Northlight Family Services - Life Learning Plan™

WHAT TO EXPECT LIFE LEARNING PLAN™ FAMILY WORKSHOPS SUPPORT & THERAPY

Our Life Learning Plan™, parent, and family work with Northlight has helped us grow personally, gain insights into our family patterns, and make changes critical to supporting our daughter's change and growth in her therapeutic school.

Rob's skills and expertise in counseling parents and teens offers families the opportunity to heal rifts, reestablish honest communication, and develop bonds and relationships that are essential to maintaining family ties.

The Life Learning Plan™ is a therapeutic curriculum consisting of readings, exercises, and lessons that a family is guided through by a coach. The Life Learning Plan™ process helps parents and other family members make individual change while also participating in a student's residential process. It is also a comprehensive planning process that leads to a thorough plan for transition at the end of a residential program.

The Life Learning Plan™ process respects the changes the child has made, acknowledges his or her hard work, and allows the student to express his or her needs. It honors the family's belief systems, individual values, and helps family members develop a vision of what is possible. It also assists parents in taking a meaningful and influential stand in their child's life while also acknowledging that parents do not control their child's thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

Exercises in the Life Learning Plan™ are designed to:

Clarify the purpose of the child's emotional growth work
Identify areas for parents' emotional growth work
Expose patterns of relationship in the family
Provide "tools" to interrupt and change dysfunctional patterns
Connect emotional growth work to individual needs, values, and beliefs.
Help families improve communication and create their own unique tools for decision-making, planning, and conflict resolution.
Help families understand and work with issues of power and control
Help families create schedules, budgets, expectations, and consequences
Create "structures" for accountability
Identify and work with core needs and beliefs
Improve personal boundaries and emotional contact in relationships
Heal old wounds
Identify local resources to support long lasting change, learning, and growth
And much more...

A Life Learning Plan™ is a significant endeavor. Family members work with written Life Learning Plan™ materials and receive 25 to 40 hours of coaching, instruction, and guidance. The Life Learning Plan™ coach meets regularly with the parents and also travels to the student's school. Regular phone appointments are scheduled with the student when they are nearing transition out of the program. Families are advised to start the Life Learning Plan™ process early in the residential program. We have found that the earlier that a family begins the process, the greater the payoff of the work.