Janae Moss: Why Do We Coach Athletes But Not Parents?

<p>We coach athletes to perform under pressure. We coach executives to lead through uncertainty. But parents—who routinely make high-stakes decisions with limited control over the outcome—are often left with little more than advice.</p><p>Janae Moss thinks we can do better.</p><p>In this episode of Mental Health Momentum, Silicon Slopes Director of Mental Health Awareness and licensed psychologist Dr. David Morgan sits down with Janae Moss, business owner, community advocate, mother of seven, grandmother, and doctoral student in Sport and Performance Psychology.</p><p>Moss’s interest in mental health began long before the classroom. As a young mother, she and her family experienced the collapse of a business after her husband received the wrong medication in a prescription bottle. Suddenly, a family accustomed to taking care of itself was struggling to afford basic necessities.</p><p>That experience changed how Moss understood hardship and the systems designed to help people through it.</p><p>She remembers discovering just how much work we often ask people to do at precisely the moment they have the least capacity to do it: filling out paperwork, navigating assistance programs, finding counseling, and figuring out where to turn next.</p><p>It also helped shape an idea that has guided much of her work since: What would happen if we reached people upstream, before they were in crisis?</p><p>That question eventually influenced her community advocacy and the creation of <strong>Parents Driving Change</strong>, an effort designed to help parents recognize the leadership, knowledge, and influence they already possess within their families and communities.</p><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Why personal hardship changed Moss’s understanding of mental health and community support</p></li><li><p>What happens when getting help becomes another burden for someone already struggling</p></li><li><p>Why prevention and protective factors matter before a family reaches crisis</p></li><li><p>What business and community leaders can learn by listening directly to parents</p></li><li><p>How Parents Driving Change grew from Moss’s community work</p></li><li><p>Why parents should be viewed as leaders, not simply recipients of services</p></li><li><p>The emerging idea of parental performance psychology</p></li><li><p>How resilience is built one day—and sometimes one small decision—at a time</p></li></ul><p>Moss discovered that solutions don’t always begin in a