#66 "Unveiling the Truth: Stories of Vulnerable Youth and the Importance of Community Support" with Lucy EM Black

Empowering Vulnerable Youth: Community Support and Solutions with Lucy Black

In this powerful episode of Parenting Teens: Advice Redefined for Today's Complex World, we dive deep into the challenges faced by vulnerable youth and the vital role of community support in transforming their lives. Join host Cheryl as she speaks with celebrated author Lucy Black, whose book "Class Lessons" sheds light on the real stories of teens grappling with abuse, cultural divides, and mental health crises.

Lucy shares her extensive experience as an educator and administrator, discussing the importance of community partnerships in schools and how they can provide essential resources for teens in need. From addressing mental health issues to creating safe spaces for marginalized youth, this episode is packed with insights and actionable solutions for parents and educators alike.

Whether you're a parent looking to better understand the struggles your teen may face or an educator seeking to make a difference, this episode is a must-listen. Discover how you can be a part of the change and support the vulnerable youth in your community.

Cheryl 

00:00 - 00:50

Deanna was being abused by her stepmother. Addie was being abused by her stepfather. Riza was a student from out of country who was really struggling with the cultural divide and how our public education does not address the gap between the moral values and disciplinary actions and how life goes in a completely different culture when they come over to our country. Sydney, her mom was being physically abused by her dad, but felt like they had nowhere to go, no financial resources. These are just a few of the stories in this book, Class Lessons by Lucy Black.

Cheryl 

00:50 - 01:30

And as we continue into this episode, you know, these are not one-off stories. This is how some kids, way more kids than we even like to count are living off every day all day. This is their experience. And Lucy has created this book so that not only are the stories shared, but also there are ways to help these kids. There are ways to help these families and it means our community, reaching out to our community. It doesn't mean throwing our hands up in the air because the politicians aren't doing anything or the boards aren't doing anything or the ministry can't do anything and saying, oh well I tried.

Cheryl 

01:31 - 02:18

No, that's not what Lucy's about. Lucy is about sharing different opportunities for collaboration between communities to whether it's ministerial or social work or even, you know, families who are not Experiencing these things who can step in and help so these stories will move you. I Highly recommend you read this book, especially if you are an educator I think it's I think it's a must read and as an educator 25 years in the public school system I can tell you that I could have put a different name on just about every single story. So that's how prevalent this is and this epidemic of kids who are just not being able to be kids.

Cheryl 

02:18 - 03:07

So I thank Lucy for writing the book and I thank her for meeting with me and you will thank her too. After you hear this episode, if you never share another episode, I would ask you to share this with anyone you know who is in the school system. Let's dive into this. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice, Redefined for Today's Complex World. And today I am so honored to have Lucy Black, celebrated author of Class Lessons, Stories of Vulnerable Youth. In her book, Lucy brings to life the challenges faced by youth on the margins and how community efforts can play a transformative role in their lives.

Cheryl 

03:07 - 03:25

In this episode, we'll explore the vital role of community school partnerships in supporting our vulnerable youth. Drawing on the poignant stories from her book, We will dive into what needs to change, who can help make it happen, and how we can start helping today. Welcome, Lucy Black.

Lucy - Guest

03:26 - 03:27

Thank you so much.

Cheryl 

03:28 - 03:47

I'm so glad to have you here, Lucy. Before we launch into everything, I really want everyone to know who you are, what's the point of the book. There's the book, read the book. But what's the point? And I'm gonna let you start so people know who you are.

Lucy - Guest

03:48 - 04:59

Okay, how far back should we go? I was a career educator. I came into public education from the corporate world where I was a corporate trainer. And after being a classroom teacher for a number of years, I became a facilitator and then became a vice principal and a principal. So I had 29 years working for a public school board in a number of schools, from communities with really high new Canadian populations and communities with low socioeconomic demographics to quite wealthy school communities. These stories come out of my experience. I've been retired for 7 years, And I found, even in retirement, I was still thinking about some of these girls in particular, and wondering if they'd found a safe place and how they were doing.

Lucy - Guest

05:00 - 05:48

And I'm a writer, I have a number of published books, and so I began writing short stories just to sort of work out my own emotions and my own experiences. My writer colleagues convinced me that these stories might give interest to a greater public and might be helpful in terms of training new men, training new teachers, and also advocacy. And so, I pulled the collection together and I'm just so grateful that Demeter Press, which is a feminist press out of Ontario, also thought that the collection had some merit. And so there it is.

Cheryl 

05:49 - 06:31

Well, thank you for doing what you did. Having some merit, I think, is totally understating what's happening here. And I'll say we have a few things in common. I, too, was an educator in the same school board for 28 years. The difference is I was in the same school for 25 years at the end of it. And reading these stories, Sadly for me, it was all so familiar. It was, there was the same story, but a different name, but a different name, but a different name over my years of being in the high school. And I think that's what hit me first.

Cheryl 

06:31 - 07:14

It's like, these are not one-off stories. This is what actually happens. This is what our vulnerable youth are actually experiencing. And not for a week or a day, but this is their lives. This is all they know. And to bring these to light, I think, and when you say trained staff, the first thing I thought reading it was, teachers need to read this. Teachers, 1000% need to read this, because sometimes, you know, we graduate from university and we go directly into teaching and we live in this bubble And this is never a slam on teachers, because I was 1.

Cheryl 

07:14 - 07:50

But if we are not out there in the real world, if we're not dealing with all different aspects of life, sometimes we sit in this bubble and we're completely ignorant to what some of the situations our kids, like as an adult looking at these stories, I don't know how I would manage. And to be 13, and to be 15, and to be 17, like I just get blown away by it. And again, people looking at this, reading this book who are not in the education system could easily be going, no way, no way. This feels like a Netflix series.

Cheryl 

07:50 - 08:41

Listen, way, this is what's happening. And this is the importance of this podcast episode because Lucy has some really great solutions and has noticed some solutions that have already worked. And we really wanna get this out into the world because this can really make or break, literally save a life, literally just save a life. And if we're talking about saving the life of a teen, what better way to try and do that? There's just no other reason. So Lucy, as I went through this book, and I know you confidentially put different names to different kids, but tell us first before we start going through some of the stories, what do you actually mean by community partnership?

Cheryl 

08:41 - 08:42

What does that even mean?

Lucy - Guest

08:46 - 10:01

What takes place in a school building is a reflection of the extended community that it serves. And I think that's important to note. That's important to note. And reaching out into that community as an administrator to say, hi, I'm the principal, I'm new, how can I support you? What do you think your community needs for your kids? And forging those partnerships was really vital to my work as an administrator and had an overwhelming amount of community support for that approach. So little things like partnering with the community library and inviting them in on grade 9 orientation day so that every grade 9 student gets a free library card and is told that they're welcome to come do their homework at the library after school and that there's going to be somebody available to help them and that they're not afraid of teenagers and you know, come with your friends.

Lucy - Guest

10:01 - 10:49

We want to be a helpful hub. So little things like that can really, really make a difference to the kinds of supports that are available to young people and to how young people are perceived in the broader community and how the school's perceived in the in the broader community. So I needed a practice to reach out to the mayor, members of municipal council, the library, the churches, any of the large community organizations or employers, to see how I could work as principal with those community leaders to enhance the offerings that we had for our students and to forge really tight links with the community.

Lucy - Guest

10:50 - 10:52

And that's work that I'm really proud of.

Cheryl 

10:53 - 11:44

You know, as soon as you said library and you said little things like that, I right away pictured a student who mom and dad work all day, all night, and he's trying to get marks to get to college or university, but the second school's out and he goes home, he has 4 siblings to babysit and make dinner for and look after and be responsible for. So is not able to get anything done. This would have changed his life. Potentially. Yeah. So, you know, We think sometimes we think little things, but when in the eyes of a student would change everything, let's not, you know, as a listener, don't like diminish the little things because they could just be massive.

Lucy - Guest

11:45 - 12:20

And to add to that, Cheryl, some of the communities I worked in had very poor internet. And so I had lots of students, even in a wealthy community, who didn't have reliable internet at home to do their own work. So having an invitation to go to the library after school and being told that they were welcome to be there and knowing that the library had good internet meant that they had a safe place where they could access the internet for free and do their homework with support. Yeah. So,

Cheryl 

12:21 - 13:08

yeah. So true. So if we go into, I just, what I would love to do, because we can talk about like the umbrella of community supports, but I would love to dive into some really specific kids stories and hopefully you can share with us how a community support system did work or if it wasn't available, how would it have worked? And so I'm gonna dive into Deanna's story, where, and again, these are not real names, people, so stop trying to figure out who it is. Deanna's story is where her stepmother was abusing her. And it was hidden by, dad had no idea apparently.

Cheryl 

13:10 - 13:45

And Deanna was acting out in different ways that would not connect that that's what's happening. And this is what happens, right? Our teens, we think, oh, I have a headache, so I'm going to go get an aspirin, and that's the connection. But our kids have something else going on. They're being abused, or they don't have any food at home. But their behavior is very different. They just don't get an aspirin. They go around the corner and down the store and to the and then they find the aspirin. So, you know, their their path is not linear when it comes to acting out and behavior.

Cheryl 

13:45 - 13:57

So sometimes it's very, very difficult to make a connection. So let's talk about Deanna first. How did community support come in and help, or how did it not?

Lucy - Guest

13:59 - 14:51

So the story begins, really, with Deanna telling me that she was part of a group of young women who believed they were essentially Celtic goddesses. And it was quite an elaborate fabrication, and it came out of nowhere. I didn't have a relationship with her. She just popped into my office and told me this story randomly. And as events unfolded, it became very clear that she was very attached to a member, a female member of staff, and she actually showed up at that staff member's home 1 weekend, uninvited, and said that she was homeless and needed a place to stay.

Lucy - Guest

14:52 - 15:50

And she was very attention-seeking, very needy, and the stories just continued to escalate. And finally, when I confronted her about her behavior, she disclosed that she was being abused. So, the first thing I did was call in her father and call in the school social worker, because I have no clinical training and I don't pretend to have clinical training. We tried to determine how much of what she was telling us was truthful. The social worker was also unclear, and so we referred her to an adolescent mental health clinic at Lake Ridge, where they diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder.

Lucy - Guest

15:53 - 17:05

And really, apparently, a very classic case of borderline personality disorder in terms of her attention-seeking behaviors. But what was at the root of that appeared to be abuse, but that abuse couldn't be substantiated. So I also involved community policing, and they went to the home and had a look around and certainly saw evidence that would suggest that she was telling the truth. But again, nothing definitive. So a couple of things. I mean, using the school social worker with that clinical background as a first step was really important. Getting a referral to the adolescent mental health clinic at Lake Ridge in an emergency situation was crucial and also involving community policing and those agencies work together to get this girl and her father, the support that she needed.

Lucy - Guest

17:06 - 18:08

But I will say that children's mental health is 1 of those really big, glaring areas of need in our community Because adolescents are going through all sorts of hormonal changes, there's a complexity to their mental health that isn't present for people in other age groups, and there are very few practitioners who actually have the skills and training to work with adolescents in a mental health crisis. And that's a real area of need. The waiting lists, typically, to access a psychiatrist or a psychologist with that kind of training are quite long, and waiting lists to get into an adolescent treatment program are also quite long.

Lucy - Guest

18:08 - 18:28

So you could be a family with a teenager in crisis and be put on a waiting list for 6 months. And during that six-month period, it's up to you as a family to try to keep your child alive, essentially. So there's a lot of stress there for families with teenagers in crisis.

Cheryl 

18:30 - 18:58

Is there in your opinion, is there ways around this? Is there something we can do as a community to push for something different, to listen to our spidey senses and not just listen to the waitlist like is and I don't know if there's an answer to that. I don't know if there's an answer to that. I'm just as you're speaking like is there a way around this? Is there people we can talk to? Is there doors we can be knocking on?

Lucy - Guest

18:58 - 19:48

Well I think that the reality is, mental health isn't quite sexy. And so, when politicians are making financial decisions about where money is going to go, You know, mental health just isn't 1 of those priority groups. So, you know, there are really strong lobby groups for all sorts of other special interest needs, and I'm not saying they're not legitimate, but mental health just isn't sexy. I think we need more funding, and I think we need stable funding and we need to make that attractive for practitioners to specialize in and to do that really difficult but important work.

Cheryl 

19:48 - 19:57

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more there. So I wanna go on to, let's talk about Risa.

Lucy - Guest

19:58 - 19:58

Yes.

Cheryl 

19:59 - 20:41

And I'm trying to dive into like very different support systems here. I know there's probably 30 stories in your book, but I'm trying to. So Risa, so in this situation, there's a different, and I remember experiencing this so many times, the different ethnicities, and the values and the morals, the disciplinary actions that go on in those homes, even the respect of different genders, really played an impact on some of the students I knew and how we would try to support that and still respect the cultural difference. Can you speak to that 1?

Lucy - Guest

20:42 - 21:46

That's a really challenging 1. And it was certainly challenging for me as a young vice principal. So in my own experience, I did reach out to a local man to ask for some guidance. And he was generous, I will say that. And very, very pragmatic. So 1 of the issues that's sort of Risa-related is a group of students asked for a prayer room that would be a dedicated space for them, and They wanted access to the prayer room at times that didn't coincide with the school timetable. And they wanted it to be an unsupervised space.

Lucy - Guest

21:48 - 22:44

And they didn't want females allowed. It was to be an all-male prayer room. So essentially, as their demands grew, and I was working with them, trying to accommodate them. They wanted a private little clubhouse, no teachers, and privilege to sort of walk out of class whenever they wanted to meet there, and nobody could know what was on behind closed doors, and women weren't allowed. And, you know, I reached out to the MN and he said, well that's outrageous. I mean, 1 of the things that these boys need to learn is that they're part of a social organization and they have to respect the parameters of that social organization, and I will meet with those boys, and if they would like to meet me for prayer before or after school, I will make accommodations to my schedule.

Lucy - Guest

22:45 - 23:34

And he called their bluff, and it was amazing. Now, I mean, there was certainly a willingness on our part to make a prayer room available. There absolutely was. But it was the local imam who said that these boys are just basically jerking your chain. And it was really important in that particular instance, that wouldn't necessarily be so in all instances, please understand. But in that particular instance, he knew who these kids were, and he knew what they were trying to accomplish. And because I had the foresight to reach out to him, and his willingness to work with the school meant that we ended this sort of negotiation that was ridiculous.

Cheryl 

23:36 - 23:51

And it was a reach out. It didn't, it wasn't a business proposal. It wasn't a check. You didn't have to pay for all of this. It was a simple phone call. And on the other end is somebody saying, yes, I will help.

Lucy - Guest

23:52 - 23:54

Absolutely. Yeah,

Cheryl 

23:54 - 24:42

yeah, I love that. Okay, so I'd love to talk about children's aid resource and how this comes into play, how we can and cannot, can we supplement that kind of support based on what we know? You know, we know the funding and you can speak more to this than I can, but the funding and the staffing and all of that is just so skeleton. Is there a way, because we taught, I mean, we as teachers, we have an obligation, first of all, to always call, always make the call. And then sometimes we get met with, you know, no, we can't, or there isn't enough, or, but as teachers, I think anybody has a spidey sense, but I'm speaking for teachers.

Cheryl 

24:43 - 24:58

You have a spidey sense, you know when to say, oh, okay, well, let's see how it goes. And you know when to say, nope, diving in more, here, take another step, chip away at this. We just feel like we know that. So can you speak to that kind of support?

Lucy - Guest

25:00 - 25:54

First of all, I need to say that I have a huge amount of respect for the people that I've worked with from Children's Aid. They're just incredibly professional and incredibly caring individuals with untenable workloads. In my opinion, Children's Aid has been seriously underfunded for a number of years, so that the workloads are incredible. And, you know, not to get too political, but the idea that somebody in provincial office is launching an inquiry into how they spend their money is just outrageous to me, because what they need is more money and they need stable funding. But they have so many restrictions, and so there are 2 things that I'll address.

Lucy - Guest

25:55 - 26:41

The school board that I worked for went from Lake Ontario to just shy of Lake Simcoe, a very huge territory. And when I was working in a school in the far north and needed a CAS worker to come to the school to deal with a crisis, She said that she was working at home that day and she lived in Scarborough And it would have been a three-hour commute for her to get to my school Which wasn't possible by the end of the bell. So the onus was on me as principal to ensure that my student had somewhere safe to go at the end of the day because CIS couldn't get there in time to do anything about it.

Lucy - Guest

26:42 - 28:00

So I was able to reach out and find a family that was prepared to help. But, you know, they have those kinds of limitations. They can't be everywhere at the drop of a hat. And that's, you know, no fault of this young woman's, honest with you. So I mean, that's 1 concern. There has to be that partnership where, you know, the contact person, be it a guidance counselor or a vice principal or a principal, you know, can work in cooperation with CAS to problem-solve crisis situations immediately. But the other thing, and the thing that I have found really frustrating, is that There are a number of families who, when they felt that CAS was becoming too intrusive in their life, doing too many home visits, suggesting that if things didn't change, they might take somebody into care, that family would pick up stakes and move out of the community into another community outside the reaches of that particular CAS contact person.

Lucy - Guest

28:01 - 28:46

And it could take months before anybody at CIS knew where that family had relocated to and where their name popped up again. In the meantime, those kids are really vulnerable and abuse happens. So 1 of the things that I think should easily be put in place is a better tracking system for young people. And you know as an educator that all students in the province have something called an OEN number, an Ontario Education Number, and there should be a way of flagging OEN movement so that CAS can respond more quickly when families pick up and relocate to another community.

Lucy - Guest

28:48 - 29:04

I think that would be really helpful. I have looked at OSRs where families have registered their children in as many as 6 schools in 1 school year. And you know, that's a problem. Oh my God, yeah.

Cheryl 

29:05 - 29:30

That's brilliant. And when we talked about this when we first met and I couldn't stop thinking about the OEN tracking system is just feels like such a fix, like such a fix and how, okay, everything's a process, but if this process leads to this, oh my gosh, what are we waiting for? What are we waiting for? I'm voting for that. I'm voting for that.

Lucy - Guest

29:30 - 29:49

But I don't know what's involved technically. I don't know what's involved in terms of permissions and technology and software, but it seems to me the Ministry of Education has this great system set up, so it ought to be possible to marry that somehow. But who am I?

Cheryl 

29:51 - 30:33

Exactly right. I feel like, yeah. Okay, so I wanna talk about just 1 more type of support. I wanna talk about resources for kids who are either trans or have identity challenges, like not challenges, respect to sexual identity. And again, you know, we don't always have welcoming families. We don't always have welcoming peers in that situation. So I really like to know how or in what way we can reach out to what organizations to receive some support in that arena.

Lucy - Guest

30:36 - 31:53

Yeah a couple of things. Statistics tell us, and my own experience and probably yours will tell you, that adolescents experiencing personal identity challenges in any kind of form are very, very prone to depression and suicidal ideation. They feel like they don't belong, they feel like they're unnatural, they're rejected by their family, and these kids get depressed, they self-harm, they attempt suicide, they self-medicate. So in that context, 1 of the key resources for me has been Durham Region Public Health and most schools have access to Durham Region Public Health or whatever region they're in, a public health contact person who's very, very well connected in terms of allowing these young people to connect with professionals who can give them some support and some guidance.

Lucy - Guest

31:55 - 32:59

In the school board I worked with, we had social workers, psychometrists and psychologists who were also available in the short term to provide counseling while they facilitated connections for these young people in the long term. So I think it's really important to connect these kids with professionals with clinical training. There are lots of really well-intentioned people who, you know, themselves have struggled with these issues, who want to be helpful, and would love to connect with these kids. But before you go there, I think it's really important that you connect kids with people who are objectively trained clinical professionals, I think that's just imperative because they're vulnerable and you don't want them influenced by someone who doesn't have a certain level of skill,

Cheryl 

33:00 - 33:00

if

Lucy - Guest

33:00 - 33:53

I may say. So, those are 2 of the concerns, sort of the mental health concern. But the other issue has to do with homelessness. A number of these young people are rejected by their family and end up couch surfing or sleeping in parks homeless. And I think the homelessness in youth is a real issue. Now I've been retired for 7 years, but when I was retired, there was only 1 shelter that would take homeless youth, and it was outside of our community. And it had a waiting list. And I don't know if that's changed in the last 7 years, but it's a real issue.

Lucy - Guest

33:54 - 34:56

At the beginning of my career, there was a very large youth shelter in a particular community, and it had to close because there were staff members who took advantage of the kids. I actually had a female student raped there. So finding safe spaces for young people who are homeless as a result of coming out or trying to figure out who they were is a real issue. 1 of the ways I was able to solve that in 1 community was I was very fortunate to work in a community where there was a strong ministerial community, where all the members of the different churches met together on a regular basis and partnered with the school.

Lucy - Guest

34:56 - 35:47

And so when I had a young person in crisis, homeless, and couldn't get them into a safe space and they'd run out of options in terms of couch surfing, which happens, I could call a member of the ministerial committee and they would find someone in their congregation to billet them. At the same time, we would connect with Durham Region Family Services, social services, and help that young person apply for student welfare. But that's a fairly long process. That doesn't happen overnight. Even if they expedited it, it can take a month. So again, reaching out into the community and finding those people that were willing to be helpful made a difference.

Cheryl 

35:49 - 36:10

And it's not 1 way. So if somebody is listening to the podcast right now who's not in the school system, but is a parent, or a minister, or a volunteer at church, how can they be the first to initiate this kind of collaboration? What can they do first?

Lucy - Guest

36:11 - 37:12

I think it's important to support the community organizations that are already vibrant, contributing organizations in a community. So, rather than, you know, 100 parents calling up the local schools saying, I'm available to help, what do you want me to do? For those individuals to reach out to some of those organizations and to say to them, I'd like to help the youth in our community, what do you need? And I think that would be the way that I would recommend people go. So whether the organizations need volunteers or whether they need funding or whether they need social media assistance, But I think to reach out to some of the organizations that support the causes that you care about and find out how you can be a part of that.

Cheryl 

37:13 - 37:44

That's so good. And you're right. You're gonna have a hundred parents phoning 1 principal. That's gonna be a little overwhelming when there's already established communities out there. I think that's really important. I'm going to ask 1 more question. If Lucy Black could wave her magic wand, What policy changes or resources need to be urgently done now in order to create this lasting change for our vulnerable youth.

Lucy - Guest

37:45 - 38:36

I think stable, generous funding for adolescent mental health and for homeless youth would be my 2 big items on my wish list. My third wish, to be truthful with you, Cheryl, is that teachers, all teachers, would understand at a really deep level what a privilege it is to be a part of a young person's life. And that they would treat every young person they encounter with kindness and generosity.

Cheryl 

38:39 - 39:36

You know, we always say, I mean, we've been saying even in the school forever, 1 caring adult, 1 caring adult. And sometimes it's so hard to believe that some kids don't even have 1 caring adult. And as teachers, to assume that kids have 1 caring adult is a big mistake. So can you just offer to be that 1 caring adult? And if then they have 2, great. If they have 20, even better. But if you don't step up and say I know I'm busy I know I have marking I know have report cards I know I have PD I know I have all that some of the other bullshit that I have to deal with but can I be the 1 caring adult in somebody's life?

Cheryl 

39:36 - 40:03

You change the world. You change the world. Lucy, this has been amazing. I'm so, so grateful for your book, what you're doing, what you're fighting for, who you're talking to. Can you tell everybody like how do we find your book and how do we find you? Is there a way to talk to you? Can we ask you questions if we need some help, if We need some resources to be those collaborators.

Lucy - Guest

40:04 - 40:59

Absolutely, thank you. So the book is available at independent bookstores and chapters Indigo, and also directly from the publisher, which is Demeter Press. So that's where you can get the book. And where you can reach me, I have a website, Lucy E. M. Black, And there's a contact page on my website, so you can contact me that way. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. And again, it's Lucy E. M. Black. And I'm happy to respond to anybody who reaches out. I'm happy to visit book clubs in real life or in person and I hope the book makes a difference.

Cheryl 

40:59 - 41:33

Well it did for me and now it did for all of my listeners. And I think a book club, especially for teachers, oh my gosh, like that would just be 1 enjoyable PD because I don't think there's too many. Sorry. I've retired from teaching so I can say things like that. Lucy, I'm so honored to have you here. I really appreciate this conversation. You're taking the time and again, I'm grateful for the work that you do. Everything that Lucy talked about will be in the show notes. Get the book. The link will be also in the show notes as well.

Cheryl 

41:33 - 42:20

And you know, it's not a huge book. But when somebody says, oh, it's an easy read, it's not an easy read. But it's a manageable chapter, a story for every kid. And I think everybody needs to read this period. So thank you again, Lucy. I really appreciate it. And thank you for listening to Parenting Teens Advice, redefined for today's world. Thank you for listening to another episode. I hope you loved this 1 as much as I did. And I just wanted to share something with you because, you know, parenting teens is not just about managing these challenges that we talked about on all the episodes.

Cheryl 

42:21 - 43:04

It's also about evolving alongside them. And I'm Cheryl and not only the host of this podcast, but I'm also the creator of Insight to Impact, coaching and consulting. And I help you moms of teens reconnect with your true selves so you can lead with purpose, you can parent with clarity, you can create stronger, more meaningful relationships with your kids. Because here's the truth, the transformation starts with you. Together we will break free from the stress and overwhelm, we will rediscover your power, we will create the life and the family dynamic you always dreamed of. If you're ready to start this journey, let's do it.

Cheryl 

43:04 - 43:38

You might just not recognize your life in the next 90 days. It all starts with a call. There's no pitch. There's no pressure, just a call to see if I can help. We'll talk about your goals. We'll talk about what's making you feel stuck and what might be getting in your way and everything you need to connect with me is in the show notes. Again, I'm Cheryl, thank you so much for joining me here on Parenting Teens, advice redefined for today's complex world and the creator of Insight to Impact Coaching and Consulting. Have a great day.