Parent Coaching Institute (PCI)

The Parent Coaching Institute (PCI)

PCI was founded in 2000 by Gloria DeGaetano whose mission is to empower parents to make decisions in support of their children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. She devised a 4-component model as part of her educational curriculum for parent coaches.

This four-part model includes:

  • Parenting as a living system: Parents and children are viewed as changing and growing beings with different strengths and capacities that shape their relationships. Understanding these relationships within the living system is the key to positive change.

  • The functional ecology of parenting: Understanding parental decision-making within their socio-economic and ecological system.
  • Brain-compatible parenting: Coaching with the understanding that each individual develops with unique needs and on their own timeline.
  • Appreciative inquiry: Utilizing strengths-based language and instilling hope and positivity in parents and families.

There is a difference between therapy and coaching.

Therapy can be focused on finding the root cause of issues. Whereas coaching is more about leaving that ‘cause’ behind, and focusing on what can be done to improve the current problem, or to achieve the goal at hand.

However, if you constantly struggle with any of the following issues, to the point that they affect your ability to live ‘normally,’ it may be wise to seek the support of a professional parenting coach, and possibly a family or child therapist.

The types of issues are:

  • Feeling overwhelmed by everyday parenting duties, to the point that, some days, you ‘give up.’ That may mean staying in bed, or not taking care of kids as one would expect.
  • Having arguments with another parent about how to raise children.


  • Having trouble enforcing rules in the household.
  • Feeling a lost sense of love and attachment with your children.


  • Difficulty controlling overly rebellious children, or children who can’t regulate their own emotions.
  • Difficulty consoling a child who is having nightmares, wetting the bed, or who can’t get over separation anxiety


  • Difficulty helping a child make friends.


  • Solving the problem of bullying – either your child being the bully or being bullied by others.


  • Raising a child with special needs, or a child in an extraneous family situation (such as one dealing with death or trauma).
  • Raising a child who has been fostered or adopted (especially later in life), and who doesn’t ‘fit in’ with their new family.

The reasons for hiring a parenting coach can be as unique as you are. And, each coach can have their own strengths and abilities to help you in an individual situation. If your situation is beyond the scope of parent coaches, they will relay that to you and assist you in finding a family or child therapist that best suits your needs.

Learning the psychology and physiology behind how the adolescent mind operates, for one thing, is endlessly fascinating and extremely helpful. Understanding why certain behaviors originate and persist has been key to getting to the root of problems.

  • Setting Intentions for Parenting
  • 10 Pillars of Empowered Parenting
  • Attachment Science
  • Nervous System Science
  • Mindsight
  • Brain Science
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Empowered Conversations
  • The PEACE Process
  • Exploring Anger and Healthy Agressions
  • Playful Parenting
  • Generational Healing
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