Michelle Cooke

I’m a working mum of 2, with a 12 year old boy and a 10 year old girl, so I’m acutely aware of how hard it can be to juggle work and home commitments. At its best, family life can be a joy – filled with laughter and love – but let’s be honest, it’s not always fun. It can be mundane, exhausting and challenging. So often you feel like you’re not being the parent you want to be or the professional you want to be. Often you can feel like you’re falling short on both. Just when you think you’ve finally cracked it, understand your child, and feel confident in your parenting – suddenly something changes and you feel like you’re doing it all wrong again. My work with parents is all about helping them to develop strategies that will build confidence, reduce stress, and bring a little more of that elusive joy element back into family life. I love supporting parents to understand children’s behaviour, work out how they want to parent and what changes would work for their child, so that they can enjoy being together as a family and feel confident in their parenting.

No parent is the same and each child is a complete individual, so it is always really important to work together to understand the behaviour and get to know what will work for you and your children. My approach is carefully tailored to the needs, preferences and circumstances of each family who chooses to work with me. One size does not fit all, and I would work with you to understand what is going on and how best to support you. My 20 years’ experience supporting families has given me a range of approaches to draw on, not to mention 12 as a parent! At the heart of all these approaches is a focus on understanding what is behind the difficulties that parents are facing. Every child can be challenging at times, for a whole host of reasons. Life is busy and in the moment we often react quickly and instinctively, and not necessarily how we hoped we would. If you choose to work with me, you’ll have the time and space to think through what is happening for you and your child. You’ll have the opportunity to understand and unpick challenges, develop and test new strategies to identify what works for you and your situation. You might find, for example, that you develop alternative ways of responding to your child so that you are able to reduce a difficult behaviour over time, or preempt it from happening in the first place. place.

I am an experienced parenting practitioner and social worker, working within the field for over 20 years. I am an accredited Parenting Positively practitioner and hold a Diploma (DipSW) and a Masters in Social Work.I have completed additional training on a wide range of subjects including working with challenging behaviour, Autism, additional needs, sensory processing, conflict resolution and solution focused practice. Prior to becoming a private parent coach, I worked within frontline social care and managed a Family Support Team. I also worked in a behavioural support team, working closely with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) supporting families where children exhibited extreme challenging behaviour and/or had additional needs.