Meet Olivia
The Positive Parent Coach®
Parenting isn’t meant to feel this hard.
Many of the parents who come to me are thoughtful, loving people who care deeply about their children, yet they find themselves feeling overwhelmed, reactive or unsure of what to do next.
You might be navigating frequent meltdowns, emotional outbursts, power struggles, or a child who seems to feel everything intensely. Maybe you’ve tried different parenting strategies or advice, but nothing seems to create lasting change.
Are you often left wondering:
“Why does this keep happening?”
“Am I doing something wrong?”
“Why does the advice that works for other families not work for us?”
And the simple answer is the approaches you’re using probably aren’t matched to your nervous system personalities.
I’m Olivia Edwards, a UK parenting coach supporting parents of children with big emotions, challenging behaviour and lots of resistance.
As The Positive Parent Coach, I help parents understand their child's unique nervous system personality and discover the strategies that actually work for their child.
Parenting Coach UK • Emotional Regulation Expert • Deep-Feeler & Neurodiversity Support Specialist
Appeared numerous times on BBC News, The Breakfast Show, National and Local BBC Radio Stations and Sky News
My expertise: understanding your parenting roadmap
One of the most important parts of my work is helping families understand their unique nervous system personality and then match parenting strategies to the way their family actually works.
Because there is no shortage of parenting advice.
The problem is that much of it is generalised.
A strategy that works beautifully for one child can completely miss the mark for another. And a parenting approach that sounds right in theory can become incredibly difficult to follow when your own nervous system is overwhelmed.
This is often where parents have gone wrong in the past.
Not because they haven't tried hard enough.
But because they've been given strategies without first understanding the nervous systems of the people who are expected to use them.
First, we look at your default roadmap
When I work with a family, we start by understanding the parenting roadmap you've been following up until now.
Your default roadmap is the collection of beliefs, experiences, responses and strategies that have shaped the way you instinctively parent. It is often built from your own childhood, the parenting you've experienced or observed, your beliefs about what children should be doing, previous advice you've received and the things you've learned to do when you're under pressure.
It isn't a roadmap you've consciously chosen.
In many ways, it has been drawn for you over time.
Together, we explore why your roadmap looks the way it does, what happens to you when you're under pressure and which parts of that roadmap are helping you move towards the parent you want to be, and which parts keep taking you somewhere you don't actually want to go.
Then we look at the roadmap you want to follow
From there, we can begin to create something different.
We explore the parenting roadmap you want to follow, taking into account your child's nervous system personality, your own nervous system, your long-term goals and, most importantly, the destination you want to reach as a family.
Because knowing what kind of parent you want to be is important.
But knowing how to get there when your nervous system is under pressure is what makes the difference.
And then we build your capacity to navigate it
This is where my coaching goes beyond simply giving you another list of parenting strategies.
We look at how to support your nervous system, so that when you reach a fork in the road, encounter a particularly difficult moment or find yourself travelling along a very bumpy stretch, you have the capacity to pause, orient yourself and choose how you want to respond.
Rather than automatically returning to your old, familiar route.
Think of it like learning to become a confident, sturdy driver.
You don't need the road to be perfectly smooth.
You don't need to know exactly what is around every corner.
And you don't need to follow someone else's map.
You need to understand your map, your vehicle and how to navigate when the road gets difficult.
That is the heart of my work.
I help parents understand their own and their child's unique nervous system personalities, understand the roads they've travelled before, consciously choose where they want to go and develop the capacity to keep navigating towards that destination, even when the journey doesn't go to plan.
Because confident parenting isn't about never taking a wrong turn. It's about knowing how to find your way back to the road you chose.
Who is Olivia Edwards?
I’m Olivia Edwards, Director and CEO of The Positive Parent Coach Ltd, and a parenting coach specialising in children who feel deeply, experience big emotions and can find everyday life surprisingly difficult to navigate.
Over the last 20 years, I’ve supported hundreds of families and thousands of children and parents to understand challenging behaviour, navigate big emotions and, importantly, understand themselves so they can work with their strengths and develop the skills they need for the future.
My work has taken many forms over the years. I’ve contributed to parenting publications and resources, worked alongside social workers and the court system, spoken at conferences and had two scientific papers published. I bring together my background in psychology, education, trauma-informed coaching and family support with the practical understanding that comes from working alongside families every day.
But there is another part of my experience that is just as important to me.
I’m a mum of three.
My children are confident, strong-willed, creative and deeply emotional. I know what it is like to juggle multiple needs, to carefully balance the needs of children who are right on the edge of their capacity, to advocate fiercely for your child and to navigate situations where there can be misunderstandings about what a child actually needs.
I also understand the frustration of knowing that your child needs more support, while finding that the support available doesn't always recognise the individual child in front of you.
That is one of the reasons this work matters so deeply to me.
I want parents to be able to enjoy their children and enjoy parenthood without feeling that they have to sacrifice themselves in the process.
I want parents to feel connected to their children, but also confident in themselves.
To feel competent rather than constantly questioning whether they're getting it wrong.
To have clarity about what is happening and, more importantly, clarity about what to do next.
And I want children who feel deeply to grow up being understood rather than continually being asked to fit into approaches that weren't designed with their nervous system in mind.
My bigger vision
My hope is that every family has the opportunity to understand their own unique nervous system personality and the nervous system personalities within their family.
That parents can understand why they respond the way they do, why their child responds the way they do, and how to bridge the two.
That they can develop practical strategies that work with their family's individual strengths, needs and capacity, rather than continually trying to make generalised parenting advice fit.
And ultimately, that Deep Feelers and their families can thrive.
Not by changing who they are.
But by understanding who they are, developing the skills and capacity they need, and having the right support to navigate life together.
That is the work I care deeply about. And it is the work I feel incredibly privileged to do..
So, what is your child's nervous system personality?
By now, you might be wondering:
“What does my child's nervous system personality actually look like?”
One of the nervous system personalities I see frequently in my work is what I describe as a Deep Feeler.
Could this be your child?
Does your child...
Experience emotions incredibly intensely, with feelings that can seem to go from 0 to 100 very quickly?
Struggle with transitions, changes or being asked to stop something they are deeply engaged in?
Seem to resist everyday requests, even when you know they understand what you're asking?
Become overwhelmed by situations that other children seem to manage more easily?
Have big reactions to seemingly small things?
Need a huge amount of connection, reassurance or co-regulation when they are struggling?
Seem incredibly strong-willed, determined or persistent?
Feel things deeply and become particularly affected by disappointment, perceived unfairness, rejection or shame?
Leave you wondering why strategies that seem to work for other children simply don't work for yours?
If you're nodding along to several of these, your child may be a Deep Feeler.
Is your child a Deep Feeler?
I've created a dedicated guide to help you explore this further, including the characteristics I commonly see and the signs that can help you recognise whether this nervous system personality might fit your child.
Click here to find out more - Is your child a Deep Feeler?
And if your child is a Deep Feeler, this is where my work can make a real difference.
Rather than giving you another generic parenting strategy to add to the list, I can help you understand why your child responds the way they do and which strategies are most likely to work with their nervous system.
You can begin to understand why previous approaches may have led to more resistance, escalation or disconnection, and what to do differently.
Because when you understand the nervous system you're parenting, you can stop fighting the behaviour and start working with the child underneath it.
