How can coaching support children with their mental health?

I use ‘children’ in the widest possible sense – from babes in arms to those who have not yet reached the milestone of eighteen years. It’s not an exaggeration to say that all these groups of children and young people have been affected in some way by the events of the last half decade and it’s right we focus on their mental health and well-being.   

But as I go about my daily work coaching well-being leads in schools, there are some big questions that pop into my mind regularly and that I feel an increasing responsibility for: 

• How do we focus on the well-being of children without our concerns becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?
• How do we avoid projecting societal worry and stress onto children’s most carefree years?
• How do we empower children to take charge of their own futures?
• How do we help children to become self-aware, without becoming self-indulgent or self-critical?

Lessons from yellow cars

Let me take you on a momentary flight of fancy…

So, in a flash of flamboyance and freedom, you’ve bought a yellow car. You’re looking forward to being unique and unusual… because no one has yellow cars, right? 

To your disappointment, for the weeks and months after you’ve bought your yellow car, everyone else seems to be driving a yellow car too. 

Are you a trendsetter? Probably not. 

You see, our brains have a tendency to search for, prefer, and remember information that connects to what we are already thinking about. The yellow cars were probably there before but you didn’t notice them.

It’s similar with pink elephants. Whatever you do, don’t think of a pink elephant! 

I know what I’m currently thinking about and it’s not ‘not a pink elephant’!

Coaching and children's well-being

So, how does this link to the well-being of our children and young people? 

The simple answer is that if all that our children and young people have drilled into them is that their futures are pre-determined by stress, uncertainty, and global catastrophe, then we risk landing them with the burden of permanent pessimism goggles. We rob our children and young people of hope, of agency and of self-determination. Defining personal agency, Gallagher (2000) suggests ‘the sense that I am the one who is causing or generating an action’.

I firmly believe the solutions to these questions that rumble around my mind - and the minds of parents and teachers across the land no doubt - lies in the hope and agency intrinsic to coaching.

Coaching gifts hope

Hope is not the blind optimism of the ostrich as it sticks its head in the sand. Coaching brings real and radical hope that acknowledges reality whilst also enfranchising the client to dig deep, set goals and succeed in spite of challenges in their way. Martin Luther King famously said ‘Only in the darkness can you see the stars’; coaching encourages our children and young people to look at the stars.

Coaching grants agency

A huge amount of a child’s life is controlled by others and although the teenage years bring some new freedoms, how much our young people feel a sense of true agency is variable.   

The power of having this belief is something we cannot underestimate in relation to well-being. It is this sense of self-determination that enables us to take responsibility for our decisions and take our happiness into our own hands. When we don’t feel this sense of agency, we are much more likely to feel powerless, blame others and play small. This can lead to us talking to ourselves in a way that is self-critical, self-indulgent, or both. 

Within the DNA of coaching is the unfaltering trust in the coachee to know what’s right for them and to take ownership of it – whether they are seven, 17, or 77! This is one of the main reasons that all the work I do within the field of mental health and well-being in schools hinges on coaching. And why I firmly believe it will always be one of the brightest stars in the night sky. 

Rachael Bushby is one of our expert trainers here at The Coaching Academy, specialising in Coaching in Education, as well as the co-founder of Dragonfly: Impact Education, and co-author of Islands in the Stream: Senior Mental Health Leads in Schools.

If you’re feeling inspired and would like to learn more about making an impact in the lives of children and young people, why not join us for our free Introduction to Life Coaching webinar? Plus, you may also be interested in our follow-up session: Insight Into Coaching Within Education.