Coaching for Change

“Oh, man! This is so frustrating. I can’t go out anywhere. I can't play with my friends. All my activities have also been stopped.” ranted a 12-year-old. “I had planned a play date with my friends today. But then we found, we can’t play in the clubhouse anymore! Just playing by myself at home is so boring” whined a 10-year-old. “I have my GCSE coming up. But sitting at home and doing the self-study is hard. I am missing my school and my friends. I feel like I am under house arrest” lamented a 14-year-old. Tween and teenage is a time when the child’s brain is generally anxious over the smallest of things. When we add a virus and an epidemic to the equation, it goes crazy with frustration, anxiety, and stress. Sonia Lupien at Centre for studies in Human Stress has a handy acronym for what causes stress in our lives: N-Novelty  Something that you have not handled in your life before. U-Unpredictability  Something you had no way of knowing occurs T-Threat t...

Leaders are not born. They are groomed patiently in their formative years. We moderns parents, however, might be hampering this in our enthusiasm to protect our child. Here I share one of the many examples I often come across. A parent’s anxiety on one of the many parents Whatsapp groups I am part of: “Yesterday my child, who is in Grade 8, was told by his teacher that he cannot eat his lunch in the classroom. Apparently, it was against the school policy. He made him eat outside the classroom in areas with benches with shades. I was shocked when I heard this from my child. That’s so cruel. Eating out in the open with no aircon and all the bugs around. My child did not eat a single bite yesterday and came back cranky and hungry. It is absolutely not acceptable. Did you guys know about this policy?”   The discussion that followed attacked the school and the teacher directly. I was shocked to see the overprotectiveness of the paren...