“We’re so focused on the negative and ready to assume something’s gone wrong,” said Belton, a parenting coach who has known children as a mother, teacher, crisis counselor, guest speaker and friend. “We need to simply enjoy our kids and not worry so much.”

Belton has a caveat, however. “We have to be responsible and accountable as parents. Our kids don’t bring up themselves.”

Belton’s straightforward approach has endeared her to local parents and educators, who have hired the Cupertino woman to deliver more than 400 presentations in the past decade.

She recently opened a private practice in parent coaching and has begun producing a DVD of her latest program, “Burn Your Kids’ Report Cards and Still Raise Successful Adults.”

A 20-minute interview with Belton, 46, was featured June 1 on “Something You Should Know,” a national radio show heard in Los Angeles, Fresno, Monterey and 150 other cities across the country.

“What impresses me so much is she speaks to people like a normal parent, not above them,” said Donna Glanville, president of the Piedmont Middle School Booster Club and a regional PTA secretary, who has booked Belton for several presentations.

After a May program for about 100 parents from the Berryessa Union School District in North San Jose, Glanville said at least a dozen people approached her to praise the session.

She cited Belton’s energetic and personable style as part of her ability to connect with parents. “She doesn’t use a microphone, and she doesn’t sit still,” Glanville said.

Patience and passion also shine through in her programs, she added, as Belton has always stayed to answer every question “with enthusiasm.”

Those qualities led Roy Avila, producer and host of the “Q&A Program” on Channel 36 in San Jose, to invite Belton to be “parenting adviser” for the show, where she appears several times a year.

“She gives things to people that they can use,” Avila said. “She has the ability to talk in plain English about relationship issues. That makes her good at public therapy.”

Belton believes her connection derives as much from good listening as good speaking, plus a wide array of experience.

“I’ve been there in a lot of ways,” she said.

A Chicago native, Belton grew up in a single-parent family after her parents divorced when she was 4. She began baby-sitting when she was 10 years old, developing a steady base of clients that allowed her to pay her way through Illinois State University.

While in college, Belton became the first female sports announcer for radio station WILN, where she broadcast play-by-play commentary for university sports.

“I’m crazy about sports, and that gave me some confidence in speaking,” Belton said.

She graduated with a special-education teaching credential and a desire to help needy students. “Working with kids who had psychological and emotional difficulties was fascinating,” she said.

Since coming to California in 1982, she has taught for a private special- education preschool, worked as a substitute teacher, run a home day-care service and led Gymboree classes.

Her public-education skills began to bloom in 1995 when she joined the Family Service Agency of the Mid-Peninsula in Palo Alto, where she ran a teen hot line, a parent stress hot line, a program for domestic-violence offenders and developed a speaker’s bureau.

Now married for the second time, Belton has a son, 20, and a daughter, 16, as well as a 15-year-old stepdaughter. She has worked for the past five years as a personal assistant, which includes household management and one afternoon a week caring for a 2-year-old girl.

As a parenting coach, Belton said, she wants people to know she’s not offering therapy.

“I’m not a psychologist, but most parents don’t need one,” she said. “They just need feedback and some ideas they can use.”

The most common questions, she said, involve kids who talk back or won’t listen.

“This is about respect — giving it to the kids and demanding it from them. The parent has to draw the lines,” Belton said.

Often, parents who call with a question about children who won’t clean their room actually have a larger problem that they’re failing to confront. Belton will help them tackle it.

“Parents have emotions that get in the way of doing the right thing,” she said. “I tell them to pretend it’s a neighbor’s kid and see how they’d treat the problem.”

The DVD title, she said, addresses report cards because she sees many kids under pressure to perform, and parents who won’t let their kids make mistakes.

By worrying too much about quantitative things, she said, parents forget to let children feel satisfaction from hard work and gain experience by living with the consequences of their decisions.

“We want to raise successful adults, not just good test-takers,” Belton said. “The message we should give our kids is: do your best.”

Maureen Kerr, personal guidance counselor for Bellarmine High School in San Jose, said Belton’s coaching practice addresses a common need.

“There are not too many places for people to go,” said Kerr, who has worked for 25 years at the private Jesuit high school that serves 1,450 boys. “Some parents don’t like to read the books. Coaching doesn’t have the same stigma that you find with therapy.”

Though Bellarmine holds a reputation for high academic standards, Kerr said she backs Belton’s philosophy of paying less attention to grades. Modern distractions like instant messaging, Web surfing and electronic games have created new hurdles to old-fashioned family time, but not lessened its importance, she said.

“In the bigger picture, we want a good character in our children,” she said. “Promoting good communication between parents and children is so important.”

For Belton, ironically, her career path shows that some tests can be valuable with the right interpretation.

“I took a high school career test that showed I should become a nun,” she said, chuckling because she’s Jewish. “It happened because I wanted to help people.”

She wants to focus that energy full time on helping parents, whom she describes as having the most important, fascinating and frustrating work in the world.

“It breaks my heart to see so many families struggling,” Belton said. “I’d like more parents to enjoy their jobs.”