Sometimes it isn’t the child that needs fixing. Sometimes, they’re just the loudest voice in a household silently screaming for change.

This is a story about a client I once worked with – a little girl who, at just nine years old, was carrying the emotional weight of her entire family on her shoulders. What looked like a mental health issue was, in truth, something much more tangled.

When It’s Not the Child Who Needs Help

She came to me after being thrown out of her after-school club. Her screams were so intense that neighbours had called the police more than once. You might assume she was emotionally unstable or had a condition that needed urgent intervention.

But as is often the case in the work we do within this coaching franchise, the surface symptoms were only part of the story.

This wasn’t just a child struggling. This was a child surviving in a deeply dysfunctional home.

Mum was disengaged, a self-confessed workaholic barely involved in her daughter’s life. Dad wanted to leave the marriage but couldn’t afford to – financially and emotionally. He felt manipulated, discouraged, and trapped. And all of this simmered under the same roof every day, infecting the atmosphere that little girl lived in.

“The child won’t move forward until the parents do.”

She had learned to communicate the only way she knew how – by mirroring what she saw. Her parents spoke to each other with contempt, and when she copied that same tone, they didn’t like it. But unlike them, she had no adult filters, no coping mechanisms, and no escape hatch.

Children Can’t Thrive in Chaos – and Neither Can Therapy

The truth is, the little girl’s behaviour wasn’t caused by a broken mind. It was the by-product of broken parenting.

I had to walk a delicate tightrope. This was no longer just a therapeutic session for a child – it became a family intervention. I coached the father on how to be more cooperative with his estranged wife, and I sent her my recommendations too. Because while they weren’t emotionally together, they were still co-creating the world their child lived in.

So often, parents bring their children to therapy hoping for a magic fix – a solution that means they don’t have to change themselves. But the real work begins when they realise the child is not the anchor… they are.

Why This Matters to Our Practitioners

Stories like these are why I believe so passionately in the work we do at NLP4Kids. It’s why our coaching franchise has grown into something more than just NLP sessions for children – it’s a movement toward healing families from the inside out.

When you become part of our coaching franchise, you’ll likely encounter cases like this – messy, multi-layered and emotionally complex. And that’s not a reason to be put off. That’s the reason to lean in.

You’ll help families see themselves more clearly. You’ll become the mirror they can’t avoid and the support they didn’t know they needed. And sometimes, you’ll be the first person who gently but firmly holds up a hand and says, “Actually, it starts with you.”

The child in this story? She improved. But only once the adults did.

by Gemma Bailey (with the help of Ai)

Becoming a Licensee