Just like a lot of mothers out there, when I am not coaching my clients, I am parenting two kids aged 2 and 7 amidst doing my morning yoga ritual, reading my favorite books, cooking nutritious and healthy meals, watering my little plants, and liberating my painting brushes (once in a few months though!). When I started the brain-based coaching training program about a year ago after quitting my Human Resources job, I wanted to be a life and career coach and on top of that, to fully maximize the investment of SGD 5,000, I wanted to apply coaching to my own life and to parenting. I have been asked by friends to share about the later, and here we go, the very first post on the topic.

I treat any project or task that I partner with my son like a coaching engagement, so before the story begins, let me cover a summary of what a coaching engagement looks like. Typically, there are four or more sessions. The first session is spent on defining shiny, inspiring and measurable goals. The second session is about working on the strategies and action plans for the goals. The subsequent sessions are where the coach and the client review progress, challenges, lessons learnt, and continue to brainstorm actions. The last session is for celebrating the goal achievement and looking at learning throughout the whole process. The coaching methodology that I adopt is brain-based which means among the other key principles, taking care of emotions is extremely important. In practice, it means checking in the feeling of the coachee from time to time and at the right time. Equally important, the coach would listen whole-heartedly without any bias (and keep it confidential), challenge the thinking, and provide support and encouragement so the client has AHA moments, makes progress, and feels happy. There are some other key principles which I will share in later posts.

Having said this, theory is theory and that could be found everywhere. Another is I am not a perfect mother: I learn as I do and I do as I learn. Over here, I just want to share about the actual stories and my own struggle as I have been using coaching for raising up my own children. Just like a normal parent, I have up and down moments in parenting. There are moments when we play together cheerfully as a family, when we have insightful and enlightening chats with each other, when we burst laughing after making jokes or doing riddles, but there are also moments where I really shout out loud to our kids to later mock ourselves why I could not cool down then. I have helped my clients live happier and more meaningful lives, and I wanted to do the same for my domestic clients: my children. All I try to do is to be mindful of using those skills. And most importantly, I just keep reviewing my own experience and learn from it to make it better or have less struggle the next time. So yes, I am on a journey as you could tell it.

My posts could be located with the title “PARENTING 4.0” on this blog page.