5 Coaching Tips for Caregivers to Nurture Young Minds

While coaching executives, quite often issues being explored tend to relate to parenting or having been parented.

?As it's often said, all deeper issues in business and executive coaching tend to be life issues. Of life issues, invalidation comes up as one of the most important disempowerment areas. Within invalidation what happened in one's childhood often leaves traumas for the future. These traumas in turn haunt one's children.

?How often do we hear parents saying ?to children

·????? 'This is how we were brought up',

·????? 'You don't realise how lucky you are'

·????? 'Why can't you be like so and so?'

·????? 'Why don't you listen to what I say?'

·????? Why? Why? Why?

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These are generational commandments, always prefaced by aggressive 'whys' passed on to us by our caregivers, which made many of us suffer and now create suffering for the next generation. Whatever form of psychological therapy one seeks to learn from, whether Gestalt, Transactional Analysis or Positive Psychology, all will in some form reframe the limiting beliefs we grow up as parents with.

?To break the pattern, set themselves free and set their children free, parents can look at these five simple ways to coach themselves to nurture their children.

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1. Be Emotionally Intelligent

?Parents with emotional intelligence, able to identify and manage their emotions can relate and manage interactions with their children with empathy better.

?Telling a child to 'do as I tell you', and 'why can't you be like so and so' are emotionally unintelligent responses to rebellious behaviour, without addressing with empathy whatever caused the child's behaviour. Hugging the child and showing affection would be far more emotionally intelligent responses with younger children. With older ones, it would be to explore their emotions and sensations.

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A simple 'What will make you feel better' is far more effective than telling a child 'Stop crying now!'. Childhood responses arise from the emotional limbic brain, not from the reasoning frontal cortex. I am not talking about grown adults who act through their limbic brains reactively!

2. Be Present, Show Them You Care

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All our brains are wired to connect. We are entangled. In children, this is of greater significance because of their dependence on caregivers. They need to know that their parents care.

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Everyone speaks of focus at work. Rarely do parents focus on their children at home. They are busy doing other things, which they ironically believe are more important for their children's future. They are absent to their children. Presence creates trust and safety.

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At a deeper level, outcomes of the Marshmallow experiments designed to evidence delayed gratification, depend on the trust the child has in the adult. The child willing to wait for the second marshmallow needs to believe the adult.

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3. Play, Don't Just Show and Tell ?

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Play is the language that works best with children. It also works well in adult learning as gamification shows. One learns, young or old, problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence and even critical thinking far more easily through play.

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An important aspect of play is its open-endedness. Nothing is closed. There are no 'yes, but', only 'yes, and'. Everything can be a story. Those who have learnt the basic rules of improv will understand how much improv turns us into children, in a better way. Children respond far better to play than to instructional learning.

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Play helps the brain grow faster and better connected. In addition to improved cognitive thinking, play enhances emotional and social interaction.

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4. Focus on Growth Mindset

?The coaching approach helps to move from the past and even the present to the future. Parents must apply it to themselves first. What would they like to see as a change in a child's behaviour rather than admonishing the child? Once the parent is future and growth-focused, so will the child.

Growth focus enhances neuroplasticity. Appreciate the child for effort and motivation. 'Good job' responses genuinely expressed with a focus on what the child is learning and how she is being appreciated is the best inspiration.

5. Treat them at Your Level with Respect

?Children are smarter and wiser than we give them credit far. Stop talking down to them. Step up and talk to them as equals. Most adults know nothing and yet talk spouting advice. Children can spot a fake better than adults and are not polite in expressing themselves.

?Use language and tone which can enhance their curiosity to learn and imitate. Expose them to new things and new languages, if possible. A child's mind is a sponge that absorbs everything. How to retain it is something we need to help them with.

Reflection

?Carl Rogers' coaching principles of empathetic, authentic, unconditional positive regard is what caregivers need to practise with their wards. It's much easier to do this with one's we love as compared to strangers. When we become good at this with our wards, the same emotional and spiritual intelligence can?work far better socially.

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