~132~ “Breaking the Education ‘Compliance’ Trap – Real Strategies for Parents” Will Dobud & Nevin Harper

#ParentingTeens, #EducationReform, #YouthMentalHealth, #ComplianceVsAdvocacy

In this power‑packed episode of Parenting Teens, Advice Redefined, host Cheryl Pankhurst sits down with Nevin Harper and Will Dobud, co‑authors of the groundbreaking book Kids These Days. Together they peel back the layers of a schooling system that was built for a world that no longer exists and explore why today’s teens are disengaged, anxious, and why the “one‑size‑fits‑all” approach isn’t working.

Key takeaway: Disruption doesn’t have to be loud or political—it can start with one honest conversation, one DIY move, and one teen‑centric principle.

If you’re a parent of a teenager who feels stuck in the school‑system, overwhelmed by the “compliance vs. confidence” debate, or just wants a fresh, evidence‑based way to connect with your teen, this episode is your roadmap.

Speaker 1
03:14 - 03:53
Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice, redefined for today's world, the space where we stop reacting to our teens and start understanding them. I'm Cheryl Pankhurst, your host, and today we are stepping directly into a conversation that many parents whisper about but rarely name out loud, the one we grew up in. The one our kids are sitting in right now, the one that for too many teens simply doesn't match who they are, how they learn, and what they need to thrive. For decades we've been taught not to question it, but a system is outdated when it's built for a world and a learner that no longer exists.

Speaker 1
03:53 - 04:24
We have to talk about it, and today we are. I am joined by Nevin Harper and Wilt Dahlbent, authors of the incredible book, Kids These Days, a book that isn't just about diagnosis, but what's going on with youth, what shines a bright light on the system shaping them. Together, we're going to unpack what's broken, what's possible, and how every one of us, parents, educators, advocates, can begin disrupting the system in small, meaningful ways. One moment, one choice, one podcast at a time.

Speaker 1
04:24 - 04:34
Welcome, Will. Welcome, Nevin. I am so excited for this conversation, in case you can't tell. Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1
04:35 - 04:42
Yeah, great to be here. Great to be back. Yes, yes, it's a sequel with Will. So why don't we start, Nevin, just tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 1
04:43 - 04:56
And I don't want to just throw this conversation without people knowing who you are. And then, Will, you can go, and then we will dive right in. OK. You've left that open-ended, and my wife says I talk too much.

Speaker 1
04:56 - 05:21
So this could go anywhere. I'll set an alarm. I'm a fellow Canadian, I live on the west coast now, but I grew up in the north, northwest Alberta, just before you get into the territories. So outdoors, outdoors, thought everybody grew up that way, thought it was normal to see northern lights and bears and moose and such.

Speaker 1
05:23 - 05:52
Worked outdoors for a long time, got to work with really, really interesting, wonderful, difficult populations like young offenders, brought the worlds of counseling and outdoor leadership, outdoor recreation together in my work. And it's been primarily what I do and have been talking about and doing for the last, I just lectured to some students on Friday. It was 1991 when I led my first group outdoors. So it's been a couple.

Speaker 1
05:53 - 06:18
And I make the joke that I have limited transferable job skills. So I just have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. However, it's the frustration that Will and I experienced in recognizing that some of our work is wonderful and yet our fields in general aren't necessarily making progress in times for kids these days. So, hence the book.

Speaker 1
06:18 - 06:22
Love it. Thanks. Will, you're up. Yeah, yep, Will.

Speaker 1
06:23 - 07:09
Like Nevin, it was the outdoors and therapy that brought us together and led to really amazing experience working with young people across the United States, across Australia. And then I also have, we both actually, oddly enough, have little blips of experiences in Norway as well. And so, yeah, like Nevin said, I think one of the interesting ways that Nevin and I really connected is Nevin wrote a peer-reviewed article that came out in 2010 that when I read it in probably 2014 or 15, I could tell that we had both read the same books.

Speaker 1
07:09 - 07:50
And so when we got together, I said, let's take this, what you wrote here, and let's keep working on things. Because sometimes, and I think this can be something we talk about in relation to the book, that a lot of headlines or even like press releases don't translate what the research really tells us so like for instance one of the things that nevin wrote about that that i you know has been part of my research world is that you know in 1977 you have the first the first meta-analysis of all time, but it's of psychotherapy outcomes. And people were arguing, does therapy work?

Speaker 1
07:50 - 07:57
Does it not work? Is behaviorism good? Is psychoanalysis good? Are any of these things any good?

Speaker 1
07:58 - 08:24
And the meta-analysis said, yep, this works. Works really well. You're better off. If you think you need therapy, you're probably better off going, but there's warning signs there as well and things to know and then it's that was 1977 it's 2025 no improvement in outcomes nothing not one percent change in anything and so we just started going i think as

Speaker 1
08:24 - 08:53
a as a field i'm in social work nevin's been in education and child and youth care I just, we sat there and went, maybe it's time to actually take a big critical swing here at what the hell we're all doing. And why, why is this not work? Are we measuring the right things? So that's sort of, I think, as the three of us like team oppositional, you know, I think that that, That brought us together, and it's like every paper, every project we come up to do, it's like, what's missing?

Speaker 1
08:54 - 09:20
Let's take a big, critical look at this. And that's also part of turning the mirror on ourselves as well and looking at where we've missed. You know, it's funny, I wanted to go down the path of this other question as we wrap up, but I'm going to start with this. I'm going to start with it because when people are listening, You know, we talk about things being systemic, the education system being systemic, and how change comes from top down.

Speaker 1
09:20 - 09:48
And I think because listeners are now starting, I want them to have this idea in their head as they're listening to our conversation. How can we, one conversation at a time, one person at a time, create a movement that breaks this system as opposed to saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got this idea, but I have to start up here. I have to start with administrator or the ministry or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, change has to come from there as well.

Speaker 1
09:48 - 10:13
But as people are listening, as parents are listening, as educators are listening, I want them to kind of get this threaded through the whole conversation, like, how can we, one person at a time, start to shift drastically this movement of the education system? It's antiquated. We know that. And I'm going to just, whoever has the answer has the answer.

Speaker 1
10:13 - 10:24
I'm not going to direct it at either because you're going to know who I'm talking to when you hear the question. So what do you say to that? I want to hear that first so that people have this in their heads as soon as they start listening. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1
10:25 - 10:39
I can do that. You know? I'd like to start by just responding to one word that you mentioned, Cheryl, and it's the answer. And I think Will and I will both agree that there has hardly ever been one answer.

Speaker 1
10:39 - 11:09
that it's a multifaceted issue, regardless of what you're addressing, whether it's the educational system, the systems and the therapeutic process and community. It's broader than that. And there's many answers because there's got to be many attempts and many solutions that have to come together. And, you know, as we've described in the book, this youth mental health crisis as a wicked problem, wicked problems that even if they're solved, nobody's going to be able to point back and say, look, that's what I did.

Speaker 1
11:09 - 11:33
That was the answer. Right. So our perspective in writing the book was how do we avoid writing a parenting book full of rules, full of lists, full of propositions, and instead write from perspectives and I don't want to say philosophical, philosophical approaches, but we write in a way that's more about principles. Right.

Speaker 1
11:33 - 11:41
If you can adopt a principle. So is the educational system going to solve itself? Can we wait for government to fix it? Right.

Speaker 1
11:41 - 12:12
So adopting a principle of, say. DIY, do it yourself, like that approach for a parent, for an adult who has concerns or or some ability to influence the life of a young person. Taking it upon themselves to try to help make the change that's necessary, rather than complaining or waiting for systems to come and solve the problem for them. We've seen that over and over again in society, across cultures.

Speaker 1
12:13 - 12:37
Do we wait for the problem to be resolved by our boss? Or do we wait for the problem to be resolved by our elected leaders? It's often the case that we just need to do it ourselves, because we tend to be closest to whatever the problem is. And in this case with youth, if we're listening to youth, we could hear them say things like, yeah, social media and the cell phone has become a problem.

Speaker 1
12:38 - 12:58
What should we do about it? Well, we would figure out ways to work on it rather than the adults telling kids that they can't have them and being prohibitionist and making cell phone bans in schools mandatory and getting parents excited about the answer. Because that sounds right. That could be the answer.

Speaker 1
12:58 - 13:28
That's why there's so much energy behind these movements. That's why when Will and I, as people that work in the outdoors for education and therapy, weren't as excited as many people 20 plus years ago when a book was written called Last Child in the Woods, Saving Our Kids from Nature Deficit Disorder. pathologizing language, labeling of kids, inducing fear in parents. I don't want my kid to be the last one in the woods.

Speaker 1
13:30 - 13:55
So there was a movement that came from that that was induced by fear and driven by almost like propaganda statements and pathologizing and labeling. And we've we're just seeing it over and over again, you know, and I'm sure you may have talked about the recent one where we've called our entire generation anxious. Yes. But I see he's got a new book out that's calling the next group of even younger people, the amazing generation.

Speaker 1
13:56 - 14:01
Yeah. So that's a kid's book. That's a kid's book. Awesome.

Speaker 1
14:02 - 14:42
I think there's two. One of the things that surprises me when I am either in a room of social work students or a room of educators or professionals is I don't meet many people that tend to really deviate from some of the concerns that Nevin and I have talked about. Usually, let's say the social media, someone might say, well, I know it won't work, but maybe it'll give solace to parents. And I go, sure, that makes sense.

Speaker 1
14:42 - 15:20
book of you know psychiatry's bible the dsm i don't meet anybody who goes you know what's a great idea let's just keep using this as the center backbone of the entire western mental health system even 90 of psychologists surveyed have ethical concerns with this book. Every time there's a new revision, we hear about more undisclosed financial conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies. Like, the list just goes on and on. Like, I don't meet anybody that doesn't say, yeah, you're right, the agricultural practices that are poisoning us all are a really big problem.

Speaker 1
15:21 - 15:50
And then I also see when it comes to education and working at a university only for, you know, I've been in a university full time for not a lot for six years or so. I see everything that is a, as a push gets tied up in committees and change is like, no, you got to go talk to that committee or that committee. And I think what Nevin said is whatever. We'll do it ourselves.

Speaker 1
15:50 - 16:05
I remember our. I don't know, Nevin, if you remember this, but we were working on a different project five, six years ago, and I had to go teach an intensive school. I'll get 200 students, and I'll be there with them for a week. We do that a few times a year.

Speaker 1
16:05 - 16:18
They're awesome. And when I got to the university, they were called residential schools. And Nevin was like, wait, what? And I know why it comes from like a residency.

Speaker 1
16:18 - 16:36
I get it. So I went to the higher ups and I said, we got changes. And then it got approved. They gave me some award, you know, you are making change for the university and decolonizing and how wonderful and all these things.

Speaker 1
16:36 - 17:02
And then they said, so by 2023, like two and a half years later, we will pivot and transition. I'm going, how would it even take more than five seconds for that to change? And so it was really interesting where I went, so the obvious change is just, this is like just a change of language, like this is not even hard. And still it was like, well, but you know, in two and a half years we'll make this change.

Speaker 1
17:02 - 17:28
So Some systems are very resistant to change. Every now and then when I'm stuck in a boring committee meeting, I'll just Google, and I encourage everybody to do this, just Google funny quotes about committees and you'll get, they're amazing. Like if there's a venomous snake and it's attacking people, don't hire a committee. Nothing will happen.

Speaker 1
17:29 - 17:51
Or a committee is a horse with four back legs just going nowhere. So sometimes it can be really frustrating. And so you have to keep an eye on the little changes that you can make. And then this is another little piece that I wrote down, speaking of DIY.

Speaker 1
17:52 - 18:24
When Nevin and I started writing about America's troubled teen industry, and I remember we wrote some paper about like, let's say, you know, kidnapping kids to the woods, not a good idea. And I've interviewed a lot of young people who say this was terrible and I can't sleep alone anymore as an adult. from people entering my bedroom and dragging me to the woods. And I remember I had with our small nonprofit, a group of, let's say like six adolescents, and we get out of the car and we're in the woods.

Speaker 1
18:24 - 18:41
And all I thought is, oh my gosh, I better not mess this up. I was like, I just put a target on my back calling out everybody else. and I better actually do the right thing. So sometimes we can think that change has to be this global thing.

Speaker 1
18:41 - 18:58
I joke about with ideas of evidence-based practice, who's evidence? Who cares what that person did? You need to know what you're doing. And so you can call things out and be, you know, you know, shake up things.

Speaker 1
18:59 - 19:26
But you also need to be making sure that your work is a demonstration of your first principles, as our friend Daryl Chao would say, that you have that, you know, why you're doing what you're doing. and you know the exit ramp when it's not working. Because that's when the biggest issue is not that for the average young person, school's perfectly fine for them. It's for the people that this is not working and we're not catching it.

Speaker 1
19:27 - 19:42
So, yeah. So, and we're talking about these kids that the education system isn't working for them. And yeah, we have the kids that it is fine. They can sit there for eight hours and they can listen and they can whatever, but that's not the majority.

Speaker 1
19:43 - 20:05
We know that's not the majority anymore. And so how do we shift these conversations? Let's say as educators, how are we shifting these conversations where we are having change in the, like direct boots on the ground change in the classroom. I know you do the outdoor education and I find that incredible.

Speaker 1
20:06 - 20:37
How can we take even a tenth of that and put it into the classroom so every kid, you know, we, the kids, even the kids that are managing or excelling at the antiquity system that they're in, there's still best practices for everybody. Like everybody gets good stuff out of whatever we're trying to change. Just because they're doing well doesn't mean they can't do better. It doesn't mean they can't excel and flourish in the type of education systems we're talking about changing.

Speaker 1
20:38 - 21:05
So if you were talking about even taking a tenth of that strategy, a tenth of the MO that you have with the outdoor education, how can we apply that? Boots on the ground in the classroom. Well, can I, I'll pass this to Nevin, but just to jump in about outdoor education for a second and not to not to poo poo on outdoor ed. One of the things, and this has been written about, Nevin will know, probably since the 80s.

Speaker 1
21:06 - 21:42
In the outdoor ed world, and I'm sure this comes from education literature as well, we have a McDonaldsization and Disneyfication of the outdoors and the classroom. What ends up happening is how to make one milkshake, the same milkshake, make that in 30 seconds or less as fast as possible and make them all uniform. And so what some of the things that were the ideas of outdoor education, have turned into more crowded curriculum. And so it's more things for kids to learn, more techniques.

Speaker 1
21:43 - 21:58
And I think as humans, we naturally want ideas of how we can make things better. And if I go to this conference, I'll learn something that will help me. If I go to this thing, that will help me. If I read this book, that will help me.

Speaker 1
21:58 - 22:19
And I think that there is a issue where We are missing the huge, big point, which is kids are experiencing your classroom. They don't care what technique you learn. They don't care how you set up the desks. It's not going to radically change the system.

Speaker 1
22:21 - 22:34
So we want to avoid that mechanical, linear idea of how we think about this. Ned? You know my background. To the extreme, Cheryl.

Speaker 1
22:35 - 23:04
had the privilege of, with my wife, raising our kids in a way that we had lots of choices around education. We started our oldest in a school that was supposed to be built on A.S. Neal's Summerhill model, which was a purely democratic educational system. Kids knew what all the content was that was available to them, but when they arrived on Monday morning, they'd say, today, I'm going to play outside this morning and I'm going to do art this afternoon.

Speaker 1
23:05 - 23:25
And so there was someone outside setting up games and sports equipment, and there was someone in the art studio in the afternoon. And the kids had that ability to choose where their passion and motivation was at the time, but knew that ultimately they had to get through all the subjects. Does that make sense? Like a purely flexible democratic system.

Speaker 1
23:25 - 23:51
The model came from a system that was designed to deal with all the kids that weren't fitting in the system in the first place. So it was an alternative school in England in the, gosh, I don't know when Summerhill happened, 40s, 50s maybe. And then it caught on and it was beyond, you know, John Dewey's like progressive experience in education. It was like experience and some education, right?

Speaker 1
23:52 - 24:22
That didn't work out for our kids. We ended up working with a whole bunch of other educators in the community that we live in and built outdoor nature schools, basically. a wall tent, a wood stove, an outdoor fire pit, an outdoor, like an outhouse, along a river, we would bring all sorts of specialists in. There would be a biologist, there would be a native plants interpreter, there'd be a First Nations elder, there would be someone who is an artist in residence somewhere locally.

Speaker 1
24:22 - 24:42
And the kids just kept getting all these exposures to learning opportunities. And when there was passion, they would pour it on and you would feed them more resources. And when they weren't interested, you would back off. Well, that means that some of the kids weren't reading books as they would be measured by in the school system until a couple years later.

Speaker 1
24:43 - 25:22
But ultimately, by the time they all reached the fourth or fifth grade, they were all at the same place. So that freedom in education is something that I think is near impossible to build into the existing structures. And John Taylor Gatto, in dumbing us down whenever that was written 40 years ago and in Weapons of Mass Instruction, continues to say it like we probably can't necessarily fix the existing system. This might need to be not a gardening experience, but a Phoenix experience that starts with an absolute raising of the structure and system.

Speaker 1
25:22 - 25:43
and then start fresh and build it in the community so that education and learning isn't happening in a box on a hill over there. It's maybe it starts there every day but that the learning is integrated with the community. Like who knows what types of skills or knowledge a child entering school today is going to need in 12 years. The rate of technical technological change.

Speaker 1
25:44 - 26:10
I just hope they can communicate that they have enough self-esteem and understanding that they can be something in this world, like as we write about the Circle of Courage model, that they belong, that they can get good at something and have some level of mastery. They can at least then step towards independence and then become a generous contributor back to the community. Like that, if we give advice anywhere in the book, it's probably what is that, Welch? Is that chapter three?

Speaker 1
26:10 - 26:21
Is that starving with Martin Brokenleg? Chapter two, yeah. Chapter two might set the tone for parenting advice. If those four elements can be achieved, you've done your job as an adult or a parent.

Speaker 1
26:22 - 26:38
And they're not difficult to do if you're embedded in a community that cares about the upbringing of children. You know, it's as quaint as the it takes a village quote is. It's true. And it's not that difficult.

Speaker 1
26:38 - 27:17
It's actually quite simple, but we're so caught up in modern society and achievement of all these unrealistic goals that apparently are all going to be displaced by AI in the next three to ten years anyways. You know, as a parent, as a parent now, I'm putting on a different hat right now. So as a parent, I'm sitting at home and I'm like burning because I know this education system just bites for my kid right now. What conversation am I having with my kid to find out what they need to change in the classroom?

Speaker 1
27:17 - 27:51
I feel like we come in as parents, we swoop in, we're like, oh, I'm going to talk to that teacher, and you're not going to have that teacher in your classroom, and you're not doing this. I feel like we lose out on the glory and the luxury of collaborating with our kids at the kitchen table. So what conversations, if you're saying to parents, here's what I, you know, here's how to lead, not tell them what to say, but how do you lead these conversations where you are getting from your kid, you know, you know, kids, how was school? Fine.

Speaker 1
27:51 - 28:02
What'd you do? Nothing. Like, how are we pulling that conversation of them? So we, now we have a place, we team up, our kid and a parent, we're teaming up now.

Speaker 1
28:02 - 28:26
Now we know what to come at. Now we know what conversations we might be having with the math teacher, the science, whatever. You know, how do we start having these conversations right at home? Well, I think one big thing is, For how much talk of the last five to 10 years, we've talked about power and oppression.

Speaker 1
28:26 - 28:48
Teachers have all the power, right? They have your kids all day, every day. And then they have administrators and whoever's higher up than that, all the power of what's going on. And a lot of young people, don't feel like they have the space to really talk about how crap their day was.

Speaker 1
28:48 - 28:59
That no one will listen. I'll get in trouble at home. I've been in trouble at school. I remember my kids were very nerdy in high school.

Speaker 1
28:59 - 29:09
They cared about grades. They were the kids that sat there and just did their homework. Bella was a school captain. I joke that I'm the worst influence in the house.

Speaker 1
29:09 - 29:19
Lucas came home one day. He'll probably kill me for telling this story, but it's great. He came home one day and he slaps down this piece of paper. He goes, I got a detention.

Speaker 1
29:20 - 29:28
And I said, finally. I was like, yes. And I go, what'd you do? And it was a teacher having a bad day.

Speaker 1
29:28 - 29:42
And he called out an answer without raising his hand. Like ridiculous, right? And so Lucas ripped it up and threw it away. And I was like, And right when he left the room, that is put back together and laminated.

Speaker 1
29:42 - 29:48
And I was like, on the fridge. I was like, good for you. I was like, heck yes. I probably could go find this thing right now.

Speaker 1
29:49 - 30:14
I think we have to, kids, especially when they get to the teenage years, they're starting to call bullshit on everything. And if they're not telling you what they're calling bullshit on, that means they're not telling you. So sometimes we can just be a lot more real with our kids and say, I hated school. Because if they're not telling you what's difficult about their day, it means that you don't know.

Speaker 1
30:14 - 30:46
Because as a teenager, when you're going through all your puberty, your brain is doing this incredible developmental process, which starts with hitting the delete button on a lot of stuff. It's harder for them to talk to you in a more You have to find ways where they can talk to you without it being like an interview or a transaction. So doing things together is really important. I don't know.

Speaker 1
30:46 - 31:28
Nevin, what do you think? I'd go back to John Taylor Gatto and just point out that if people aren't familiar with his work, It was only after he retired and was free and clear of the educational system that he came forward and then said, if administrators knew what I was doing as a teacher, I would have been fired decades ago. Assignments in the community, working with the family, out doing experiential community-based inquiries.

Speaker 1
31:29 - 31:58
so that your learning was based in reality. But he was doing things in a way that weren't necessarily meeting the curriculum, weren't necessarily the way that it's done within the rigid structure of a system, which protects that system as it is. Again, his reason for calling for a Phoenix experience or looking to the homeschooling community to figure out how to do it. It's really, really hard to change those structures without being a deviant.

Speaker 1
31:59 - 32:24
And he was award winning. He went from like school award to state level award to national teacher of the year awards, and then retired and said, yeah, but I wasn't doing what you thought I was doing. Right? And if I go back to one of my favorite books from the years when our children started homeschooling, and they're both young adults now, but Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society.

Speaker 1
32:25 - 32:53
He wrote an essay that in fact had said, How is it we've got to a place in society where a school is more powerful than church? Because mandatory by law, mandatory attendance until 16 years of age. In a government run, government dictated curriculum institution where all children have to attend. When you put it in those terms, you go, wait a second.

Speaker 1
32:55 - 33:10
Why is that the case? Why? You know, and again, the argument will be so that some kids don't get lost because some parents won't have the skills and some adults won't be able to lead them down the right path towards an education. But then again, whose education?

Speaker 1
33:11 - 33:21
And what is it they're learning? Like how could any of the teachers in my daughter's high school who's there for her last semester? She only needs three classes. They've told her she's not allowed with her spare.

Speaker 1
33:21 - 33:43
She's not even allowed to be on campus during her spares to study and do homework for the other three classes. Like it's become a mini police state. Cameras in the washrooms, vape detectors, like we're not U.S. inner city schools with metal detectors yet, but it's not far off. It's a police state, and the kids are not connecting.

Speaker 1
33:44 - 34:10
If they're not feeling connected to the teachers, to the activities in the school, how are they likely to be connected to anything that's attempted to be taught there? Well, and this gets into my view of therapy. And when writing this book, I didn't give too much thought to education. And we've talked about John Taylor Gatto a lot, which is interesting.

Speaker 1
34:10 - 34:44
I guess it's cool to see his books being published with the same publisher of kids these days. That's freaking cool. But one of the things I think when it comes to, especially my lens of thinking about the world through, you know, the therapy world that I've lived in the last 20 years, is we have a massive youth engagement problem. And if you just think, you know, the kids aren't going outside, they're not playing with other kids, They're not drinking beer.

Speaker 1
34:44 - 34:50
They're not having sex. They're on their phones. They're not listening to the teacher. They're on their phones.

Speaker 1
34:50 - 35:05
They're not talking in the hallways. And I'm sitting here going, hey, you can pathologize and medicalize this all you want. If you turn this around, we have an engagement problem. We have not given them a world worth engaging in.

Speaker 1
35:05 - 35:28
That's on us, the adults. So if a kid is bored in your classroom, That's your classroom. If a kid's sitting in front of me in therapy, just sitting on their phone, what difference does it make if I have DR or PhD or MSW before or after my name? They don't give a shit about that.

Speaker 1
35:28 - 35:54
And then you look at therapy, we have 1000 types of brands of therapy. What difference does it make if this young person is sitting across from me and I go, should I deliver CBT, ACT, DBT, EMDR, motivational interviewing, solution focused therapy? you know, acceptance and commitment therapy, psychoanalysis, should I be psychodynamic today? Like, what a waste of time what we've created.

Speaker 1
35:54 - 36:31
We've created all of these rules that helps people sell books, helps them sell their training packages, and nothing is moving the needle on youth engagement. And so if I know what the people that like selling books do is they like to find something, like say social media, and go, well, this was a problem in 2010 when we put front-facing cameras on phones. Now look at kids don't want to, kids aren't engaged anymore. And I'm going, but if you zoom out from this, the compulsory schooling system is an experiment that's, what, 160 years old?

Speaker 1
36:32 - 36:48
And do we think mental health has improved? Do we think things are heading? Mental health outcomes, when we start seeing, I mean, Jeanne M. Twinging, who's a, you know, a lot of her research is used to craft this, you know, social media moral panic.

Speaker 1
36:49 - 37:12
But her doctoral research was that from the 1950s to the 1980s, you have a massive deterioration of youth anxiety. So much so, the average child's anxiety in the 1980s would have warranted a hospitalization in the 1950s. That's how drastic this change was. And what did she say?

Speaker 1
37:12 - 37:21
More social disconnection. You know, divorce rates went up. That became less stigmatized. And what happened in the 80s?

Speaker 1
37:21 - 37:30
Get under your desk. Russia might nuke you all. You know, we're scaring the shit out of everybody. You know, just turn on the news.

Speaker 1
37:31 - 37:55
Moral panic after moral panic, after scare, after scare. And then we as the adults aren't thinking, are we really giving kids something to look forward to? And there's also, and this is, it's funny how whenever you put the pencils down writing a book, I go, can I, I want to call a publisher and go, can I have the book back? Because I have a lot of things to add to this.

Speaker 1
37:55 - 38:06
I just learned this one. This is fascinating. How headlines and research get kind of manipulated. We hear all the time of a loneliness epidemic, right?

Speaker 1
38:07 - 38:21
Well, some of those big studies are how often are you alone? That being alone and being lonely are two totally different things, right? More of us work from home, especially after the pandemic. We're allowed to be at home more often.

Speaker 1
38:21 - 38:52
So we see these are two different talking points here, but they often get put into what will make the best headline. So anyway, I think we have to be really mindful about, instead of it's the phones, it's just the schools, it's just this, if we looked at what are we giving them to engage in? I think that'll turn it around. I think it'll turn around the way adults think about their kids.

Speaker 1
38:52 - 39:10
Like, that kid's just being disrespectful to me. Or they might not know why they should be respectful to you. Like, how do you own this as the adult? You know, it keeps bringing this word into my head, compliance, compliance, compliance.

Speaker 1
39:10 - 39:30
And I get goosebumps because I get so angry. And it's just our schools reward this compliance, this predictability. And then we send kids out in the world. And now, even especially now, we want them to flourish with emotional intelligence and creativity.

Speaker 1
39:30 - 40:27
And, you know, and like, it's such a dichotomy. Like, how do we, how do we start to shift even if it's conversations at home or if it's you know something a teacher can say or that we can say listen compliance is like we're not we're not doing that how do we shift that so a kid knows hey am i standing my ground am i parenting in my values or am i being compliant and how do you know i know how many conversations I've heard parents say with kids when I was in the school just you know what just don't rock the boat just they're just they're just gonna you're gonna get payback because how do we teach kids that whole compliance crap like is there and I know that's a huge question But is there like a few like targeted things we can say to parents about the difference between compliance and standing in

Speaker 1
40:27 - 41:08
your ground and advocating for yourself and all those beautiful things we want our kids to do? I think one thing I took away from Dr. Gordon Neufeld years and years ago when our kids were young and we had first read his Hold On To Your Kids book, which was at the time just illuminating for us as parents of young children. There was a sense, and I think we actually took a workshop with one of his trainers in the city of Victoria. There was a trainer saying like, you have to be a little bit dispassionate about your kids resistance to things or their non-compliance.

Speaker 1
41:08 - 41:30
Because if you don't get caught up in it emotionally and you can just look at it and think about what is that as a trait going to be like for them as an adult? It's a complete reframe. It's like, oh my God. What you're doing to me, what you're listening to the language, what you're doing to me right now is so infuriating.

Speaker 1
41:31 - 42:01
And yet in 10 years from now, it's going to be a superpower that you're going to have. You're going to have a frickin cape on if you're able to hang on to that particular perspective on on things to be able to see truth, at least your own speak to it, regardless of the response. Like I struggled through school trying not to get in trouble. I just was bored.

Speaker 1
42:02 - 42:19
I was undermining myself and my success kind of to protect how I showed up to teachers relative to my older sister. There was some self-sabotaging going on, but I got myself into trouble. So I got thrown out. I got the detentions.

Speaker 1
42:19 - 42:29
I got asked to stay after school. I got strapped, right? Like we write about that in the book. But what happened is the next generation didn't get strapped.

Speaker 1
42:29 - 42:45
They got medicated, right? So compliance for us came through fear. For the next generation, it came through pharmaceuticals. That is all a part of that story of compliance.

Speaker 1
42:45 - 43:08
Like when you think about. Behaviors that are showing up in, say, young adults lives that are disruptive in relationship. This is sort of the bread and butter of my my private practice right now, working mostly with young men. It's almost as if the struggles they had as a child led to behaviors that were protective at the time.

Speaker 1
43:08 - 43:25
They were adaptive behaviors. Right. Whether that was sheltering themselves from from bad feelings or from lashing out to protect themselves or a sibling or their mother in a family of violence. Those things at the time got them through.

Speaker 1
43:25 - 43:49
They adapted, they protected themselves, they moved on. They're a survivor of those environments that adults created. But now they're in these other environments, like a loving, caring, intimate relationship, and some of those behaviors are now just like, really inappropriate. And when they come to you, or to me in this case, there's a lot of guilt and shame associated with those behaviors.

Speaker 1
43:50 - 44:11
But that mental reframe that those were superpowers for you, that protected you as the child when the adult in the room was not protecting you appropriately. You have to see them as what they were at the time, which was an adaptive, protective feature. You did what you could to survive. And now you just don't need that behavior anymore.

Speaker 1
44:11 - 44:49
So even that reframe is a powerful lifting of weight, the shame, the guilt, the fear, And if you can then go home and explain that to your partner and have a conversation about it, the level of compassion and empathy for you when you do have those moments again, goes through the roof. I was going to add in the spirit of getting in trouble here, I'll probably get in trouble for this hot take. In talking about compliance, one of the things we've seen over the last 10 years is an important shift to re-looking at social justice.

Speaker 1
44:49 - 45:14
And the thing that always irked me about this, and I'm going to just use self-care as an example. You know, self-care was, you know, the idea of it came out of like in medicine, like doctors and nurses in the hospitals were like, you know, we're telling people stay hydrated, make sure to get outside. Then we're not doing it and we're all burning out. We should do self-care.

Speaker 1
45:15 - 45:39
How self-care really got popularized was the Black Panthers, so fighting to end segregation. And so they were doing martial arts, yoga, meditation, reading books, and these things that they thought. And their idea of self-care was, we're going to get arrested. Like, we're fighting racial segregation in the 60s.

Speaker 1
45:39 - 45:50
We're going to get arrested. We need to come out of jail stronger than when we went in. We need to be able to stay radical. Now look at self-care.

Speaker 1
45:50 - 46:14
You put a bulletin up in the teacher's classroom and go, we need you to stay exactly the same. So make sure you hydrate, exercise, do this, because we need you here on Monday to do the exact same thing that you were doing, that teachers were doing 70 years ago. Bell goes off, kids get up, move to another room, sit down, get a lesson. Bell goes off, stand up, sit down.

Speaker 1
46:14 - 46:37
No wonder they're all on their phones, you know. Anyway, but so one of the things we saw, and Nevin and I wrote about this. the rising rates of accommodations that students bring to the university classroom. And of course, as educators and mental health professionals, we want everyone to feel like they're included in the classroom.

Speaker 1
46:38 - 47:03
We also don't want you to have a list of 50 accommodations for you to comply with everything. We want you to be thinking and being radical instead of these accommodations just to preserve the system. Because we should all say, you know, we should not be looking at these individualized interventions. We should be looking at what's wrong with the classroom.

Speaker 1
47:03 - 47:15
Yes. Why is this suddenly? Why do we need all these accommodations to change this thing that maybe won't be working? So self-care these ideas get hijacked into let's actually just keep everything the way it is.

Speaker 1
47:16 - 47:51
So it sounds progressive in many ways, but sometimes this feels like utterly regressive. Like, it just feels like this is to maintain the system, to maintain the, and I think John Taylor Gatto does say, it's not a problem of education. It's a problem with the institution of schooling that has this issue. And so sometimes with these ideas, we could do sort of a thought experiment of if our schools were really focused on social justice, what would we see in five years?

Speaker 1
47:51 - 48:07
We should see a radical change like ending segregation was a radical progressive movement, allowing, you know, women to be educated, progressive movement. It changed something. You know, don't call on me in class. I'm anxious.

Speaker 1
48:07 - 48:36
This feels, it's like, what are we talking about? It's totally backwards. So sometimes we see these, things that get changed, but they look like a radical change, but it's a radical way to preserve the compliance. So we need to, if something doesn't feel right, and I think this is the undertone of kids these days, the whole book, is we need more people who just say, hold on a second.

Speaker 1
48:37 - 49:14
Because when they're surveyed anonymously, more people, like I said at the start of this, more people do have similar concerns about all of this. And then us being quiet about it lets the, you know, for how much we're talking about power every day for the last, you know, however long, the longer we're all quiet, the more powerful the power gets. Yeah. You know, so for instance, I, you know, when I talk to psychiatrists, I haven't met the psychiatrist who's just, well, the quickest and easiest thing to do is for me to just medicate you.

Speaker 1
49:15 - 49:37
They don't talk like that, but somehow this is happening. And so what's going on here is, I think that if, and when we wrote about this, like, if we all came together in the middle, which means you let, we don't have to agree on everything, but we can agree that some of this is nuanced. Is social media bad? Sure.

Speaker 1
49:37 - 49:48
Should we do this sweeping universalist, universalist, Ban? Probably not. Let's come together and figure it out together. That's giving kids something to imitate.

Speaker 1
49:48 - 50:11
That's giving them something where, yeah, you can go sit with that teacher and they might bore you, but understand why they bore you. Learn something about yourself. I don't know. I think sometimes these, we need to, when we see the compliance, you know, mania, I think a lot of us could do a better job at calling it out when we see it.

Speaker 1
50:11 - 50:16
Yeah. Yeah. You know what? It caused me to retire two or two years early.

Speaker 1
50:16 - 50:27
I could not. I went through 25 years, high school, public education, three. And then I decided, I'm going to try the private education and see how that goes. Sorry.

Speaker 1
50:28 - 50:59
Sorry. You know, and it went from, you know, it just goes from, In our system anyway, and in Canada, Ontario is, you know, you have this whole. Board of education, of course, and they have their facilitators and every five years, a facilitator changes the buzzword. Costs all this money for the board to change the, you know, the new PD and the new this and the new that, and then four and a half years later.

Speaker 1
50:59 - 51:31
it's all shredded and a new administrator comes in, a new facilitator comes in, changes the fucking buzzwords, all it is bullshit. And, and it, and it comes down to, you know, administrators, I remember a principal saying, so I'm a spec ed head. So I work one-on-one with the most significant needs kids, like just trying to really support them in a high school system that doesn't work. And, was told more than one time by principals, you're just way too passionate, you need to relax.

Speaker 1
51:33 - 52:09
That's nice. Twice, two different principals, you're way too, and the next time you go to the board of ed to, I don't know, fight for somebody, you better not do it on my watch because it makes me look bad. So let's file those retirement papers right now because I tell you, if it wasn't for passion in the building, Sorry, like it's what you need is what you want, you know, and yeah It's insanity when I hear these conversations when I was just like I can't do that Can't get up in the morning.

Speaker 1
52:09 - 52:29
Like I love teaching loved being with these kids. It didn't I had a war on all day long fine, I could manage it. And it was it was my jam, not because you want kids to be in that situation, but if you're able to be that safe person for them out of 2000 people in the building, I'll take it. That's mine.

Speaker 1
52:30 - 53:02
But I want to talk about, you know, we talk about this over diagnosis and over medicating, and we know we know that's probably a whole other conversation. And then we talk about inclusion and accommodations. And I feel like are we really acting on inclusion with all of these accommodations? Because I feel like, hmm, we're just excluding you with a diagnosis and all the, like, how do we shift that, that mindset?

Speaker 1
53:02 - 53:06
How do we shift? How do you understand what I'm saying? Am I articulating it? Okay.

Speaker 1
53:08 - 53:43
I've got an idea here. One, um, one approach I heard, from a group of educators in a school where, Cheryl, maybe there was enough people with passion to be able to get administrators on side recognizing that their ideals of maintaining status quo are not going to be held for very long when there's this many people wanting change, was to approach school as a system more like a community development project rather than a curricular extension of government. Right.

Speaker 1
53:43 - 54:24
So this idea that you can't kick anyone out of your community. You have to live within the community and you have to find it where the strengths are and where the resources are needed and you move resources around. And so that it's again, but that comes back almost to like a democratic experience where decision making is shared, where pain is shared. And that that's a different approach and the systems that we work in, whether it's K to 12, whether it's universities, governmental, maybe even non-governmental systems, they're often built with structure that makes it quite difficult for the structure itself to change.

Speaker 1
54:25 - 55:03
That's to protect the system, to keep it intact, which usually is benefiting someone, somewhere. So as an administrator, I've dipped my toe into senior administration in different places, in different organizations, and now at the university, just even stepping into like a director's role of a school. The administrative burden is so high that leadership opportunities are hardly present. Review and approve everybody's activities, research proposals, their receipts from their last conference trip, funding grants, everything.

Speaker 1
55:03 - 55:17
It's just review and approve, review and approve, review and approve. It's nothing more than a bobblehead administrator with a rubber stamp. So when someone comes and says, let's do something radically different. And we've tried this at the universities.

Speaker 1
55:17 - 55:31
I've tried it at the colleges. I've tried it in organizations. The place it was most successful was in the nonprofit sector, because you have to be resourceful and adaptive. And when someone's got passion, often people will get out of the way and line up behind you and push.

Speaker 1
55:32 - 55:36
Right. Like, OK, do it. Let's go. And you charge forward.

Speaker 1
55:36 - 55:57
But you're able to make change. If we want to change the name of a course at the university. Oh god. The educational curricular guards are up so tight that it's like there's four cycle meetings throughout the year you have to get your proposal first approved at.

Speaker 1
55:57 - 56:21
your school level? Does it offend any other schools that might see that the title is now duplicating something in another part of the university? Administratively, it is so burdensome that many people are just like, I don't even want to change the title, even though it's not reflecting what I'm teaching in that class anymore. And so that system is designed to not change.

Speaker 1
56:23 - 56:48
Status quo, it seems to perpetuate mediocrity. It's not a performance-oriented system. I could go from faculty member to director, to associate dean, to dean, to vice president of something or another at the university, but always have my faculty line protected. I can go back to being a regular professor at some point.

Speaker 1
56:48 - 57:12
So am I going to offend anyone? Am I going to make any radical change that actually improves the system but disrupts the system up here if I want to just someday have that big salary and then go coast here for a few years and take my salary home on pension? It's just not designed for that. And that's unfortunate because most of the systems that our kids are growing up in are built and maintained by adults.

Speaker 1
57:12 - 57:29
And many of them have these perpetuating mediocrity reality. Hmm. Can I show you something? You won't be able to see this very well, but I went to New Zealand for a conference the other weekend.

Speaker 1
57:29 - 57:45
And I had to get, because the university, I had some funding to pay for a conference, so I got it all approved. This is my university's domestic travel approval plan. That's how many steps. It looks like a circuit board.

Speaker 1
57:47 - 58:05
I said, they're good. I don't even know who nine of these people are that have to like, you're not paying for the flight. But it's, but that's like Nevin's role review and approve. It's just at one time, one of the higher ups emailed me and says, this needs to be approved by this person.

Speaker 1
58:05 - 58:18
And I was like. That's you. Why are you emailing me? Like, just, it's wild how, and there's theories about this that we didn't really harp on enough in the book, I don't think.

Speaker 1
58:20 - 59:09
But, you know, this organized irresponsibility where we're supposed to be radical, but it's organized in being just, nothing can be done. You know, going back to committees, a committee is a group of people that individually could all make this change, but as a collective decide, nah, you know, it's amazing. But going back to the question about the diagnosis and inclusivity and the accommodations in the classroom, The biggest fear of this for me, and where I want every individual who says, you know, I want them to be able to come to me and say, I might need to stand up and move around in your classroom.

Speaker 1
59:09 - 59:20
Yeah, no problem, don't care. Or a parent, I need to bring my kid, I have no daycare. No problem, you know, whatever. I'll do anything for my students, you know.

Speaker 1
59:21 - 59:47
What I don't want to do is actually categorize and classify and label people into corners. So one thing, when we paint ourselves, a label can be, for a lot of people, oh, a lot of students come up to me, they call me the king of ADHD, just because I go, I use that as a trigger warning. I go, hey, guys. I might jump around here.

Speaker 1
59:48 - 1:00:12
And so that might look like an ADHD diagnosis. That label doesn't interest me any longer. And I go, you know, so just raise your hand if you're confused with what I'm saying, you know. And so students will come up and they'll say, and we're seeing this rise of especially mature aged female students coming to the university saying, I realized that 40 I had ADHD.

Speaker 1
1:00:13 - 1:00:32
Sure, exactly. And so what they are saying is it was euphoric to figure out, it's OK that my brand works differently. And that explains some of my social quirks, explains who I am. And I go, and now you have a new journey to learn how you learn.

Speaker 1
1:00:32 - 1:00:53
So you need to know this label. In a year, how will you be navigating the university, the classroom, your essays that you have to write? So for me, I know that when everybody in my house goes to sleep at night, I get two hours of my brain really firing. So that's how I do most of my writing.

Speaker 1
1:00:53 - 1:01:26
If I had to sit in an office with 50 people around at 9 in the morning every day, I would lose my marbles, you know? So you need to learn how you learn, and then that will help you navigate this world by knowing more about yourself. That's a transformative educational journey that might start with a label, but ends with learning more about yourself and how you participate and who you are. Instead of, I have this limiting thing.

Speaker 1
1:01:26 - 1:01:43
You know, I think you have a superpower and now you got to use it. Yes. You know. So instead of using the label as why you can't fit in, why you need more of something else, I'm willing to give you anything you want, because who cares?

Speaker 1
1:01:43 - 1:01:53
You got to get out of school. You know, you got to get the degree and go do the work. So at the same time, you need to learn how you work and who you are. You know?

Speaker 1
1:01:53 - 1:02:10
So I think that's one of the most important things. Like, people will say to Nevin and I, how are you, you know, how did you write two books in however long? And like, and for Nevin, three in what, eight years or something? So, you know, something like that.

Speaker 1
1:02:10 - 1:02:51
And we write well together, and I'm going, Well if we didn't write it down it would be stuck in our freaking heads i gotta get i gotta sleep at night you know i gotta get this crap out otherwise it's gonna be stuck there so know how you work and knowing your your superpower whatever it is sometimes some of my. best friends I like to talk to are really quiet ones who are really critically reflective and they can call **** better on anything because they're awesome observers. They can see **** from a mile away and they're just not loud and obnoxious like I am but they have a different superpower.

Speaker 1
1:02:51 - 1:03:10
That's okay. So, yeah, I think sometimes the categorizing and classifying it also in the therapy world and I'm sure this translates to education as well. It gives the adult a really clever out. You know, they're too autistic.

Speaker 1
1:03:11 - 1:03:21
They're too attention deficit. They're too traumatized. They're too depressed. Think about this language in like, in like dating world, right?

Speaker 1
1:03:21 - 1:03:30
You know, readiness for change. I met this person at the bar, but they were pre contemplative. You know, they weren't ready. They're in denial.

Speaker 1
1:03:30 - 1:03:58
Like, oh, they haven't hit rock bottom yet, so they don't know how wonderful of a partner I would be. All of this weird language that removes the adult from the relationship. So it's amazing how we can use the classifications in the name of inclusivity, but also as a way to exclude the person as well. I agree.

Speaker 1
1:03:58 - 1:04:14
And I raised my hand because I've known self-diagnosed ADHD for a million years. But you know what? My job in high school was crisis management. Who better than someone who can just jump, run, and just act great.

Speaker 1
1:04:15 - 1:04:25
Went to the private school. Well, this diagnosis is really affecting me. I got medicated for a year. Turns out, I just don't like doing the shit they were making me do.

Speaker 1
1:04:28 - 1:04:49
sit on your butt and do google spreadsheets and import data and Well, let's just get out of this completely. Stop taking the medication, start doing everything I love like this. Turns out it's all good. So I could not agree more just even from personal experience.

Speaker 1
1:04:49 - 1:05:03
And man, I hate to wrap this up, but I'm going to wrap it up with one fire question at each of you, because we can do a sequel. Will knows we can do what is it a treacle? I don't know how to do it. Right.

Speaker 1
1:05:03 - 1:05:07
Whenever we're ready. Yes. Okay. Fire question to Nevin first.

Speaker 1
1:05:07 - 1:05:25
What if there's one thing you could change right now, right here, right now in the system, what would it be? In the educational system? Yes, sir. I would empower teachers to have far more freedom over time and assignments and how they go about managing learning.

Speaker 1
1:05:25 - 1:05:57
Love it. Will, you're up. I would, instead of, I would, in the spirit of thinking about youth engagement, I'd have a youth advocate in every school who's called the youth engagement officer, and when, maybe not officer, that's a doing, but if what they say goes, the other thing I would have, and this is something that was done by some of the people that inspired me in the therapy world as a solution-focused worker into Kim Berg.

Speaker 1
1:05:57 - 1:06:16
Before she passed away, I believe this was in New York City, she created a program called Working on What Works. And what she did is she sat in the back of the classroom for the first like four weeks of a semester. And she just took notes on noticing what works. But she went up to the kids and said, you seem really passionate about this.

Speaker 1
1:06:16 - 1:06:26
Tell me a little bit about that. Or you seem really focused today. Why are you focused on this? Where maybe they were a naughty, distractible kid in other ways, right?

Speaker 1
1:06:26 - 1:06:54
And then for the rest of the semester, the kids and the teacher worked on how to do more of what works in the classroom. So actually progressing something. So maybe something like that, or someone who focuses on engagement, but has the power and freedom, as Nevin said, to do their role in the way that they probably know what's best for the kids in their classroom. Not that's amazing.

Speaker 1
1:06:54 - 1:07:36
I love I love that we wrapped up with that and I am so grateful to you, too I love this conversation. I would love to do it again pick another topic. Let's dive more into your book This has been it like, you know It just the whole point of the podcast is like shift perspective like we get get the get the blinders off start asking questions start being curious curious with your kids and and and you know that's if we're asking questions and we're learning but not asking questions with the expectation of what we want that answer to be we want the true answer and then we want to work with that and collaborate and be curious and ask the questions and I think that's uh I

Speaker 1
1:07:36 - 1:07:50
just love this conversation thank you both so very much Again, Kids These Days is the book to read. Everything is gonna be linked in the show notes. Any final, there you go, there we go. Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Speaker 1
1:07:50 - 1:08:00
I really appreciate your company today. And here's some John Taylor Gatto with a Kids These Days bookmark. Beautiful. I'm taking notes.

Speaker 1
1:08:00 - 1:08:09
I'm taking notes. Thank you for listening to Parenting Teens Advice Redefined. Share this, download it. Everybody needs to hear this stuff.

Speaker 1
1:08:09 - 1:08:39
Honestly, have a beautiful day and we'll see you next time. What I love about conversations like this with Will and Nevin is that they remind us that disruption does not have to be dramatic, it doesn't have to be political, it doesn't have to be loud. Disruption can be personal. It can start with one moment of awareness, one shift in how we see our teen, one decision to question a system we were taught to accept.

Speaker 1
1:08:40 - 1:09:13
If today's episode opened up something for you, maybe a new way of understanding your kid, how to communicate with them to get some real answers, or the system that we are navigating, and more importantly, the system they are trying to navigate. Let that awareness guide your next interaction with your team, your next conversation with a teacher, your next moment of advocacy. Because when we change how we see our kids, we start to change the world they're growing up in. Thank you for joining me.

Speaker 1
1:09:13 - 1:09:44
Thank you to Nevin Harper and Will Doba for their leadership, their research, and their dedication to building a system worthy of our kids, of your kids. Until next time, keep questioning, keep connecting, and keep redefining what's possible, one conversation at a time. Thank you for listening to another episode. I hope you loved this one as much as I did.

Speaker 1
1:09:44 - 1:10:19
And I just wanted to share something with you because, you know, parenting teens is not just about managing these challenges that we talk about on all the episodes. 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.

Speaker 1
1:10:20 - 1:10:29
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.

Speaker 1
1:10:29 - 1:10:44
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. You might just not recognize your life in the next 90 days. It all starts with a call.

Speaker 1
1:10:45 - 1:10:53
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.

Speaker 1
1:10:54 - 1:11:11
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.