7 Ways to coach children to have a positive attitude

Parents naturally become their children's first teachers, guiding them through learning various skills such as sports, cooking, sewing, and even academics, with many opting for homeschooling with notable success. However, offering life coaching to their own children presents a unique challenge.

To foster sustainable development in Executive Functioning Skills, it often takes an external Kids Life Studio® coach that parents trust. The impact of external affirmation on a child, from someone other than their parents or grandparents, is profound. Witnessing the joy and uplift in a child's demeanor when their efforts are recognized by an outsider is truly special. Moreover, managing a highly emotional or frequently angry child without escalating one's own emotions is a challenge where a Kids Life Coach can make a significant difference.

Our role as Kids Life Coaches is not to solve problems for parents but to coach the children directly. We have the advantage of observing the family dynamics from an external vantage point, free from the emotional baggage and ties that influence parents' interactions. A Kids’ Life Coach is trusted primarily for two reasons:

So here are some ways that you can support parents by coaching their children to have a positive attitude:

1. Coach children to realise that they are not victims despite what they may be facing is about getting them to choose to not get swept up in an ocean of negativity. Coaching children to be positive and think like a winner is about accentuating their strengths and talents whilst at the same time acknowledging their areas needing improvement through a healthy sense of self awareness.  This way, they learn to respect others and choose to display their behaviour that embodies positivity as a choice. It is about coaching children to actively monitor their thoughts, words and actions. Through a heightened sense of self awareness, they can begin to choose to replace negative with positive.

2. Coaching gives children the much needed time and space to explore the world on their own terms. That is how they learn to think, invent and socialise; to take pleasure from things; to work out who they are, rather than what the world wants and expects them to be. They need lots of attention from you as their Kids Life Coach, with no conditions attached and in a framework that provides them with the things that they need to grow and learn will in turn give them the positive energy to move forward.

3. Engaging with a child is about pitching to them higher than your expectations might be and lowering your input according to their feedback. Never the other way around. Don't be afraid to speak to them using the proper terminologies and language associated. Dumbing children down in coaching is a sure why to train their brain for mediocrity and not positivity.  This is the very reason why when coaching a child, you should always remember that they are, unlike adults, always willing to try new things and they don't choose to live from a place of fear but one of love for adventure. They are inherently positive and you need to harness that.

4. Coaching takes any negative behaviour that a child displays and turns it into a positive so that it lands a little softer with the child.  This is a skill that takes sharpening as our minds are naturally programmed to want to fix what is wrong and in so doing we sometimes use the wrong language when speaking to a child albeit unintentionally.  Kids Life Coach is a realistic sounding board for a child that acknowledges problems but enforces that with the right mindset they can find positive solutions for their problems.

5. Coaching is about helping children to develop the capacity to use the rational parts of their brain to regulate their emotions and manage their behaviour.  While feelings may be tricky and they can be viewed with unease, they're actually very important and very valuable because they tell us a story of what is happening on our inside world. So coaching children to understand all feelings are okay is very important.

6. The secret to knowing who you are and living well begins with knowing being coached to know the difference between sustained feelings and temporary emotions. Children need to be coached to look at it this way: Nothing you can ever experience in life, no matter how terrible, will ever be anything more than a bunch of thoughts, plus a few physical sensations. We all get to choose what we think and so we in essence get to choose what we feel and how we react to a situation.

7. Coaching children to understand their role in the universe, is about giving them the concept of being a servant leader that acknowledges that their place in life is to give more than they receive. In other words to have empathy, kindness, compassion and to be good listeners and communicators. Having a good understanding of the theory of the mind gives children a stronger ability to understand others and why having a positive attitude is so important.

As adults, we all want to inspire and motivate young people to believe in the power of now and to feel empowered to rise above circumstances.  Especially parents! But...can parents coach their children and give them a toolbox of tips and strategies to cope in an ever demanding world like we can? Maybe?

However, I believe that any child who you as their coach, will have a heightened sense of awareness and their positive experience of making good choices and improving on their own behaviour will be a catalyst for further meaningful change.