We caught up with the brilliant and insightful AMY-BETH FISCHOFF a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

AMY-BETH, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

After a 15-year career as the director of a New York City art gallery, I woke up one morning with a flash of insight: I had to find more heart-centered work or I would lose a piece of my soul. I loved art, but the art business could be cold and cutthroat. So I returned to school and at the age of 38 I got a Master’s degree from Bank St. College of Education, with a specialty in infant/toddler development. I spent the next 8 years working with children and families in various roles – teacher, program director, pre and perinatal educator, and caregiver for high-needs children.

After caring for kids of all ages over the years, I longed for my own, and miraculously at the age of 46, I birthed a beautiful daughter.

Secure in the years of knowledge I had acquired with my background and training, I was convinced motherhood would be a breeze for me. Well, that was a cold-water bath! Almost immediately post-partum, I felt overwhelmed by the conditioned ideas, knee-jerk responses and overpowering emotions that toppled my expectations and self-image daily.

As my daughter grew, parts of me that I had not anticipated, or even knew existed, came barreling out of the shadows of my emotional “closet”. To my great shock and dismay my child’s behavior often provoked intense feelings of fear, rage, resentment, shame, and powerlessness in me, which were met with equally strong emotional backlash from my daughter.

Being a solo parent, I experienced a lot of anguish and loneliness in these early years. Having considered myself a seasoned professional at handling children, it was hard to admit I was missing some key ingredients for relating to my own little person. I felt deeply sad and afraid of never finding my way to the joyous journey I had imagined before giving birth.

Then, when my daughter was 7, I was blessed to come across Leslie Potter of Purejoy Parenting. Leslie was and is a brilliant parent coach with a unique approach that bypasses children’s behavior, and goes directly to the inner experience of the parent. Through the Purejoy work and its amazing method of self-kindness through self-inquiry, I learned that there were young parts of myself that needed as much attention and love from me as my daughter did.

Through this gentle work, I honed the ability to identify, listen to, and accept the parts of myself that I was resisting fiercely through shame and self-criticism; attitudes that had their roots in my own early conditioning, I started to literally ‘grow myself up’ from early programming. I learned to work kindly with the ‘inner critic’ that had “run” me for most of my life and refocus the lens of perfectionism and judgment through which I also viewed my daughter.

After spending years suffering secret fears that my missteps would ruin my daughter’s life, I found ways to trust myself and my daughter in the face of the unknown; to see how wholesome attachment with my child necessarily included my own needs, and to understand the true meaning of appropriate boundaries.

Over time, motherhood became the relaxed, connected and joyous experience I had hoped for, not because all conflict had disappeared, but because I now knew how to meet conflict, both with my daughter and in myself, with curiosity and compassion, rather than resistance and fear.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Having gained so much from Purejoy Parenting in my own life, when Leslie offered certified training in her work, I jumped on board her first training, becoming a Parent Coach for both individuals and then groups.

In my work, I see clearly that every parent who comes to me wants to be the best parent possible for their children. And yet, like I did, they find themselves, impatient, judgmental, irritated at all the interruptions, the constant needs, the lack of sleep, the lack of personal time, of any time! Parents are often consumed by worry – am I missing the best years of their lives? Am I messing them up? Are they already messed up?
Nothing in ordinary life adequately prepares us how to handle the stress of parenting, especially not in these singularly challenging times.

In my work, I help my clients unpack messages absorbed from their family of origin and the general culture that might be unconsciously driving parenting decisions, and reveal where the triggers that upend our best intentions to be kind and evenhanded with our kids, have their genesis.

Often parents feel like their lives would be so much better if only their kids would just — BEHAVE!! And many parent coaches orient to that approach, trying to modify children’s behavior so that parents will feel more at ease. My approach is somewhat different. I show parents how to more accurately understand the messages children are communicating with their behavior. This helps clarify the family dynamic, shifting parents’ experience from feeling like a hostage to their child’s expressions to feeling empowered in the family system.

With my deep love and intimate understanding of the parenting journey and through skilled questioning and accurate feedback, I guide parents to tap into their inner wisdom. I demonstrate how to create a safe emotional environment within the family. Parents learn how to attend to both their children’s needs and their own without having to sacrifice one for the other.

​Most importantly, through this engagement, parents learn how to lean into kindness and compassion towards themselves which is the basis of a life of Family Harmony.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

I would. Counseling and coaching others seems to be something I was born to do. Much before I took it up as a profession, I was always the friend other friends would come to for advice. I even have a vague recollection of sitting on a barstool in a Catskill hotel where my mother was the “house” singer, and listening and offering compassionate advice to my mother’s friends – at the age of 7!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Well, the first pivot was to leave the art world and enter the world of family care. After the revelation that I had to leave the art gallery for something that nurtured the more heart-centered part of myself, I spent a year searching for what I wanted to do next. I knew I wanted to work in a service capacity with people, but I found social work too much on the “glass half empty” spectrum for me. When I discovered the Infant/Toddler Family M.S.Ed. program at Bank Street a bell rang deep inside me.

I started as a non-matriculated student with a course in child development, and I quickly found that I loved the material and signed up as a full-time student. I worked with children for the next 20 years. Many children I taught or cared for seemed to have especially testy relationships with their parents or siblings. I could see from the vantage point of being unhooked emotionally (which is challenging when you are a parent!) that there was a kind of emotional “aikido” that these kids required. A way to flow with their sometimes overwhelming energy rather than combatting it.

When I became a Mom, I stopped working with other children for the first 7 years to be with my daughter, and found myself similarly unable to unhook from battling with my child. However, when I found the Purejoy pathway it was clear to me that I needed to pivot again and shift from working with children – which I indeed loved – to working with their parents. It seemed to me at that point, that was the way I could serve children best.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://amybethfischoff.com
• Facebook: Family Harmony with Amy-Beth