Kids Life Studio® Coach Academy
Okay so let us speak about the elephant in the room here!!! Yes...children as young as age 5 are being diagnosed with Bipolar! But what is it? Why is this happening? AND....can Kids Life Coaching help children who have been diagnosed with Bipolar?
With world Bipolar Day coming up on Saturday, 30 March, I wanted to share a few facts with you. Like....Did you know that this day was Vincent Van Gogh's birthday, who was diagnosed with bipolar after he died?
So why was he only diagnosed after he died you may be asking? Well perhaps a research paper published in 2020, can shed some light on that for you. It speaks of co-morbidities, alcohol abuse, malnutrition, epilepsy and many other things...
So why am I sharing this with you? Well it helps to answer the question "Is Kids Life Coaching for children diagnosed with Bipolar?"
You see, as a research Clinical Child Psychologist, my Masters degree showed me that it is easy to diagnostically label a child according to the criteria in the...
I am so pleased that when I started my Kids Life Coaching journey way back in 2003...I was naive, filled with optimism and perhaps a little too "blue sky" in my thinking! You see, I believed I could do anything for children and that nobody could stop me!
I really truly believed it!
Why?
Well, because I really cared! For me, coaching children wasn't just a career change from my teaching career which I absolutely loved. It was my way to serve my local community, earn an income and make a difference.
With over two decades experience under my belt, I know my stuff BUT what nobody ever told me....is probably not even related to what you think!!
You see when I first started coaching children, there were no other companies doing what I was doing. I was the first! I pioneered my approach in South Africa (now expanded to countries all over the world!) simply because I believed I could and I wanted to help children. The biggest problems I saw facing children back then was watching too...
For many years, I have been speaking to potential students interested in enrolling in our training. They ask me how our Play Based Coaching System® works. They are interested in our approach and almost always have been led to believe that it involves telling stories to children!
I am not sure where this misinformation has come from. Although there is a lot of truth in the fact that children love a good story book....especially colourful ones with a meaningful and fun protagonist...stories in coaching sessions are simply a waste of time.
Let me tell you why!
In younger children, stories are meant for bedtime. This is a special time for parents to spend with their children reading to them and perhaps imparting a few incidental "words of wisdom" that teach them life skills.
As a children's author...I LOVE stories....but do I use my own Zeal the Zebra book in my coaching sessions? Nope...not at all! But do I recommend my book to parents and teachers? For sure!
You see, a...
Okay so let us speak about this up front. Parent coaching is not what we do at Kids Life Studio®! It's not that there isn't a time and place for this, but for us we work with the whole family with a strong focus on the child facing various wobbles or challenges. After assessing their lifestyle and stressors, we tailor make a programme to give them skills that can be transferred into the whole family. Parents love this non invasive approach that empowers their whole family to understand their roles and responsibilities.
So often, we see parents approach us for support at their wits end and really struggling to cope with their child. They are overwhelmed and they want help and they want it yesterday! They want us to TELL them what to do and how to do it. We reassure them that we have an easier way....
Sometimes they believe us and they patiently allow us to do our magic in our 4 week foundational kids life coaching programme and sometimes they refuse to accept that we...
In our Kids Life Studio® Coaching programmes, we support children to build their brain health! We do this in a non invasive way that shows them the importance of:
With so much happening in our children's world that impacts on their brain behaviour, we have made it our collective mission at Kids Life Studio® to...
Kids Life Coaching is a relatively new field in the greater scheme of things. When I first started coaching children in 2003, it was unheard of and I was the first Kids Life Coach to launch my own practice. At the time, I had nobody to learn from, nobody to help me and nobody to point me in the right direction. Simply because coaching was reserved for adults and nobody was doing it for children (yet) until I identified the gap and took action.
Just like you....I saw a need and you no doubt have also seen a need for kids life coaching in your community. It always surprises me as to even after two decades of coaching this field is still growing. In fact, since the pandemic I have seen a growth spurt with the field gaining amazing traction.
Yet sadly...with every good intention, I see passionate children's change makers launch their own coaching practice the same way I did over two decades ago and even there there is so much help they choose to do it alone!
THEY GUESS THEIR...
Recently, I have noticed that a lot of people feel impatient. They want to help children. They want to do their best for children. They want to learn how to coach children BUT they want to do it quickly!
In the past (I have been training people since 2009), this wasn't the case. People were prepared to put in the effort and learn slowly and incrementally how to coach children. I just feel that the media is pushing their agenda of declining mental wellbeing in children and people (perhaps you?) are feeling desperate to be part of the solution and help.This means they are googling online to find quick fixes....
I am here to tell you that if you want to help and do be part of the solution there is only one way to do it.
PROPERLY!
Anybody who knows me as the founder of Kids Life Studio® Global and who has done our Kids Life Coach Certification training knows this about me....
I don't do short cuts.
I don't believe in short cuts.
I don't do a half job.
When it comes to coaching...
When I first started coaching children in 2003, I was doing it part-time as a primary school teacher and school counsellor. I would consider myself pretty creative and I absolutely loved finding, curating and making new resources for the children in my classroom and that I was coaching in my spare time.
I remember having this big old steel filing cabinet!! Yes, you know the type!! The old industrial office one before cloud storage was a thing. I had all these neatly filed away alphabetical folders with resources from A to Z! If I found a magazine article or a book or a resource or poster or a worksheet, I would print it out and file it.
Oh and did I mention that I didn't have access to google and AI like we do now! ALSOOOOOOOOO....how did I do it WITHOUT ANY social. media!
Boy oh boy! How times have changed! Now we have everything at our fingertips. You can google away and there are millions of resources available to you! What I have found though is that with this choice...
I'm just going to spill the beans here...perhaps I am one of the few...but so far I have not as yet made use of Chat GPT to write my blogs, curate articles or executive administration tasks.
Am I being foolish?
Maybe?
Yet, I can't help but circle back to our highest value at Kids Life Studio® and that is to nurture caring, kind, supportive relationships with children. If we are to walk with integrity in our work as Kids Life Coaches, there may be some sense in taking short cuts when it comes to admin but when it comes to children, I can't think of anything worse.
Children are showing an upswing in mental health problems not because of something they have done...but because of what the world is doing to them collectively. The pressures have exponentially increased and alongside this, quality of life has deteriorated with less meaningful face to face relationships and more online interaction. Less family time and more go go go....Everything accessed at the click of a button...
Today is supposed to be BLUE Monday in England where I live! A day of the year that is supposed to be the most depressing. The concept is believed to have first been published in 2005 in a press release from Sky Travel, who made claims that by "a novel calculation they determined it as the most depressing day of the year." Due to this, the first-ever Blue Monday was born on January 24, 2005. And the "legacy" (a negative one...) lingers on.
To be fair, I can see how today would be a hard day for many adults. It is halfway into the first month of the new year and perhaps "new years resolutions" have already disappeared. Some of you may still be hammering away at eating healthy, exercising, not drinking alcohol (dry January it is now called...) sleeping better, doing hobbies, being mindful...and...and...and...
The pressure in our world "to do" is overwhelming us and our natural inherent need to "just be" is being overtaken. With so many external influences such as the media...
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