Julia Ferguson

A Time for Growth

After two decades of working in adolescent mental health, I feel passionately about empowering parents to raise resilient children. Despite the challenges and heartaches I’ve witnessed as parents and teens wade these turbulent years, I’ve also learned that adolescence doesn’t have to be a time to just “survive,” but a time to thrive. This unique time will lay a foundation for patterns and choices your child will make for the rest of their lives. No matter the parenting challenges you’re facing right now, with the right perspective and tools in hand, you can ride this wave of growth with calm and confidence.

A Positive Foundation

We’ll partner together in weekly 50-minute sessions to co-create a parenting path with hope and optimism. Throughout your coaching sessions, we explore the positive qualities in your child’s developing mind and in your parenting approach and build on this foundation to create the future you want to have with your child. Armed with the tools of positive parenting and researched based brain science, we’ll create manageable steps towards a more resilient path for you and your child.

Supported with Self-Care

As we pave this new path in your parenting journey, we also regularly check-in on your own self-care so you can show up for your child with intention instead of exhaustion. Taking moments for calm and rest will open doors of creativity, flexibility and positivity you had not previously accessed in your parenting. Allowing more time for calm and introspection in your own life will allow for more moments of connection with your child.

A Focus on Internal Motivation

With this new perspective on your parenting role and your child’s maturing brain, we’ll explore what builds your child's internal motivation. Whether they’re struggling with school, responsibility, or in their peer groups, we’ll examine what drives your child to be the best version of themselves and how you can support them in this internal development. My coaching always supports a parent and a child’s agency. We all yearn to create our own unique path, as adults and children. As we walk this path, my coaching supports parents in helping their child not to “be good” but to choose good.

About Me

As the mother of four children, I’m in the trenches with you, raising my children imperfectly in an ever changing and complex world. I love the relationships I build with my clients. They’re constantly teaching and challenging me to look at parenting with new lenses. I like to make my coaching sessions fun and enlightening for my clients.

In addition to being a PCI Parent Coach®, I’m also a Positive Discipline Parent Educator. I offer classes and workshops in this role. I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Marriage, Family and Human Development and am the co-founder of Connection Counseling Center, a private counseling and coaching practice for teens and young adults. I reside in the DC Metro Area but I’m available to coach through phone or video sessions anywhere in the US.