Every now and then when I tell people I am a Life Coach I get asked if I can coach kids. I actually have done so in the past, but have to say that it’s not something I do anymore. However, that isn’t because I don’t think kids can benefit from working with a Life Coach, because I do. It’s more that I specialize in coaching people that tend to be between the ages of 30 and 50 and feel stuck in life. That’s just the kind of work I love to do and am best at. However, if a kid likes the thought of working with a Life Coach and the parents want to invest the time and money, then I think it’s a very cool idea indeed and I know there are Life Coaches that specialize in ONLY working with kids. In my opinion there has to be a bottom age limit and I don’t think kids under the age of about 10 should be working with a Life Coach. However, when they get past that and into their teens they can benefit a great deal. A good Life Coach helps people think differently and this can be tricky when somebody has 4 decades of using their current way of thinking. However, a 12 year old is, by and large, much more able to change the way he or she looks at things and get a huge amount of benefit from Life Coaching. The unfortunate reality is that millions of people have no idea that they can think differently because nobody has ever told them at a young enough age for them to really believe it. That’s why you hear nonsense phrases such as â€A leopard never changes its spots†Well that maybe true with leopards, but it most certainly isn’t true that people cannot change. Change is harder as we get older and repeat patterns of behavior, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Having said that, not having to change is a way cooler option and that is what Life Coaching for kids can help achieve. Possibly one of the most powerful tools I can give a client is the ability to reframe. Reframing is the act of taking a negative situation and looking at it in a way that gives us control of how we think about it. One of my dogs recently tore her cruciate ligament. It would be really easy to get down about such an incident and many people would. And the reason they’d get down is because they would only see the negative. However, I had three things to be grateful for that meant whereas I wasn’t at all happy it happened, it didn’t feel like the end of the world. Firstly, is was only a partial tear and although the procedure for repair surgically speaking is the same, the recovery time is much faster. Secondly, we had this happen with a previous dog and we know they can make a full recovery. Finally, we have insurance. It won’t cover all the cost, but it will certainly help. All of the above are true. I haven’t tried to deny reality, I have just chosen to look at the situation in a manner that doesn’t get me down. Imagine teaching kids how to reframe. Imagine showing them that they can ascribe a positive meaning to a situation just as readily as a negative one. What effect do you think that would have? I’m pretty sure they would be happier and a lot less likely to suffer from problems such as depression later in life because they realize that they are in charge of their thinking and it doesn’t just happen by magic. Reframing is only one tool in a Life Coaches bag that could be taught to kids, but in and of itself it’s valuable enough to make it worthwhile to hire a Life Coach to work with kids.
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