However, establishing dreams, goals and plans earlier in life help us explore our life themes, review what we want and get on the best path for ourselves faster than we would without that early exploration and practice.  In my early life I wanted to be a musician and performer.  I was a pretty good singer, and, in that context, not a very good performer.  My goals evolved, and I sing for my own enjoyment now and do some performance as a presenter on a variety of subjects.  

There have been many things that I have learned to enjoy that I couldn't have dreamed of when I was young.  Most of those were discovered while in pursuit of other things that were meaningful.  I was lucky enough to have proactive people in my life early in my career who coached me, much as I coach others today.  It was those experiences that led me to my training in NLP and other areas and my interest in personal and organizational coaching.

The greatest challenge with coaching young people is to get them to choose to participate.  I get calls about young people having problems in school, behaving badly at home, and other issues, and I hesitate to immediately work with the young person.  I often choose to coach the parents or other referral source instead.  In order for coaching to succeed, the clients have to have dreams and goals they want to achieve.  If they don't, and you try to work with them, you aren't coaching, you are coercing.  That isn't much fun and only produces a positive outcome about a third of the time.  

Coaching isn't primarily about solving problems.  It is about generating options and creating the life you want, often in such a way that problems resolve as a side effect.  It is generative work, and often difficult for people to understand in this society so oriented towards fixing things.  

If you are trying to interest a young person in getting a personal coach, talk with them about their long term futures, not the short term problems you see now.  Helping them get what they want in the long run will be much more attractive than trying to get them to see someone about improving their grades.  Once they know what they want, and see the connection to their school performance, the grades may improve, or not.  Either way, they will have clarified long term vision and started on the strategies important to them.  It won't be perfect, but our process wasn't either.  If the coach has the requisite skills, however, it can be a very valuable investment.