White Mountain Coaching

Our Story

     Twenty years ago, our family embarked on a journey of adoption, driven by the hope of welcoming children into our home. Like many others, we faced challenges, which led us to explore alternative paths. Our experience of attending classes and evaluating various sibling groups was emotionally taxing, often making us question whether we were truly prepared for the immediate demands of an instant family.

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     After much anticipation, we welcomed a toddler sibling group into our lives, but soon realized the lack of support and training provided by multiple agencies did not equip us for the parenting needs of children with extreme traumatic backgrounds. The absence of appropriate resources became evident as we navigated parenting children who had experienced significant trauma in foster care, including instability and mental health concerns. Despite our strong hearts, we struggled with the harsh realities of everyday life as a functional family amid these challenges.

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     Over four years, we sought help from various therapists, parenting classes, and online resources, but often found ourselves lost. Many resources reacted to "normal" parenting situations and did not address the unique needs of our children. Frustrated and overwhelmed, I made the decision to pursue a degree in clinical psychology, aiming to gain the understanding necessary to support our family. As time passes, things we were doing were wrong according to adopting extreme traumatized children versus raising biological children of your own versus those who were in foster care. In addition, the traumatic events as parents were dealt with on a daily basis. Now our children are in their mid-teens, just as disturbed as day one. The earned degrees were not a loss but gave a better insight and how to use reverse psychology and different tactics. We only fought battles that we could control ourselves. We even overlooked emotional events that were out of our control. In addition, letting self-consequence take place as part of learning or mastering negative situations.

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     We were unable to understand why multiple therapists and behavior coaches could not help our family, for falling apart! Dealing with mental health without the knowledge is very difficult and challenging. The professionals of behavioral health, we were given, had no prior education in combination with working with foster children that have 10 plus placement times. After numerous professionals failed attempts, for our family. To have helped, they would have known the foster mental health or experience by having walked in the shoes of parents and children to truly understand their needs. Hungry to learn about mental health and extreme parenting was our next step in our process. This is a totally different field of mental health other than general parenting class or learning what is a diagnosis, for the first time. Enough is enough attending agencies, classes, and researching.  Seeking out wisdom, Googling, and tapping into social media was helpful to a point because every family has their own unique challenges.

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     The next four years were a struggle, continuing lots of yelling, screaming, and violent disruptions. However, we pulled through, using my education from my university, research, and understanding the needs of foster children’s mental health. Another roadblock that our family did not see coming after earning my degree, you cannot be a therapist or behavior coach while being a dad at the same time, nor would this make an overnight impact, if our children slow down enough to listen.

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     The next phase of our journey was intense. It involved not just personal struggles but also self-changing the way we communicate. In addition, listen with each other regarding our parenting approaches, background history of the children. Despite the ups and downs, including thoughts of giving up or even returning the children back to foster care. We slowly began to see a positive shift in our family dynamics as the kids approached their late teens. This change was not instantaneous but rather a gradual process built on understanding and patience with different tactics and new programs that we created.

As our children matured, we learned to implement additional new strategies, such as reverse psychology and natural consequences, which allowed us to better manage challenging behaviors. In addition, we focus on what really matters. With time and persistence, our family developed a deeper understanding of each other's needs, fostering stronger bonds.

Reflecting on our story reveals that many families endure similar struggles in their own contexts of yelling, screaming, and daily arguing, police presence, and child welfare showing up. Sharing our experiences can help highlight the critical need for access to appropriate resources and help for adoptive families, particularly those with children who have faced trauma.

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     Moreover, working in the same field working with adults and children with serious mentally ill (SMI) population for two years, three years of independent behavioral health clinician with the Gila River Tribe and other populations, five years working with the Child Protective Services with the Gila River Tribal Community, one year working in the Gila River Indian Community Hospital Behavioral Health Care unit. The total experiences and ongoing education, workshops, and just listening to stories after stories gave us the enlightenment that we are all the same. In addition, where we stood and can say from talking to many, we were where you are now. Let us help you and give our story with how we can help guide.

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     Today, we are motivated to leverage our experiences to assist others in need in the White Mountains of Arizona, advocating for families with mental health concerns that are not in a book. White Mountain Coaching seeks to help others who are at the beginning where we have started to navigate the complexities of adoption, extreme parenting, and traumatic children. Many struggling families have very similar situations like ours but they just live in a different home. In the many years, we have had many successes and helped many children and adults with behavioral and mental health challenges. We continue to encourage families with new found hope to move forward by assisting their needs.