Parent Coach For Teens

Parent Coach for Teens
To help you prepare your teens to become independent adults who have the skills and values to live meaningful lives and contribute to the communities. If you approach the ideas here with an open mind, you will have more confidence in parenting and enjoy the challenge in parenting teens. Take the best and discard the rest.

Teens are searching for their identities, their lives are no less stressful as ours. How do we help them to help themselves? Simple but not easy. Parents need to be role models and to influence your teens in a positive direction. To help them become independent youths who have self-responsibilities and make right choices. We need to first love ourselves before they can feel our love.

More often than not, their mental, physical & emotional development, can be a major challenge in this modern society with the speed of change. Parents who experienced hormonal changes in their retiring age could well relate to their teens' experiences.

You need to support each other during these trying times. Explain to them and talk about your difficulties so that they too could understand that creating a space can lead to loving energy within the family. Teens are not designed to drive you crazy nor you them. Not taking it personally is a good start.

Coaching is mentoring, guiding, supporting and encouraging. Coaching is not telling your child what to do. Parent Coach gives the ownership of self-responsibilities to the teens today. Teens need to learn responsibilities. The authoritative style of parenting does not auger well with today's democratic style of managing our lives. The environment is on a transition to more self-expression. Teens are confused by the need to be creative and to be told what to do. The influences from the media and TV give them a different perspective of what is.. There is a need for them to be heard and to express their views to grow and develop their innate potential. Encouragement to have self-expression helps them to think and develop confidence.

A Parent Coach listens about 80% and speaks 20% of the time. We need to know what works and what does not. A Parent Coach is aware.

Blog on 30th Oct 06
To start, take small steps to first build the relationship. Focus on them as a person. Catch them doing things right and praise them. Everyone of us need acceptance & acknowledgements. We thrive on praises. It is common for us to keep quiet when they do something right and when they do something wrong, we are ever-ready to highlight that to them. Does it sound familiar to you? Remember criticisms tear down instead of build up. Watch how they warm up to you and open up to you when you sing praises about their small achievements. Be sincere. Takes time, don't expect immediate change. Does not cost you a cent. Try it! It works!

You may have to put the emphasis on academic aside until they know you love them for who they are and not what they can achieve academically. They are just as worried about their studies as you are. Surprisingly, students I know want to connect with parents but dont know how. I did a research with secondary schools and was pleasantly surprised by my findings.
That gave me more enthusiasm to want to communicate this to parents. Parenting is a complex & challenging task, nevertheless when you learn more of what it takes, how you can become better, it is rewarding and also an area of self-discovery journey of knowing who you are!

I believe no one style fits all and every family has to fine tune and seek for family cooperation to connect with each other to bring their relationship to the next level. I find it more fulfilling and productive to focus on solution rather than complaining about each other and nothing change.

Life skills has become the most important topic in my vocabulary now. Whether you are a CEO, Manager, worker, Principal, Engineer, or any profession, knowing what you value and who you are is a good step to begin with. When you live your values, your children will emulate you. Be aware of what you say, do and believe in. Values are caught not taught.

Any thoughts to share? Pls post your comments here:)

I welcome your email at:
dolly@mindset-coaching.com or visit my website:
www.mindset-coaching.com