I love sharing time in our Teaching Tuesday mindset mentorship calls and Thinking Thursday Peer Supervision calls with our students and certified Kids Life Coaches!!

I have noticed that those who excel as coaches are dedicated to shaping their thinking by surrounding themselves with likeminded people.

Recently in one of our Tuesday mentorship sessions, I shared on the topic of “Cheating your way through life.

I asked attendees:

"Are you doing this one thing?”

Many of them didn't even know that they were actually holding themselves back from being a world-class Kids Life Coach….

I spoke about just this ONE thing!!!! As you're reading this...You probably don’t even realise you may ALSO be doing it!! Even if you aren't part of our team and getting peer to peer supervision and mentorship....You need to know this!

I used to do it….when I first started my career as a Kids Life Coach in 2003….but now I know better….

So can you guess what this one thing is? 

Guessed yet?

It's making ...

Last year I did my dissertation research on mental well-being during Covid for my Masters Degree in Clinical Child Psychology.

I interviewed 12-year olds around the world…asking them who and what was the most helpful to them during Covid. All of them shared ONE thing in common…

CONNECTION

👍They enjoyed time playing board games with their siblings and parents.

👍They valued shared time cooking family meals together or for each other.

👍They appreciated sitting around a table and eating meals together.

👍They loved the extra unhindered time with family with fewer extra murals and distractions.

How you spend time with children counts!!! That is why our kids life coach training is so powerful!

Our students come from a range of backgrounds such as teaching, social work, psychology and life coaching. No matter their background and experience, our training is underpinned by our highest value at The Kids Life Studio® which is RELATIONSHIPS.

Children are yearning for real, meaningful conn...

When we interview people and decide to give them the go ahead to join our global team of Kids Life Studio brand ambassadors there is an element of gut feeling....initially....

As the founder, when I speak to Childrens change makers, I use my intuition to “feel” their true intentions. Usually this is what I call my “goose bump” moment! Where I connect to the persons heart.

Once that is done we move into the formalities. A checklist of criteria we look for in brand ambassadors. One of the MOST IMPORTANT things we look for is attitude over aptitude.

Yet this is probably the hardest thing to measure initially....since some people choose to hide their true colours until later.

So we ask ourselves some of these questions when screening “leaders” to join our organisation as change makers for children:

⭐️Do they have a good foundation for coaching children already in place? This isn’t necessarily formal education but could be that little secret ingredient...

⭐️How will the person choose ...

Just imagine. You are in a burning building. Your toddler is with you. You are on the 16th floor.  You can't use the lift. So you run down the stairs but cannot get past the second floor. You have nowhere to go. So you climb onto a balcony.  All you can think about is saving your child.

What would you do?

A South African mother did the unthinkable. As she was engulfed in smoke, she made a split second decision. She threw her 2-year old from the first floor of the burning building, into her neighbours arms. She trusted they would catch her little girl and keep her safe. 

Why did this happen?

This was in the aftermath of a rampage of violence, riots, looting and arson throughout the city of Durban. My old hometown. The place I was born.

The very spot this happened, I have fond childhood memories of holiday shopping with my mom and my accompanying treat at the "Wimpy" for a burger, chips and milkshake. 

My childhood is a far cry to the one currently being experienced in Durban by ch...

The coaching and education industry is a huge industry (and growing). Parents  today are more inclined than ever before in history to invest RESOURCES (time, money, etc) to acquire skills, knowledge and transformation not only for themselves but for their children.

 Which begs the question: why do so many Kids Life Coaches seem to struggle?

 I don’t mean to be critical, but it really is puzzling to me. There’s more opportunity than ever before and peo...

Sometimes we try to hard to fit in. We strive for perfection. We people please. We perform according to other people’s expectations.

The result....

We end up losing ourselves.

I can speak from personal experience as to what it feels like to want to be a biological mom but knowing this will never ever be possible.

I have yearned to participate in “mommy” conversations about pregnancy, teething, breast feeding but I will always be an outsider.

Most of all I will never fully understand what it means to have protective instincts as a parent.

Yet my whole entire life revolves around being an advocate for children’s well-being. I feel so strongly and passionately about getting it “right” in childhood purely because I can remain objective.

This vantage point allows me to see the unvarnished truth that parents can fail to see. It doesn’t make me a judge...it doesn’t mean I have all the answers...it doesn’t mean I am always well received.

What it does mean is that my words of advice som...

Sometimes we try to hard to fit in. We strive for perfection. We people please. We perform according to other people’s expectations.

The result....

We end up losing ourselves.

I can speak from personal experience as to what it feels like to want to be a biological mom but knowing this will never ever be possible.

I have yearned to participate in “mommy” conversations about pregnancy, teething, breast feeding but I will always be an outsider.

Most of all I will never fully understand what it means to have protective instincts as a parent.

Yet my whole entire life revolves around being an advocate for children’s mental well-being. I feel so strongly and passionately about getting it “right” in childhood purely because I can remain objective.

This vantage point allows me to see the unvarnished truth that parents can fail to see. It doesn’t make me a judge...it doesn’t mean I have all the answers...it doesn’t mean I am always well received.

What it does mean is that my words of adv...

Compassion is a concept foreign to some. The dictionary says:

"The meaning of compassion is to recognize the suffering of others and then take action to help. Compassion embodies a tangible expression of love for those who are suffering."

As a kids life coach, this should sit at the core of how you support children. Whilst not all children may be "suffering" in the true sense of the word, nonetheless taking their personal situation into account is what counts. 

Sometimes when things get painful because the truth is to hard to bare, people shut down and disconnect.   As a kids life coach, choosing to be curious and choosing to connect is harder than choosing to walk away and giving up.  Shutting yourself down and joining the ranks of those who 'judge' a child who is labelled or badly behaved, is avoiding the path of compassion. 

To be vulnerable means to say things as they are. As a kids life coach, your job is to not sit on the fence. You need to be brave and face things head on. Y...

It absolutely amazes me how so many people profess to be a “Child Wellbeing Expert” and “Kids Life Coach”. They are well meaning and obviously have a BIG heart for helping children. But....does this make them an expert?

Come on, you need more than a short course online to become an expert! Also you simply cannot do an adult life coaching course and think you can coach children successfully! Not to mention that if somebody has never even been exposed to children or had any experience, it will take them extra long to be considered an "expert".

So what makes you an expert as a Kids Life Coach?

Well for me it boiled down to these 3 things for me:

1. Ask for help:  When I started coaching almost two decades ago, I had already attended a multitude of courses and I had two degrees - one in teaching and in psychology of education. Yet....nothing seemed to make 100% sense because I had a whole lot of puzzle pieces but I didn't know what the bigger picture looked like? There was nobody to fol
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