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Does your child feel Tongue Tied?

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As a 12-year-old, I was once visiting my grandparents in an overcrowded bus accompanied by a guardian. A nice lady, seeing my discomfort, gave me a part of her own seat. In the no-mobile phone era, it was common for strangers to converse with each other. The nice lady asked me, ‘where are you going?’  What was a general conversational question for her, was a trick question for my tween brain.  Should I talk to a stranger? How many details am I supposed to reveal? Should I tell her the name of the stop I need to get off at? Should I tell her who I am going to meet? My confused state of silence was judged as a misdemeanour. The fellow passengers were quite quick in passing a verdict on the whole generation as being insolent! But the questions in my head were quite genuine! Each time a teen coaching client narrates their social conversational dilemmas to me, I can’t help but remember my own innumerable dilemmas.  Growing up in nuclear families with busy schedules, rushing from one class t
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4 crucial reasons to play a sport for academic excellence Academic excellence is of prime importance to us parents.  For us the hallmark of successful parenting is the child getting into a reputable university for a good course.  All we want is for our children to have a safe and secure future. However, in our focus on academic excellence, we forget one key element that contributes towards it but is often neglected or ignored. That is playing a sport.  If you are wondering, what is the correlation between academics and sports, read on. Photo Credit: Lordn Consider this real-life scenario below from one of my coaching sessions: "He works so hard for his exams. I know he puts in a lot of effort. But on the eve of the test or exam or performance, he gets so nervous that he can hardly function. He would just sit quietly in a corner, paralysed. Or he would be on his device, for hours together." An anxious parent commented. Photo Credit: Jeanette Virginia Goh It is easy to get nerv
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How to make your child "Employable for Life" in unpredictable times

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  There was a time, not so long ago, when there would be only a handful of premium careers to choose from if one was serious about doing “well” in life. Engineering, Medicine, Law, or Chartered Accountancy. With a little bit of variation, that list would be it for most families. Students would undergo months of tutoring so that they could get into their choice of course and college. The idea behind selecting these careers was to give them lifetime job security and hence, a secure future. But today the higher education scenario has changed. There are many more interesting and lucrative careers to choose from. It is great news for students who are not very keen on following the “standard” career options. This also becomes a challenge for the parents. The dilemma of the parents begins with 2 major factors: How do we guide the child to choose the best option to match their interest and also ensure that they will be making a good living? Given the unpredictable times we are living in, how d
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Public Speaking? Nah… Just Tell a Story!

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I dedicate this article to my favourite age group – the youth of today. Much has been said and written about this topic and yet it remains an enigma to most of us when it really shouldn’t be. It should be as easy as it is for a 4-year-old to tell a story. Photo Credit: pixabay.com Recently I was invited to mentor a group of kids to improve their public speaking skills. These kids were going to present their project to a group of judges and the best idea was to win an award to fund their idea. I first asked them to tell me about their project. As they told me about why they chose the project, the passion, enthusiasm, and energy in their gestures and body language was apparent. Then I asked them to present their idea to me as they would to the judges. Suddenly the whole dynamic changed, the same bubbly bunch became uptight, nervous and robotic. When I asked them what the reason was, they said: It’s a formal presentation so we need to look and feel serious; It feels weird to stand on a st
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Terrible Teens?

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  When my delightful, well-behaved daughter hit her teen years, her defiant, impulsive and irrational behavior, left me and my husband zapped and lost. Each situation was a battle and each day was a war. We had no idea what had hit her. We were the same parents, doing what we had always been doing. What had gone wrong and more importantly, where we had gone wrong? One thing we were sure of was, this is not how we would like things to continue. It led me to do read and research on what psychologists had to say about the teenage brain right from the beginning of the psychology like G Stanley Hall to present-day thought leaders like Dr. Dan Siegel. When I started coaching teens and parents, this one question I have seen come up again and again from parents “My child was not like this. What happened?” This article is a bid to answer this question. It is an outcome of my research, my observation, and experience with my own two teens and the teens I have coached. What’s happening in their he
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Are you a victim of The “Perfect” Parent Trap

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  There was a time when I had a vision. The Vision of a perfect parent. For me, a perfect parent was like Bond. You know, James Bond. Cool and sophisticated, always ready for any eventuality. He has the skills and pieces of equipment ready for whatever comes his way. And yet, at the end of the day, his thousand-dollar suit is still intact and every strand of his hair is still in place. No, it doesn’t end there. After a gruelling day, he is still fresh enough, in the evening, to charm his love interest. I was ready to be this Bond parent. During pregnancy, I read any material I could lay my hands on, on parenting. I was confident I knew every trick and technique of the parenting world. I had also located the best shops in the town to equip myself with gadgets as and when required. I was ready. Very ready. To be that perfect parent to my child. And then I became a parent. Photo Credit: Tom Wang The first couple of months went by fine. I had the skills, knowledge, and gadgets. I was the B
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