In this short parenting coaching video, the speaker shares a personal anecdote about her daughter Scarlett’s sudden reluctance to attend a tennis summer camp. She critiques common dismissive parental responses and introduces an "antennae" approach: actively listening, validating the child’s feelings, and asking open‑ended questions like “Tell me more.” By uncovering that Scarlett felt lonely because no one would sit with her at lunch, the parent proposes a concrete solution—asking the camp teacher to introduce her to other children. The speaker emphasizes that emotional validation, not negation, is powerful yet challenging, and invites viewers to book a discovery call for further support. The tone is conversational and instructional, with a supportive, encouraging sentiment throughout.
Chapters
It's that time of year when many of you may be sending your children to summer camp, and maybe you've already had some problems with it. So I wanted to share a story of my daughter Scarlett. She was signed up to a tennis camp. She was pretty okay to go on the first day, and then on the second day, major meltdown, and she really didn't want to go. So here's what we're all very tempted to say: Don't be silly, you're 'You'll be fine,' which negates the emotion. 'That's not true. I know you like it because you are happy at the end of the day.' Again, not validating what she's telling you. Or going in with questions, 'Why don't you like it? Everybody else does. It's a nice camp.' So I want to advise you to do something differently. I want to advise you to put on your antennae. Every time that your child has an emotional response to something, we need to think about the questions that we ask them or what we say to them that validates the emotions that they're showing. So something like, hmm, so there's something about the summer camp that you don't like. I wonder what that might be. You might add in, maybe there's a teacher that you don't like, or maybe there's some of the games that you don't like. You might just say something like, it's so hard. 'When you don't feel like going, even though I know you do like parts of it.' So having said this to her, she then said to me, 'Nobody would sit with me at lunchtime. I didn't know how to sit with.' I then added in, 'Tell me more,' and she told me that she felt lonely and she didn't know what to do. So then I'm looking for possible solutions, having found out more with my antennae and also I was able to validate those emotions for her. That's hard. Gosh, that must have been really difficult. But the solution might be— and so what I said to her is, hmm, I wonder if we could go today and ask the teacher to introduce you to some girls that maybe they don't know anyone either, or boys. And that's what we did and it was so much easier for her. So what the message is, if children have emotional responses to something, we need to help by validating their emotions, not negating them. And we need to put our antennae on in order to be able to do that. It's so powerful, it's so effective. It's not necessarily easy to do. So if you're struggling with your child's emotions and you want some extra support, That's what I'm here for. So do book a discovery call and we can discuss how I can help. But if in any way, what I would just encourage you to do is just keep looking up, keep validating, adding in 'tell me more.' Don't tell them that they're wrong or silly to have the emotion. That's it.
