The Relational Parenting Podcast

jennifer___mama_sue:
We'll bullshit in the beginning. So, okay. We're here. Uh, welcome everybody. Welcome back to the relational parenting podcast. We are here with mama Sue today. Um, and she is here for the third episode of our educational, uh, series. She is going to be talking to us about being a school psychologist inside of the school system. Sarah on and she was an expert in the history of the education system and where the education system needs to go as far as being more child-centered. And then our second episode last week was with Caroline who is a child psychologist outside of the education system but she works with families the system school psychologist and she's here to share her journey over the last 30 years of school psychology and how things have changed and evolved over time and then also what she is doing to help train her district specifically on more mindful trauma-informed emotional informed child-centered care. So go ahead and introduce yourself. All right. Well, I'm Jenny's mom. I'm Suas Stoi and also Jenny's mom. And about 33 years ago, I decided that I needed to get a good solid job I could sink my teeth into and still raise three kids as the main caretaker. and even further in that, I knew I needed something very practical. And so I decided to work in the school system, went back to school with a one-year-old, a three-year-old, and a six-year-old. I don't recommend it. It was a full-time, very difficult thing. And we got through it. And I think- Because this was graduate school. This was graduate school. This was a master's, not your bachelor's. had been signed up twice to get a master's degree in the previous 10 years to that and moved first to North Carolina, then to Pennsylvania for your dad's job. And so this time I was determined. This was going to happen. New babies, not new babies, it was gonna happen. And it did. And I started working in my 29th year Although I can't imagine really doing it, even though I say I'm going to do it. You like being busy. Well, I like what I do and I feel like, you know, I talked about sinking my teeth into it. I feel like the things that I started with were important things. And as a school psychologist, you are by yourself. Yeah. are typically, especially in small districts, where I'm not even in one district the whole week, you are the only one of you. And how many districts do you work in? Because I don't. Okay, so it's still just two. It's two. Not just and still. You're the only school psychologist for two entire districts. Correct. Yeah. And so what they use psychologists for mostly is testing to see if a child needs an individualized education plan or an IEP. And so that is always my first foremost job. If they need me to counsel somebody and they don't have someone else to cover it, then they call me. But for the most part, those are the things I'm doing. And so over the years, what I discover is, yeah, that's important. And yeah, there are kids that I'm creating behavior plans for and all that, but I feel like I'm always working against an uphill battle. mindset of schools is not geared Yeah Toward children's emotional growth. Yeah, and it isn't that people don't care There are a lot of people that care. It's that nobody's trained and nobody understands and the few of us who do Are just running around putting band-aids on That's how I felt like trying to plug holes in a yeah, and trying and and you know based on how we were trained. And the truth is they don't really train you in those more intensive things. You understand about mental illness, but what do you do about it is the hard part. And the part that I always felt was lacking. Well, and inside of a system like that, a large system, there's red tape everywhere, right? So there's, even if there are people with mental illness or know what to do for child specific needs because of all of the red tape and all of the process and procedures and chain of command and approval and all of the steps that it requires in order to get anything to happen, to actually happen. It takes weeks or months or however long that it takes. And by then it's like the child has moved on to a new classroom or. Yeah, so that's always the conundrum. And when I talk to teachers or like talking to Caroline last week or talk to you, it's like all of these teachers, they care. They want to do more. But it's like their hands are tied in a lot of situations. Well, and the truth is, even those of us in the special education department, which is the deadlines, the timelines, the first this, then this, then this, you know, that you got to get 40 signatures from the parent exaggeration before it's all done. Yeah. And so one of the things that the world created was response to intervention. Well, response to intervention is something that we've been doing in schools now for 15, 20 years, at least in Illinois. And but it's been focused on academics. Okay. of doing what you do in the classroom and trying your best with a student, maybe they get something like an intervention. We eventually say they're not making the progress. We need to refer them for an individual education plan. Yeah. And then I test, right? Well, through response to intervention, we have in place different types of reading, math, writing, Then if they're not making a certain amount of progress over time based on all of that extra, then it comes to me and I do an assessment. Of course, there are a lot of other pieces in there that don't have to do with academics. But what we haven't had in place the way we need to in schools, and it's because of time and because of money and because of personnel limitations. Lord, not in the schools I'm in. And so especially since COVID, people have finally become aware of the needs, and we're finally getting some money funneled into that. Where is that? So how are you now getting money funneled into that? Federal government has given funds. Of course, they have to be used for those specific things. people in charge to say yes to things that cost money that they didn't used to be able to. So even if nobody had talked to me and told me about those funds, I know because now people can say yes. And I know that it's taken seriously because they're saying yes. Okay, so there were things that you would ask for in the past to be done or an intervention to be made that you would, the red tape or the finances of the school, to invest in that kind of training, etc. And now you're getting yeses and you're getting to go do these trainings and so. Yes, and I don't want to say we didn't go to trainings or we couldn't, you know, do things. No, but specifically the social emotional ones. Yes, and especially for teachers. Yeah. I could go to trainings. Right. But again, then I'm the person running Let me go back about seven years because that was a key change for me. This changed my complete mindset, my complete career. People had been asking me for the 20 years before that, what do you think is going on? Why are these kids getting worse? Why are they having more issues? Why are all the problems that we saw exacerbated and more difficult? down to our children since the industrial revolution, the food, the water, and the air, and the things we touch. That's not helping. But those were the things I was trying to figure out. What is happening in these kids' little bodies that makes them dysregulated, which wasn't even a word we used then. And seven or eight years ago, I went to a training and it was on trauma. 15 or 16 and it was at least three or four years before COVID hit. Why do we measure everything by that? Well, it's a benchmark. We used to measure everything by 9-11. Yeah, that's true. So it was a trauma-informed training. Yes, and I went with a social worker that I worked with. I ended up working with her a long time and we went together and I really didn't have big of, sadly. Like trauma informed was not something. Yeah, traumatology was not a word I knew. I didn't know that was a word. It is the study of trauma. Yeah, it makes sense. And so and Dr. Bruce Perry coined that phrase in my mind, but you know, he's obviously studying that for years and years and years and is a great resource. And so I went to this training and they started off with a and then went straight into the brain science of trauma and how those little pathways are built in all of us. Yes, of course, here you have a wished for a neuropsychologist person sitting there listening and I'm getting, my body language must have been intense because I'm just sitting there like, that answers that question. I'm sitting next to Laura and Laura's like, what is going on with you? I'm like, this is the answer. Yeah. This is what I've waited to understand. It was, it was emotional. Don't get emotional. I didn't bring the tissues over. It was, it was very, I mean, I spent the day heightened, you know, and just now I can't look at you because, yeah. spoke, you know, as this person presented, I'm just, I'm just going through kid after kid after kid. And with that explains that one, that, oh, what could we have done? Yeah. And so this is the next question, of course, that people like me who do what I do are asking themselves, then what can we do? Yeah. And this particular training touched on that a little, but not very much. So I left beginning. It was the beginning spot. Awareness is the first step. Yes. And so very shortly after that, like by that was maybe spring, by the next fall, I had contacted the co-op I work for that basically rents me to these districts. Yeah. And you can always give them input into what trainings training your team in trauma. And so I put a team together in the district I'm in the most and it included myself and a counselor, two special ed teachers and two teachers. And I was excited that I had these people interested. And we went to these trainings on how to train your school because it was clear to me that if my mindset was changing, I needed people to understand. to understand how this was impacting their lives every day and the kids in their classrooms. And so we did the training that year. Everything's slow in education. The next year we trained our teachers and this is exciting to me. You know, when you're when you work in education, you have to get evaluated once you're at my level every two years. And so after we did the trauma evaluates me came and observed one of those. I mean, we had him going through the ACEs, you know, we had him understanding self care. What's ACEs? Oh, ACEs is... We don't know what that is. I'm sorry. So, oh gosh, I haven't talked about ACEs for a while. So that was a study done many years ago. I believe it was the 90s. And this was basically done by information for medical predictive purposes. And so they took a very non-inclusive group of people. It was basically middle class and basically white, which is one of the problems with the ACE. You know, we look at it a lot, but we need more tests. It's actually one of the problems with a lot of earlier studies was lack of diversity and lack of women being included in those studies. This had women, but it didn't have, had people who could afford health insurance. Yeah. And it had people basically from the middle class and a little above, I suppose. And they asked several questions on what happened to you. And the study showed that if you had, you know, two or more answers that were, yes, maybe it was my parent, one of my parents died, one of my parents was a drug addict, suffered from alcoholism, there was a divorce in the family. So it was questions about their childhood? Their childhood trauma up until age 18. Okay. And so then it and then there were other questions about about their lives, you know, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, etc. And so on. And if you fit into one of these 10 or 12 areas, I can't remember exactly how many, you know, then you obviously there are other traumas, which is another argument about the ACE. they have a lot of predictive value for your health later in life. If you had five or more, you would die 20 years younger on average. And of course, self-inflicted death is part of that. And carrying all that trauma. The trauma lives in your body. It lives in your muscles and fascia and bones. And then if it continues to be unresolved for years and years and years, it turns into disease. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Trauma training involves so many pieces. And self-care is one of them. And we wanted teachers to understand trauma is in the eye of the beholder. Yeah. So you can, and sometimes it's just witnessing a traumatic event. Sometimes it's not something that's that big a deal, but maybe it happens over and over and over again and it becomes a big deal. And nobody even notices that it's- Yes, it's prime example tiny things tiny things over and over and over again for many many many years unresolved Turns into sometimes you all you've been neglecting me in tiny ways for 20 years or you've been You know and then finally something topples that over and and and for children I mean divorce can be it's never smooth sailing because they're grieving for their family divorce are grieving for their family that they thought they would have. Well, and depending on, well, yeah, so I mean, people, the people, the parties who are splitting, obviously are grieving for the future that won't be there or the vision of the family that they wanted and didn't get. But children, especially depending on their developmental level, are struggling to even understand what divorce is or why mommy and daddy or daddy and daddy or mommy combination of parental names are no longer, you know, living in the same house. Like literally all the change is, can be traumatic. Yes. Just huge change alone can be traumatic for children. And if they are at an age where they don't understand it yet, there's an age of ignorance. And then there's an age of like some of that in between age where it's like, wait, what's happening and how does this world work? those difficult ages. I mean, they've even shown that adult children who are out of the house, it's a trauma for them because it's their whole view of their life. And identity and connection. So it's one of them. And some kids might have handled that smoothly and some kids may have struggled and struggled with that depending on the whole situation. So all these things. I buried it. I was did you bury anything really? I I I know that it maybe it never seemed like I buried it but I from 16 to 18 I buried it. I could see that. And I got cancer somewhere there. Oh that's mean. the divorce process. It took a couple of years and I remember, but I remember being ready for it and betting on it. And I had a bet with very cavalier. Yes. And I had a, and that was, that was and is to this day, not really anymore, but up until a couple of years ago was a coping skill But you, but I had bet Josh, I had a bet going with Josh that you would divorce before I graduated high school. And he thought that they would wait till Nathan, that you guys would wait till Nathan graduated high school. But nobody questioned. But nobody questioned that a divorce was happening. Except maybe Nathan. Yeah, I think he was caught off guard. I know he was caught off guard. is to pretend I didn't care and to dissociate. And that's an invisible coping mechanism. And I actually just did a talk last night explaining there was a meta-analysis of 53 studies done over the course of 20 years from 20, maybe it was the early 90s to just before 2020. And the meta-analysis was actually just done last year. So they took these 53 studies and it basically showed that parental influence, parental emotional regulation or dysregulation, parental behaviors affect children like across the board, no matter what there is an effect. But what they found was that the effects they could pinpoint almost non-existent. The only ones they could pinpoint were internal markers of shame, guilt, self-worth, lack of self-worth, lack of confidence, dissociation, those internal emotional things that kids just brew and sit in for years and years and years because they never learned healthy coping skills when they were little. They never learned how to move through an And even those little tiny, even something that seems so tiny and insignificant as their feelings being invalidated when they're three will then become an external coping mechanism when they're an adult. healthy emotional regulation skills, which translate into healthy relationship skills with their children and with themselves so that they aren't causing this invisible trauma for their children to deal with once they're grown and out of the house and on their own. And so, what were you saying? Well, just teaching those skills, I don't know what I was saying, but just teaching those skills when you're- Oh, wait a minute, I remember where I was, sorry. So this meta analysis was basically showing that that a lot of coping skills and traumas and maybe even microtrommas that children are experiencing, they're either showing up in school as struggling or struggling with their friends, but even more so than showing up in their behaviors at home, it's not even showing up until they're adults, which is the dangerous part of this is that, oh, well, my kid is fine. Oh, well, my kid doesn't care about that. Oh, well, my kid doesn't misbehave, so they must be fine. And that's like, that's the dangerous part of this. And especially for girls. Yep. Yeah. And what I was going to add to that was when you teach those skills, you know, when they're little, when you recognize those feelings and you teach those skills, they start to use them right away. It's not like they wait till they're grown up and then they remember them. They love them. They use them. They love them. I've had two, a two year old that I nannied for. I have had a two year old come to me and more than one, after I've taught them just like how to take a deep breath and let's take deep breaths together or whatever, when it's like I gave them the green cup instead of the blue cup and they have a full blown meltdown and every part of my body just wants to be like, Right. Like you just, your whole body reacts to what feels. But when you're two, you want choices. Right. So when you're two, you have no control of your life, and you have no idea what's going on. And all you wanted that day was a blue cup. And that's all your brain can process. And so as the adult, teaching her first, validating, oh, that's so frustrating. I didn't know you wanted the blue cup. I'm sorry. She's screaming and she's not really hearing me. And so I just sit with her and hold her hand and let her scream it out. And I just tell her, get it out, girlfriend. Get it out. And she gets it out and then I go, And with a two year old, you don't even have to tell them what to do. You just do it and they'll start copying you. They'll mirror it. Especially things that are your body. This feels really frustrating to me. And you just talk about your own experience of them screaming. You don't say you're screaming so it's upsetting me, but you just sit in your feelings and say, oh, this is so frustrating or I'm so mad right now and I'm maybe holding her hand and I just start deep breathing. a teeny tiny little baby will start doing it with you. And then the next time she was upset, I didn't teach it to her, I didn't verbalize it to her, I just did it in the moment. And the next time she was upset about something, she started screaming and crying. And then I came in the room to see what was wrong and she looked up at me and she went, And she was taking like these really intense her whole body was shaking and she was upset And she was clenching her fists I just remember and she just looked up at me and she was just like taking these deep breaths and when she was ready I just waited mm-hmm, and when she was ready. She was just like teddy bear isn't in my crib for nap time. And I can't find him. You know, and she told me what was wrong. And I was like, do you want me to help you find your teddy bear? And she goes, yeah. And then we went and found the teddy bear. And it was like, what just happened? Awesome. Well, you have to let them calm. And the breathing is what does it. I mean, we regulate the babies. Yeah. You know, our bodies, when they're itty bitty, We regulate them a lot for most of their life until they move out in different ways. Yes. Yes. And then when they're that age, you can start just having them mere breathe with you. And in schools, we teach it now. We teach it now. So you want me to go back to where I was? Yeah. So we were, let's see, we were talking about trauma informed care and you training. Training the teachers. Yes. was that, of course, regulation comes through things like yoga and mindfulness and the go noodle and YouTube, you know, getting up and moving by your desk. And you made a video for me of yoga for children. Oh my God, I forgot about that. I don't know how many teachers downloaded that. And so the second time... You could have made you pay for it. You should have stalled it to you. yoga mats and this was before COVID and way to store them. Yeah, I guess you can get them cheap and at least 30 of them. So for a school, that's a lot of money. And I had all of my grade school teachers pre K through fifth grade at a yoga training for 45 minutes. And that was that was my second observation. Now, this is from a person who 14 years before that, practicing meditation mindfulness. Yeah. And I have always walked and I do a lot of that when I walk because it regulates me. Yeah. And I would not have admitted that to anyone where I work. I didn't know. Or, well, no. And you'd, and I didn't know about it till I was struggling with my own mental health stuff in my twenties. That's when I told you. meditation and all these different like spiritual practices and just like breathing and being quiet and setting up a little sacred space where you can just go like a little safe space and like just be with yourself and I didn't know any of that like when I was growing up that that was. And then 14 years later I find myself teaching people to do it when all I have done was figure listening to audio tapes. I learned it by CDs. Audio tapes. Yes. Audio tapes. In my car with a cassette. Yes. This is not, it wasn't an 8 track. That was before my time. I think. So anyway, that. Before you had a car. Before I had a car. Definitely. I had a record player. So, yeah, I mean, it was a process, and now I can look back and I can see how my interest in that probably grew out of something I felt that needed to happen. Well, and maybe even drew you to school psychology to learn about kids. Yeah, could be. But it all of a sudden, I find myself, first of all, I don't wanna train people. Yeah, you're not a get up in front of people kind of person. That was not my goal. I, you know, I didn't want to speak in front of others and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I was fine at a meeting, but somehow if you stood up at a podium and started to talk in front of 30 people, that was different. It is different. Or 50 people or whatever it is. And so, so I... Well, now you're on a podcast. Look at you. Yeah, so, yeah. How did you do that? Yeah. No, it's, I'm getting used to it. So, you know, that's, that's where we went with it. And then we came up on, I found a program that was someone else doing a lot of the training. And then I added to that with, actually bribed my principal to do this. Can you say that? I just did. No, I think she would have done it anyway. Anyone wonders where I get my sass from? I added a little to it. And she wanted the best for her teachers anyway. Wait, hold on. Would you bribe her with? Because I know it wasn't a real bribe. It was a U of I thing. It was a stained glass U of I that came in a bar that we had purchased. OK, so you buttered her up. Sure. You got her a really nice gift. I said, then the year if we can start these trainings, this is your right. Look how pretty this is. I did. We may or may not have been drinking on the porch when that happened. But yeah, is that kind are we gonna have to cut all of that? No, I don't think so. She's we weren't drinking at school We would never do that No, yeah, we're talking about gift giving and drinking it was it was all in fun after hours It was all in fun and and educators are allowed to have drinks No, I know but the word bribe. Oh That was it was not a bribe. It was it was a gift And it was a thank you. It was a thank you. I wouldn't worry about this. No money changed hands. Rhymes don't have to be money. Quit it. I'm going to edit all of that. I'm going to piece together the good parts. Good. I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be great. So OK. So I had found this program and it sort of filled. And it came to me accidentally. just it was trauma-based and it was about relationship in school, about a school family instead of the factory concept of schools. And I'm going to tell you a little story. We love stories. A little story. When I was six, I was in first grade. And just pause for a second. he's doing but he needs to fucking stay. Can I blow my nose? Yeah. moving furniture. Then we moved our foot still over. I really didn't even notice it. I have to pick up on things because the shit comes through on the microphone and it's really obnoxious. Are they just walking? Let me go talk to him. Okay, we'll keep going. I'm gonna get a drink. That's fine. Sorry, Natalie. Okay, all right. So when I was six, I was in first grade and I had a teacher that I think in my mind was okay. You know, I didn't have a lot to compare to. And there was a little boy who sat in front of me and he did not smell good. He clearly came from a home where there was neglect. And one day he spilled his milk. complete accident. And this teacher not only yelled and screamed at him, she was making him clean up the milk, which is okay. Yeah. Natural consequence. Yes. A great natural consequence. But also an accident doesn't need a consequence anyway. I know. Just keep going. He started to clean it up and he bent over. And while he cleaned it up, she swung her arm and paddled him the entire time. This was back up until I was in about eighth grade. You could hit kids in school. And I have never forgotten that. Not only did she abuse him verbally and physically, she shamed him. In front of everyone. In front of everyone. And it traumatized me enough that I have never forgotten it. And I can't really tell you another memory that's clear about first grade. not in that classroom. I mean, there's a little bit of Dick and Jane that runs through my head, but there's no clear memory. Yeah. Just that. And also that I never liked her after that. Yeah. I knew that. And in my home, we did not treat people that way. Yeah. And that I knew as well. I have no idea if I told anyone about it. I don't know any of those things. just watching it. Yeah. Well, it's just like reading or watch like the George Floyd video or whatever. Like you, it is well proven that trauma, secondary trauma occurs by witnessing horrible things, whether it happened to you or not. It's why I can't watch certain movies, I publicly apologize for it because about four or five years ago, I started to notice myself. I quit watching super violent, you know, super horror, like horror movies, like scary movies, always kind of stuck with me, but I also kind of like, I liked curling up with a boyfriend or whatever and watching them, you know, and like being scared or going to haunted houses. I've learned what my body, you know, I'm very in tune with my body and my emotions now. And the last four or five years, I have stopped letting those things into my life. Like I do not feed those things to my brain anymore because it's literally unnecessary trauma. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah. Well, yeah, I forgot what I was going to say. But it's, oh, and once I had kids. Yeah. I could handle even less because every parent's biggest fear is the natural consequence of your kid steps in front of a bus. Those are scary, scary thoughts. And if you watch a movie about something horrible that happens to a child, I can't even read those books anymore. So there are things we know not to do to our brains. And we learn it as we get older. sooner and younger and it's having an impact. Back to what I was training my teachers in. I keep losing my train of thought with that. So. That's okay, that's what we do. We went through it. We're highly supportive of ADHD, tangents on this podcast. And we got about two thirds of the way through it. And these trainings and COVID happened. Here's what happened after COVID. Everything changed. We could not all be in the same room together. movement things and all were out. We changed hands. There were different people in charge of our buildings. We, some of our buildings, like different administrators, we lost a lot of our people. Yep. There was a lot of turnover for all kinds of reasons. COVID was very hard on kids, but also on thought that the first year after the original March date was tough, but honestly, the year after that was even harder. Yeah. And I think it was just the culmination. 21, yeah. Yeah, 21, 22 school year. Still, and yeah. Yes. And you were in some kind of a limbo area where you didn't know what to do and you still had to do these things. And there was all this testing and masks and all this stuff. fear. And polarization on both sides and parents who are... Yes, there were all those issues. I don't want to put my kid in a mask, and I only want my kid in a mask. Right, and so it was just a lot of stress. And that became the focus. Not, and it wasn't that people didn't continue to do some of the things they had learned, and it wasn't that their mindset changed. It was just that they were busy trying to just survive. Yeah, survival mode. And that's kind of what the kids, in a whole different mindset themselves. Some of them had been in bad situations. Older kids had learned that they can just do work online and not really do work. And so why should they come to school? I'll just keep doing work online. Well, there's also kids who learned that they learned better online and by themselves. There are. We didn't see a lot of those. I've seen those. I've seen kids who benefited and quit going to school do online school, like there's online public schools because they can whip through their stuff in three hours and have the rest of the day to be a kid. In my district, what we saw was kids who might have wanted to do that came back anyway because they wanted to be at school. Yeah, there's a social aspect to it. But the kids who were staying home, at least any of the ones I was aware of, were the ones with their executive brain to do the work. Well, so they weren't getting what they needed at school. Well, no, they weren't getting what they needed online, but they also found that as a reason not to come back to a place where things are just hard for them anyway. Because the kids I'm working with, school's hard. Well, but that's what I mean is like a kid who was struggling in school before the pandemic, who has then now doesn't have to struggle and maybe their gift isn't school academics. Their gift might be building stuff or whatever. It could be. And the Caroline in our last episode shared the analogy of if you try to make a fish climb a tree, they're going to fail every time. They're going to fail your test, right? And so measuring a child. So anyway, I can see a child who struggles at school, feels embarrassed or ashamed all the Absolutely. And not every student can have a one-on-one teacher 24 hours a day, which is what some kids need. I can see them being like, that system does not work for me. Why would I want to go back to that? Now we do offer in one of my schools basically an online version in school where you're not in classrooms and you have someone to help guide you. kind of thing that we offer and that has worked well for certain kids. Yeah. Is that like a computer, like a separate computer lab? Well, it's on computer. I mean, it's but it's it is not a lab. It's just a room designed for that. So is it considered a special education room? No, not at all. Okay. And then do they transition and like do lunch and break stuff? It's basically a for a while they weren't participating in other things. Now I think other than lunch, now they are. It's been different every year and it's not something I'm directly involved in so I don't want to say oh it's been this or that all the time because I don't really know. But I do know it has seen success. Yeah. It's you know kids who we know they have the skill but they are not able, need a special ed classroom at all because they have the skill differently, but they are not able to keep. They don't have the executive skills to perform what they know. Yeah, and so those kids are doing better in that kind of a setting. Yeah, so I thought that was a pretty creative way to help kids get through the high school piece and again, this is a small town. So you don't have five avenues that that there was not one. I'm like that. Well, we also have we'll you know, LTCH or you know, we'll bus you over to Lincoln and you can do, you can learn to be a chef or you can learn to be a nurse's aide or you can learn to do mechanics or computer tech, you know, half a day. But of course, you have to have your basic credits to do that. Yeah. And so there have always been those options. But we don't have, it's pretty much you're on track to go to college or have their limitations. And what my goal has been is, can I help this kid in the last seven years? Can I help this child learn to regulate themselves? Can I help these teachers learn to teach the kids after they have regulated themselves to then regulate the children and to use encouragement and natural consequences? And if they know the skill and they're connected and some logical consequences to motivate, but not just say, you did this, now this happens. You know, there's so many techniques and the more kids need choices, the kids who are so out of, who don't have any control in their lives, like the two year old, but they might be 14, or they might be eight, and emotionally they're still stuck how to regulate their emotions. Yeah. Or they come from a home where there's abuse or all kinds of situations. There's all kinds of abuse, yes, where it's either, you know, I'm going to take you out or I'm not even going to notice you. Yeah. Those opposites. Mm-hmm. And we wonder why they're angry. Yeah. And can't focus in class. Mm-hmm. Or there's kids who aren't getting meals at home and their only meal is school lunch or like, there are kids that are out there like stressing. this and not finishing up and not being able to implement like we wanted. I still have teachers, even the ones that had the training, they wanna do it again. They're trying to, other teachers are interested because they've heard about it, the new ones. And cause it's working. When they do it, it's working. And I walk into a classroom in my grade school of a teacher who ran with it and it's a beautiful thing. to see. And I don't even think they realize how wonderful they are. And like there was a little boy in one of those classrooms and trying not to, you know, put anybody on the spot. And he came in, you know, with counseling minutes and couldn't regulate his emotions very well. And he learned to go to the calming place and to hold a little doll that had the doll that he held and he learned when he needed to, to go there and do it and breathe and calm himself down and he no longer has an IEP and this just started in the fall. What were his, so what were his, how did he show emotional dysregulation in the classroom and then was there anything else besides him going by himself to a calming corner? Because there's also, I have been a fan of the calm corner or the safe place versus a timeout or a rejective separation. Well, there were lots of supports for that. And one of them was that the counselor taught him the skills. The teacher reinforced the breathing and the skills. So he knew when he was calm what to do and how to go through the steps. beginning of the year, he would get very dysregulated, maybe very angry, very fast. What did that look like? Specifically, I would call it a mild meltdown. Was he screaming? Was he throwing things? Was he attacking other kids? He did not get aggressive to other kids. He was angry with himself. I think that at times he would do little things to hurt himself, but mostly he was crying and yelling. in the classroom. But like at the teacher. I just want to paint a clear picture. It just depended on the situation because it wasn't always one thing. Okay. But he, you know, he also had a teacher who could see his body language. You had a very expressive face. That's helpful. So yes. And so you could see. You could see it coming. He would start to get, his body would get more dysregulated. So there would be more movement. You might get a little pound on the desk or something like that. attempt that step in while he was in his emotional brain and to do the calming with him and remind him of what he could do with the breathing and preempt for him. So she was teaching him in the moment that he could go ahead and calm himself and helping him do that and it didn't take long. And look, this cracks me up. So another little girl joined the class, I think it was after Christmas or and he was basically letting the adults that he deals with know that he felt like she could use the calming corner. And he was like, I love it when other kids do that. They learn a skill and then they can identify it in other kids. Yes. And one of the things that, and some of my teachers look at me funny, like I'm crazy, but I'm the only one that does it. So I got to say it. I can't rely on someone else to say it. And I'll be like, if you get a kid, a new kid in your classroom about getting them to do work. Expect it, promote it, encourage it, focus on your relationship and focus on their relationship with their peers and have the peers do some of those things that they know how to do with each other and problem solving with each other, conflict resolution. Do that in your classroom with him or her first because the rest of this isn't gonna mean anything him or her. Well, and the work will never happen if all you do is focus on the work. It'll be a constant struggle. You're going to set them off. There's going to be a meltdown and nothing will get done. You have to build a relationship with somebody before you're going to go anywhere. And so relational parenting, relational schooling. We are as always kind of on the same path. Yeah. I remember. going through my yoga teacher training, my first one, back when you, or maybe I was in my second one, I had maybe started my second one. Yeah, because I had graduated my first one and then I had started my, my 500 hour. So I was a certified yoga teacher at this point in time and you had reached out to me and asked me, you had just started getting in the schools. And I was like, that's so cool because I'm like getting trained in all of this stuff now. And I was working with, I was working at that time in the youth, at risk youth juvenile facility. Yes. And I was teach and I was working with boys ages 14 to 21 who had been put in juvenile lockdown for crimes And I mean, these boys, I got myself an education from these boys because I grew up in small, white, middle America cornfields. And these boys towered over me and they were, they had grown up in extremely traumatic environments and were all, every single one of them had a gang affiliation and et cetera, et cetera. me. And I went in there as humble as possible, knowing that I didn't know jack shit about their lives and what they'd been through. Like I couldn't even imagine it on my worst day. And I went in there and I forged relationships with these kids and I listened to their stories. And I was terrified. But I was also I was also pretty confident. Like I was calm, I was humble, maybe determined is a more accurate word, not confident. When you come by that now. Determined and humble and, but I'm also a person who doesn't put up with bullshit. Well, and with a group like that, they need to know that early on. Well, and so I learned real quick, like I had kind of a great personality for that work an understanding of almost any situation and any motivation behind doing something, doing whatever action it is. But I'm also like, cut the crap. And that those two sides of that coin, you know, just happened to be what kids in that situation need in a lot of ways. But anyway, administrator if I could start holding Saturday meditations. I always worked Saturdays. I worked a 14 hour shift on Saturdays. And so every night after dinner, I think it was like six o'clock or whatever, the kids, the boys who wanted to come do meditation with me, we would meet in one of the sitting rooms on their block. And I would walk them through And then if any of them, you know, a few times one of them would stay behind and like talk to me about what like happened in there in their meditation with me and we'd process together. But I was so I was going through my I had graduated my first yoga teacher training. of everyone for these mindfulness practices and trauma-informed training and all of that. And you asked me if I would put together like a 15 minute yoga movement thing for kids in the classroom. That they could do like right next to their desk. At their desk. So I had to put something together where we weren't like on a yoga mat and doing all kinds of fancy shit. It had to be. We got them yoga mats later, but they didn't have them yet. We can stand up and take a break right next to our desk and then sit back down and refocus, right? And so I created a sequence and videotaped it for you and I was just like, I felt so crazy and silly doing it. But- I wouldn't believe how many people showed that too, like in trainings, like not just that school. Yeah. So did that and then, and that was the first time I was like, oh, we're like, we're kind of learning the same things right now. last seven or eight years, every time you come to visit and we're talking about the stuff that you're doing in schools, it's always kind of aligned with what I'm learning and doing in my life. So I went on to be a social worker. Kind of blows me away, really. Yeah. The parallel growth. And I believe in like there's a collective consciousness and especially with the internet and social media, information spreads and like there's, you And that just means that a lot of people are becoming aware of the same thing, right? And so you... How we align. I went on, so then I went on to, I was a social worker for a few years, working with adults with disabilities, and then, you know, used my psychology and all of that in conversations with you, and then, and I, you know, wrote behavior plans and implemented, it wasn't called an IEP, because I wasn't working in a school, but I would place adults with disabilities certified homes in the community to take care of them that were that had been trained on how to care for someone with that specific disability. And I was the trainer. So I would train new host home providers that were the host homes in the community. And I would, I also recruited host home providers, I would train them. And then I would also match a client to a home and their preferences. And that's important. Yeah. And so I was, I was the matchmaker, but I also then had to do all these evaluations of the client upfront so that we could train the home provider on all of their needs. And I would write behavior plans and I would write like daily, gosh, the technical terms are slipping my mind. But anyway, I was basically doing a lot growing up and what a school psychologist does and evaluations and assessments. And I was basically doing that for adults with disabilities and specific needs and all of the things. And then I left that profession to go back to being a professional nanny. And I started reading new parenting books and reabsorbing new studies and information. again. And it was like every time you came to visit every year, we would we would like talk in depth about what we were doing in our lives. And it was like we were we were just growing alongside each other like kind of learning the very similar things at the same time. Ways to regulate our bodies and help others do it, right? Well, and the importance of the importance of the emotional and mental wellness, parenting and you took it into teaching from the school's perspective, teaching it to teachers and counselors and administrators. Because they're also primary caregivers. They become primary caregivers. They are with those children seven, eight hours a day, depending on classroom rotation. and conflict resolution, et cetera, they're not just going to quit doing it. They're gonna take that with them. For the rest of their lives. The rest of their lives. And if they're a trauma child, a child that's experienced a lot of trauma, all they really have to have in their life is one key person each year. It doesn't have to be the same person. But if they don't have that one person them with all of these issues. One safe person. Very safe. Yes. A safe, reliable person. That they have connected with emotionally. That they have a true relationship with. It can make all the difference. that that is something that I didn't say early on because I hadn't even been trained yet myself. So I didn't really get that. But as I've done the first training and then we had COVID, I now this year, I'm training my other district because I had a goal. If I'm retiring, I need to get this done. And we have done five of six trainings, is a lot of time for a school to devote because you don't get that much. You know, there aren't that many days where the teachers don't have kids where they can do that training. And so I totally appreciate that. And on one of those days, we kicked it off with not only my training, but we had a person come in and do mindfulness as well, who does it all the time and to teach how to do it with students better. that I have to start with A lot of you people are parents and I want you to know that when I did this the first time and we started our training, I got texts, emails, and crying teachers in the hallway saying they weren't good parents. And I understand that. And so I sent out an email to the entire grade school and said, hey, this isn't saying you've been doing things wrong. This is saying we have learned more information. And we are going to change our mindset to do it differently and to make you aware. It doesn't mean that you've been wrong. These are people who are good parents, right? But a lot of young parents. with that explanation. That was the very first thing I did, because I didn't want people to sit there and feel smaller and smaller. restate that. I knew that was gonna happen. I could hear him read that. I'm gonna give an example of you. I'll be everyone's favorite. I just want to check. It'll be a very neutral one. So we'll do an example and then we'll start to kind of rip it up. Yeah, tie a bow on it. Yep. I think we're about there. So the first thing I did with these teachers was basically let them know that they were good parents and that this was not a reflection on them and that hopefully this will just give them some good ideas. Well, and once you, I think this will be the third time we've quoted Maya Angelou with the, when you know better, you do better. Yes. And so it's not an opportunity, like learning something new and reflecting on what you've been doing up until this point, like reflect, yes, great, okay, step forward into that new idea, that new problem solving technique, or better way, healthier way of doing things, but spending a ton of time lamenting about the past when you had no idea. Yeah, I mean, there's no point you didn't know you're human, like you didn't know you don't know what you don't know. Right. So anyway, Yeah, so that that's what I started with. And I thought, well, the best way to really instill this in them is I will I could have done better, knowing what I know now. Right? This is about me. This is about all of you. Just a simple example where I know every parent sitting there has experienced something like this. So I used the car example. And every parent, every mother, has been driving along with one, two, or three kids in the car. Or more. And heard these things coming from the backseat. We're gonna say my three kids are five seven and ten. All right and the middle one the girl I could easily have heard Josh is touching me or Say it the way I would have said it Josh is going to touch me There that was a favorite right However, because he'd go like this. Yeah, he he'd hold it right in front of you armrest because I happened to take my arm off of it for half a second and he knew that I wouldn't touch his foot in order to get him off the armrest. So he knew how to get a reaction. So that's what I might hear and then I might also hear Nathan doesn't have his seat belt on because in my car you damn well better have your seat belt on right? Also I was concerned for his safety. Yes now I am not saying you did anything wrong. Because I didn't. No you did not. So here's what I would have done back then. I know I would have I would have said I start with yeah start with what you did do Yes, what I what I did do often I'm sure because I remember many of these circumstances is Say Josh, do you need to sit on your hands? basically. And then I would have said, Nathan, you need to get your seat belt on right now. I'm going to pull over and help you get it on if I don't hear that click. And you're not going to like it. Right? Flashbacks. Exactly. And then I might have even said to you, you need to stop with that. Because there was a lot of voice in our opinion, right? Because that's what you did. You had that anxiety about things and you told me you were... Well, it wasn't anxiety. It was like they were purposefully torturing me. Yes. But I got in trouble for telling my trusted adult like I'm being tortured. So here's what I would do differently now. I would say I would completely ignore Joshua You, the victim. How do you feel about that? Did you like that? What do you think about that? And you would say, no, I don't like that, or something to that effect. And then I would say, then say, Josh, I don't like it when you pretend to touch me. Next time, keep your hands to yourself, assuming it's a hand, whatever it is. It's always his foot. And then I would have had you practice it. And at first it would have been, Josh, keep your hand to your, and then eventually you would have said it. and you would have said it in the correct way. And all of my focus was on you and teaching you how to say it to him in a conflict resolution kind of way. Can I add a piece real quick? Absolutely, I'm not done yet, but go ahead. Oh, I know, but so for me, for what I teach, and it's different, because I work directly with parents, you know, in those situations, and you work with a school system The thing that I would have done first is... identified and validated how I was feeling. Whether I'd said it or not, I was complaining about him, right? So I'm clearly frustrated. And I need someone, I need someone to reflect that back to me and validate it for me so that I know you are a safe place and now I can open my ears and listen to you versus now I'm going to get in trouble because I opened my mouth. So from the front seat, it would have, it would have been for me, it don't like it when Josh puts his foot up on your armrest, do you? And I would have been like, no, I don't like it. Or like you said, you could have asked, how does that make you feel? But first saying, like as the adult, you knew how I was feeling. You could stop and pause and go, that sounds like she's frustrated. I knew. And I could have gone that route. I especially would have, would go that route now if you were further into it. And why not? Well, I mean, if I felt like you really needed to see that yourself, I may not have felt that you were that far into it at that point. And of course, this is also something that may have happened 10 times in one car ride. So it might not have been. I'm not talking about. a super emotional experience. Well, so it doesn't need to be. Right. And this is how I teach parents to respond to their children is if they are not coming to you with a feeling. So here's the comparison that I make. When you are married or partnered or committed looks like. The way that you are counseled to bring an issue to your partner is you bring your emotion. You don't bring an accusation. You don't bring a, you did this. I'm feeling this. But you come to your partner and say, I'm feeling really frustrated right now. I'm feeling like resolution, like that, bringing up an issue to your partner and prefacing it with an emotion immediately gives your partner context to they have an emotional need that needs to be met. Not I'm being attacked and I'm going to stand up for myself. And where that, the reason that partnered people don't know how to do that is because they never learned how to do it when they were a kid because nobody ever did it for them. conflict in a healthy way is from our parents. And so anytime there's a conflict between the children, the parent has to model the emotion first, whether it's a huge crying, screaming fight, or the 10th time I'm telling you that he's put his foot on my armrest. Right. And so no matter how tiny it might seem, if we respond first by mirroring the to feel safe enough to hear your conflict resolution teaching. So, that's just- So you can recognize it or you can ask them to recognize it, but you need to recognize the feeling. Yes. And then you can give them the skill. You can give them the skill or depending on age and how many times you've already taught the skill. If it's the first time, you could ask once, what do you think you, how do you think you could talk to your brother to make that stop? seven or I don't remember what the ages you said but seven eight nine I am very much old enough to come up with a solution myself but if I'm very adamant that I don't know like and you haven't really taught it to me yet you know maybe this is a new concept for you at me at age seven then give me the answer right well if I'd have been doing this with you when you were two you And that's the thing I think parents also and teachers need to do this with a kid each year. Yeah. And, you know, we teach them how to read over and over and over and over again at different levels. You have to teach them the language to use at different levels. And so I would have done that with you. Yeah. That way, the guy in the back seat, first of all, he no longer gets the reaction from you. Yeah. And I'm completely ignoring him. stop tattling. I don't get shamed for doing what's natural. You are completely off the hook, but he's also not getting the little thing he was going for, which is dangling the bait in front of his sister and getting a reaction. That's what I'm saying is that the behavior disappears without you ever acknowledging the behavior. Yes. So you emotionally say, that sounds frustrating. What do you think you could say to your brother hours me to stand up for myself. And when I'm seven, maybe I have a parent doing that for me, but when I'm 25, there's nobody around to do that for me. Oh, sweetie, you just took my example. I'm sorry. No, I'm not. I'm not sorry. No. And I'll come back to you. And then I would have. So I would have empowered you and given you the words. And then I would have said to your little brother, it is my job to keep you safe. Right now, you are not safe in this car. Yeah. Would you like to put your seatbelt on, or would you like me to pull over and help you? Yes. Simply. So it's not a threat. And you don't need the threat. You have two choices. You have to have your seatbelt on. Yep. The expectation remains, you can do it yourself, or I can help you. Yep. And what I ended with that day with you was, I said, But if I had instilled that skill in her early on, we might have seen her standing up for herself without having to be, as an adamant, the only girl among the boys. Pushing back. Pushing back. Against everything. But also I said, don't you want, you know, if the example is, I don't like it when you touch me next time, keep your hands to yourself, don't we all want to send our daughters off had a teleboy. I don't like it. And then if they tattle, they're not going to get in trouble. Yeah. So it's a simple thing, but that skill of and what I did was what parents like a simple thing, but but it's not. Yeah. And what I did was I took control for all of you. Yep. I was used to running around and making sure everybody was okay and everybody was safe. And you do this, you do this, And I'm not saying that we didn't have a lot of emotional connection and a lot of cuddling and all those things and recognizing feelings, but a lot of times it had to hit a different level. Conflict resolution is where, like there was love and connection and like understanding and we talked about our feelings, but when it came to conflict resolution, it was like, what can I do in this moment to make this stop now instead of, here's a teaching moment. Well, that's like, that is the, like the parental mindset of, I don't want my kids to be fighting. I need this to stop right now. I'm driving. I don't want to get distracted. I've got one kid without a seatbelt on and you've got 40 things going on. Right. And there's this urgency. Yes. And so teaching parents how to, call it like how to self-regulate that urgency. Yes. Right? Yes. How to be safe in their own bodies and know that nothing disastrous is going to happen right now. Well, teaching them the skills of what to do. Yeah. They need to go. Well, but they can't do that from an urgent place. You've got to do it from a calm place. They have to be in their intellectual executive brain to do it. And so when you're hanging out right here where you are not reacting primitively, but you're also not reacting executively, you have to breathe, to calm yourself, to get yourself back up there. You're an autopilot. You've got to get out of autopilot. Okay, I'm going to address this first, and then I'm going to address that, and then we're going to address this, and we're not going to threaten, we're not going to shame, we're not going to make anyone wrong in this situation, because every one of them has their feelings, and we just need to take care of each person. And if I had advice for parents today, it would be, give your kids time to lay on their backs and look at the stars and have a conversation. because they don't get time to think and feel and just experience who they are. And I was guilty of letting you be in everything you all wanted to be in and taking you there and running everyone around. And I don't think it's bad to be involved. I think it's really good. But they're busy, busy, busy. They're busy, so parents are stressed, kids are stressed, little humans. Well, and we also, I think one of my biggest regrets from my childhood is we did not have family dinners. Oh, mine too. We never, we never sat down and ate a meal unless it was Christmas or Thanksgiving. We were occasionally on a Saturday, but we were running. Yeah. We were running everywhere. And we tried really hard. I tried to keep Sunday. to Sunday. I mean, we at least had to go to Sunday school, go to church, come home and have lunch, and then we collapsed. Right? Or we had plans with friends or like they're, and when we got older, there was tournament, you know, tournaments and this and that, you know, so many things. But yeah, that involved but not over scheduled. Let them be bored is what I tell parents. Yes. Let them be bored. I want to tell you this, and then we really do have to wrap up, but I remember growing up, we grew up out in the country, we didn't live in town, and I remember giving, we all gave you such a hard time for that. Because all we wanted was to be close enough to our friends to be able to run out the back door, jump on our bikes and go, because I would hear stories of all my friends getting together because they didn't need their parents to drive them there or whatever. And I was just always like, grass is always greener. no appreciation for the wide open spaces that I had. And in whether it was the summers, but it was the warmer months and you it was a summer, I think I was like 1011 ish. I you had we had the Kali pups. Yeah. And Nathan and I had gone out, we lived on three acres. It wasn't all our land. Some of it belonged to the neighbor, but we lived on a big open field with big trees and we'd climb trees and like it was beautiful. And we went out back and Nathan and I went and we got the puppies and we brought them to the backyard with these two giant trees that gave like provided so much shade in the backyard. And we laid down in the cool grass and the puppies ran all over us and I have this vision of like looking up under the tree and seeing the speckles of the sky. Probably can't hear me when I'm back there talking like that. I had this vision of looking up from under the tree and seeing the speckles of sky and sunlight through the leaves. And I was laying on cold grass and these puppies were these tiny little like six week old puppies just like running all over us and me and Nathan are just laying there giggling and they're nibbling And that is like, it is a visceral memory for me. And it's one that I, I led a women's circle a couple of weeks ago and I had everyone, we did a re-parenting meditation and re-parenting the self. And I had everyone go into a meditation and pick a place from there, pick a scene from their childhood that was their safe place. gonna cry. And when I was putting together that meditation, that is the image and to this day and prior to that, that is the image that when I picture my childhood, that is the image I picture. And so like, you know, and Lewis and I, we've moved out of the city and we're still in, you know, a little bit of suburbia, but we've got a little bit of land and we've got, you know, a field. We've got some breathing room. And we're moving more and more towards that open spaces. And, You know it's interesting. The point is I appreciate pieces of my childhood that I had no idea. how much it mattered, that time to just be a kid, that time to just lay in the grass with puppies, to just lay outside and feel nature and be a kid. And there were no cars honking, there were no neighbors making noise. It was just me and the wind and the grass and the dogs and the trees and my little brother and giggles. could remember their entire childhood and never have a moment like that where it was just quiet in nature and joy. You see, it was really important for me to give you that because those pieces in my childhood were when I had puppies, which was one time. You had a horse. And when I was riding on the back of a horse, for two years and then it was over, you know, it's hard to give up something you've had that was perfect. But those, when I was on the back of a horse, that is when I thought through things that I don't think kids often get a chance to think through. You know, and in between the thinking there was now I'm gonna gallop, you know, and so I wanted you, I wanted you guys to have that you told me about that because I didn't know that. I hoped that you would remember those things. Yeah. You don't know. Um, is there any, are there any last pieces that we didn't cover that you feel you want to share? I think If I was gonna say anything more about the school issue, it would be that when I think back to behavior plans I created before trauma, the things that, and as I thought through examples to tell my teachers about of kids who were extreme, kids who would organize a stoning of other kids, kids who were extreme, the things that helped those kids, the two things that I might have done right, not understanding what was going on with them and the trauma they'd experienced, were getting in a true relationship with their teacher and also having a job in school. purpose but also that only does a job build self-esteem it keeps you in your executive brain. Yeah, keeps you focused. And so having a reason to stay in their executive brain and having a relationship of trust and safety were the two things that got those kids through that I learned to write into sometimes it But those were the things. And so I have kept that knowledge and added all of this other stuff to it. And those are the plans that I write now. And I feel like, Finally, there are some differences being made that might be permanent for those kids. I have hope. Yeah, because you, we were talking a little bit before this, saying that you write behavior plans now based on the need behind the behavior, versus we just need the behavior to stop. Yes, instead of focusing on- We need to identify what that child's needs are and meet those needs and then the behavior stops. And you know, and I don't blame them. at me when I say, well, if this child needs, if they crave attention from an adult, that's what we should give them. We should give it to them all the time when we can give it to them positively. When they're regulated. Yeah. We should give them that attention. And again, we struggle with that in schools just because of personnel issues. But you're going to give anyway. How about we do it positively and then you're going to see the negative behaviors go down and you build in a lot of other structures with it. But once you know, for me, it's targeting that need, the function of their behavior. And you also know that there's going to be that dysregulation piece there too and that can be very strong or that can be very mild address the function of their behavior and give them what they need. If I don't eat lunch, I get hungry. So let me eat lunch. That's a good one. So that would be my advice. Figure out what they really need. Let that be the battle cry of the parental and education revolution. food and drink and sleep. Awesome. A lot of love. Well, thanks for doing a podcast. I love you. I love you. All right, everybody, thank you for being here. I hope that you picked up plenty of wonderful nuggets from my mama. And we will see you next week for episode four of the Education Series. And as always, if you have any questions, please go to the YouTube channel and leave a comment there. doing on different podcast episodes. So, all right, bye everybody.