Cathy Liska by guest blogger Mikayla Phan
The concept of coaching has been impactful for me as a person and as a mother. On the one hand, coaching is very conducive to me because I do not function well in an environment where mindless conformity and the one-size-fits-all is expected and enforced. I grew up in a system where success was achieved by following an external standardized system, and the concept of calling forth the inner soul was nonexistent. My first experience with coaching was through self-help books for my own personal goals. This transformed the way I perceived things and life, in general. Through the concept of coaching, I have developed and grown my inner strengths in ways that I thought were impossible.
On the other hand, coaching has particularly impacted me as a mother. I gave birth to my son, who has ADHD, while I was living in China as an expatriate married to a Chinese national. Because of the lack of recognition and understanding of neurobiological conditions such as ADHD, my son naturally needed to have an alternative academic education outside of the standardized school system. I was fortunate to have access to many resources (online and via international shipping!) used in coaching to homeschool my son. I was able to develop systems for my son to help him function successfully with ADHD, even though sometimes I wasn’t even aware I was being impacted by a coaching model or resource at the time. As a result, a very close partnership was created between my son and me from when he was very young and remains today as I continue to use many coaching tools and concepts with him. The fruits of coaching are very evident, as my son thrived when he started attending a brick and mortar school for the first time and also was recently accepted into an elite high school this year.
