Emotional coaching is one of the keys to raising happy, adaptable, and well-adjusted children in an often sad, intractable, and irrational world. According to John Gottman, author of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, his research shows that it is not enough to be an engaged and loving parent. Parents also need to be emotional coaches to their kids yo help them understand and effectively manage the wide range of emotions and feelings they will experience.
The first step in emotional coaching is to recognize your child’s emotions and feelings. Parents are often caught up in their own adult world or only see the results of these emotions: bad behavior, acting out, crying, or other negative behaviors. Parents need to learn to see each child as a whole person with a wide range of emotions.
The next step in the emotional coaching of children is for the parents to be empathetic. Parents should ask them about their emotions and feelings and then discuss their own emotions and feelings. Parents should make sure to listen to what their children say and not just instruct, admonish, or punish them.
From the moment children begin to talk, parents should be using words for each type of emotion. Using words such as sad, happy, miserable, ecstatic, disappointed, content, lonely, and delighted are not only a great way to improve their vocabulary, but also works to give them a way to convey their emotions to their parents.
Can Emotional Coaching be a Niche?
Parents need to use this type of coaching in child rearing, but can emotional coaching be a viable niche in the coaching profession? Is there room for the coaching of emotions in the industry?
Those individuals that reach the top of their professions get there through a combination of hard work, luck, persistence, and the ability to think outside the box and to take chances. Moving your established coaching business into emotional counseling and coaching would be taking a risk and thinking outside the box. Look on the Internet – how many websites or ads for emotional coaches come up when you do a search? There are a few, but not many. Most of the results refer to parenting. It is a niche that is wide open and just waiting for a outside-the-box thinking entrepreneur like yourself to come along and make you name in a brand new field.
What Would a Emotional Coach Do?
- Help clients identify their emotions and balance the negative with the positive.
- Work with clients to manage their emotions on both personal and public levels.
- Guide clients to a place where negative and positive feelings are used to motivate and encourage.
- Help clients work through their emotions in relationships, life, business, and leisure.
- Spend time analyzing the source of feelings and make them work to the clients benefit.
- Emotions are part of life – they are good for us – clients need to learn to control emotions, but not eliminate them.
Would it possible to earn a living in this niche? That’s for you, the trend-setting entrepreneur to find out. Emotional coaching may not even be a blip on the radar right now, but all it takes is some dedicated and skilled opportunist who sees a need and fills it. Is that you?
Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article…Thank you!
Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community
I think that emotional coaching can be a good niche in the industry because many people out there have a hard time handling their emotions that they tend to make the wrong decisions or act without sound judgement. This could really be helpful for those who have a hard time expressing themselves.
This type of coaching will require a good, sound and dedicated coach. His clients should also be willing to paint the whole picture and be able to express themselves for this to be a successful niche in the industry.
Interesting. This type of coaching might not be it for me but I can imagine that the market is there. Simply because there is a number of people who are perfectly capable to live their daily life but are unsure how to deal with emotions in general – let alone the emotions of a child.
It will be interesting to see if emotional coaching get some attention in the future.
Greetings,
Lyn
@LynEgen
Children cry for a reason, it can be anything from wanting a simple hug to ‘listen to me, please’. The same goes to the parent who unable to help their child/ren because they don’t how but by reading your article will give them hope and understanding on how to best support their child and maybe other’s.