Linda Tu

About Me

In 2010, a year before my son was born, I became very passionate about raising a kind and happy kid. This passion led me to read numerous books on positive parenting and to apply what I had read when my son was born.

When my son was four years old and went to a Montessori school, his teacher made a comment about him: “You can see how secure he is.” At the time, I didn’t think too much about that statement. However, years later, I was able to see what the teacher had meant and the impact of positive parenting on my son.

A few months after my son started his Montessori school, his teacher got cancer and stopped teaching. I decided to homeschool him using Montessori philosophy and materials, something that I had been learning for a year. Applying positive parenting was very difficult when I was homeschooling my son during that time. He was super active, and he also started to have stomach issues that made him have tantrums almost daily, whenever he got hungry. These difficult times lasted for four years. With hindsight, life during that time would have been much easier if there had been someone available to coach and support me.

As difficult as it was, I always tried to practice positive parenting as best as I could because I saw the difference in my son's behavior when I felt stressed and did not practice positive parenting. Self-reflection was what helped me the most to effectively apply what I had learned; for many years, every night, I would reflect on what I had done during the day so that I could improve the next time. Also, when I saw my son doing something that I did not like, I would look at myself first and see if he was copying me or reacting to me. Most of the time, he was doing one of the two. When I changed myself, so did he.

In the last four years, my relationship with my son has been amazing: We chat all the time about little things and important things; We often joke around; We trust each other completely; If we confront an issue, we communicate respectfully and collaborate.

One day, when I was traveling with my family, I felt so blessed that I had come across positive parenting. I thought about parents who were struggling with their children and wondered whether their lives would be different if they had the opportunity to know about and practice positive parenting. That was when the lightbulb went off, and I started googling parent coaching. I found out that Jai Institute for Parenting's philosophy and teaching align with almost everything I had learned and intuitively grasped after over ten years of positive parenting my son. Immediately, I signed up for their parenting coach training course.