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Autonomy coaching helps adolescents build the executive-function skills, self-understanding, and practice they need to direct themselves.
Autonomy coaching helps adolescents build the executive-function skills, self-understanding, and practice they need to direct themselves.
Roz Romatz:
Roz Romatz:
More than 20 years working with middle-school students
Five years as a K–8 principal
Training in Smart but Scattered executive-function coaching
MSc student in Applied Neuroscience at King’s College London
After more than two decades in schools, I wanted to understand better how to help young people become their own source of direction. That question led me to create The Autonomy Coach.
I am curious, direct, patient, and difficult to shock. I take young people seriously, and I do not believe shame is a useful foundation for growth.
Coaching that goes beyond getting assignments turned in:
Coaching that goes beyond getting assignments turned in:
Many systems are designed to help young people keep up with the demands of a fast-paced world. Autonomy coaching is built around a deeper goal.
In more than twenty years working with middle-school students, including five years as a K–8 principal, I have learned that helping young people meet external expectations more efficiently is not the same as helping them identify their own goals, clarify their personal values, and build the skills to act on them. Children (and adults as well) are far more motivated to change when that change is connected to something they genuinely value.
Those larger values take shape through small, everyday choices. If we are what we repeatedly do, then the responses we practice are extremely important. But choosing a different response first requires recognizing that there is a choice.
I help students notice the space between what happens and how they respond, so they have more capacity to choose what comes next.
Coaching may be helpful when a child:
Coaching may be helpful when a child:
understands what they need to do but can't get started
struggles socially because of impulse control: blurting, arguing, or roughhousing
becomes overwhelmed, avoidant, or shut down when demands increase
depends heavily on adults for reminders and follow-through
struggles to recover after mistakes or changes in plans
wants more independence but does not yet have the systems to support it
loses track of assignments, materials, or time
As an adult, it's easy to interpret these struggles as laziness, defiance, or a lack of caring. Often, however, the behavior is covering a skill gap, a response to overwhelm, or a pattern of avoidance that has become hard to interrupt. Coaching helps young people identify what is actually getting in the way and begin making more workable choices.
As an adult, it's easy to interpret these struggles as laziness, defiance, or a lack of caring. Often, however, the behavior is covering a skill gap, a response to overwhelm, or a pattern of avoidance that has become hard to interrupt. Coaching helps young people identify what is actually getting in the way and begin making more workable choices.
During adolescence, immediate rewards, strong emotions, and social experiences can carry tremendous weight. At the same time, the executive function skills, those that help us pause, consider competing possibilities, and act toward longer-term goals, are still developing.
Coaching can help young people build more space between having an impulse and acting on it. Through practice, they can strengthen the skills that help them pause, notice what is happening, and choose a response that is more aligned with who they want to be.
A young person does not need to become someone else in order to become more capable.
A young person does not need to become someone else in order to become more capable.
Coaching begins with understanding how they currently function, identifying what is working well for them, what is getting in the way, and building from there.
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