Rachel Vecht

Who are you?

Hi, my name is Rachel Vet. I'm a former school teacher and the founder of Educating Matters. I've spent the last nearly 25 years supporting working parents, and I have four children myself. I am not a perfect parent, but three of them are now adults. So I do know quite a lot about raising children.

What is your background?

So I started out my career as a school teacher, which is what I always wanted to do from a very young age. But within a few months of teaching, I realised that most of the learning actually happens outside the classroom. And I found myself giving a lot of support and guidance to the parents of the kids that I was teaching. I carried on teaching for about seven years, and I also used to train student teachers. And then back in 2001, when I had the first of my four children, I decided I could actually have a bigger impact on the lives of kids by working with parents. And that's when I founded Educating Matters. And very quickly I realised that actually going to parents in their place of work was a much more captive audience rather than expecting them to do it outside of work. And so I started to speak about everything to do with educating, raising children and integrating work and family and everything from when you are first having a child all the way through to them leaving home all the while drawing on my own experiences as a parent of four children and speaking to tens of thousands of parents every year, and getting a real sense of the challenges that parents face globally outside the workplace. I provide a lot of one-to-one support to parents. I have online parenting courses. I regularly contribute as a guest speaker to podcasts, and I even support parents who have maybe been denied access to their children. There is so many parallels between parenting and leadership, and I feel incredibly privileged to be involved in a career that is really building a foundation for children to thrive in their adult lives.

What does "positive parenting" means and how it differs from more traditional parenting approaches?

So differently, people might have slightly different definitions. For me, positive parenting is all about building a deep connected relationship with your child so they feel confident, supported, and emotionally secure. It's being the kind of parent who truly appreciates and respects their child for who they are and coaches them to become the best version of themselves. Parenting is above all about your relationship with your child rather than a skill to be acquired. Our relationship is central to everything we need our children to know. We will always be on their side and accept them for who they are, even if we don't like what they're doing. Children thrive when they feel connected and understood by their parents, and the main focus of my work for the last 30 years has been to give parents the tools to achieve that. Positive parenting is also about providing clear boundaries and expectations, but through communication, empathy, and problem solving rather than through coercion and control. This creates trust and consistency. It's not about how do I get my child to do what I say, but more about what does my child need and how can I support them to meet those needs? The ultimate goal of positive parenting is to raise children who have a good sense of self, who make positive choices on their own in any situation, not because we are watching or hovering over them or telling them what to do. This is the secret to raising children to thrive in the adult world.

How important is a child’s sense of autonomy in building emotional resilience?

What can parents do to help a child feel emotionally connected to them?