Life Coaching - Help your preteen make wise choices!
When children reach their preteen years, parents often feel overwhelmed at the life coaching challenges that lie ahead. There are many books you can read based on adolescence, many which give you great advice. Nothing can truly prepare you for what lies ahead; you just have to live it. That is how true life coaching skills in parenting are learned. Our job in life coaching as parents is to decide to take a proactive stance. If you don’t provide leadership during this time, the culture will provide all the life coaching for you. We should approach our preteen before he or she makes some critical decisions about the issues they face. When preteen’s bodies start changing, a new awareness of the opposite sex comes also. Friends will often give them wrong information at a time when they are looking for answers. Culture today is robbing parents of their rightful life coaching skills by taking away the courage to stand up for personal convictions. As a result, many teens lack the standards that will protect them through this vulnerable time in their lives.
Coach your preteen on how to go around the traps of adolescents. Let them know you are free to listen, and be specific in your answers to their questions. Make it your business to address the temptations of peer pressure, sex, and dating. The life coaching skills that you will need will automatically come from a combination of your belief and conviction. You have the ability for successful life coaching, you’ve personally been through the obstacles and either succeeded or failed. Use the moments of your past as a reference guide for their future. Therapists would comment that clients, (or parent), can not set standards in life coaching for their teens that they don’t have for themselves.
Your child has been given a wonderful gift, their innocence. Help them to maintain the integrity of that gift by helping them set high standards for themselves. There is a story about a teenage boy who was teased unmercifully that he still was a virgin. “When are you going to become a real man?”, they taunted. Finally, the young man replied, “You know, I could become just like you anytime I want to. I could have sex. But you can never again become like me. You can never become a virgin again.” This boy had decided in advance he was going to set a higher standard for himself. He made a choice ahead of time to stay pure till he was married. If we use our life coaching skills to connect with our adolescents when they are open to discuss tough issues, we can help get them prepared for adulthood. For more information on life coaching, visit www.familylife.com