It’s going to take more than some people who want to become a life coach to make an impact on the future of young people. It’s going to take people who are brave enough to become a parenting coach. What’s so tough about deciding to become a parenting coach? The clients of course. It’s not that kids are tough to work with, it’s that the parents are really the ones who need to transform. Unfortunately the parents rarely see that they are the real issue behind their children’s behavior. How can you become a life coach for the right client in this case?

Become a Parenting Coach that Knows How to Find the Real Source of the Issue

You need to become a parenting coach who is brave enough to ask the right questions and get honest answers, or decide that you are just going to become a life coach. When the parent or parents show for their appointment, the first thing you need to do is make a diagnosis of what’s going on. What do they want? And which of their basic needs are driving them to get what they want? What they really want, of course, is to fulfill one or more of the basic needs of significance, love, connection, certainty and variety.

Parenting Coaches Use Some of the Same Techniques They Learned to Become a Life Coach

Next you need to become a parenting coach who finds out what is preventing the parents from getting what they really need. This is the same process you need to go through to become a life coach who really understands what the core issue is. What prevents people from getting what they need is always in the form of a triad. The triad is basically the emotional behavior based on what a person says to themselves, what they focus on and believe, and their body’s posture and physiology.

For example, a parent might go into an angry emotional behavioral pattern in reaction to their child’s behavior, or they might go into a loving emotional behavioral pattern. Most people demonstrate reactive behavior instead of responsive behavior. They don’t realize that they have a choice. When you become a parenting coach you can connect the dots between the parent’s reactive emotional behavior and the child’s emotional behavior. When you can help parents get past their own justifications of why they react a certain way and get to their core issues, you become a life coach for the client who really needs to transform.

Whether You Become a Parenting Coach or Become a Life Coach, You Have the Ability to Change Entire Families

If you can become a parenting coach who gets parents to see that they have the ability to set the emotional tone of their family learning how to respond instead of react, you can transform the dynamics of the entire family. Instead of someone who has become a life coach and affects the life of their client, as a parenting coach you have the ability to transform the entire family by working with even one of the parents.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach