Coaching practices for Solution Focused Brief Therapy Building on What Works for My Teenager

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 for My Teenager, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • All day my attention goes straight to what went wrong
  • It feels like this is just how I am
  • 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
  • I know everything I want to get away from, but if you asked me what "better" actually looks like
  • 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

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. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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)
  5. 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
  6. 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)
  7. 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
  8. Evaluate the outcome and adjust
    After implementing, honestly assess what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next.
    Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
  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. 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)

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