Through this process, I have opened my eyes to the flaws I had. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

I didn’t feel less than. My Family Time Coach didn’t patronize me. It was a perfect balance. The pre and post meetings were really helpful.

My Family Time Coach was really nice. She explains things and asks me how I want to do things. She’s there for me. I love her. She’s awesome.

Making gingerbread houses was hard and I was getting frustrated. The coach could tell I was frustrated and she reminded me to interact at his age level and so we built a gingerbread truck. It was great and the coach said, ‘I’m proud of you’.

I learned that you set your own feelings aside and focus on the child.

My Family Time Coach let me talk about how hard this was for me and helped me be a better mother. She made suggestions and 9 out of 10 times, it worked. She let me explain from my point of view and she was helpful with resources. She made me feel comfortable.

I learned breathing—it’s okay to sit and breathe and count. I learned to be prepared before something happens. Plan ahead. As a mom whose child is in custody, you want to do everything, fit everything into the time you have together, but that overwhelms the kid.

I learned to listen to him—hear what he says—he’s a person and he has opinions and is entitled as long as it’s appropriate.

I definitely learned how to keep patient. I had just put the last of the formula in the bottle and it got knocked over. Normally, I would have exploded but I just told myself, ‘breathe, just breathe” and I calmed down and my coach helped me clean up the mess.

I learned to multi-task between the kids; to give my daughter something to do for the baby.

I felt like my coach was really focused on me getting what I needed out of it and also what she noticed we needed. She had everyone’s overall experience in mind.

For me, it was reinforcement of my own personal goals that someone trained in coaching parents would say that I was doing a good job. She would also say when she noticed things that I could do in a different way.

A couple of times when the children were struggling, my coach waited until after the visit and then told me, ‘You did everything you were supposed to do. Mistakes are going to happen. It’s to be expected.’ I was beating myself up. I felt they expected everything had to go perfect and my coach made me just feel like a human being.