Fall River Parent Coach: Mistakes You’re Making But Can Fix

Parenting is hard and a lot of people struggle with it. At least that's what Fun 107 morning show cohost Michael Rock claims. Luckily, there's a parent coach from Fall River who is here to make life as a parent just a little easier.

Sarah Slattery of Fall River is a 38-year-old mom of three who recently dove into the occupation of parent coaching. Her company is called Parenting With Purpose.

Being a mom for so much of her life -- her oldest is 20 and youngest 11 -- led her to this career path. Her passion is to help parents break generational patterns to support their children and help them become stronger and more emotionally intelligent.

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Her confidence comes from her own parenting.

"I wish I had a mentor while raising my children so I consider myself to be just that," Slattery said. "I've made it far in my parenting on my journey so my role is to go back and help people and bring them to where I'm at."

We checked in with Slattery to get some insight on mistakes that are easy for parents to make.

1. Impulsive Reactions

Parents reacting immediately or initially is typically driven by fear, judgment, shame or guilt. When it comes to a child having a temper tantrum in a store, for example, a lot of parents are reacting out of fear of judgment or people shaming them for having a child who is out of control or who isn't following the rules. Reacting out of shame is one of the bigger mistakes I've noticed in parents.

2. Repeating Generational Patterns

Example: "This is how I was raised..." Unfortunately it's not the same world anymore and when I do work with parents, a lot of times when we start to dive into that and pull back the layers like an onion, we realized that how they were raised didn't serve them. Our DNA gets changed after so long, it's part of evolution and this is a default pattern (i.e. realizing something your mom would say just came out of your mouth -- that's the default pattern).

3. Not Repairing Relationships

We often hear a lot of just sweeping a situation under the rug and that's the mistake. Being able to go back and having the opportunity to connect with your child, learn a little about them, and have an opportunity to share a little bit about what your expectations are -- that repair is critical. A lot of parents get stuck in the over-parenting part where you say to yourself, 'I'm the adult, I don't need to explain anything to you, I don't owe you anything,' when in fact that these are our children, they are not our enemies. They are completely dependent on us to role-model how to make a mistake and how to repair from making that mistake.