Parenting Tips: Young Dad Podcast · Jey Young

254: Life Coaching for Kids & Raising Confident, Resilient Children with Renaye Thornborrow

·47 min·3 clips

Renaye says stories stimulate more of the brain than facts alone, creating stronger memory.

1. Parenting Tips: Young Dad Podcast episode 254 centers on Renaye Thornborrow and life coaching for kids. 2. Renaye Thornborrow is the founder of Adventures in Wisdom and the author of A Parent's Guide to Life Coaching for Kids, and Jay hosts the conversation as a working parent who also works in mental health. 3. The episode asks what life coaching for kids does that therapy and parenting alone do not. 4. Renaye says she discovered personal development after college and wanted children to learn it earlier than she did. 5. She says she could not find tools for mindset development when her own children were young about 23 years ago. 6. She describes writing stories for her children when she wanted them to learn concepts without rolling their eyes. 7. Those stories became the basis for Adventures in Wisdom, which she says now supports hundreds of coaches in over 30 countries. 8. She defines life coaching for kids as proactive work on the mental wellness side of the mental health continuum. 9. She contrasts that with counseling and therapy, which she says often focus on children who are struggling more heavily. 10. She says coaches help kids build resilience, coping skills, confidence, self-esteem, and goal-setting. 11. Renaye says children often need to hear a message from someone other than a parent. 12. She gives the example of a coach or assistant coach reinforcing lessons that a child will not absorb from a parent. 13. She says stories work because they activate intellectual, emotional, and sensory parts of the brain. 14. She says a story-based format creates stronger memory for both the story and the lesson. 15. She uses words from her curriculum such as "grungies" and "Canville" to help children talk about feelings safely. 16. She says mental fitness means navigating situations and keeping forward momentum, even after disappointment. 17. She recommends starting the day with goals and gratitude, and she links goals to the brain’s reticular activating system. 18. She coins "yo-yo self-esteem" to describe self-worth that rises and falls with grades, goals, and outside events. 19. Parents who want practical, story-based tools for confidence and emotions. 20. Listeners wanting advanced clinical therapy or high-level academic debate.

As heard by us

A practical conversation about helping kids build confidence, self-talk, and emotional resilience.

Renee frames the conversation around a story-based life coaching approach for kids, and the throughline stays clear: children need language to make sense of feelings and setbacks.

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Why you'd press play

Help your kid find words for emotions, confidence, and the resilience to bounce back.

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