For parents
Your teen is doing fine on paper. The grades are there. What's missing is the confidence: knowing who they are, and being ready for what comes next.
I coach 15 to 20 year olds through that gap: expat teens in Spain, homeschooled students in the US, and young people away from home for a semester or a year.
Parents come to me from three very different places, with almost always the same worry.
You moved to Spain, and your teenager is doing fine at school in English or Spanish. On paper, anyway. At home they're quiet, they've stopped seeing friends, and they don't know who they are here yet.
You've given them a better education than most schools manage, in the US or abroad. What they don't have is practice at the world outside the house: the interview, the group, the room full of strangers.
Your child is in Valencia for a semester or a year. This is the most exciting thing they'll do, and the loneliest. You can't fix this one from a phone.
Academically prepared. Not yet ready. That's the gap I work in.How it usually looks
A small group programme, or one-to-one if your son or daughter would rather work privately. We start with what's really in the way, then build from there.
Before we build confidence, we find out what they want, believe and care about, not who they think they're supposed to be.
Real moments, practised: starting conversations, being new, disagreeing, asking for something, being the one who doesn't know anyone.
Their own tools, the ones that work when I'm not in the room. We finish with a plan for the next thing they're facing, not a certificate.
Why me
I moved abroad for the first time at sixteen, and again at twenty. I know what it is to be the new one in a country where you don't yet sound like yourself.
I have a psychology background, I work with CBT tools, and I spent more than a decade in education. So I know what development looks like at 16 and at 20, and what a school report will never tell you about a young person.
If your teenager is fine on paper and not fine in private, that's not a phase. It's something we can work on.
No. Coaching isn't therapy and it isn't advice: it's a structured, confidential conversation where your teen does the thinking. If they need clinical support, I'll say so and point you the right way.
No, and that's the point. The room has to be safe or nothing useful happens in it. We agree at the start what you'll be told: how it's going, and anything that worries me.
Usually, yes. Most teenagers relax once they're not being fixed. The first session is a free 20-minute call, so you can all find out before paying anything.
Next step
What's the thing you've noticed and not said out loud? Write that. I read every message myself.
Free 20-minute call. No cost, no commitment.