Coaching practices for Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works as a Parent

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works as a Parent, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • Every conversation with my kid about their behavior turns into me laying down the law and them digging in, and I want a way to actually talk it through together
  • All day my attention goes straight to what went wrong
  • It feels like this is just how I am
  • My kid and I agree on a fix and it sounds great in the moment, but a few days later it’s fallen apart again
  • I know everything I want to get away from, but if you asked me what "better" actually looks like

Practices that may help

  1. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
    Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT), developed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, directs attention to what already works — client strengths, past successes, and desired futures — rather than to analyzing problems. Meta-analyses report small-to-moderate positive effects across a range of presenting issues, with particular strength in behavioral problems and depression in adult populations.
  2. Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
    Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
    Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
  3. The Formula First-Session Task and Between-Session Noticing
    Assign between-session observation tasks that direct attention toward what’s already working.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  4. Exception Finding: When Is the Problem Already Less Severe?
    Identify times when the problem was absent or less severe — these are evidence that solutions already exist.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  5. Evaluate solutions for durability: realistic, mutually satisfying, safe
    A collaborative solution that fails one of three tests — realistic, mutually satisfying, safe — will not hold.
    Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
  6. Preferred Future: Describing Life When the Problem Is Solved
    Ask the person to describe in concrete, behavioral detail what life looks like when things are better.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  7. Problem-solve together once the child is calm
    After the emotional storm passes, invite the child to find a solution with you.
    Emotion Coaching (John Gottman)
  8. Plan behavior management strategies in advance
    Decide how you will respond to predictable problems before they happen.
    Triple P Parenting (Matthew Sanders)
  9. Coping Questions
    When things seem terrible, ask how the person is managing at all — acknowledging and excavating their resilience.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works
  10. Complimenting Strengths Throughout the Session
    Deliberately name real strengths, efforts, and resources the person displays — not as praise but as information.
    Solution-Focused Brief Therapy: Building On What Works

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