Why Child Coaching and the Child Coaching Experience specifically?

In the Global Coaching community there is multiple types of coaching from Executive to Life to Team coaching to Parent to Spiritual to Motivational coaching to Couples to Youth to Leadership coaching, however Nikki struggled to find a child coaching experience.

Often the issues that tamariki/children present with are inter-generational and Nikki’s anecdotal experience with multiple Professionals supporting and working with children validate research that indicate these issues are presenting younger and younger in our children, with issues that were presenting at 10 -13 years now presenting at 5- 8 years of age and younger. 

Nikki’s passion is to break the inter-generational cycle and she believes we need to walk alongside children from a younger age and to set the bar higher than previous or current approaches have been doing.

Healthy child development has an expectation of both care for the child and contribution from the child. Leadership opportunities and responsibility are part of  the expectation of healthy child development and are often lacking in today’s child supports and programs – the Child Coaching Experience provides this exciting point of difference.

The unique aspects of a Child Coaching Experience for a child in trauma or dysfunction are;

-       An extended  ‘window’ to another way of living, creating opportunities for comparison, reflection and questioning in a non-threatening relationship

-       Opportunities for the child to guide the Coach to areas of contribution, leadership and responsibility that interest the child.

-       A relational journey that potentially takes Child and Coach from Primary school  to Intermediate and beyond to High School years – a corridor of transitional support

-       Specific Child focussed considerations such as police vetting, digital identity, whanau and both care and contribution of the child 

While Nikki grew up in a family environment of violence and sexual abuse, Nikki was also fortunate to have an extended window of time into a friends family life – this experience was the catalyst for Nikki to look at her upbringing and realise that perhaps all families weren’t the same and in fact that perhaps her family culture of violence and abuse was ‘dysfunctional’.  This revelation propelled her out of her inter-generational track and into a life of education, counselling and emotional wellness that has lead to a 25 year marriage, raising 3 awesome teens and contributing to her professional and community life through multiple projects and people. Nikki had her life transformed by the opportunity connect with someone in the community to see ‘another way of living’.

The aim is to break the cycle and Nikki expects this change transference to happen for tamariki/children through the ‘Child Coaching Experience’.