Jane Wolf Frances

Jane Wolf Frances, M.S.W., J.D., Family love expert, Coach, Attorney, and Author, feels very grateful for a varied, lengthy and meaningful career. She has worked as a psychotherapist, a law professor, the Founder and CEO of ParentingOurParents™ (POP), a not-for-profit foundation, a litigator, a Happiness Coach working with the world’s leading experts on happiness, and then as the creator of her own Certified POP Family Coaching Program.

Jane has developed practical tools to help families immersed in POP, based not only on her expertise as a geriatric therapist and her years as a legal expert but also because of her life experience caring for her aging parents for the last ten years of their lives. These tools include her book, “Parenting Our Parents: Transforming the Challenge into a Journey of Love.” It is a “memoir” where Jane shares the very intimate story of her own numerous POP challenges, despite her professional background; and at the same time, this is also a “self-help book” since she is always intent on using her combination of experiences and expertise to help you and your family. Jane’s book provides specific solutions to the many issues one in four families are currently struggling with but don’t know where to turn for answers. Jane’s POP tools are a growing community online at ParentingOurParents.org; she also developed a unique program to train professional coaches to help the 1 in 4 families still struggling through their “POPcycles” to develop the skills needed to better negotiate that often chaotic path and, to solve what has seemed unsolvable.

Many years after she’d moved across the country from her east coast home, Jane traveled to be with her parents for the holidays and discovered the truth that her aging parents had been hiding from her on their many phone calls. Then in their mid 80’s, they’d been able to conceal from their only child serious health issues, a number of practical needs and the fact that their elegant home had become a filthy, unhealthy place. A light came on when Jane recognized that she could “reverse” her place as their child and embrace a different - unexpected - role, parenting her own parents.

Soon it became apparent that this role reversal was her opportunity to “give back” to the parents who’d given her not only her life, but also their caring, a fine education and so much more. By choosing to "parent her parents," she also discovered much about herself that she’d not yet seen. Nor did Jane know then that doing “POP” (as she soon called it), would last for ten years and require her to bring to bear all her educational and life resources. Not long afterwards, doing POP and demonstrating how to do POP became her life mission. Many readers report not only that they find relief and spot-on advice from the book, but they also notice that doing POP can heal childhood wounds and result in becoming a complete grown up!

Graduating with honors from Wellesley College, Jane received her Juris Doctor law degree from Boston University and practiced law in Massachusetts and California for 20 years. She returned to school mid-life and graduated from UCLA with a Master’s degree in Social Work, thereafter opening her practice as a licensed psychotherapist specializing in geriatric families.

For Jane, the ultimate goal of the book and all of POP is to create a journey of love for your beloved seniors and for POP families. To find a Certified POP Family Coach to help you or someone you know who could use some guidance, or if you wish to learn more about the online training to become a Certified POP Family Coach, go to: ParentingOurParents.org