Top executives rely on business coaches to keep them accountable and to learn new strategies in their work. Top paid athletes have coaches to guide them through their physical and mental game. Professional singers have coaches who provide them the techniques to keep their voices in the best condition. Coaches provide consistent encouragement, mentoring, and support to help increase one’s confidence and success rate.
These coaches are usually also business professionals, former athletes or singers. They know the strategies for success based on some of their own lived experiences. They have also studied and researched the most up-to-date techniques for achieving greatness.
Coaches are used for a myriad of reasons and several professionals credit their coaching to gaining them many of their greatest accomplishments.
A coach provides much the same support for a parent who is struggling with their video gaming addicted child or adult child.
Coaches with first-hand experience and those who are parents, themselves, make great advisers. They understand the difficulties parenting a child in crisis presents. These coaches use their own experiences and the techniques of success that they developed, through trial and error, to guide other parents who are now facing similar challenges.
Here’s a list of the values that coaching can bring to these struggling parents:
Building a stronger relationship with your child. Often, by the time a coach is involved a home environment will have become a battleground of nagging, complaining, and fighting. The relationship between child and parent has crumbled. A different approach is now needed to start repairing the damage and create a more peaceful climate in the home. A coach gives a mother or father an opportunity to step back and breathe a little easier, knowing that they are now fully supported by someone who “gets it”.
Build communication skills, problem-solving, and conflict resolution. If screaming matches have not brought results, new communication skills are now necessary. A coach helps one understand that acting out of anger and frustration is just pushing a child further away. They also understand that a parent in this situation has lost perspective, they are too emotional and unable to step back and behave objectively. While feeling supported and understood, a parent is more likely to try new steps in reaching their child. A coach can provide a different approach and more effective tools for communicating.
Understanding of the Stages of Addiction and Recovery. The path of addiction and recovery is not linear. It is a process that can take time. It can be a bit of a two-steps-forward-three-steps-backwards process, a roller coaster of a ride to get through. There’s no one finite answer that works for everyone. A coach can guide a parent through these stages so they learn to know what they can expect and to realize that one failure does not mean they should stop trying. They will provide solutions that are unique to each home. 
Consistent cheer leading and encouragement. Every parent with an addicted child will experience times that seem so overwhelming that they want to just throw in the towel. It’s sometimes easier to just give up than face the enormous work ahead. Coaches help keep a parent motivated to change and try different strategies. A coach will praise parents when their parenting methods are working and make corrections when they’re not effective.They help one to feel less isolated in this issue of addiction. When I struggled to get my son to recovery, I longed to know one other parent who was having a similar experience, one parent with a video gaming addicted child. No one was discussing this addiction back then and it was quite lonely for me. Coaching provides an arena for a parent to feel they have someone they can count on to give them accountability and keep them moving forward, someone who can build their confidence and help to strengthen their parenting skills.
Learn more about a child’s development. Just as there are stages of addiction, there are also stages of development for children. Coaching can help a parent to understand why their child is behaving with volatility and/or despondency, why they are pulling away and/or pushing back, and what they can do to help support their child rather than aggravate them.
Self-Care. Just as with athletes and other professionals, healthy self-care and habits help give a parent the strength and stamina needed during this difficult period. This is essential for them to move through the many challenges of their child’s addiction. Parenting is exhausting on the best of days. Having a child with an addiction perpetuates this fatigue and can have detrimental effects on one’s health. A coach will guide parents in learning how to take better care of themselves and their home, with the right balance. This could include diet, exercise, rest, structure in the home, and self-nurturing habits.
Moving forward in Recovery. Coaches explain what can be expected for recovery to be a success and how to cope with relapse. With detox from an online social community comes the challenge of helping one’s child to build a new, tangible and healthier community. This takes time, patience, and commitment. Often times, the parent will be the child’s only source of company, and there can be a period of limbo that needs to be addressed with some strategies to create a successful transition. Relapse can happen. A coach can help a parent stay focused and not allow this setback to discourage them.
You do not need to be in a top executive position or earn millions of dollars as a professional athlete or entertainer to require coaching. A parent can also benefit from having a coach. A mother or father, or both may need to look for a coach to assess their family situation and reassure them that there are tools to help manage their family in a healthier way. This may just require one session, sometimes just feeling heard can provide the strength and confidence needed to carry forward. Or ongoing weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly coaching sessions may be required to help attain the desired goals. Coaches provide both single sessions and packages of several sessions. They can work with a parent in-person or online. Most important, is to find someone who you feel most comfortable with and who leaves you feeling understood and inspired.