A foster parent commented on how she regularly used Emotion Coaching with the children and young people she worked with and also with their parents and other professionals working around the children and young people. She said, "I see the difference it makes. It can be adapted to different situations and over time becomes more natural."
The foster parent recounted a recent instance at home:
Tina was taking her phone in the bathroom when having a bath. Her phone was her most treasured possession in the whole wide world; she trusted no one. From our perspective this was a huge safeguarding risk for her to do this. My husband and I discussed an approach that would work best. At that time Tina was not engaging with any of us in the family, she was in shutdown but he had a better relationship than I did with her (it would change from one day to the next with her due to her developmental trauma and attachment style). So he approached Tina at a calm time, using Emotion Coaching.
He said he knew how precious her phone was to her and how she liked to have it close but that she knew the rules we had around where phones were allowed and how it wasn't allowed in the bathroom and how we needed to work together. Tina said she liked to listen to music whilst in the bath so they worked together to find a solution. They set up a playlist for Tina to listen to in the bath on her phone and put a bluetooth speaker in the bathroom The phone remained on the landing.
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