Coaching practices for Dan Siegel Parenting Practice

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Dan Siegel Parenting Practice, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Even when I sit down to play with my kid I catch myself steering it
• I only ever try this stuff when my kid is already in full meltdown, and that’s exactly when it comes out stiff and scripted and falls apart
• My kid melts down and my instinct is to fix it or shut it down fast, and the tantrum just gets bigger
• I praise my kid constantly
• I lay down a rule and my kids ignore it because it’s "my" rule they had no say in

Practices that may help

1. Follow the child’s lead completely during special time
   Let the child decide what you do, how long you stay, and when you move on.
   Special Time (Lawrence Cohen — Playful Parenting)
2. The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson)
   Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson's Whole-Brain Child framework draws on neuroscience to explain why children behave as they do and offers strategies that work with the developing brain rather than against it. The core insight is that children's emotional storms reflect genuine neurological immaturity — particularly in the prefrontal cortex — not moral deficiency. The practices are clinically endorsed and mechanistically grounded; RCTs of the Whole-Brain Child program specifically are limited.
3. Special Time (Lawrence Cohen — Playful Parenting)
   Special time is a structured daily or near-daily practice of ten to twenty minutes of fully child-directed, uninterrupted one-on-one play, drawn from Lawrence Cohen's Playful Parenting framework. It fills the child’s attachment "cup," reduces bids for attention through misbehavior, and builds the relationship reserve that makes limits and teaching more effective. Clinical and observational evidence consistently supports child-directed play as a relationship and behavior intervention.
4. Practice emotion coaching during low-stakes moments
   Build the skill in small moments so it’s available in the big ones.
   Emotion Coaching (John Gottman)
5. Labeling emotions in children: the parenting application
   When a child is upset, name their emotion aloud and validate it before attempting to solve or redirect.
   Name It to Tame It: Affect Labeling in Practice
6. Sportscast what you see rather than directing
   Narrate the play without evaluation, question, or instruction.
   Special Time (Lawrence Cohen — Playful Parenting)
7. Use family meetings to solve problems together
   When children help solve the problem, they own the solution — and solutions they own, they actually follow.
   Positive Discipline (Jane Nelsen)
8. Use special time to fill the connection cup before problems escalate
   A proactive ten-minute connection recharge can prevent an afternoon of battles.
   Special Time (Lawrence Cohen — Playful Parenting)
9. Positive Discipline (Jane Nelsen)
   Positive Discipline, developed by Jane Nelsen and based on Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs’s work, is a parenting and classroom approach that is simultaneously kind and firm — neither permissive nor punitive. Its central premise is that children do better when they feel a sense of belonging and significance, and that most misbehavior is an ineffective attempt to achieve one of these. The approach has strong clinical adoption and is consistent with authoritative parenting research, though controlled trials on the specific Positive Discipline curriculum are limited.
10. Spend quality one-on-one time with your child
    Fifteen minutes of child-led, uninterrupted attention per day builds the relationship that discipline depends on.
    Triple P Parenting (Matthew Sanders)

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.