Show Notes

What if you could help your child better manage anxiety? Want 3 simple techniques you can use that Kids and Teens love? What if you understood how to better communicate and support your child?

In this episode of NLP talks with Laura Evans, we invite you to meet our guest Cai Graham,  the founder of Peak Parenting. Cai is a Parenting Coach & Master NLP Coach who has written a best selling book ‘Teen Tool Box’ (available on Amazon).  Cai helps parents and children lead fulfilled and successful lives. In this episode she helps you the parent,  to understand and manage the effects of anxiety on your children, bringing back an air of calm & clarity.  During the podcast you will hear a number of tools and techniques to help you do this.

What drives you?

“I remember what it was like”!  Cai recalls how it felt to have that feeling of not being good enough, not knowing where to fit in or of not being understood.  She recognises that adults often feel this but believes that if we can deal with these feelings at a young age,  it means that they will not carry around a weighty knapsack of emotional baggage for decades.  It was only in her forties after being involved with NLP that she recognised this!

Scary statistics

Laura asks Cai about a statistic that she had shared recently on social media which it stated ‘50% of mental issues people have are installed by the age of 14’.  A scary statistic that validated for Cai, why she is so passionate about her business Peak Parenting.  She wants to help educate families and parents.  Children are not born with a manual and as parents, no one teaches us how to communicate or deal with anxiety or deal with problems such as cyberbullying.  It’s Cai’s mission to help parents raise a generation of mentally healthy young people.

Cai reflects back to her own parent-teachers evening when she was ten years old,  and how the teacher’s remarks made on that night, affected her whole life.  As a child she understood the teacher’s words to mean that she was average, she was nothing and didn’t count and her whole world imploded.  For years and years, it overshadowed her and It wasn’t until her NLP Practitioner training that this came to light and she realised enough was enough and it was time to let that stuff go.

Cai wants to give the children the resilience to recognise that what ONE person thinks of you, is just their opinion and might not even be true.

Trust the process

Cai shares an example of a teenager who couldnt face going out and spent all of his time watching TV on the sofa with his dog.  Cai used an NLP technique and saw a change in just one session.  When he came back for a follow up he had managed to sit in an arena with three thousand people.  His remark was positive that the technique worked. When the young man had gone back to University his mum reported happily to Cai he was now going out with his friends.  It changed his life.  NLP is fast and creates immediate change.

Go to technique

Cai likes the submodalities technique and she has a Teen Tool Box App on her website where you can find the technique.  Cai finds that Timeline Therapy™ gets the biggest results.  Timeline Therapy™ is an advanced NLP technique that allows us to get rid of the negative emotions of anger, hurt, guilt, sadness, fear and it is content free.  It is phenomenal to know that everyone can benefit from this technique and make massive shifts in their lives.  It is powerful to use with children and helps them deal with traumatic situations, Cai does not need to revisit the trauma they’ve previously suffered to fix it.  It also gives them the confidence to begin fixing themselves with other problems.

Anxiety is here to stay

Laura states that she believes anxiety is here to stay.  Generational changes, upbringing, children using technology in the early years is all adding to a lack of social skill development and is stacking up a huge amount of mental health issues for the future.  Cai speaks of the young children coming to her, some as young as ten years old, unable to sleep and worrying about exams excetera. Cai recognises that we are putting huge expectations on our children and although she can’t change the education system or the health service,  she can give her child clients a formula to live by.

Cai’s Top Tips

E + R = O Formula

E – is the event, for example exams, or fear of some kind

R – is your response – this is what you can control. You can learn techniques to calm your response.

O – the outcome, if you create a more positive response, you achieve a more positive outcome

To compliment the formula you can learn simple techniques to change the response and learn that you can control your outcome.

3 Questions

This is a communication technique for parents who are struggling to talk to their children.

Cai suggests asking the following questions.

Q1. What is your number?  Use a sliding scale 0 means awful and 10 is fantastic, allow them to choose the number.

Q2. What is your word? Allow the child to pick a word that describes how they feel.

Q3. Do you want to talk? If they answer no, respect that and shut up.  If they say yes, you talk.  This allows the child to chose when they wish to speak and will often result in them taking more time in the parents’ space aware that they are not going to be questioned or pushed.

5,4,3,2,1 Calm down

This technique is good for a child in a panic or overwhelm.  They have to do five things as follows.

1. Look around for five things you can see
2. List four things you can touch
3. Look for three things you can hear
4. Notice two things you can smell
5. One thing you can taste

What this technique does is distract the mind and helps the child to calm down.  This exercise can be done without anyone knowing.

Laura’s Quick Fire Round Questions

1. What does Unleash Your Potential mean to you – Opportunity
2. If you had a favourite word, what would it be? – Empowerment
3. If you weren’t doing what you are already doing, what else would you do? – A travel blogger.
4. What pearl of wisdom would you share? – ‘Do as you would be done by’

Unleash Your Potential Badges

Cai chose the badge Energy – “I have an absolute passion for helping people.” – Cai Graham

• For all of Cai’s techniques download her Teen Tool Box App