« The Secret | Main | Life coaching for anyone who is open, honest and willing to explore their potentials. »
Stop Parenting & Start Coaching
By admin | May 10, 2008
In my workshop I shared what I read about the increasing number of teenagers sent to the Institute of Mental Hospital by counsellors in schools in our Straits Times’ report in March 2008. Is it counsellors are not competent in their work or parents not cooperating? It is really sad because there are a huge number of parents suffering from the same sadness, worries and anxiety as their teenagers and dont know what to do. The difference is as adults we can cope better, we can handle it better and teenagers have limited resources to de-stress. They cannot articulate or express themselves as well as they like to. They either clammed up, shut down or act out. When they act out, parents often think that they are rebelling. Some parents who have problem communicating differently as their children transit from a child to a young adult get a shock to find their teenagers react very differently. Suddenly the child begin to talk back, refuse to go out with you, want you to talk less, find you irritating. If you find yourself facing the same issue, you are not alone. Your child is transitioning to a teenager, a young adult and searching for their identity. Give them the space to grow and don’t make them wrong. Their hormones are coming in as ours are leaving us. If we insist on treating them like a child, you will find it a struggle and your relationships may spiral down.
Stop parenting means do something different. Find out the love language of your child. Read Gary Chapman’s book on the five love languages of your teenagers. Instead of telling your child what to do, learn to let go and ask them questions instead. Get them at the right time because they are very stressed with peer pressure, study pressure, expectations from schools and parents and yet find it challenging to deal or handle the changes in their body. They begin to feel that they need to be independent and want to move away from parents. Seek to understand them then to be understood. Don’t insist that they must do the same things when they were in primary schools. Nevertheless, we still need to guide them.
Have clarity of where you are in your relationship with your teenager and where do you wish to go from here. What are the changes you need to do, how can you speak differently to them to get a positive respond from them. How can you support them in their growing pains. Are you also suffering from menopause or andropause?
Schools may not have the life skills that is necessary for them to work from inside out to process this sea of change. Some schools can have life skills such as goal setting, motivation tools, etc. but how it is being delivered is students don’t have ownership of their own goals. Without ownership of their own goals and having teachers set goals for them is not effective. The mindsets of teachers need to be changed. The sad part is, even if you have young teachers with different mindsets, the environment does not support them to grow or move forward.
How can parents also support them with new life skills to work together with them as the world become more complex. One of my client shared with me that teachers do not like to teach secondary schools. If they are asked to do so, they would rather resign. It is common knowledge that teachers ended up managing the classroom rather than teach. Parents are aware of the fact that the exam oriented system is not working and is very stressful for students and parents but little can be done unless parents speak up. It’s a catch 22. Teachers think that it is the parents’ expectation that students achieve academically.
Topics: Parent Coaching |