“It's the message that I'm sharing with people. It's the hope. That we are always healing our inner child.” 

When Jai Certified Parenting Coach Lelia Schott wanted to heal her and her children’s hearts, her quest led her to become a certified parenting coach at the Jai Institute, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Despite starting out with a power-over parenting style, Lelia always knew in her heart that there must be another, more gentle way to parent her children. Regardless of other parents complimenting her on her children’s good behavior, the dominant parenting style never sat well with Lelia.

“The cost is really that we betray ourselves every single day. I felt like such a phony, and I felt like my children couldn't truly respect me or feel safe with me because I was so unpredictable – one minute I'm nurturing and loving. The next minute they're not listening and I'm sending them to their rooms. Just all the things that we've been led to believe to raise responsible adults. And of course we know they don't.”

After the divorce between her and her husband, Lelia wanted to find a way to heal herself and her children. She came across gentle and peaceful parenting. 

Knowing that this mode of empowered parenting was out there gave Lelia the liberating permission to parent in the way she truly wanted.

Now practicing peaceful parenting, Lelia has seen a huge shift in her children, especially the children who experienced the more peaceful methodology from a very young age.

She says, “My youngest son – if I'd only had him, I would think children were a walk in the park. He's just such an easy child. He's like an advert for peaceful parenting. I felt like with my eldest, we'd really broken his spirits. I think children are longing for us to say to them, we're so sorry, we want to reconnect.”

Along this peaceful parenting journey, Lelia became a child advocate and shared her advocacy online to allow parents to step into the perspective of a child. She also offered counselling for families as a Jai certified parenting coach, growing her own parent coaching business while raising her own children in a more peaceful way. 

Already an advocate and counselor, Lelia reached a point where she wanted to become more confident in her coaching. She wanted to be able to provide a more structured process for her coaching clients. When she did her research and chose the Jai Parent Coaching Certification Program, she saw that the program allowed her to gain valuable new skills, increase her knowledge and expand the resources she now shares with parents.

”The people that seek out parent coaches, they really want the best for their children. So instead of outsourcing that, taking their kids to a therapist or a psychologist, they suddenly realize, oh wow, it’s the relationship I have with my child... not that those things aren't necessary, but often they no longer need those services because it was their relationship where the child really needed to feel safe. And so that's very exciting to see people realize, to feel confidence in their ability to parent their children.”

Having graduated in 2018, Lelia’s decision to start a business wasn’t immediate. Lelia kept pursuing her advocacy and counselling for parents until she felt ready to take a leap of faith and start her own parent coaching business, Synergy Parenting.

“I recognized it's the message that I'm sharing with people. It’s the hope. That we are always healing that inner child. If this is what you want to do, then trust your heart and just keep pushing forward. Because sometimes when we look online, we feel like, oh, there are so many people out there; but we still need many, many, many more.”

You can find Lelia on her website https://www.leliaschott.com, as well as her Facebook @synergygentleparenting and Instagram @synergy.parenting

Do you want to know more about how you can create positive transformation for families, one parent at a time? Visit this page to discover more about becoming a parent coach through our six-month Parenting Coach Certification Program.