Focusing on what I want for my child

Hello, welcome to Releasing my child’s potential blog. Thank you for visiting. I wanted to explain my reasons for choosing the title Releasing my child’s potential. When choosing a title for a website offering coaching support to parents I thought about all sorts of titles and what they could represent. I wanted people to know I could relate to the complex, the negative, the hurting side of how you can be affected but I didn’t want to stay there. I found that I wanted to focus on what was possible, the positives, the potential within a child.

Thinking of a child’s potential always sparks excitement in me and I love thinking with parents about all the things their child can do, where they would love their child to be and how they can help them to learn, grow and achieve. This doesn’t mean I am in denial of the serious difficulties, issues, meltdowns and pain that your child – and you – can face on a daily basis. But I also believe there is hope on many levels.

I love to first analyse where a child is, then work on reducing the pain levels and raising the potential for growth. Pain levels I discuss with parents are stress, anxiety, meltdowns, difficulties with processing, understanding language, refusing to try, being inflexible, not seeming to want a close connection etc. I have experienced all of these – but quite a long time ago. I now have the opposite experience – close connection, long talks, laughs, in-jokes, lots of willingness to try, flexibility, patience and kindness from my child (now teenager) and I love to analyse all the changes that brought me to this positive and happy place and to work with parents to change the trajectory of their child’s life in the same way.

I believe when parents put the focus on what they really want for their child rather than what they don’t want, it opens up doors for thoughts, conversations and learnings which spark up further ideas, learning and growth. When I started this journey 12 years ago, I often found that when I really grasped the point of something, it helped me to change what I believed was possible, which in turn helped me to change my attitude and responses to my child, which, over time has led to changes socially, emotionally and academically that I could only have dreamed of.

Therefore, when I work with parents, I first like to focus on the potential within their child and what they really want. It’s a really inspiring starting place.