Part 3 of 19 in How to Coach Your Child: A Handbook for Indian Parents← Part 2Part 4 →
I’ve been reflecting on the role of parents in nurturing their children, particularly in the context of the Indian upbringing many of us are familiar with. Growing up, I observed that most Indian parents were not coached themselves; rather, they were managed. This management style has often been inherited by the next generation of parents who, despite their best intentions, oscillate between harshness and guilt—two settings that are far from the coaching approach our children need today.
Take, for instance, a common scene in an Indian household. In a flat in Andheri, nine-year-old Ishaan has not started his Hindi homework. His mother, after asking him four times, hears her own mother’s voice emerging out of her mouth: “Kitna baar bolun? You will ruin your life.” Ishaan’s shoulders slump as the book remains firmly closed. The guilt arrives almost immediately, compelling her to sit with him and write the first three answers. Ishaan watches, but both have already lost the evening. The opportunity for coaching, for guiding Ishaan to take ownership of his homework, is lost.
A coach would have refused both moves—the insult and the rescue. The insult predicts a ruined life from a closed Hindi book, a hyperbole that no child truly believes but every child resents. The rescue, on the other hand, takes the work away, teaching the child that resistance is a strategy that works. The coaching move, though smaller and harder, is more effective: “Hindi is still yours. The book is open or it is not. I can sit in the room. I will not write the answers.”
Coaching is about boundaries, not bailouts. It’s about refusing to take the bat, while still being present in the room. This brings me to what a coach actually does, which I believe can be distilled into three core responsibilities.
Firstly, the coach is in charge of boundaries. In the home, this translates to setting non-negotiable limits—bedtime, safety, money, school attendance, hitting, lying about where the child was. These are not joint ventures. A child does not get a vote on whether the gas is left on. As parents, we must distinguish between accepting a child’s feelings and accepting every act that results from those feelings. The two are not the same.
Secondly, the coach does not play. Completing the project, answering for the child when a guest asks a question, calling the teacher to erase a small consequence, choosing a hobby because it will “look good”—these are all substitutions. The child leaves the field. Later, everyone is surprised that the same child cannot decide what to eat at a restaurant. By stepping in too often, we inadvertently teach our children to rely on us instead of their judgment.
Thirdly, a coach talks to the player as someone who can hear a true sentence. “You are lazy” is not coaching. “The bag is still unpacked and the bus is in twenty minutes” is. One attacks a character; the other describes a situation the child can still act on. It’s about presenting facts and allowing the child to make choices, rather than dictating their actions.
The opposite of a coach is what I term the “remote-control parent”. Volume up, channel changed, battery pulled. This approach might work on a television but works badly on a person, and it worsens as the child grows older. The remote-control parent says “because I said so” long after the child can see that the reason is anxiety, not wisdom. The child learns to hide the phone, not to judge a good use of time.
There’s a softer cousin of the remote control—the parent who cannot bear the child’s disappointment. Every “no” is followed by a negotiation, a sweet, a new promise. The child does not feel respected; the child feels that the parent’s distress is the real decision-maker. Agency is not the same as getting one’s way. Agency is knowing that one’s words landed, and that the boundary did not move because of tears.
Notice what a coach does not do. She does not recruit fear of the neighbor’s son. She does not demand agreement as the price of love. She does not withdraw love as a punishment. She states the fact, the choice inside the fact, and her own availability. This approach respects the child’s autonomy while maintaining the necessary boundaries.
If you’re a parent who finds this approach challenging, I propose a practice for the coming week. Pick one daily battle—homework start, screen time, or the morning bag. For seven days, ban two sentences: any sentence that predicts the child’s future, and any sentence that does the child’s task. Replace both with a description and a choice. At the end of the week, do not ask whether the child became obedient. Ask whether you still recognized your own voice.
In my experience, this shift from manager to coach is not just beneficial for the child but also transformative for the parent. It’s a journey of self-discovery, where we learn to recognize the inherited voices within us and choose to speak with a voice that is truly our own. As I reflect on the lessons from my practice in IVF, angel investing, and education reform, it’s clear that the principles of coaching—of setting boundaries, fostering independence, and respecting autonomy—are universal. They apply equally to raising a child, nurturing a startup, or guiding a student.
Ultimately, being a parent-coach is about preparing our children for a world that demands resilience, critical thinking, and self-reliance. It’s about equipping them with the skills they need to navigate life’s challenges independently. As we embrace this role, we do more than just raise children—we raise future adults who are capable, confident, and ready to take on the world.