WGNU Radio→ on Parenting for an Extraordinary Family

my name is Carrie silverstock well today as you heard on the break before we are going to be talking about parenting which is a topic I know is so incredibly needed as a mother of two I often feel like pulling my hair out and I sometimes don’t know what to do with some of the behaviors of my children and we have just the person that I know all of you are going to want to talk to today Judy Ryan is the owner of expanding human potential and this is a training and consulting firm that specializes in Cooperative practices within corporate educational family and government settings and luckily we have her here today she has done some incredible things for the city of St Louis and our local communities but she’s going to tell you about you are also going to be able to meet Judy firsthand if you would like to and our espw meeting next week and we’ll be hearing more about that and today on our show she’s going to be talking about some specific strategies that you can use as well as her own journey to start this incredible business so I want to find out first of all how did you get started on this helping parents what what started you on this journey well I myself am a parent of five children I have children that are 25 all the way down to nine my first four children were very close together in age and I was a very young mom with the first four and then 10 years later my last child slipped in under the wire and gave me a whole new set of experiences almost like having a second family so lots of personal experience with this and what happened for me was that I’ve always been a learner and a seeker and when I was my first three children were born and my oldest was only four I went to a parent training workshop and I’m so grateful that I happened upon the model that I happened upon because it has really absolutely enriched my life and changed my life for the better and um in so many ways and it’s it’s interesting because I I when I very first went to my first meeting I introduced my son who was four years old and I said this is my son the biter and so uh right away what happened was after I got him settled in the babysitting room the instructor pulled me aside and said you know first lesson is that you don’t want to ever say anything in front of your children that you don’t want to nurture and cultivate in them and then eventually you want to start thinking of them only in the way that you want to nurture and cultivate them and I think I fell in love right then and there and it was just an amazing journey the model was very honoring of uh human beings and of me as a parent and as of my children and really taught me a lot about how to bring the best out in my children in a way that made me feel good to be a parent I think a lot of parents feel disappointed in the role because it feels to them overwhelming stressful maybe unsupported they they may often feel that they’re the only one that has some of the problems they have and so my goal would be to help to provide some hope and some joy and some some just point some direction for the listeners today wonderful and I think just that thought of not you know not only does not speaking negative thoughts you know or characteristics in front of your child but not then also not holding those or thinking them right is already just a powerful tip for users out there that’s half of it if we could do the same for ourselves as well um one of the things that I love about this model that we use is that it’s focused a lot on mutual respect and understanding that every person wants to feel a sense of belonging and a sense of significance in their life and there’s lots of ways that we do that and in our family life is the first place that we learn how to get those needs met and how to do that in a way that is honoring of who we are so we start out the shoot you know feeling like these powerful important people and then in the socialization process as it currently exists we often end up sort of throwing the baby out with the bath water literally and what what I love about the work that we do is that we help to bring all of the creativity and the initiative and the giftedness of each person preserve that and help to order how that that potential within that child can be brought forth in a way that is is Pleasant that’s enjoyable for everybody and that’s a challenge for many people right my name is Carrie silverstock and today we’re are talking with Judy Ryan owner of expanding human potential so that is such a cool title of a company I think and I really want to ask Judy what does that mean and how do you do that how do you expand human potential well I I love the question first of all thank you my my role is to help create the conditions for people to expand fully and so I’ve been really looking at that looking at what the purpose is beyond you know the business purposes what are the um the meaningful visions that I’m holding and one is that I realize that people to me are like a field they’re they have they come with these seeds of their purpose and their their gifts and their Destiny and so much of the time those fields are almost as though they’re covered over with concrete or plastic or something like that and what I see expanding human potential doing is actually allowing the conditions to begin to take place so that people can eat more easily and gracefully become who they already are and that they can you know be brought forth so my hope is that people will say yes to that because that’s where it’s not my business you know my business in a sense feels almost like a gardener where I’m tilling that field and taking all those things out of the field that actually created to be um less productive less able to thrive and then some people it’s so interesting because some people it’s almost as though their will is so strong that it’s like a a plant that makes it through the concrete you know and then some no matter what you do they choose not to and that’s the beauty of life you have a free will free choice you know but I see our our role as actually opening the space for people to expand into all that they really can do and we don’t tap that at all and that’s what I really learned in my own parenting is how untapped we have allowed um even children very small children are so much more competent and if I can continue on about that definitely one of the reasons I decided to have this company and this happened years before before I ever formed the company because the company is only about four years old is that I was teaching this program I was so in uh excited about this program that I kept taking the course over and over again because it was such a shift for me and my instructor about the third time said you know why don’t you become an instructor because when you teach something it becomes even more your right and I said absolutely sign me up so um after being in this about six years my oldest was 11 at the time and we had four children by then um we were invited to present a family meeting in front of a big audience of people I was in a gymnasium and we were up on a stage and there were teachers and parents and Educators and so on and what we did was we had at the time our five-year-old who was our youngest actually lead the family meeting wow and the reason we did that is because she could we had really worked on transferring leadership and responsibility to all of the kids and so she was used to taking that role at least periodically and so she was able to hold the authority of the group knew how to start the meeting how to do compliments how to problem solve how to handle an agenda and a vote all these things and it was interesting because I was so close to it as a parent that I couldn’t see the value of it but when I saw that the kids were all of a sudden they were given lots of questions from the audience and they shared certain solutions that they had tried that had failed right and they were comfortable expressing things that they tried that failed first of all it wasn’t a big deal to them and then they shared the things that they had tried that worked and we would we pointedly did things to give them an opportunity to be competent and to be powerful and to be influential for example we would give them the budget for the grocery shopping for the week and they would go as small teams and luckily we live in a safe neighborhood and we could actually physically drop them off as a team and they would have the full governance of that budget and we would let them know what’s required like toilet paper and all those things but they knew that they were in charge of this really very important task and so when they would be at the checkout line they’d call us and they’d say uh you know we’re ready to be picked up and the checkout lady would say you mean you’re doing the shopping for the family you’re managing this money which was over a hundred dollars and all all of that and so that was a really big deal to them that allowed them to feel powerful and to feel you know really important to the family to make contributions which are some really basic needs that all people have so I saw them Fielding these questions from the audience being confident having leadership skills having people skills and I realized the tremendous value of what we were doing Not only was I happier Not only was I punishing less and all those things that we do trying to get good citizens of children but I was seeing the strengths that were being built in them and I thought at that point in time even though this was years ago I want to bring this out I want to bring this to other people because this is Joy this is this is a way of you know enjoying life and so I think that’s when I planted my own seed you know that eventually I would bring this forward so if some someone out there that’s listening that you know just heard your example and is like wow I want I want to do that what is what’s a way to get started I mean how do they start incorporating where are the where are the starting places for people that might be listening well I’ll tell you two kind of General starting places one is to know to learn about how what actually is creates a healthy human being because there’s some real basic things that create a healthy human being and we inadvertently work against those ends for example if I had a group of parents in front of me and I said what do you want for your kids they wouldn’t necessarily be saying I want them to make a lot of money although they probably wouldn’t mind that but their top priorities would be I want them to be caring I want them to be lifelong Learners I want them to be good citizens I want them to be safe and healthy have good marriages good relationships with people right you know all of those things so what we do is we want those for our kids and we’re very sincere in that and yet we do behaviors toward them that don’t get us that result and we often don’t stop and examine what is it in the methods that we’re using that are actually getting in our way and is there possibly another way so the first thing would be to be willing to question some of the long-standing traditions of why we do things the way we do because many many people still don’t even know the model that we you know we support because it is very non-traditional in a sense we’ve had so many hundreds of years of a lot of command and control and it just frankly doesn’t work anymore it has a lot of negative side effects to it and understanding the human being and what is required to create a healthy human being is is number one and so the first thing that we say is key to that is creating an encouraging environment okay and by encouraging it means that you want to look at what are the things that I’m doing in my family life that are helping my children feel powerful and influential that are helping my children feel lovable and valued for who they are in their own unique way and what’s helping them to feel that they’re part of our family in a connected way how are they feeling a sense of community I mean I I can think of a worst case scenario is uh the the kids out in the Columbine school you know that did all the massacre right I mean that’s a very radical example right but the truth of it is they didn’t feel connected they did not feel part of that Community felt very ostracized in that Community they didn’t feel heard that’s the that’s the the most extreme extreme example but in Family Life there is a certain extent to which a child feels that sense of connection and belonging and that sense of community now just as an example the family meetings are just one way of doing that um and and also the fourth neatest contribution to feel that you have things to offer gifts to offer talents that are welcome that are needed the family meeting is a great way to get all those needs met lots and lots of other things can be done to get those needs Mets even equally important is lots of things should be taken out of our practices that don’t allow for that to happen so many times we force kids to apologize we force them to um be good we force them to share their toys all kinds of ways that we use control and rewarding and sort of uh we’re in charge and we’re going to evaluate and we’re going to grade and we’re going to tell you when you’re good and when you’re bad all of those control methods are our best attempts at trying to get those results from the children and they’re actively working against the four core needs so that’s number one is what is an encouraging environment look like because if I can do that well tons and tons of the problems that we have in our families and in our schools would go away just by doing that I I like to use the example of scurvy on a ship if you look at the four core needs do you remember what scurvy was scurvy was an illness that seafaring Navy people or whatever in the olden days would get because there was something missing in their environment it was they didn’t have enough vitamin C and that’s why they eventually called those Sailors limeys because they’d have to send them off to see with a bunch of lines and lemons so that they wouldn’t lose their teeth in their hair and die and all that so here’s an example of just something simple that was needed in the environment that without which they were in trouble well that’s how these core needs are If people could build their sip systems and their family around those core needs that would create a lot of Health people would not be acting out and doing some of the things that they’re doing and you’re saying the first place is really for people to take a look at what is working where they are where their child does feel nurtured and connected right and what’s Meeting those core needs and what am I doing what are the things that I’m actually practicing for example a lot of people don’t know that rewarding and praising are very destructive practices because in the short term there are things we do that get some immediate compliance from children like if you if I were to say to you um Carrie you know if you’re uh if you keep your legs crossed I’ll give you a thousand dollars and you knew that I would or thought I would right you would definitely do that right but all of the research shows that if you would do that for me the um the commitment to keeping your legs crossed which is kind of a crazy example but would actually diminish right and so that’s important information to know and part of what falls into the category of rewards are ways that we use praising and ways that we use um competing and pitting people against each other and a lot of awards and things like that and we think that those are all really good things that will motivate children to be good and unfortunately in the short term it works and the same with punishment in the short term it works to get the compliant Behavior we want but in the long run it actively works against those four coordinates and is very counterproductive so there’s lots of information that we don’t have I liken good parent training to a subject that we all needed in school just like definitely Reading Writing and arithmetic right I’ve heard that over and over again you know that especially for new from new parents you know that the baby doesn’t come with a handbook and how many parents wish they had that and we also say well we should all have common sense well common sense is the sense of the collective right and if the collective has been to beat people or to put them into slavery or something then that’s not very good Common Sense exactly sometimes common sense if it’s collectively not working needs to be really closely examined and even parenting I God love everybody that’s out there trying to do this parenting because it it really almost happens to answer what model you fall upon I was so blessed to fall upon this model because this has been so enriching for me personally and building my own character my own Integrity I think there’s lots of parenting models out there that are well meant but they’re just another version of control and command very interesting so that’s that’s another thing to be aware of and right before the break we were talking about some of the key principles that she shares with parents and one of the first steps that you need to you know really maybe change things in the household or start to address challenging behaviors is really change your your mindset and the framework and start coming and looking at things from a more positive place um you know how can I make my child more connected and feel more nurtured in this environment and her program really helps to do that but I know I’m talking with a lot of parents um there’s a lot of parents out there that feel like gosh you know I’ve tried everything I still am having challenging behaviors and how you know I just want this to change how can I how can I do this and so I definitely want to ask Judy what are some of the key issues that people come to you with and how do you help them what can they do yeah that’s a great question and yes it’s always in the Forefront of our mind what what uh causes this pain definitely gets our attention you know and I think one of the unpleasant sides of parenting is you know what do we do with that misbehavior or that negative behavior that shows up and sometimes it’s us that’s in that negative behavior because you know we may be right down there with that child misbehaving right back with them you know as as we get discouraged and one of the things I love about the model that we use is that um it’s based on the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolph Strikers and and we bring in a lot of others as well but there uh there’s a primary piece that we use that was brought in by I mean Rudolph drikers and it’s that all Miss behavior is based in discouragement so if you think about it if I’m discouraged in in feeling powerful in feeling lovable and feeling connected and feeling my contribution I’m going to be doing things to try to get those needs met that may not look very productive or be very productive and that’s where negative behavior shows up and so in fact think about it as a parent when you’re feeling powerless over your child and you spank that child you’re coming from that place of discouragement and that’s the same for the child so it’s a different way of looking at it it’s not that this person’s bad or evil or you know even the worst case scenarios have a good reason there’s a positive reason and a positive intention for the behavior trying to get them away from that sense of discouragement so that’s number one helpful is to realize we don’t have to box ourselves into some box of evil okay the other thing that’s really great is so many of us feel that we’ve only got a couple of options when we are faced with negative behavior one is that I can punish people and use harshness in one form or another shaming and blaming and all that kind of thing or I can ignore it which is a passive you know way of handling things which is not helpful and be permissive so people will think well what else is there well the good news is there’s plenty more there’s plenty of other options and one of them is called redirecting negative behavior okay in fact just as I mentioned um you had mentioned in the opening of the show that I’ll be speaking at espw next week and the topic is on this very thing and it’s not necessarily focused just toward parents because negative behavior shows up in many settings so redirecting negative behavior is a topic that we all In fact when we teach parents how to redirect misbehavior in children they say oh my gosh this worked with my co-worker or my boss or my my wife or my husband you know and then when we’re teaching it in a corporation they’ll say this worked with my teenage son or with my two-year-old and and so it’s very interchangeable but just to give you kind of a background of what redirect is I want to I want to use a little bit of a rough metaphor when when you are a child and you taught what to do when a dog comes running up to you barking what was the thing that you remember that you were taught to remember uh stay still yeah right stand like a tree calm your body because the dog if the dog senses like a reaction in you right it’ll perceive that as hostility and it’ll get more hostile so it’s counter intuitive to actually calm yourself and stand still like the part of you that’s what it wants to run and what’s likely to happen you could get bit you know probably someplace that wouldn’t feel so good if you’re running so um so that’s a that’s a great example of the um sort of what the nature of redirect is redirect is all of a sudden we’re faced with something discouraging that is um provocative in one way or another and we our natural reaction would be to fight it or to run from it or to defend ourselves from it something that would actually be meeting a state of hostility or discouragement with our own hostility or discouragement so that’s that’s the first thing to understand about redirect and secondly what’s really exciting is that there have been some very smart people like drikers that have figured out how to recognize certain behaviors that show up in the human being that when they provoke and evoke certain feelings in us we can recognize the patterns of that so that we know what’s a more helpful response than the fear the discouragement and the hostility that we would otherwise bring so that’s the first good thing that there’s this great skill set that can be taught so what does that look like in Practical right reality so I’m going to give you a story because I think stories are a great way okay to illustrate do we have time for we do that is it a quick story yeah fairly quick okay um I’ll tell you about this mother that came to see me when my kids were little and we were visiting we had seven kids under the age of seven and they were all playing downstairs in a playroom having a great time except for her little boy Robert who was three years old and Robert would come into the room and he’d say I don’t want to be here I want to go home anybody relate to that I’m sure you know that feeling of oh gray you know so she would say Robert go play look at all the kids look at all the toys you know go have a good time so Robert would leave the room and a couple minutes later he’d be back in you know I don’t feel so good can’t we go and she’d stop talking and she’d say Robert you know look at these cool toys they have we don’t have these toys at our house and you know go play and so this kept going on and on and finally she said you know I’m going to have to break our play date early because Robert just does this Robert’s always miserably makes me miserable um you know I don’t know what to do with him I’ve tried timeout I’ve tried you know threatening I’ve tried bribing him everything and he’s just always miserable and he makes it difficult for these visits and I said well I said you know you know I’m doing this parenting thing if I see some things that I could help with with Robert would you be open and she said oh my God if you could help me with Robert I’m all here so I said well the first thing you want to do I want to give you some um some idea of what to do and then we’ll talk later about what happens so she said okay so I said when Robert comes in the room next I want you to first of all not interrupt our flow at all like don’t make eye contact with him and don’t speak to him but even before you do that I want you to as soon as you feel them enter the room I want you to stay in your head I know you’re there Robert and I love you I’m glad you’re my son so in your head just have that thought I’m so glad you’re my son Robert so when Robert comes in say that inside yourself and just keep our flow going now when Robert comes over to you because he will just reach over and kind of stroke his arm or put your hand on his shoulder or something to make physical contact with him and again don’t do anything else than that don’t make eye contact and then just see what happens and so just maintain it so sure enough Robert comes in the room and he starts whining and she reaches over and just kind of Strokes his arm and she keeps talking to me and he sort sort of stops and looks like what’s up with this you know and um he’s kind of looking at her and looking at me and he wanders out of the room and he just looks a little you know just bemused like what just happened now I said to her it’s very possible if this has been a long-standing pattern with Robert that he’s not going to give up there he has just you’ve just broken the pattern right there and he’s going to say hmm this is not usual I’m going to have to test that so when Robert comes back the chances are likely that if he does come back he’s going to up the ante so just know that’s normal you haven’t failed this process hasn’t failed in fact in your head Encourage Yourself by going cha-ching I’m making Headway you know so just keep doing what you’ve been doing so sure enough Robert comes in does the same thing starts really getting loud starts to even try to pull her chin you know to look at him and she’s kind of looking at me like holy cow how do you know this you know right and so she pulls him even closer she kind of pulls them into the crook of her arm and um he’s just really kind of struggling and all of a sudden his body starts settling down and settling down and he looks at her and he looks at me and after a while he looks a little bored and he leaves well 20 minutes past 30 minutes pass and she hears Robert squealing with joy in the uh in the playroom and she said probably hasn’t been in a while is that Robert I hear laughing she said Robert’s having a good time Robert never has a good time how did you know that would work and so what I was able to help kind of debrief with her was the process for why that worked and and do we have time to continue on this or yeah we have a couple okay well so what what I helped her to understand was that Robert was in the mistaken belief that he first of all he was discouraged in his in the family so there were some things that I suggested that she do to help him to feel more contributing in the family so many times we protect children from the very thing that would give them fulfillment giving them uncertainty giving them challenges giving them stretches giving them more opportunity to do more to make more of a contribution and to feel more powerful so I helped her out to see that somewhere that was not happening in the family life for Robert and to kind of look at how to Shore that up the second thing was that um the mistaken goal pattern that he was in was called the goal of undue attention and in that goal out of fear that person believes that love equals attention I’ll settle for attention because I can’t get what feels like the real thing so if we support that mistake and belief even with a spanking which a lot of people would think of as a non-permissive thing to do right by actually giving him into attention were being permissive and so by helping her to see that you can give him the affirmation of who of his value without giving him the direct disrespectful to yourself attention she was able to redirect that belief in that moment she wasn’t going to confirm that attention at all cost is a worthwhile goal wow so and now I know when you’re going to be talking at this meeting on at espw on the 27th are you going to be going more into detail with these types of examples and how parents can redirect negative behavior right you’ll see all kinds of applications of it first of all at espw but definitely everything that is taught will be applicable to any relationship and one of the things we’ll be doing is we’ll be actually bringing some people up front and they’ll have specific situations and we’ll actually demonstrate redirect like you would a karate demonstration or something you know where you can actually feel the power of it and that’s really the exciting thing like uh Robert’s mother could feel the power of it and then that helped her to believe that she didn’t have to use force or control with Robert anymore and that there was another another way well so it literally changed their life itself yeah in fact she signed up for the parent training she said man I need I need to learn more because there’s you know lots of things that I didn’t realize and I have felt dishonoring with Robert and I want to do it different and one of the things we can talk about if you’d like is the process for actually disclosing a mistaken goal to a child and actually negotiating a different way for them to get that need bad and that in itself is a very powerful thing too wow we’re going to wrap up our discussion with Judy Ryan with expanding human potential we’ve had such an interesting to discussion and thought-provoking discussion today I know part of our show is also about learning how business women have gotten to where they’ve they are today and so I know we spent a lot of time talking about parenting but really quick I do want to ask Judy what has been the biggest challenge in getting your business started or you know just as you’ve worked along the way that’s a great question and I think for me the answer to this question is because I have a real high commitment to living from purpose and to living from the truth of who I am which I think is really the best way for all of us to be living one of the biggest challenges for me has been to learn to really live in faith in terms of trusting that what I’m here to do I can do learning how to clear all my own discouragement learning how to truly encourage myself and to be willing to take risks be willing to all the things that I learned how to do in my parent training to actually parent myself that way to learn to to keep building upon my strengths instead of doing things that actually would move me away from my goals so really what’s happened is that um as a result of learning how to do that and working with a coach and having a company coach and all those things I’ve been able to really begin to realize the dreams that I’ve always had you know this project with the school district is a great example I’ve always wanted to be able to help teenagers have what I didn’t have before I had children before they have careers before they have relationships in their business and in their workplace and it’s just so satisfying to be able to truly commit to what you love so I know that’s very cliche do what you love to do right but it is true and and many people I think that their real struggle is in um finding the way to being encouraged through that process because there’s so much that is built into us from the way we were parented the way our culture treats uh failure or treats uh discouragement is to use more pressure new use more harshness you know I think if I were to say anything to a new business owner or a person that’s wanting to follow their dream or a parent that would be don’t put so much pressure on yourself encourage yourself love yourself look for the things that you’re doing every day that are courageous just for getting out of bed just for taking a breath those kinds of things that’s a great tip and in a sense I mean I can really see how you have to live what your company is really expand your human potential every day well I know we told our listeners that you were going to kind of give your top three tips could you share those with us real quickly well let’s see one would be to keep in mind the four core needs which are that everybody every person needs to feel powerful lovable connected and contributing um so so sort of weigh everything you’re doing up against those core needs one would be to recognize that when you yourself are encountering anything that’s unharmonious or unpleasant in your life to recognize that there’s some discouragement going on whether it’s with you or with the other person or with both and be willing to take a step back from what’s going on you know if all of us could just begin to recognize when we’re in reaction versus responding that is so that’s what responsibility really is is the ability to have a response that’s based in Freedom and choice as opposed to a reaction that’s just sort of a knee-jerk like the Robert story when the mother was you know she was just knee-jerk giving Robert what he was demanding almost like a kid saying give me five dollars give me five give me candy give me candy and we just do it knee jerk right so being able to be aware of when we’re responding versus reacting and another tip would be to really recognize that you’re doing enough that as a parent in particular that we sometimes we give ourselves too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things go poorly um you know I have people say to me all the time well you know this redirect like the back of your hand you know you must do it all the time I was like no you know there’s a there’s a mistaken goal pattern called revenge and I remember one time saying to some nobody I just did Revenge to my daughter you know she did Revenge me I did Revenge right back to her you know but what I know about myself now is and there was a time in my life where I said oh my God I’m this teacher of this I know this how would I how could I do this you know I realized in that moment when I’m in a negative behavior I’m discouraged so what the question now becomes is okay oh I didn’t know I was discouraged what do I need to do right now to bring myself back to square one to my Center so I think that if we could all start putting down the punishment reward Dynamic within ourself we will have done a huge service to humanity because then we won’t then take that out to other people those are some great tips so once again I just want to emphasize those four cornerstones that you talked about um did you it was powerful connected loving and contributing absolutely absolutely and those are ways that we we want to belong and we want to feel significant in life and it’s so under used to have people to be contributing and I love this because whether you’re a parent or not that these are applicable to all relationships that that we’re in um I know we just have a little bit of time and if do you have any good books that you’d recommend if people want to find out more about this type of thinking and yeah I recommend just about anything by by Alfie comb because he he actually helps you sort of break away from in fact he’s got a wonderful book out now called unconditional parenting he gives all of them many many reasons like 26 reasons why we still choose control when there’s other options and really makes people think about some of the things that we’re doing and how to actually be more unconditional in our parenting there’s also wonderful books out there by Jane Nelson on positive discipline there’s I would look up anything under adlerian parenting I’m trying to think of others just there’s a lot of information available to you on this model also I would encourage you to look for anything that helps you to recognize that doing things to Children is not helpful like doing things with children helping anything that you’re you’re in charge of the child’s behavior is going to be less helpful to you than when you are teaching the child to be in charge of themselves wow that’s another great tip I mean because I think so often you know we like you said we do things to Children instead of doing it with them yes so that’s kind of a great Easter nugget that people can take away as they’re trying to maybe research this on their own or find more materials but I know you have a lot of programs and things that you offer can you tell us I know there’s a lot of colors out there that want to know how they can reach you and maybe what other programs and services you have for people well thank you um yes we do we have a parent training program that is called fully engaging your family we also have a program called the influential teen we have a program that’s the parallel to that called fully engaging your classroom so when we work with schools sometimes we do parent training and classroom management training simultaneously which is wonderful because then those children are getting a consistent quality of interaction with the adults and they’re all kind of on the same page my organization is it okay if I give my yes my contact information is my website is

www.expandinghumanpotential.com that’s expandinghumanpotential.com and then the phone number is 314-878-910

zero that’s three one four eight seven eight ninety one hundred and we love to work with groups we love to what one of the things that we really like to do with the parent training well with many of our groups but especially with the parents is that so many of you really could benefit from the support of one another the encouragement the support helping each other stay on track with the model A lot of these skill sets are new people have a hard time sometimes just learning something new because they feel inept at it and so having other parents that are learning along with you that are saying oh we don’t want to reward we don’t want some of the things that because you feel sometimes like you’re up against a whole system where it’s not done this way right you know so having other parents and creating a support system with other parents that are learning these same methods is extremely valuable and it sounds like it and it’s that whole idea of you’re not alone because like you said at the beginning so many times people feel maybe they’re embarrassed or ashamed that they spank their child or that they lost their temper or they feel like oh I’m such a bad parent and real really not only can they meet other parents who are facing the same challenges but also learn these new skills that might be very different from what they’ve been accustomed to hearing absolutely it’s hardest to see your own your own self you know it’s helpful to have that outside view until you get really really clear about what’s going on for you in fact there’s this wonderful model that we use it’s called the change process and it’s it’s the first level of the change process is that we don’t know what we don’t know we don’t even know how we’re being unhelpful like Robert’s mother did not know that she wasn’t being grateful to Robert right so that’s unconsciously unhelpful when you finally start learning some of these techniques now then you become consciously unhelpful so now you’re going oh I just did it wrong and you think oh that’s got to be a bad thing and we teach people that that’s actually a great place to be to go oh I see what I’m doing wrong I still haven’t changed it yet and that’s where we need a lot of support and encouragement and other people around us that say it’s okay it’s all right you’re you’re learning this new skill and then the third level of the change process is that we become consciously helpful we can all of a sudden start doing things like redirect or doing it different or stopping ourselves when we see oh I’m doing something against the four core needs I can stop Midstream and then the fourth stage is so cool it’s like um when you learn how to drive a stick shift and finally one day you realize I didn’t even think about shifting I drank my soda I was on my cell phone and I shifted all without thinking that’s unconsciously competent or helpful and that’s how these parenting skills become over time as you become adapted it just becomes second nature but it takes time well I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there that will be interested in signing up and if you didn’t get that it’s www.expandinghumanpotential.com I know I’ve learned so much today from Judy and I’m so glad she is able to be here thank you