I'm Christina Mitchell. I've spent thirty years studying human behaviour, twenty-five of them as a teacher, and I now work with families to help children who are struggling with anxiety, change, friendships or the pressure to perform.
I don't tell parents they're getting it wrong. I show them the impact, and what they can do differently.
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Your child is bright. Capable. Kind. And yet something isn't settling.
Maybe it's anxiety that flares up around school, or a total refusal to walk through the gates some mornings. Maybe it's a meltdown over a test that didn't go perfectly, or a child who crumples the moment something doesn't come easily. Maybe it's friendships that feel fragile, or a total inability to cope when plans change at the last minute. Maybe it's your relationship: you don't want to clash, to shout, to get so frustrated.
You've tried talking it through. Reassuring them. Some days it helps. Most days you're left wondering what you're missing, and whether you're the only family finding this hard. You desperately want to get it right.
You're not missing anything obvious, because what's actually going on usually isn't obvious. That's where I come in.
I describe myself as a behaviour specialist and a pattern spotter. Give me a handful of scenarios from your child's life and your parenting struggles and I can usually see the pattern underneath them, the thing that's really driving the behaviour.
Here's what thirty years of studying this has taught me: you change the conditions, you change the outcome. Not through another conversation, or more shouting, but through understanding what's really going on, and what to do differently once you can see it.
I won't pretend there's a quick fix, and I won't tell you what you're doing wrong. What I will do is help you see the fuller picture, gently, at a pace that makes sense, so that by the time we're working together it feels like finally being equipped. You'll breathe a sigh of relief and start to feel like you are getting it right. I'll equip you and give you a map for your child, with tools and strategies not only for you, but so you can equip your child too.
I've spent thirty years studying human behaviour, not only in the classroom, but in myself and in my own family too. I look at the problems downstream, so I can go upstream and change them, and I've worked with schools as well as families, coaching and consulting with head teachers and training whole school staff bodies, especially for when you aren't there.
Human behaviour repeats. Underneath almost every difficult behaviour is a child trying to feel safe, to belong, or to feel capable, and once you can see which one is under strain, things start to make sense. It isn't only true for children. You are trying to feel safe, to belong, to feel capable and to get it right too.
I've built simple, memorable tools for this, the same language for a young child, a teenager, or an adult. Everyone needs a backpack: self-awareness, awareness of others, tools and strategies, and the confidence to use them. Fill it, and you become more capable of handling whatever life throws at you. That's agency.
Quite simply, I equip the adult, to equip the child. That's a child equipped for life.
This isn't a six-week fix. It's bespoke, one-to-one work with your family, built around what's actually happening in your home.
1. Discovery call. A relaxed conversation to see if this is the right fit, both ways.
2. A detailed questionnaire, so I can start building a picture of your family's patterns before we speak properly.
3. Coaching sessions on Teams, tailored to your family: sometimes with each parent individually, sometimes together, and where it's appropriate, with your child too. The older your child, the more I might work with them directly, then equip you to support them.
4. Support between sessions, so you're not on your own when something happens in the moment.
5. Ongoing check-ins across the length of the programme, adjusting as things shift.
Where useful, I can also help you navigate school conversations, or work with the school directly.
I worked with a family where a bright, warm-hearted child would regularly lose control when frustrated, at homework, with a sibling, over small setbacks, and feel deep regret once they'd calmed down. Their parents were doing everything they thought they should, and it still wasn't landing. They weren't the parents they wanted to be. It was affecting everyone.
We looked at the whole family picture, not just what the child was doing, but the rhythms, pressures and responses running through the household, and built small, practical changes into the mornings, into handling frustration, into how everyone communicated under pressure.
A year on: they work through frustration instead of being overwhelmed by it, and they've stopped lashing out at their sibling. Performance at school has improved, the house is calmer, and it's easier for everyone to sit with a difficult moment without rushing to fix it. This works whether your child is younger, navigating a big transition, or a teenager balancing A-levels and everything else growing up throws at them.
This tends to fit families where:
• Your child struggles with anxiety, particularly around school, new situations or change
• Meltdowns, shutdowns or frustration are becoming a regular part of home life
• Performance pressure hits hard, a test, a mistake, a setback, and the reaction feels out of proportion
• Friendships feel fragile or hard for your child to navigate
• You feel like you're doing everything you can think of, and it still isn't quite working
• You know what lies ahead for your child, and you want to fully equip them so they can thrive fully in life
• Your child is capable, but isn't reaching their potential
This is bespoke, sustained work, not a workshop or a checklist. Because real change takes time, this is a longer-term programme delivered over months, not weeks.
I work with a deliberately small number of families at any one time, so the coaching stays genuinely tailored. If that's the kind of investment you're ready to make in your family, the next step is a conversation.
A relaxed conversation to see if this is the right fit, for your family and for me. No pressure, no obligation.