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 may not have th...

I remember the day he walked into my Kids Life Studio®. He was angry. A very determined look on his face. His first words to me: "I don't have to do this stupid coaching thing."

My heart skipped a beat and then I leaned into his fear. All bad behaviour in a child is an unmet need and this child was feeling scared. He wasn't sure of what to expect. He had every right to feel the way he did.

Strong willed children are awesome candidates for kids life coaching! We love supporting them because they are not only full of fun and enthusiasm to work with, but they show natural leadership. We support them to channel their energy into willpower to succeed with a toolbox of skills that makes a parents life easier! Who wouldn't love doing that! 

Yet, this child seemed extra resistant and wasn't budging! No amount of encouragement from his parents was getting him to budge. 

So what did I say and do to shift his attitude and get his buy in? Well these 3 things shifted the needle for this strong...

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:

• Feeding it (giving it the nutrition and water it needs for optimal functioning and feeding it with a good diet of information ie. avoiding too much social media!)
• Befriending it (treating their brain with respect and keeping it safe at all costs. This starts with the words they speak and the choices they make.)
• Defending it (protecting their brain from harm when doing contact sport, wearing a helmet when riding a bicycle and avoiding head injuries at all costs and knowing what to do when they get one.)
• Training it (strengthening their brain for success with daily mindfulness practices, lifestyle choices and good habits relating to sleep, exercise and leisure time)

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 suppor...

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 WAY AROUN...

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 chi...

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 has also ...

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 with the...

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 putting an ...

As we sail into the new year of 2024, I still can't believe that our Kids Life Coach Certifications are now accredited Diploma Trainings. I have come a long way from my early career days of being a school teacher and counsellor and I am sooooo excited for what this year holds in store for our global network of Kids Life Studio® Coaches!!

With life coaching children continuing to expand and grow in most countries, I have noticed trends and cycles since I first started this journey over twenty years ago! If you haven't as yet read my blog on the history of kids life coaching, it makes for some interesting insights!  It shows how the demand for support has increased exponentially since the pandemic and that the market is ready for more productive and more proactive goal orientated approaches to improve children's wellbeing. 

That being said there is a common thread in that everybody has now heard of kids life coaching but I have felt excited that we are still the emergent leaders and pi...

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 cont...