About Us
Kelly Elise Matzen, MA, family coach, “play-at-home-mom,” and award-winning parenting author of, When You're About To Go Off The Deep End, Don't Take Your Kids With You, has inspired hundreds of thousands of committed parents with common sense parenting tips that guide children to look for what they can give, rather than focus on what they can get.
Early on in her career, Kelly was the caregiver for two blind brothers for whom the community had lost hope. These two boys were nick named “hell on canes” by their special needs camp director and with good reason! Reminiscent of Anne Sullivan’s success with Helen Keller, Kelly learned positive parenting practices that made all the difference while in this “parenting trenches lab.”
What she discovered was that much of the advice from leading parenting experts only increased children’s misbehavior. In reality, Kelly says that “Most child discipline only teaches children to lie to their parents or to not get caught next time—not to help them improve and learn to do better next time.”
Kelly’s goal is to provide parents with simple tools that boost the amount of laughter & smiles experienced, increase respectful dialogue, make cooperation with daily chores the norm, and ensure that cuddles & connection happen regularly; while dramatically reducing the daily exhaustion, parenting guilt, fighting frequency, nagging & disrespectful words experienced in the home.
Far from having a magic wand (she seems to have permanently misplaced hers) she offers time-tested, mother-approved, and child-tested strategies that work for busy parents seeking solutions to common struggles like tantrums, sibling rivalry, lying, peer issues, self-centered attitudes, bedtime struggles and whining.
A popular media guest, speaker and educator across North America, Kelly has led small community groups, taught corporate audiences such as GlaskoSmithKline and was the media spokesperson for the Fountain Tire Gift of Time Family Campaign (owned by Good Year Tire) which reached over 1.8 million parents during her one week parenting media tour.
Kelly’s contagious zest-for-life, and effective communication strategies have helped thousands of families. Why? Because with over two decades in the “parenting trenches,” Kelly passionately empowers parents with simple strategies that take much of the struggle and guess work out of their parenting and put more of the joy back in. This means children are raised to learn from their mistakes, embrace responsibility, lend a helping hand, listen to (and even respond to!) their parents wisdom more and ultimately, be happier and healthier kids for others to around.
