Mindset training is the missing link in most children’s education. Schools work hard to teach reading, math, and science, but very few teach children how their mind works, how to handle life’s challenges, or how to build the inner confidence they need to thrive. Kids learn academic subjects, yet they’re rarely taught the mental and emotional skills that shape how they see themselves, how they think, and how they respond when life gets hard.
This gap between academic learning and mindset learning affects everything from motivation and confidence to friendships, emotional well-being, and school performance. Mindset training fills that gap by giving children practical, brain-based tools for positive self-talk, resilience, emotional regulation, courage, self-leadership, and achievement. These are the skills that support every subject they’ll ever study and every challenge they’ll ever face.
Since 2013, Adventures in Wisdom® has provided mindset training and life coaching to kids using a story-based coaching process. Helping children build confidence, resilience, and emotional strength by learning how to use the power of their thoughts to be confident and prepared to lead their own lives and thrive.
Table of Contents
- What Is Mindset Training For Children?
- Why Don’t Schools Teach Mindset Skills to Children?
- What Does Mindset Coaching Help With?
- How Do Children Learn These Mindset Skills?
- How Does WISDOM Coaching Work?
- How Is Mindset Training Different From Therapy Or Parenting?
- What Results Can Mindset Training Create for Kids?
- What is the Best Age for Mindset Training?
- How Do I Begin Mindset Training For My Child?
- Frequently Asked Questions About Mindset Training for Kids
- Can I become a WISDOM Coach®?
What Is Mindset Training For Children?
Mindset training teaches children how their mind works. How their thoughts directly shape their feelings, actions, and results. Through simple, age-appropriate brain-science concepts, children learn that every thought they think sends signals through their brain, creating neural pathways that influence how they see themselves and what they believe they can do.
When children learn to notice negative thinking, shift to more supportive thoughts, challenge limiting beliefs, and re-wire unhelpful patterns, they strengthen their confidence, emotional regulation, and decision-making skills. This is the foundation of strong self-esteem, confidence, and resilience.
Instead of depending on praise, perfection, or performance to feel good, children learn how to create confidence from the inside out. They build a strong inner voice that helps them navigate the ups and downs of growing up, such as school stress, comparison, setbacks, peer pressure, and big emotions.
Mindset training gives children lifelong tools to:
- manage emotions
- bounce back from challenges
- solve problems
- stay motivated
- trust their own judgment
- and believe in themselves
These are the skills that empower children to thrive in school, in friendships, and in life.
Why Don’t Schools Teach Mindset Skills to Children?
Most schools are designed to teach academic content. While subjects like reading, math, and science are essential, they do not include emotional resilience or personal development in a structured way. Yet mindset skills impact far more than academic performance. They shape a child’s relationships, confidence, extracurricular engagement, and overall well-being.
At the same time, the emotional landscape for children and teens has become increasingly complex.
- Anxiety is now one of the most common mental health challenges among young people, affecting nearly one in ten children ages 3–17 in the United States.*
- Persistent sadness and hopelessness have also risen sharply, with nearly one in three youth ages 12–17 reporting these feelings, an increase of more than 45% over the past decade.**
Although there have been slight improvements in recent years, many young people continue to feel overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, and social pressure, and they often have never been taught how to navigate these challenges.
This is why mindset training and life coaching for kids is so powerful. It gives children the tools, skills, and understanding they need to manage life’s ups and downs before those challenges become too big.
What Does Mindset Coaching Help With?
Mindset coaching helps children develop the skills to navigate life with confidence, resilience, and emotional strength. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by challenges, children learn how their thoughts shape their feelings and actions, and how to use their mind to work for them and not against them.
Mindset coaching helps kids who:
- Struggle with self-doubt and need tools to believe in themselves
- Get discouraged after setbacks and want to learn how to bounce back
- Avoid new experiences because of fear, and need courage to try
- Have difficulty handling criticism or take things too personally
- Face peer pressure or worry about fitting in, and need a stronger sense of self
- Feel overwhelmed by stress, big emotions, or life changes
- Struggle to set goals or stay motivated to follow through
- Have trouble making good decisions or trusting their own judgment
- Want to build resilience, confidence, and a strong inner compass
With the right support, kids learn how to calm their emotions, shift negative self-talk, move through fear, bounce back from disappointment, and step forward with clarity and purpose.
Mindset coaching doesn’t just help children feel better in the moment; it empowers them to lead their lives from the inside out.
How Do Children Learn These Mindset Skills?
Now that you understand what mindset skills are and the challenges they help children overcome, the next question is: How do kids actually learn these mindset skills in a way that sticks?
Helping children develop mindset skills isn’t about lecturing children or giving them more information. Children learn best when the concepts are simple and connected to real life.
That’s why mindset skills must be taught in a way that is engaging, experiential, and developmentally appropriate. Children need to see the skill in action, feel it through a story, and apply it through guided practice.
This is exactly what WISDOM Coaching® is designed to do. Certified WISDOM Coaches bring mindset training to children through a story-based coaching curriculum designed to help children develop powerful mindset skills to navigate life and thrive.
How Does WISDOM Coaching Work?
WISDOM Coaching is an innovative coaching methodology designed to help children develop the mindset and the skill set to be confident and prepared to thrive in life using the story-based Adventures in Wisdom Life Coaching for Kids Curriculum and proven STORY Coaching Process.
The coaching curriculum and STORY Coaching Process is a research-based approach that brings brain science and mindset training to life through storytelling, discussion, and hands-on activities to create transformation in children’s lives.
The STORY Coaching Process is incredibly powerful because of its simplicity. There is a coaching tool for each step that guides a coach’s work with children. STORY is an acronym for the 5-step coaching process.
How the STORY Coaching Process works:
Step 1. S – share the story to help children learn the skill
Each coaching session begins with a short, powerful coaching story featuring characters children can relate to. These stories bring mindset skills like self-talk, resilience, decision-making, and confidence to life in a way children instantly understand.
Stories give children an emotionally safe way to explore challenges, mistakes, and emotions without feeling judged or overwhelmed. Children can see themselves in the characters and begin to make connections to their own experiences with the guidance of their coach.
Step 2. T – Talk about the story/skill through guided conversation
After experiencing the story, the WISDOM Coach explores the meaning and lessons from the story with the child to support them in applying the learning to their own lives. Discussion questions are provided as part of the coaching curriculum, and coaches will often add their own as well.
Here are examples of a few of the questions a coach might explore with the child:
- Why did the character feel that way?
- What choice did the character make?
- How could the character’s thinking change the outcome?
- Has anything similar ever happened to you?
This guided conversation helps children experience the mindset skill at a deeper level. They begin to understand how their thoughts create their feelings and their actions.
Step 3. O – Organize an activity and real-life experience
Children then apply what they’ve learned through hands-on activities, exercises, or tools designed to help them use the skill in real life. These activities might include practicing positive self-talk, reframing a fear or worry, setting a goal and mapping a plan to achieve it, working through a challenge, choosing a different response, etc.
This step transforms information into real-life skill development.
Step 4: R – Review with parents to continue the conversation at home
Often the child will share what they are learning, and the parents receive a WISDOM for Home take-home sheet to continue the conversation at home.
Step 5: Y – Yes! Confirm learning.
At the start of the next coaching session, confirm retention of the previous lesson using the Wise in Five review activity.
A Certified WISDOM Coach® provides an emotionally safe, encouraging space where children feel seen, heard, and supported. Kids often open up to a coach in ways they can’t with parents, not because they don’t trust their parents, but because having another caring adult gives them freedom to explore their thoughts and feelings in a new environment.
Powerful stories like Power Goggles® and Who’s Flying Your Plane make abstract ideas, such as reframing and belief systems, easy to understand. With guidance from a certified WISDOM Coach®, kids reflect, discuss, and apply the lessons to their own lives.
Children don’t just learn about mindset skills, they develop new ways of thinking and new ways of acting – helping them calm themselves when frustrated, create confidence from within, handle challenges with resilience, and make choices that reflect the best version of who they are.
How Is Mindset Training Different From Therapy Or Parenting?
Mindset training is not therapy, and it’s not the same as parenting. Each plays an important role in a child’s life, but each serves a different purpose. Understanding these differences helps parents make the best decision for their child’s growth and emotional well-being.
Mindset Coaching vs. Therapy
Therapy focuses on healing. A licensed therapist helps children work through mental health concerns, trauma, or deep emotional challenges that require clinical support.
Mindset coaching focuses on mindset training and skill-building.
It teaches children how their thoughts, feelings, and actions work together and how to use that awareness to build confidence, manage nerves and big emotions, shift negative self-talk, handle mistakes, make good decisions, and respond to challenges with resilience.
WISDOM Coaching is not therapy. It does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions. Instead, it gives kids proactive tools to build strong mindsets before a crisis happens.
Mindset Coaching vs. Parenting
Parents are the most important influence in a child’s life. Parenting teaches values, life lessons, boundaries, love, and safety. But even the strongest parent-child relationships can benefit from an additional support system.
Why?
Because children sometimes listen differently to a caring, trained adult who is not their parent. Coaches provide:
- a neutral, judgment-free space
- tools that parents may not have been taught growing up
- a structured curriculum that turns big concepts into step-by-step learning
- a place where children feel safe to explore thoughts they might not share at home
Mindset coaching doesn’t replace parenting. Our coaches become part of a parent’s team and a child’s team to support children in learning skills to communicate better, regulate emotions, and navigate challenges with more confidence.
Mindset coaching is a powerful complement to both parenting and therapy, helping children build the strong mindset skills they need to navigate life and thrive.
| Approach | Focus | Best for |
| Parenting | Values, morals, daily guidance | Family support and routines |
| Therapy | Diagnosis, healing | Clinical or mental health care |
| WISDOM Coaching | Confidence, mindset skills | Growth and prevention |
What Results Can Mindset Training Create for Kids?
Parents often ask, “Does mindset coaching really work?” The answer is yes! When children learn how to use the power of their thoughts, they can overcome challenges that once felt overwhelming.
Here are two real stories from families who turned to WISDOM Coaching when nothing else was working.
G, age 7: Learning to manage anxiety
G struggled with anxiety that impacted her entire family. She avoided everyday activities like going to the grocery store or out to dinner. Attending school was an ongoing challenge, and her mom was exhausted from trying to hold everything together.
After working with WISDOM Coach® Sharon, G learned how to shift her thinking and rebuild her confidence. Over time, she began participating in daily life again.
The transformation was noticeable and lasting!
At age 10, WISDOM Coach Sharon learned that G had delivered a speech for the school captain and won.
At age 13, G won the “Junior Young Women Competition” at the town fair.
Working with a WISDOM Coach was transformational for G and her family.
Read her story, watch the video, and see photos from G’s updates here.
Heather, age 10: Calming worries and building self-trust
Heather often felt nervous and overwhelmed. She had frequent tantrums, struggled to calm down, and experienced ongoing bed-wetting that left her feeling embarrassed. Although she wanted things to change, she didn’t know how.
Through WISDOM Coaching, Heather learned simple mindset tools that helped her feel more in control. She worried less, handled emotions more calmly, and began stepping into new situations with confidence.
Read more of Heather’s story here.
These are just two examples of what is possible when kids learn about the power of their minds! Children not only become empowered, but they also reclaim their joy.
Every child can benefit from mindset coaching. Children are constantly developing beliefs about who they are, what they can do, and how the world works.
The Adventures in Wisdom Life Coaching for Kids Curriculum is designed for ages 6 to 12 (children in Elementary and early Middle school). We focus on this age group because this is when children start experiencing real-life challenges such as comparison, grades, competition in extracurricular activities, peer pressure, and friendship issues. Learning these skills at a young age gives them the tools they can use in high school and into adulthood. That being said, coaches can adapt the stories and activities for children who are slightly younger or older based on their developmental needs.
While ALL children gain something valuable from mindset training, coaching is especially powerful for kids who:
- Struggle with self-confidence, self-doubt, or anxiety
- Are experiencing change, such as a move, a new school, family shifts, or transitions
- Show perfectionist tendencies and put pressure on themselves to get everything right
- Avoid challenges or new experiences because they’re afraid of failure or judgment
- Have potential but hold themselves back
- Feel overwhelmed by big emotions and need tools to regulate their thoughts and feelings
- Need stronger resilience, courage, and problem-solving skills
- Want to build a healthy sense of identity and inner strength
WISDOM Coaching® gives children a safe space to grow, tools they can use for a lifetime, and the confidence to become the leaders of their own lives, no matter their starting point.
How Do I Begin Mindset Training For My Child?
As a parent, you are your child’s hero, offering love, support, and guidance. You shape their morals, character, and education, while nurturing their talents in activities such as sports, music, and art. You celebrate their successes, comfort them in disappointments, and care for their health while providing love and support throughout their lives.
Sometimes our children need additional support, and we’re not quite sure how to help.
That’s exactly why Adventures in Wisdom® has grown a global network of Certified WISDOM Coaches®.
WISDOM Coaches guide children through proven coaching stories and hands-on activities that help them shift negative thinking, regulate emotions, navigate challenges, and build a strong inner compass. Coaching provides a safe, encouraging space where children can practice new skills with a caring, trained guide.
We have a checklist on our website that helps parents determine when it might be a good time to add a WISDOM Coach to their parenting team.
Frequently Asked Questions About Mindset Training for Kids
What is the difference between growth mindset and mindset training?
A growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. Mindset training is the structured process of teaching children how to apply that belief in everyday life. It includes building skills for emotional regulation, self-talk, confidence, and resilience. While growth mindset is a powerful concept, mindset training helps kids live it.
How can I teach my child to be more resilient?
Resilience is a skill that can be taught and practiced. Start by helping your child understand that failure is part of learning. Teach them how to reframe mistakes, manage big emotions, and focus on what they can control. Story-based mindset coaching programs like WISDOM Coaching make this learning process engaging and effective for children.
What are some signs that my child needs mindset support?
Common signs include low self-esteem, frequent meltdowns, fear of failure, avoidance of new challenges, trouble handling criticism, perfectionism, or difficulty bouncing back from setbacks. If your child struggles with confidence or becomes easily overwhelmed, mindset coaching may be the missing support they need.
Is mindset coaching effective for children with anxiety?
Yes. While mindset coaching is not a replacement for therapy or clinical treatment, it is highly effective for many children experiencing mild to moderate anxiety. It teaches calming techniques, emotional awareness, and thought reframing. For children with more serious symptoms, mindset coaching can also be a helpful complement to therapy.
Can mindset training help my child do better in school?
Absolutely. When children develop confidence, focus, and emotional regulation, it directly impacts how they approach learning. Mindset skills support goal-setting, perseverance, problem-solving, and self-belief — all of which contribute to academic success.
How long does it take to see results from mindset coaching?
Many families notice small but meaningful changes within the first few sessions. Kids often begin using new language around self-talk, calming down more easily, or showing more courage in new situations. Long-term transformation comes from consistent practice and reinforcement over time.
What qualifications should a children’s mindset coach have?
A high-quality children’s mindset coach should have specific training in working with kids, a clear coaching methodology, and access to a proven curriculum. Certified WISDOM Coaches are trained to use a story-based coaching system grounded in positive psychology, brain science, and coaching best practices.
Can I become a WISDOM Coach®?
Yes. If you feel inspired to bring this work to more children, including your own, you can also become a Certified WISDOM Coach®.
The WISDOM Coach Certification program is designed for caring adults who want to bring mindset training and life coaching to children using the Adventures in Wisdom Life Coaching for Kids Curriculum and STORY Coaching Process.
Our certification program includes everything you need: the complete story-based coaching curriculum, coaching resources, and business resources to help you get started.
Let’s give them the confidence to lead their lives from the inside out.
To begin:
- Download your free coaching story
- Explore how WISDOM Coaching® can support your child
- Learn more about how to become a Certified WISDOM Coach® if you feel called to help other children as well
Mindset skills are essential. Let’s help kids build the confidence to thrive.
*(CDC National Survey of Children’s Health, 2023)
**(CDC YRBS, 2023; confirmed in MHA 2025)
Renaye Thornborrow is leading a worldwide mission to bring life coaching to kids. Since 2013, Adventures in Wisdom® has certified hundreds of coaches in over 30 countries, helping them create a business they love as a life coach for kids, while helping children build the mindset and skill set for resilience, self-esteem, achievement, and self-leadership so that they are confident and prepared to thrive in life.
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Adventure well, my friend!
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