Connection Through Coaching

We introduced coaching as the stress-free way to manage mealtimes. Next were are going to talk about taking coaching to the next level. As we already talked about, coaching is about taking some of the emotion out of how we talk about the behavior that we want to see and this is really important in the moment when we are giving a correction or direction. Another way we can coach is by providing guidance outside the actual situation. We do this following a three P approach: Plan, Practice, Process.

Taking the emotion out of corrections and directions is really important, but sometimes it’s just not enough. You might find yourself stuck on the same skills and not making process. Sometimes things are too hectic in the moment to provide good feedback. Sometimes to keep our own emotions in check, we don’t say anything at all. Sometimes we forget to acknowledge that things are going well. This is where planning, practicing, and processing come in.

PLAN. You’re probably already an expert planner. You might have rather elaborate plans for getting out of the house in the morning, running errands, or, if you’re really ambitious, going on a family vacation. A lot of the same skills and strategies you use for approaching transitions and events can also apply to smaller daily routines. Planning is really about getting everyone on the same page and making the implicit expectations everyone has explicit. Planning is especially important if you're just starting with doing family meals on a more regular basis or if you’re adding something new to your mealtime routine. When you’re planning, things to ask yourself are what are the steps of our mealtime routine and how do I communicate them? Where do things break down and how can we strategize around that? How am I going to teach my child to do this new chore? What do I really expect and how do I let everyone else know what the expectations are? One tricky thing that can happen is that sometimes our expectations change without us even realizing that it has happened. Good planning often starts with checking in with yourself.

Planning isn’t just something you do for your kids—it’s also something that you do with your kids. Involving your children in the planning processes helps you to incorporate their expectations into the routine as well as your own. Planning doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can happen in the car on the way home from school or daycare. With older kids, you might plan with text messages. Pictures and written words can help reinforce planning especially with children who don’t use spoken language as their primary form of communication. There’s no right or wrong way to plan, but having a plan for everyday routines does help them run more smoothly. The final snag that sometimes happens is we can get too rigid about following the plan. We already know that our kids can be rigid, but sometimes we forget how our own rigidity as parents interferes. We have to remember that plans are a tool to help us—they are not set in stone. It can help just to talk it out and acknowledge that things are going according to plan, how that feels, and how we’re going to cope with it.

PRACTICE. You can think about practice in two ways. First, you can think about family mealtimes as a space for practice. Each time you eat together, you’re practicing for the complex social world in a safe, (relatively) controlled environment. It’s not about having the perfect meal. It’s about set aside some time each day to practice social conventions, conversation, and daily living skills. Thinking about it that way can take some of the pressure off. If someone blows up and gets upset, maybe it ruined dinner, but everyone has a chance to readjust and try again the next day.

You can also think about practice as anytime you rehearse a discrete skill. This could take place during mealtimes or for mealtimes. For example, maybe your child wants to set up a play date. You can rehearse how your child will invite the friend and what their child might say depending on how the friend responded. You can also practice for mealtime skills themselves. For example, maybe you’re working on using a kind tone. You can practice that before mealtimes—maybe even make it into a game. “Try saying it in a kind tone. Now an angry tone. Now a silly tone. Now a sad tone.” Practice, as they say, makes progress.

PROCESS. Both planning and practice occur beforehand whereas processing happens afterward. Processing is simply talking about what went well and/or what didn’t go well. For example, if your child showed a lot of responsibility completing a chore, at bedtime, you might talk to them about how they showed independence and responsibility when they loaded the dishwasher without being asked. Some children have difficulty hearing positive comments about themselves. If you think your child might be praise adverse (or going through a praise adverse phase), you can process what went well with another adult in the way the child can overhear.

Sometimes, big emotions come out during mealtimes. Processing gives you space to talk about those big emotions when people are calmer—whether it’s your big emotions, your child’s, or both that came out. If your feelings got out of control, you can talk about what you were feeling and why. You can name the strategies you used to calm down and, if appropriate, apologize. Processing also gives you a chance to validate your child’s feelings when their feelings get big, “I can understand why, if you thought that you would feel really frustrated.” You can talk about what can help. “Next time you’re feeling like that, is there anything I could do that could help.” Kids can’t always come up with what might help on their own. You might have to say, “Next time you’re feeling like that, would it help if I sat by your side?” It sometimes helps, if you can name at least one thing your child did really well while they were upset.

Processing can also help to work through the logistical aspects of mealtimes. Families often process if the timing of their meal is working, how they might cook something differently, or different chore arrangements. At the end of the day, mealtimes are about connections, but you have to get food on the table too.

References

All content is original to Mealtimes on the Spectrum, but is based on the following scientific literature:

• Charlop, M. H., Lang, R., & Rispoli, M. (2018). The power of parents: Parent-implemented interventions for young children with autism. In Play and social skills for children with autism spectrum disorder (pp. 129-153). Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.udel.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72500-0_8

• Caldwell, A. R., Skidmore, E. R., Bendixen, R. M., & Terhorst, L. (2020). Examining child mealtime behavior as parents are coached to implement the Mealtime PREP intervention in the home: Findings from a pilot study. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 83(10), 631-637. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308022620920086

• Harrist, A. W., Henry, C. S., Liu, C., & Morris, A. S. (2019). Family resilience: The power of rituals and routines in family adaptive systems. In B. H. Fiese, M. Celano, K. Deater-Deckard, E. N. Jouriles, & M. A. Whisman (Eds.), APA handbooks in psychology®. APA handbook of contemporary family psychology: Foundations, methods, and contemporary issues across the lifespan (p. 223–239). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000099-013