools find and share relevant resources with families linked to the topics students are being taught, an incident or behaviour in school, or even a disturbing storyline being covered in a soap opera or reality TV show.
Schools also get a suite of onboarding resources to support parental engagement, regular communications on newly added content and an anonymised data dashboard that helps deliver insights into the resources families are using, and customised reporting on areas of possible concern within their school, and at regional and national levels.
Parenting involves grappling with a distinct set of demands, which is why My Family Coach is so welcome. It bridges the digital divide, and provides a welcome means of establishing mindful, joined-up thinking between parents and schools via the use of straightforward and reliable tools which empower and enable.
Verdict
- An emotionally intelligent resource for improving family communication
- Helps parents harmonise conflicting parenting styles
- Can help build strong family bonds and enhance relationships
- Provides parents with fresh perspectives and the reassurance that they’re not alone
- Includes a practical app that can help users deal with everyday parenting challenges
- Fosters productive partnerships between homes and schools
Upgrade if…
You are looking for an empowering and practical home-school collaboration tool to improve your engagement with families and develop a keener awareness of children’s needs and behaviours.
For more details, visit myfamilycoach.com
