What is play based coaching?

To understand Play Based Coaching, you need to understand play, and this links to the fundamentals of what we do at Kids Life Studio®. We play with a purpose so that we can facilitate personal development in children through speaking a 'language' that they are already fluent in.

Play is the universal language of childhood and it teaches children so many skills to use throughout their lives. Through play, children discover the world and themselves. Most importantly, play allows for a time of fun, no worries, just pure joy.

Having fun and playing is what every child wants and enjoys. It our collective  job as adults to help remove the barriers to play. There is no such thing as a child who doesn’t like to play. There may be a child who has faced trauma and perhaps has lost touch with their natural inherent wisdom to connect through play.

Through Play Based Coaching®, children are given the opportunity to explore their role and place in the world and to understand their culture in context. When our global network of Kids Life Studio® Coaches support children, they share 5 tools with their coachees which include:

Self control - the ability to take responsibility for things that are in their control and understanding what is not in their control.

Self talk - the words they use and how they speak to others and themselves.

Self regulation - the ability to manage emotions and reduce anxiety and balance their brain.

Self soothing - relaxation techniques that calm them and help them to be mindful.

Self planning - setting plans in motion with small incremental little steps to build a healthy body, heart and mind.

Whilst there is ample research that backs up our approach of using play as a facilitator for change in children, what we are really interested in is getting children to be positive contributors in a world that seems to be going insane. With so many external influences with the potential to impact on children, it really is important to use play to coach children to take control of the things they do have a choice over:

Eating,

sleeping,

exercise,

leisure time,

education,

communication

support.

These seven areas are the fundamentals of play based coaching.  Alfie Kohn said “Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.”

When you started this FREE introductory training, you watched a short video that highlighted that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expanded the world's understanding of the child's right to play.

This was an important turning point for children in 2013, but much work still needs to be done and you can choose to be part of that....

Should you choose to continue with your training and enrol in our Level 2 Kids Life Coaching Theory Certificate training, our aim is to get you fluent in the language of childhood! So with this in mind, what will you do to bring more fun into your own life so that you can become fluent in the language of childhood? 

Are you FUN?

Do children enjoy your company?

Or are you just another serious adult who wants to fix them and sees only the toxic influences facing them and challenging their future potential? 

Salman Rushdie said: “Those who do not have power over their story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, to rethink it, to deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as times change, truly are powerless.”

Our Play Based Coaching System® evolved over two decades and is always using cutting edge research and methods integrated through play. being based on a very wide research net of informed evidence relating to areas such as:

•  Attachment and play therapy
•  Performance coaching
•  Mindfulness based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
•  The biology of stress
•  The science of hope
•  Strengths based model
•  Biopsychosocial model
•  Social Support Theory

These are just a few of the areas we share as part of our Level 2 Theory Training for you to understand how coaching children is underpinned by the fundamentals of play. The most important thing you need to know is that our proprietary Play Based Coaching System® is VALUES driven and this is underpinned by working with integrity and being committed to long term sustainable solutions.

There are too many people doing half jobs or professing to have a degree in psychology and not doing optimal work because they remain focused on the deficit model and 'fixing' children are not open to exploring new ways that are strengths based. 

Play based coaching is based on the fundamentals of a child’s basic needs but it is never just about our proven methods that get proven results! There’s plenty more too. For a start, Kids Life Studio® is globally recognised for our unique child friendly approach that is based on leading research on how children think, learn, act and behave.

Sounds complicated right? It’s not really, it means that we let children explore their own super hero strengths in a safe space in a fun and non invasive way.

So this means that if you become certified as a play based coach, you will use the fundamentals of play as a way to allow a child freedom of expression as to what they may want in life. Your job will mostly be taking children back to themselves if they have lost their way and also supporting those children who may know the way but just simply need a helping hand.

You can be that helping hand!