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president never Prichard the answer to the question for the ground summer school is credit recovery students want to get ahead we had that opportunity through online down the road we and we envision this becoming bigger but we'd like to start at an opportunity for our students to have that credit recovery opportunity and they would have an opportunity to intern two sessions one in the morning one in the afternoon it would be $150 per half credit make up and they would have an opportunity to earn up to potentially that one full credit if they took both sessions during the summer or be able to make up one half credit thank you she asked my question thank you awesome any other questions great we had to move on to H for information regarding the proposal to change Luke Elementary in El Mirage Elementary boundaries dr. Kellis Thank You mr.
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president and members of the board this evening dr. Pauline will introduce the side of minutes you mean mr. president members of the board the cabinet I'd like to introduce Kevin Shipman our planning administrator will present this item good evening president leonard members of the board superintendent dr.
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Kelsey cabinet members and those in attendance I'll be providing you a brief presentation on a proposed boundary change that the district is considering for the 20:21 school year that's next school year so this is a map of the southeast portion of the district and the current elementary atenas area boundaries this is highlighted piers that ll excuse me el mirage elementary boundary then we have the Luke elementary boundary and the proposed challenge areas so this is approximately 1/4 square mile and you can see just looking at this map that the distance away from Luke elementary is pretty considerable this image map is just a close-up of this area it's again approximately 1/4 mile there's currently 226 elementary students that are Dysart students within this area and 155 of those attend Luke Elementary the others are just kind of dispersed elsewhere throughout the district through school of choice so the motivation for this change the district's always undertaking efforts to use our resources efficiently certainly this change would eliminate some bus routes and then improve efficiencies on other routes so if you go back to this map here there's two regular education routes that are in this area that are very full and pretty long routes it's approaching 5 miles to go down to Luke there's probably a half another route that would be limited as well as a lot of exceptional students are exceptional student services routes that the students would still likely get bus service but it would be a much shorter distance to travel on some of those ESS routes that travel from this area to Luke are very long and very significant so and then again we're just looking at growth so as we look at long term growth projections which I'll share with you in a moment and trying to position the district in the future so that those schools are servicing a healthy population that's why this area is being considered when you see the growth that we're planning for so this is the current boundaries for Luke and El Mirage Elementary blue the blue bars represent and this is the next 10 years and then orange it's a little washed out here but represents a el mirage Elementary School and as you can see Luke is forecasted to grow notably in the future and El Mirage Elementary's just continuing a slight decline mostly just due to birth rates and demographic changes as people age in place within that attendance area boundary this image here does not reflect some I guess potential high risk for Luke to grow a little bit more in the future so we have some better information on the growth that's occurring in Luke due to marbella ranch development called Luke landing and then wolf crossing which is a development near northern Parkway that's getting some traction in addition there are increased members of Armed Forces support family dependents that are expected from increased mission at the air base from the f-35 increase and so that could definitely increase a little bit more and then we understand that El Mirage Elementary School really doesn't have a lot of vacant land or availability so there's not an expectation that it would change dramatically in the future so this next slide here illustrates if we make those boundary changes that we're considering what enrollment is forecasted to be over the next ten years and what you can see here is it sort of normalizes enrollment at both of these schools so we don't have one school that's going to get approaching capacity in one school that's it's below the market we have proposed timelines for this boundary consideration that includes in the middle of March targeted communications to all the families and residents in Luke and El Mirage attendance areas as well as targeted communications on websites to the residents in that specific change area and we've scheduled two boundary informational meetings one at each school late March early April we have public meeting preceding the April 8th governing board and then could bring this to the vote of the governing board on April 22nd I'd be happy to answer any questions you have thank you question the only question I have and I know it's just information items so just something to consider is just whether or not we would give families who have already been there for multiple years or perhaps the student who's gonna be in eighth grade that next year the opportunity to maybe have priority open enrollment or something so they would be able to complete their experience at Luke rather than starting new as an 8th grader somewhere else just Madam President members pressured priority opener on what would be granted for students that were interested in staying thank you anything else excellent thank you thank you all right we'll go ahead and move on to action discussion one recommendation to approve the appointment of the director of exceptional student services dr. Kelly Thank You mr.
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president and members of the board dr. Pauline will introduce this item mr. president members of the board cabinet and community it's my pleasure to recommend dr. Cory Montano for the position of Director of exceptional student services for next school year dr. Mann Tanya and her family are with us this evening most notably dr. Mann tanya has received her doctorate and master's in special education from the University of Arizona so bear down additionally she has extensive history in leadership in special education including great examples of collaborating with principals with staff with teachers you know tackling tough issues such as behavior issues other things that we're working on our district and so a recommendation of dr.
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Mann Tanya there any questions any questions I'll entertain a motion second or I'll make the motion almost all motion to approve the appointment of dr. Cory Montano as director of exceptional student services second motion made by J Leonard seconded by John Densmore let's go ahead and vote drum roll please motion passes congratulations and welcome mr. president at the end conclusion of the regular session of the meeting we would like to invite the board to shake mr. montano hand and get to know her just a second excellent all right I'll go ahead and move on to action item I to recommended improve a recommendation to approve the employee health benefit plan for the 2020 20 to 2021 fiscal year dr. Kellis Thank You mr. president members of the board mr. Hicks will introduce this item good evening mr. president members of the board superintendent dr.
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Kellis cabinet colleagues community members it is my pleasure to present to you tonight our employee benefit package so I know that the board has reviewed all of the slides and all the information ahead of time so I'll try to go through this a little quick I know we also have a very important engagement across the street that a lot of people are interested in participating in so really quickly this process does start back around October when we start working with our consultants we did switch consultants looking back at the data the claims we have our consultant Valley Schools but they also hire an actuarial company Hays comes in they look at our data Blue Cross Blue Shield looks at our data we all get together look at all the claims scrub it to try to look at it as much as we can to do enough that we can to mitigate every loss and try to minimize the impact on employees and that is plan design that we go through currently we're running 113 percent so we are our claims are higher than our premium equivalent so that is you'll see that later how that impacts our trust that fund from that standpoint we also last year as we went through our few process we pulled away our PBM our Pharmacy Benefit manager so we pulled pharmacy away from our medical carved it out in a sense and so this it looks like we're expected to receive about $600,000 in rebates and that's reflected and the numbers going forward so as you can see not the not the best year so what we have is a lot of people jump right down to 11% increase but that is before the adjustment for the pharmacy rebates and so looking with our actuarial and what our expected claims are from where our current is we do go through and laser look at every single high cost claim every low cost look at a projected predicted and expected every claim in every area for every category and so we come up with a very good sound anticipated claims doesn't mean that that's exactly does n't mean that we're going to hit it but we look at sound data to make the premium equivalent estimate going forward with our adjustment the pharmacy rebate coming down off the top of that does have a net increase of 7% this was talked about at our IBA so it is part of the IBA process I will say that it was very briefly talked about we probably had more discussion in email as I left and said there's gonna be a little plan design I didn't go into all of the plan design that I'm going to hit here tonight and so they were very appreciative and and approving of the district covering the expenses and leaving no direct cost to the employees which is what was reflected here tonight that does go then also after IBA looks at it we take it to our Employee Benefit trust board so we have an independent board of non employees that look at all of our claims and all these recommendations they - also then looked at these recommendation before you tonight and approve of it this is a breakdown of our plans our three plans our PPO our HSA 2,000 and 3,000 it does indicate how many people on each one of those plans employee only or employee plus one or employee family so you have the breakdown of who how many are in each one of those plans and then what is the total premium for each and every one of those categories so PPO employee only is 829 the quick way to look at it is is that HSA 3510 we pay for that 510 and that is the recommendation going from 460 to 510 is the increase that we're recommending you could subtract that off of and that's that monthly premium for everybody else and so we pay the 510 for everybody hello scared me walking up on me so just to reiterate so this is the 510 dollars per month per eligible employee receiving that we're continuing no changes to an HSA max so depending on which HSA plane you are in if you contribute to it the district matches it and so you can see those two amounts either $900 and also if you meet the criteria of getting a physical and doing the Wellness you meet that criteria you get additional funding so incentivizing good behavior that we want you can get up to 900 or 1150 depending on the - the good news is that's a match so that means that you're putting in so technically already putting in 500 add it to 900 got 1400 into your HSA plan to cover those costs here is just look six year history looking at all the different employee costs premium costs for each of the different plans and really the last column on the right the 2021 year that we're recommending is you can see it's exactly the same as the previous year so you have any the same employee premium cost on a monthly for each one of those no change here is the Employee Benefit trust fund so this is a separate fund this is the trust board we present with them but just to give an indication of where we are I normally look at net position so outside of liabilities and where we are at and you can see that we had a high of ten point three million dollars and it's been slowly going down so that means that the trust fund is covering a greater increase in amount of claims that are not being covered by the premiums that we set that was by design and that hey we have ten million dollars I'm probably at that time it was probably eleven million dollar expense saying maybe having a full year's reserves is a little high let's start purposely using it down part of our discussion with employee trust board was how low is too low in that sense and if you look at a lot of industry standards 25% you don't want to go below that so really we're looking the low three million dollars so we'll probably end up around for maybe a little under four at the end of this year so with some of these increases the appropriate increases will help slow that down so that maybe we have another year but the trust the wholly benefit trust does cover a portion of some of the claims and so they're gonna continue covering a portion of it their question is how long do we keep covering it probably until you get down under 25% and then we're gonna have to make further decisions if the district covers more of it or some of that's passed on to employees here is just the highlights of the to to major plan design changes that we have and so it is increasing increasing our this is that for the employee only in the three plans this is the out-of-pocket maximum that individual will have is having that increase and so employee only was fifty-five hundreds go into six thousand and under the HSA three thousand the HSA two thousand was thirty five hundred go into five thousand now this is not first dollar so this isn't the deductible going up this is the out-of-pocket and so the first dollar is still not changing they're still paid three thousand and so then it's only twenty percent of the costs going forward until you meet until you reach six thousand dollars and so actually that our benefits consultant said we probably should get rid of the HSA 2000 plan it is really performing extremely bad we weren't ready to get rid of a plan they said we should look at that next year and so that will be on the agenda next year I do feel like we're about a month late in the process and so I think that would be too much disruption to eliminate a plan from that standpoint and so really this is increasing they just say a little mm a little bit more to being more line to cover the cost that it's incurring right now and so I have already heard from multiple people saying well I'm gonna leave the two thousand go to the three thousand good it's a better plan that performs better and is more designed and aligned to cover the cost and is probably better financially for a lot of people so it is providing that incentive to move to the proper plan in that sense we'll be doing some training video before the open enrollment open enrollment starts at the end of April the 23rd probably and so we get out and start training our employees of the changes here is the plus one and family increases and so this is going up the same thing it's not the deductible that's going up it's the out-of-pocket going up from 11,000 to 12,000 on the HSA 3000 and then going up from 7 to 10 thousand on the HSA 2,000 once again a little bit harder on the HSA 2,000 but that plan is really performing very bad as I said that consultants recommended getting rid of it we don't want to go that far we're just incentivizing them to get over to the proper plan the other programs there's no change this is our baseline dental program that we provide so you can see employee only once again we cover the entire employee cost so they can have a dental program that the district will cost that pay for them no changes in the proposed rates and then there's a buy up dental if you'd like Delta Dental you could buy up to that and no change in those rates as well now just going into our supplementary supplemental and voluntary programs and there is a couple changes here number one is the TEL adat is changing so before I think it was a buck eighty-five per member per month that's going up to 250 and we've now this is brand new is having a ten dollar deductible this is recommendation also of our consultants we have high usage in this and so the costs of using this so much it's a great thing that we use it it does it's still a cheaper option to go on telling instead of going in person but we do are coming more in line with a plan designed to be more appropriate in what we're doing and continuing with additional this just the everything else here is the same except for we are changing vendors on the very last one our interface EAP our assistance program this is a completely new vendor and so we're switching over to Valley schools there is a small slight price decrease I wouldn't let that fool you that's really less than a thousand dollars for the year the reason was not switching it was really performance-based that we weren't really happy with our previous employee assistance provider and once somebody that did a little bit better and so we found a solution in that and so we are happy with that and so just summarize there is a net seven thousand seven percent increase that the district is going to be bearing was coming in eleven percent but with the offset of crowding out the pharmacy put into the pharmacy benefit rebates back into it will cover the cost and so no direct cost by employees but as you can see by the plan design as they use it more they'll be paying a little bit more ansan two of those plans on the out-of-pocket continuing the same incentives for HSA plan continue the same stop-loss care coverage and as I mentioned before our Employee Benefit chess board continued agreed to continue to cover part of the costs that are coming in in our claims and so hopefully that hit all of the areas and explained the plan design and the changes and the increase and that the district will be covering and that has already been embedded into our IBA discussion so I will stand for any questions thank you thank you any questions on benefits I do I have just a couple of quick ones you said that the HSA 2000 was performing badly why what specifically was going on with that it's winner what specifically I don't know that I go I could say that one hundred and thirteen percent for claims were running expenses to premium that one was two hundred and two percent and so the utilizations a lot of his plan design we make it so cheap that using it I know people that know that they're gonna have an event would choose that they would switch over plans or an open enrollment get to it and maybe switch back that's of the free so you do have to pay a little bit but the pre MERS were not just waiting so this was the recommendation of our consultant to it's incentivizing people with certain commuted to utilize it and we need to adjust our plan design okay and I know with each year health cost they keep continuing to rise and rise all over the place and everything and I'm glad that Dysart can pay enough for it for our employees but I'm just concerned that what raises people do get from year to year that it's it's going to look as if oh I got a raise oh the premiums are gonna go up and it's more out of my pocket then is mr. president members of the voice so the good news is is there some plan design changes no premiums are changing although they were probably coming to the point at some point yeah that that'll change a little bit but so that's the good news the bad is that well board I wouldn't say it's bad news we're aligning the plan design I think it's almost like I stepped down so that instead of we're coming and falling off a cliff we're making little changes that are appropriate to incentivize proper behavior and proper plan selection so that it's a better outcome for both people for both the district and the employee so you are comfortable the out-of-pocket for network and well mr.
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president members of the board I don't want him I would love everything free if everybody could do everything for free and everything would be great and we had twice as much money everything would be great but we do have to make choices and so this does impact probably less than probably potentially up to 350 people and so but that's only if they all hit the deep penetration into their claims to go down into the out-of-pocket if you never get past the deductible it had no impact on you because there was no change in that so making plan design that could impact 350 people as opposed to making it that impact 1,700 is the proper thing and aligning to the marketplace in the industry is a good thing okay I think those weren't my main questions when I saw your how many pages 14 pages so then those were my concerns because I just want to make sure that yes everybody plans for but there are things that you can't plan for so okay thank you any other questions all right thanks so much for reviewing that with us let's go ahead and go to Jay one request for agenda items okay sorry I guess I should make a motion on that law entertaining motion I move to approve the employee health benefit plan for 2020 2020 on school year I'll second motion made by Traci sort of think build seconded by Jay Leonard go ahead and vote long name nip motion passes thank you all right now we'll move on to j1 request for future gen I am it's anybody going once going twice no sale yes all right we'll go ahead and move on to k1 and we will call for an emotion to establish an executive session to be held immediately during a recess of the regular meeting I'll second motion made by J Leonard seconded by Tracy tore seatbelt please vote motion passes were in recess thank you everyone you
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good morning Nicola today is March 2nd 2020 it is the 120th in the whe members I'm missing and I am carry today for lunch at the time of recording the breakfast and lunch menus have not been posted we don't have anyone celebrating for this thing if we wish you happy birthday Pacific out your birthday yesterday was funny started a secret identity of what superhero the answer is you know like a movie movie what's the name of the construction worker who is known as a special laboratory or answered me and please amendment we have a special announcement thank pop the when I was a table drawing please read our tip all too ready Leena early to Casa Emma's to Cheston third grade Carter three Kenan and juciano three calmly Chloe three women in fourth grade Callie for Coolidge bill Forrester and Kayla quarters in celebration of dr.
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Seuss week tomorrow is crazy chakras and now look will observe a brief period of silence whatever it dissipated that's a video please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we're gonna be hala Bunch I pledge to be a be a star whether at school or travel far I promise to be safe in every way take responsibility during work and play I might be respectful and all I do and be a star the whole day through have a terrific Tuesday remember be somebody who makes everybody feel like this and thanks for watching bye
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good evening and welcome to our first parent university of the year I'm Abby right I'm the director of student services it's wonderful to have you here it is my honor to welcome dr. Benson tonight as a champion of teachers and leaders dr. Benson is passionate about rethinking educational experiences and fostering the conditions that empower kids to thrive as learners and beings serving in various capacities as a k-12 teacher adjunct faculty member and a district leader for 25 plus years she has extensive experience in leading professional development specific to teaching and learning in the response to the complex context and experience in today's schools mindset as a way to nurture resilience real world ready kids is an important part of her work valuing the impact of teachers leaders parents and school and community members in the lives of the students we all serve is at the core of her message please help me welcome dr.
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good evening and welcome my name is Abbie right I'm the director of student services it's a pleasure to have you here it is my honor tonight to welcome dr. Erin Krasnow he is the associate vice president of health and counseling services at Arizona State University and an Arizona license psychologist he has worked in the field of mental health and higher education for nearly 20 years with a focus on creating accessible and healthy educational opportunities for youth and adults please welcome dr.
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good evening and welcome I'm Abbie right I'm the director of student services and thank you for joining us tonight it is my honor to welcome James Martin he is the principal of Kyrene alta dania middle school he has been working in education for over 25 years with a background in school age programming physical education and school administration James is passionate about supporting middle school students and their parents as they navigate the ever-changing challenges associated with middle school and adolescence please welcome mr. Martin Thank You Abby all right welcome I get to talk to you guys tonight about two of my favorite topics one of them is middle school I'm kind of crazy that way and the other one is parenting two things that I'm really passionate about when I when I looked at this and I first saw that I was gonna be talking about how to create an incredible student experience I thought man that's a lot of pressure to use that word incredible but before we move on I want to answer this question because I always feel like it's important when anytime you speak to people they're always curious about who is this person and why should we listen to it which i think is an important and thing to answer for sure so the first thing I want to start with is to show you a little bit about my personal life my family this is me and my family right here my wife Kim and I have three lovely daughters and they are Kourtney who is on the right-hand side over here she is currently 24 years old she is getting her master's degree in nursing from the University of Arizona Meghan is on the far left she's our middle daughter and she is 22 years old and she works at desert financial credit union and then Peyton is our youngest in the middle there and Peyton is starting high school this year she's a freshman at Desert Vista High School so I can say we successfully raised three kids through middle school at least that that's where we are at this point and I'm really proud of the work we did as parents and I don't say that you know to brag but just to say getting through that stage of life is challenging and each one of our girls were really different so that's a little bit about my family right there in terms of my professional career I have worked in all kinds of capacities in education whether it was community education I taught in the classroom I've been an administrator at the middle school level for about 12 years now and I am one of those crazy people that loves middle school in fact probably not a week goes by if I meet someone and I tell them what what I do their first reaction is like oh always oh my gosh I'm so sorry like like I didn't choose to do this I absolutely chose to do this and I love what I do I want to talk a little bit about why I love what I do and this picture is 13 year old me right there I was I love skateboarding I hated school at that time I often joke that it's not really a joke I say that seventh grade was the worst year of my entire life it was probably also my parents worst year of their entire lives because of me and I'll share with you a little bit about why it was some of the highlights for me or lowlights I guess in seventh grade I I thought it was horrible that they would make you sit in school all day for seven or eight hours and work and then they would give you more work to do to take home and so my solution to that was just to go home and tell my parents oh no I don't have any homework and that worked for a little while until it didn't work and when the wheels came off the wheels came off really bad I still remember I was sitting or I was standing overlooking our front office it was actually elevated and you could see the front office and one of my friends nudged me with a laugh and said hey is that your mom walking into the office with mr.
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his screens tweens and teens had a monitor mentor and be mindful I'm just a little bit about me I taught high school and junior high I became a guidance counselor and then became a school administrator and I spent around 21 years on a secondary campus and I'm currently raising four girls ages 11 11 12 and 13 so I feel like I'm right in the middle of what you're right in the middle of and together we're gonna find some answers so tonight's presentation is really about technology and devices but for me it's also about looking at your family and putting technology in a good place where you are leading technology as opposed to technology leading you so I will talk about devices and screen time impact and apps and ways to monitor and mentor but I really do focus mostly on the relationship between parents and child and then multiple children in the household having different plans based on how they're wired so last night I was in the Paradise Valley School District and at the end of my presentation a woman said well you've done a great job of completely horrifying me which landing page did you want to leave me on and I said well the eventual landing page that I'd love to leave you on tonight is feeling empowered and prepared instead of scared and horrified so I made a new slide and said okay my goal for parents is to again enable and empower you to really clarify your role as it relates to devices that you've probably already given so looking up here at restricter enabler and mentor those are typically the types of parents that I talk to on a daily basis I started doing this work in 2005 as an administrator I was writing thousands of referrals per year on students using devices in inappropriate and silly and explicit ways so I started talking to parents about what are you doing at home to help guide and support them so as I watched for 15 years I see these three types of parents there are parents that totally restrict everything and most students find a way around you I see parents that are like ah we had Atari you'll be fine and they enable everything and then I see parents that really step into the divine and knowing that we are a month and a half away from 2020 it is definitely time to step into the divine and work in tandem with your student so goals for your children I have identifying digital candy versus digital vegetables everything that goes on in Madison at school is digital vegetables technology is an advancing tool it's not going anywhere and it does amazing things for us you've probably learned about tonight using technology so we get on our kids about what I call digital candy all the time but we also need to be talking to them about the positive things around how they're using technology for good these are our leaders they're going to lead us into the future on the last part here goals for your children as well we want them to be literate in the use of media and technology we want you to also be literate in the technology use and media we also want children to be able to be self governed and dignified my goal for any eight through 15 year old is spending those seven years really getting them to the point where they don't really need you to intervene and take away devices and be monitoring and supervising as much as you're probably doing right now the goal is for them to take flight and to use technology for good I also want them to be the creator of a responsible digital footprint most of what our students are hearing right now about technology sounds something like this you're burning your brain out if you post something dumb or stupid you're probably not going to get into college and if you send them inappropriate photo you're definitely not ever gonna get a job and you're probably going to prison so that is what I hear from kids is negative negative negative and we live in a cancel culture we live in a culture where even schools sometimes look at a mistake make a suspension and don't offer a pathway back so we've learned some things along the way from doing that and I see school districts doing such a better job of thinking about a 10-day suspension for something that maybe could be a five day suspension or a three day suspension or finding some sort of restorative practice so that a mistake that was made at 12 doesn't become a lifelong sentence so know that we are working proactively on that front as well um tonight as I said is really much less about devices and so much more about you strengthening the relationship with your kids having empathy for them trying to understand that this new landscape of childhood has definitively changed due to the technology I won't read this slide at you but I was honored to be able to give the keynote this year at the back to school teacher rally and and there were about 800 employees here and one of the things that I really wanted to outline for them is the intersection of some things that have definitively changed one of them is the push for academic rigor another is restriction of recess and rough-and-tumble play and the other is about 10-12 years ago we told kids that everything was bullying and we did that because we are afraid and we're still sort of afraid we're living as parents in a culture where we have hunker down and we want to make sure that nobody's gonna hurt our babies and unfortunately some of the deficits that come from that are we're seeing lower coping skills lower resiliency and lower social competence because kids don't have agent see in their own conflict in their own life and the choices that we're making for them so I'll talk a little bit about each of those subjects tonight but I want to outline where we're at as parents um after 9/11 after Columbine after Kirkland after santa clarita every time we have a tragic incident that happens we all start filling our hearts again with this very thin veil of terror and what kids hear from us most often is the world is sort of unsafe whether you're telling an eight-year-old you can't go to the bathroom by yourself because somebody might kidnap you or you're telling a twelve-year-old no you can't go to the mall because Arizona is the number one state for human trafficking the messages that we're afraid about are being displaced on them when we tell kids that everything is bullying somebody kicked you under a table somebody pushed you into the locker somebody didn't invite you to your their birthday party what we've said to kids is go get an adult if you're on the playground and somebody calls you fat go tell the paraprofessional somebody kicks you under the table during class go tell your teacher and so the locus of control has become the adults so if you are really tired it's because we have done all of this heavy lifting for our kids so I want to encourage you if you have multiple children or you have a child that has some cousins that they play with and they fight with we know to be true that kids know how to have healthy conflicts and we know to be true based on what we see between siblings that they know absolutely how to handle their conflict at home we need to transfer those skills to the school level in an appropriate and safe way so what I'm asking you to think about as you head into 2020 is please let your child suffer please let them have appropriate conflict and please let them strategize with you what should I do next the school is there to definitively support you and Madison will absolutely guide you through that if you need it but many of the things that happen at school are typical daily conflict that is developmentally normal obviously if somebody is an imminent harm it's ongoing it's egregious it's just all the time absolutely you want your child to go find an adult but most middle school students most fourth through eighth grade students for sure are fully capable of turning to another human being and saying knock it off please stop I don't like when you said that you're my friend that really hurt my feelings but we tend to intervene whether we're educators or parents and we swoop in and they never have that practice of their own voice and that relates to devices in that if you've given your child a device you have given your child the opportunity to be hit with a lot of pain thread from other students and also to turn around and inflict pain on others and so dignity and the voice that they have in their use of their device is extremely important as well so having girls I have five sisters I have four daughters I have no sons they have no brothers so I am lived a long time and an estrogen Tydfil and I love it but part of what's going on with some of these apps that we've given our children access to is we've laid down a very strong runway for them to compare themselves to other people and it's not just girls but girls tend to take in images a little bit differently than boys do so prior to age two you've probably taken about 2,000 photos of your student and so by age 12 so many thousands of photos and the reason I'm pointing this out is often we're putting out our front stage we're not talking about our backstage so if I went to any of your platforms tonight I would probably see some beautiful families vacation homes golden scholars all sorts of great stuff going on what kids are watching is you every move and if everything you're posting is perfect then that is the bar that you've set and that is where they feel like I have to measure up to this family expectation but I also have to measure up to the restricted filtered photos and lives of my peers as well and it is an immense amount of pressure both academically as well as socially so those are some things to think about and to look out for as you're giving device use to your children so I had the opportunity to share this with the teachers as well the brains that are showing up in our classrooms have been rewired the brain at the top is a really healthy brain lots of blood flow cognition sustained memory the brain on the bottom you can see the neurons are starting to split apart the emotions are probably starting to dull we've been sitting for a long time playing for at night for nine hours and not taking a shower or going to the bathroom things like that so the top brain is using digital vegetables the bottom brain is probably using some digital candy for an extended period of time so when we talk about social emotional and physical health and wellness this is the impact on the developing brain and it is completely rewired how they behave how they show up at school what they expect from teachers what they want out of their lessons is fast moving and stimulating lesson plans and so I do a lot of faculty training on how does the video game industry actually get a few things right so I'll ask just a couple questions of you if you were to name two goals that the video game industry has for our families what would one or two of them be stay on a long time so sustained use and the other big huge win spend money right so my goal is to take this beautiful brain and shove it so far down into the brainstem into fight flight or freeze so when me and mom or dad walks in and time for dinner this brain is like no way Jose I don't want to give up get off so when you see behavior that frustrates you when you feel like you're nagging them all the time you have to be aware that this brain has been completely hijacked it is doused and cortisol it is doused and dopamine it is not your child's fault that they don't want to get off the game there's a huge social connection there's a neuro scientific component going on and so a my suggestion to you if you want them to get off the game is to give a little bit of lead time so that if dinner is at 6:00 you're telling them at 5:00 like dinner's at 6:00 and you're giving them some warning I would also suggest that you have them move their body and drink water after playing a game that will immediately dissipate the cortisol and the dopamine and you will get your kid back so some of these platforms that are digital candy have some redeeming qualities and I'll point those out but what we worry the most about is this untethered access and what it's doing not only to the body but also to the brain as well so for those of you that have not seen port Knight you might want to like hold on to your chairs it's very fast moving very stimulating but what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to just count to eight seconds and I want you to focus put aside for right now that it's a first-person shooter game I want you to look at how fast it moves how many people are in the scene and how many times the scene changes and I want you to imagine as you're counting to only eight seconds what a young boy or girl is doing for four hours and what impact that might have on their brain we should be all right here this is weird like is they getting attacked from the other side so that was a bad thing so I'm just gonna chill up here for a second the episod thing what the up is not so that was about 16 seconds to imagine being on that for an extended period of time each day so this world is pretty genius there's strategy there's competition there's collaboration I have a headset I get to be with my friends I get to be loud I can reset if I'm not doing well sometimes in the classroom or at home I don't get a second chance I don't get a do-over so video games have completely sucked in some of our kiddos because in a place in the classroom where I don't feel like I have a place I definitely have a place here and so some of our students are drifting to platforms like this because they finally have found a place that welcomes them so as you're processing this information just something to think about when I'm doing faculty trainings I talk about what does this game have that your students are after and what they call out is it has novelty it has relevance and it has competition and collaboration those are things that Madison teachers have been trained in those are things that are incorporating into their lesson plans so my expectation is not that teachers need to compete with video games but I do think the industry has some things right and I do think that kids will thrive if some of those things are incorporated on a daily basis questions so far okay you're not horrified yet okay we show as we look at other things hormones neurotransmitters we have some gains and then we have some losses so what they're gaining is dopamine and cortisol cortisol is the stress hormone dopamine is the feel-good hormone so those are huge gains there's a light side to cortisol and a dark side to cortisol we want our kids to have a little bit of good stress we don't want them to be completely incapacitated by stress other things that they're getting for from games and platforms oxytocin and serotonin so oxytocin is our bonding hormone there's a light side to right serotonin is the mood regulation hormone if our kids are up all night on videogames and devices serotonin levels are going to be pretty out of whack they're already pretty out of whack going through puberty in fifth through twelfth grade and so some of these things that you're seeing behaviorally make a lot of sense from a neuroscience perspective so um I have the privilege of partnering with ASU and we co-facilitate together and one of the people like who facilitate with shared some of his slides with me these are the American College Health Association statistics for the last ten years so when you are reading articles about electronic devices and anxiety and depression and suicide and self-harm and you are completely freaking out inside as we all should be I want you to look at these and recognize that this generation they really have D stigmatized mental health they are coming to us and droves and saying I'm listening to you when I don't feel okay I'm coming to get help for a title one population who may never have had services pre-k through 12 they're coming to the University and they're getting the help that they need and so as we look at our devices the only thing that are causing stress anxiety and depression in the world the answer is absolutely not but they are a piece of it and so as you look at some of these trends on stress and obviously thoughts of suicide nobody really wants to see that it's gone up a hundred percent but a lot of things in the world have changed in the last 10 years the landscape of childhood has changed in the last 10 years so as you're handing over devices we have to get really clear on how much do you want to know about what's on the device when you see something on the device that maybe distressful or suicidal where can you go to get the resources because some of them are limited in Maricopa County and so knowing upfront what you're looking for is really important and everything you want to know about your child is on their device there is no mystery to their life every school shooter that is decided to come and do something dangerous at school has posted for weeks and weeks and weeks the students that we have lost to suicide have shared messages with your children and other children for weeks and weeks and weeks so this is really no mystery to it but we have to dial in and really supervise and monitor what's going on so again American College Health Association stats so these are our pre-k through 12 students that are leaving us so this is a reflection of University I'll tell you we're seeing the same things on our campuses pre-k through 12 and so we have to get really clear about how to help them and when we say we're here for you we have to show what this generation has a very strong sense of justice and when we say things to them like you matter I love you they are looking at us like really I want you to prove it to me we're how can I feel supported by you so looking at this public health model approach to well-being and social emotional wellness I'd call your attention to most of our kids are doing really well some of our kids are moving from well-being into distress and back to well-being and then to distress you actually want your kid to have a little bit of distress where we don't want kids moving is from distress into crisis and where you will find out if they're in crisis is right here this will tell you everything you want to know about how that slide is going south and how quickly it's going south so a lot of parents will ask me well I feel like that's an invasion of their privacy so in this world and landscape it's my professional feeling after watching this for so long that our number one goal is for circuits and if there are harm to themselves or others then we have to be monitoring and supervising and err on the side of caution so I'll give you some tips on balancing privacy and safety and also what to tell your kids if somebody comes to them and says this is how I'm feeling and this is what I'm gonna do so these are typical of burning questions that most parents ask at the end of my presentation I'd invite you to ask me anything else and if I don't know the answer I will get you the answer is there anything right now that you're already thinking like this is something that I absolutely need to know before I leave tonight yes got it which is my next couple slides so thank you so much it's a good segue all right other questions that are popping up okay yes sure okay that's like every household in America idea right so I will do it right so I call that the dance and so I will give you I think a pretty solid strategy around that and and some things to think about as you're taking the device away what to replace it with because when we take it away we have to replace it with something to strengthen the relationship because we are dancing and in the middle of the dance we're losing their trust and the stakes are really high really high so thank you for those two questions and please go go ahead you're lying never stopped your line never stops if you want to be a good villager I had to make a very difficult phone call yesterday to a fellow fifth grade mom because her child disclosed to my child that she had been on an app that's chatroulette and that a man exposed himself to her and so for me I had a choice to say nothing because is it really my business or to protect a child and so I Katie feel very personally convicted that if this fellow mom gets mad at me which has often happened that I'm willing for somebody to be mad at me and feel like I judged their parenting I'm okay with that I can live with that I can sleep with that knowing that I may have saved a life so I'll give you some strategies on how to talk to fellow moms about that dad's do an amazing job there's this thing with dads where they call another dad and the other guy's like cool thanks thanks so much moms we are not nice we are not nice and we lose friendships lose friendships and so I'll give you some strategies and I call it the dumb girl approach on how to convey that message and then move on your merry way so that is an awesome question which I will also address so I operate on the rule of five so my target market is actually third through fifth grade students prior to getting access to social media so prior to getting access to social media or the Internet my goal or my magic wand dream would be that five years before your child is going to be exposed to anything on this slide that you have already had ongoing pervasive conversations about it so if you are sitting here with a 13 year old and you're like oops I haven't talked about any of this it's okay I'm gonna give you some places to go to have those courageous conversations but the reality is if you've given a device to a child and said good luck with four billion strangers and the world wide web they've already seen all this they've already been exposed to all of it it doesn't matter if you're a restricter Aiden's mom is super cool and they've seen it all at Aiden's house which you cannot control but everything that kids are exposed to is on the Internet and so if you haven't restricted and set settings and have a really good router that's filtering out some of the yuck chances are your kids have either talked about it done it or have been exposed to it and so we just need to be really clear about what we've given over and then in 2020 to do a better job of having some conversations with our kids so I'll talk some more about that as well so as you're sitting here thinking about what is my goal in 2020 I almost want you to raise your right hand and promise that's night you will not go home and take anything away you will not go home and take anything away until at least January 1 I want you to do nothing because you need to get super clear and consistent about what you mean by technology it's use its value and what your desired outcome it so I'll just share with you my desired outcome for my four girls is by age 15-16 that they are basically self-governing their device I'm still collecting it at night I'm still supervising and monitoring it but that I have given them guidance and support and they have taught me how to use this thing for good and that they are cultivating a digital presence that is gonna land them thousands of dollars in scholarship money that's going to land them a job that's going to land them an internship wherever they want to go your child needs to have a responsible digital presence if you want them to have futuristic opportunities so when I ask kids what is the value and function of your parents phones what do you think I hear from them Instagram okay YouTube what what do you think most kids say about their dad what kind of technology is their father using what was that most of them say I'm really tired of seeing my dad's head the top of his head doing work on his laptop most of the kids say about their moms like my mom is ridiculous she is always on Facebook she's always on Instagram and sometimes she's crushing candy so when I talk to kids at assemblies and then I say I'm gonna see your parents tonight is there anything you want me to tell your parents they say if they value their phone so much and they're asking me not to value mine that's unfair and if their desired outcome for me is to be a good digital citizen and to model good behavior then I expect the same from them and if we're really honest everywhere we go we're a head down everywhere we go restaurants airports and our cars in the parking lot sitting next to them on the couch right and so they're kind of tired of it and so for me I really want you to think about why are you giving the phone why are you giving access and what kind of content you want your child to consume because there's a difference between digital candy and digital vegetables there's a lot of stuff on YouTube that's digital vegetables there are many platforms that can be used for good I've trained students in junior high in high school how to use Instagram for a cause for a brand how to market themselves to get scholarships for athletics etc there are many different uses of these types of platforms so you had asked about how do I approach technology as a privilege not a right so if for Christmas I say it is Christmas and I'm so excited to give you this iPhone 11 XR with the three cameras good luck and then on December 26 he slugs his brother and you take it away and then on December 27th you're really tired and you give it back and then on January 7th when school resumes and they didn't do their math homework and you take it away that's the dance that we're all doing and in the middle of the dance they are staring at you and they are saying you are unfair I do not trust you and I'm gonna work all the way around you and you're not going to know anything I'm doing and I'm definitely not gonna come to you if I have a big huge safety issue so my advice and I will give this to the district to get to you um is having a family data contract you're sitting down with your child who is 10 11 12 13 on up maybe or younger and the whole family is saying what do we think is fair if your academics are sliding do you get technology use if you're a jerk to me or your teachers do you get technologies there are several non-negotiables that I would definitely say our deal breakers giving away private information sharing body parts sharing anything about your family that should not be out there anything that could put them in harm's way that is like a non-negotiable but part of students using these devices for good is giving them a say in how they get to use it and what happens when they make a mistake so this family data contract I'm going to tell you right now your kids are gonna break some of the rules for sure 100% our goal is to outline for them these are the reasonable boundaries and consequences around this I love you I'm here to protect you and when you make a mistake here's your pathway back and so that they feel like we're all in this together as opposed to us versus them because the us versus them is not working you're exhausted they are not you're furious they are not and they're starting to drift and things that are really putting them at risk any questions about family data contract so far so we're giving them dignity in the use of their device so I presented this platform at the start of the school year for all of the Madison district office employees teachers paraprofessionals kids express all of the people that were here and it's really where I've stood for the last 10 years is that kids need to know they're worthy they need to know they have dignity they also need to be socially confident dr.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
thank you for joining us tonight it is my honor to welcome Shane Watson he is a public information officer for not my child not my kid and also serves as a prevention specialist for the organization he is response his responsibilities include hosting and producing not my kids when this year podcast performing media appearances for the organization overseeing not my kids social media presence blogging facilitating early intervention sessions for project rewind program facilitating suicide intervention workshops and performing performing prevention education presentations for students parents students school faculty and other community members Shane originally joined not my kid in January of 2013 as a student peer educator on the topic of substance use in his time with the organization he has performed over 500 speaking engagements to audience of over a hundred thousand at schools corporations conferences community groups and other venues in Arizona California Boston Atlanta in Kansas City he has also made over a hundred local and national media appearances including television interviews on The Today Show good day New York and Kansas City live his writing credits include prevention articles for Katie Couric website a zpm good evening thank you for being here thank you for sharing your time with name is Shane Watson as mentioned I am the public information officer for not my kid and also a prevention specialist for the organization I've been not my kid for seven years and in addition to my staff duties for the organization I present on four topics Internet safety bullying a combination topic of depression self-injury and suicide and substance use under which the umbrella of this falls under substance use my connection to the topic of substance use has three very distinct parts first is professionally through my work with not my kid and then with the organization seven years during those seven years I've had the opportunity to work with schools students families and local and national behavioral healthcare professionals through whom I've learned some very eye-opening things about substance use the root causes of it the long and short term effects also professionally I manage and facilitate project rewind which is our organization's early intervention program several schools and school districts in the valley refer their students to us middle school high school kids if they are caught on campus under the influence with drugs or alcohol or with paraphernalia so I'm working directly with middle school and high school students who have started down that path of experimentation so I'm seeing firsthand what we are up against here locally my second connectionist topic is a very personal one I am in long-term recovery 8 plus years clean and sober and I went from being a kid who was a straight-a student a Boy Scout an athlete on for a healthy kid I went from being that person to being someone who struggled with substance use for close to two decades became addicted to alcohol cocaine methamphetamine and heroin at points in combination ended up incarcerated twice and as a result of the decisions I made the last night I drank are used November 28 2011 ended up a convicted felon and nearly lost my life so to say that substance use had a profound effect in my life is not an overstatement my third and final connection of this topic is the one that by far I am the most passionate about like many of you I am a parent and the very proud dad of a strong amazing intelligent stubborn little seven-year-old girl named Anna grace and she is everything to me and she's also the reason why my eyes look so tired now at seven years old vaping and e-cigarettes are not quite a reality in her world yet but we're beginning to see kids starting to experiment at earlier in earlier ages so I not only want to equip my family with the tools and the knowledge and the resources to prevent this I want to do the same for you prevention works we have seen the positive effects of it firsthand in schools in families in students right here in Arizona and one more thing before we start and this next statement might surprise you this is not an anti vaping or an anti e-cigarette presentation now let me clarify we are not looking to have these devices banned we are not looking to have vape shops shut down when it comes to adult use as we're going to talk about these were invented as a harm reduction method for adults a smoking cessation method remember that our organization is in the field of prevention for adolescents we don't even comment on adult use based on the odds based on the percentages someone here one of you adults probably uses vapes or a cigarette keep in mind in tonight's discussion we are not commenting on you we are talking about this being a health danger for middle school and high school kids for youth if you're not familiar with our organization a little bit of background we were founded 20 years ago in Scottsdale by a Scottsdale family Debbie and Steve Moke who had a son that by all outward appearances was the perfect kid a scholar an athlete a student leader and his parents didn't realize he was also struggling with substance use issues until he was in the grips of full-blown addiction they got him helped got him on the road to recovery the family's doing great he's doing great today but they felt like their job wasn't done they said we addressed our family's issue but how many other families are in this same situation great family who love their kids but are blindsided by what's going on with their own kids so we were founded around that initial topic that you see up at the top of substances we've since expanded out to include six total topics body image unhealthy relationships bullying digital behavior also known as safe social media use an accommodation topic of depression self-injury and suicide we speak on all six of these topics for two main reasons number you cannot walk into a middle school or high school in the state of Arizona without encountering students that are dealing with these that's reality number two through our work with local families schools students and behavioral health care professionals we've learned these are often interconnected very frequently when we meet a young person that's struggling with one of these they're struggling with another one or they are at greater risk to deal with another one we had a seventh-grade girl last school year referred to our project rewind program who had been bullied on Instagram about her appearance by people she had considered friends and turned to alcohol as an escape that's a cross over a five of those six topics in just one person scenario and as you see over here on the Left which better reach school faculty parents grandparents guardians aunts and uncles and students themselves because no one of these groups should try to have to tackle all these issues on their own but if we can educate and empower all these groups to work on the same page as I said before we can create change we can save lives and we can improve lives by the time we're done here tonight we want to make sure we've answered these guiding questions for you what our vapes and e-cigarettes we're gonna break down what's actually going on with these devices because a lot of people don't even necessarily know what they do I hear it referred to very frequently as smoking and it's not smoking it's actually something very different now if you're already aware of how that works great you're ahead of the game but we're gonna break down the mechanics of it why were they created for a very good reason which we'll get into how frequently are they being used by adolescents and that's the concern that's the focus of tonight's presentation what are the reasons they're being used by middle school and high school students if as a parent we find out our child is drinking or using we want it to stop but we also need to find out the why behind it the motivation behind why a kid is drinking or using can begin to point you in the direction of a solution we meet plenty of kids who are using or drinking to get a feeling they want the buzz or the high or the euphoria we are meeting an equal or greater amount in our early intervention program who are using to get away from a feeling they are self-medicating anxiety depression and/or stress what are the potential negative side effects why should we be concerned that kids are using in these and finally what do we do about this how do we venit and if it's already occurring how do we intervene and if you are a stickler for sources as I'm quoting statistics or information tonight if you're wondering is this coming from a reputable source or sources the short answer is yes Harvard Berkeley that National Labs NIH etc so the reason why this has become our most requested topic vaping has to do with what you're seeing here I mentioned facilitating an early intervention program now we recently analyzed some data for the last 200 students who have gone through the program all local Arizona Valley students and this is what the breakdown looks like 51 percent THC use and we're not meeting kids that are smoking marijuana anymore they are vaping THC concentrates and a fairly close second 32% are vaping nicotine because of this breakdown tonight we're not only going to be talking about kids vaping nicotine eliquid or flavored eliquid but we're gonna be talking about the effects of kids using THC concentrates and this information right here comes from the monitoring the Future survey the MTF survey this is done annually of eighth graders tenth graders and twelfth graders they do is they ask questions about drug and alcohol use and other risky behaviors and you notice these columns here every column that you see that has an asterisk next to it not only it increased in 2019 from 2018 if it has an asterisk it increased significantly from the prior year vaping of nicotine increased any vaping increased marijuana and hash oil increase and the only one that went down that's what those caret symbols mean a major decrease all the way at the end kids just fake vaping the flavored liquid so nicotine and THC vaping have gone up so let's talk about it what is vaping as you see here it's the act of inhaling an aerosol created by a liquid heated in a personal vaping device a box mod vape Joule essaouira and we have models over here that you can take a look at when we're done talking tonight by the way this may spend a little bit funny please don't take my vapes home with you I've had parents leave parent presentations with concealment devices and paraphernalia please make sure that you leave it here it is not by the way smoking I hear a lot of people use the term smoking it is not actually burning something or the inhaling and exhaling of smoke it is actually an aerosol so it's actually not even a vapor either it is an aerosol and it can come in vape pens like this although we're not seeing this very frequently when it comes to youth we're seeing other devices much more frequently we'll talk about those in a minute but what is the liquid that's being heated and inhaled and exhaled a lot of the kids that we talk to the reason they have such a low perception of risk they believe that this is harmless is because a lot of middle school and high school students when polled will tell us well this is just water vapor you cannot blow vapor clouds that big by inhaling and exhaling water vapor what is in the e-liquid tends to be one or more of the ingredients that you see here now let's talk about propylene glycol which we'll call PG from now on propylene glycol is a food additive now people who will advocate for the safety of propylene glycol advocate for the safety of vaping it will tell you propylene glycol is approved by the FDA as safe it is for ingestion not for inhaling ingesting something and inhaling something are two very different things propylene glycol is a food additive that has put in prepackaged shrink-wrap foods that are going to be sitting on store shelves for a prolonged period of time to keep moisture out of them to keep them from spoiling other people will also advocate for the safety of pg by telling you propylene glycol is used in asthma inhalers so how could it be dangerous one very key difference asthma inhalers do not heat the propylene glycol vapes and e-cigarettes do when you heat propylene glycol to the temperature to which these devices get up to propylene glycol produces a byproduct chemical or multiple by-product chemicals that are not there at room temperature those byproducts Emma Claus have been shown to be cancer-causing and damaging to the lungs now vegetable glycerin known as VG a lot of people will advocate for it being safer than propylene glycol is it safer yes is it completely safe when we're talking about youth is it completely without consequence oh and I'll give you an example if you know someone who vapes eliquid primarily or solely made of VG have them take about a half dozen hits and blow them onto a glass plate onto a window onto a glass arcadia door right up on it about a half dozen hits after they do that take your finger and run it through the residue where they've blown those hits and look at the residue the glistening residue left on your finger now keep in mind you're seeing that on your finger and the person the child the middle schooler or high schooler that's inhaling that is taking that into their lungs and you're seeing the result of a half dozen hits multiply that out over how many hits someone's taking per day per week per month per year and remember that is going into the lungs nicotine is optional but the majority of kids that were meeting are vaping either nicotine e-liquid or a THC concentrate as you saw that monitoring the future study earlier flavor is optional but flavors the reason 80% of kids said that they started and then water is sometimes used to change the viscosity the thickness now a moment ago we showed the vape pen which is how this originated but we're actually starting to see that much less and as parents you've probably long heard about the Joule ease cigarette which for a very long time was the most popular east cigarette or vaping device with middle school and high school kids it was easy to get it was easy to hide it was a big social media status you can make a big production of having your Joule on Instagram snapchat etc but Joule can no longer produce the flavors that they used to produce if you're familiar with the news that's been happening recently they have banned Joule from making any flavors other than tobacco flavor and and menthol and I don't know a lot of middle school or high school kids who want to vape menthol or tobacco flavor so as parents a lot of us saw this a lot of people saw this and thought okay good the problems been legislated away it's been done away with well also in recent years we were seeing the Soron drop and we were seeing the soar in air now when we thought that this was being legislated away the surprise that came up on the horizon was something called the puff bar now this has made the national news within the last couple weeks because as you will see down here in the last paragraph a footnote on page 9 of the new policy that banned pod systems flavor pod systems like Jewel allows flavors to still be made if it is in a disposable device so as parents if we're still looking for the soar and drop the Soron air if we're still looking for the jewel we are looking for the wrong thing we have three puff bars up here on this bag free to look at before you leave that were given to me by a school resource officer locally and I asked him you know we're seeing this nationally are you seeing this locally he said absolutely the jewel is beginning to phase out very rapidly the soaring drop in the soar and air are beginning to phase out very rapidly and now what we are starting to see is the puff guard in all of the same flavors that you could get before in a very similar style to the jewel with the equivalent amount of nicotine 5% nicotine so to give you an idea of what 5% nicotine equates to when it comes to cigarettes let's put it in terms of tobacco we may be more familiar with that 5% nicotine is the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes now have a lot of parents or educators ask me how long does it take someone to go through one of these that's going to depend on how long they've been vaping what their tolerances are like etc some kids it can last them quite a while some kids will be through one in a day or two so you may have noticed that the subtitle of this presentation was the good the bad and the ugly and it may surprise you that a prevention organization has something good to say about vaping but the truth is it was invented for a very good reason it was invented by a Chinese pharmacist in 2003 and he had been a smoker and he quit smoking by using nicotine patches but he missed the feeling of smoking his father had been a smoker and his father quit excuse me his father had died by lung cancer so this pharmacist developed the e-cigarette multiple numerous adults have used these devices to move from tobacco to e-cigarettes taper down their nicotine levels over time and eventually quit entirely that is a harm reduction method that is a smoking cessation method having said that I have yet to meet the middle school or high school student who is using these to quit smoking most often they're the entry point in a substance use now years ago typically students would start with cigarettes and an alcohol and then marijuana what we're seeing now is e cigarettes THC concentrates and alcohol is now coming in third other good news is that teen smoking is declining teen smoking is at the lowest it has been since 1991 when they started formally taking data from high school students about smoking that's fantastic well now let's talk about the bat as I mentioned earlier not only kids are not using not only are kids not using these typically to quit smoking there are six times more likely to go on to smoke cigarettes anyway if they start using e-cigarettes or vapes this is from a study done by the University of Southern California whatever reason a student starts whether it's curiosity peer pressure boredom flavors once that nicotine takes hold nicotine is a very addictive substance it is very difficult to quit the withdrawal symptoms are horrendous and that person finds out man if I don't have my jewel pods I feel awful but if I steal my grandpa cigarettes I don't feel that way there's six times more likely to go into smoke anyway and they are successful buying cigarettes online 94% of the time because typically age verification online involves a checkbox yes I am 18 years old that is typically the extent of age verification online and then finally the craziest-looking statistic and this is not a typo team use in the United States increased by nine hundred percent between 2011 and 2015 we are continuing to see on the graph of this it is continuing to climb the hope is that in the next few years the education and the prevention can catch up with it we'll see it plateau and eventually begin to decline so we talked about the what now let's talk about the why and I'd like to take answers from a few of you if you're willing to raise your hand and answer and this is not a right wrong thing I'm not looking for a specific answer I'd like to hear your experience as grandparents as parents as educators why two teens vape why is it popular so they can be cool in front of their friends meanwhile smoking could not be less cool these the decline the lowest it's been since 1991 smoking could not be less popular meanwhile east cigarettes and vapes are a big status symbol still on social media to try to be cool in front of their friends absolutely anybody else why do teens baby right here because they like the flavor as I mentioned earlier there was a poll done there's actually been multiple polls done that indicate about 80% of students who started vaping did so because of the flavors which we'll talk about here in a little bit we could answer this question for the entire time we have here tonight not give one wrong answer and not exhaust the entire list of reasons why there tend to be a lot of reasons why people will vape students will vape but will notice that many of the answers will tend to fall in one of the broad categories that you see here now appealing flavors was mentioned peer pressure was something similar to peer pressure to be cool to fit in was mention but I'm gonna draw your attention to two things on this list social media influence and advertising now this is an article if you can see the data appear in the corner January 22nd of this year now back in the day the concern was what about advertising the kids whether it was tobacco advertising or alcohol advertising there's still some of that that's going on and we'll talk about it here in a minute but what we're seeing much more often now is the appeal coming from influencers social media influencers social media influencers on Instagram and the FDA is seeing that this is so frequent that they're making this big display on their Instagram on their tik-tok wherever they have these millions of followers without mentioning the actual potential downside to it and it's not just occurring on Instagram although that's one of the biggest places and if you see down here researchers have discovered that Instagram posts that promote the use of e-cigarettes and vapes outnumber anti vaping content by a shocking ratio of 10,000 to one this article just came out a couple weeks ago and as I mentioned a moment ago it's not just Instagram is also happening on tik-tok as you can see this trending hashtag they tricks almost 300 million views on tick-tock by the way for you parents chances are if your parents of middle schoolers or high schoolers you already very familiar with tick-tock if you are not I highly recommend that you research it as well so they're having this not just promoted by friends or peers at school but people that they look up to on social media and they may be seeing it through advertisement now we as adults here those of you who are parents or grandparents remember as recently as the 90s the 80s the 70s the American public's battle against the tobacco industry an industry that lied about the dangers of their products used manipulative advertising practices we remember that we lived through that students who were not around for that may not be familiar with it unless we've had a deliberate conversation with them about that well there's some familiar names who hooked prior generations on nicotine who are back now with new nicotine containing products and they have a new target market which is youth but see if this looks similar side-by-side what we have on the left is we're gonna have a series of old-school cigarette ads tobacco ads on the right we're gonna pair them up with modern-day e-cigarette ads will have underneath each the year that the advertisement was released and at the top we will have the old tired advertising cliche that's being recycled once again to sell a new nicotine containing product so side by side we've got the tough guy the Marlboro Man kind of look leisure and lifestyle 1964 on the cigarette ad 2013 on the e-cigarette ad look at the convertible look at the pose sex appeal look at the dress look at the pose we're going back to 1930 the cigarette ad night life and romance look at the composition of these two ads side-by-side celebrity endorsement okay Stephen Dorff over there on the right not that big of a celebrity he made some movies back in the 90s will count it technically a celebrity girl power look at the airplane look at the pose going back to 38 on the cigarette ad fruit and other flavors so they've borrowed this from the tobacco company playbook as well and any flavor that you can think of you can find an e liquid in that flavor here we've got vivid vanilla cherry crush caramel cuddles banana cream pie sweet fruit punch cotton candy luscious watermelon there's also a company in New York that claims to make an organic churro flavored eliquid I don't know how you get organic churro flavored eliquid but there is a company in New York that claims to make it you can find a flavor any flavor you can think of so how did this happen is this just a matter of ad agencies connecting with each cigarette companies and saying hey these ad cliches work let's do this again or is it because there's some familiar names behind these new devices so up here at the top we have the tobacco corporation they're now called Altria most of you probably will remember them being called Philip Morris they've rebranded the old name had some negative connotation they own Marlboro Parliament and Virginia Slims very recognizable cigarette brands they own Green Smoke mark 10 and more than a 1/3 stake in Joule tobacco corporation that fooled us once before back with new products then we have Imperial Tobacco which owns winston-salem cool and maverick recognizable cigarette brands they own blue another major east cigarette brand called out by name two summers ago by the Food and Drug Administration as marketing directly to kids and then finally Lorillard which you'll probably remember the name r.j.
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good morning the cob today is March 4th 2020 it is a 120 second day of school this is WBZ news I Madsen writing the code today's lunch there'll be mini pancakes sausage patty cucumber hashbrowns orange juice and milk tomorrow professor breakfast they're all beat she'll for you graham crackers orange halves orange juice and milk yesterday fun oh we have some friends delivering birthdays eight weeks miss Preston Olsen aye Beall aye Beall gia and a Olivia blush please mr.
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met dr. Benson good evening very glad you're here thank you for having me I think very grateful that your superintendent has structured a parent University series talking about that which I think is most important and how we're taking care of our kiddos just gonna see if we can cue that light back just a little bit so I can see the peeps in the room my friends in technology group if you could dim that one just a smidge if that's possible then I can see the parents I appreciate that so to get us started um this is um why I wanted to be able to see you how many of you have a parent of a middle schooler grades 6 through 8 okay how many have a parent k5 both of us how many have our birth to kinder to pre-k is an eclectic group how many have a student beyond eighth-grade alright and anybody here that's not a parent that's just a community member that is interested in learning how we can take better care of our kiddos fantastic welcome very glad you're all here I started being interested in what's going on with kids and the role that mindset might have in that as a parent as well so I've been an educator for 25 plus years the bulk of that as an administrator now and the bulk of that in the Scottsdale Unified School District as a director and executive director of the teaching and learning world at the minute I have the privilege of serving kids in the southwest region of our country running around to California Nevada with imagine schools and serving the teaching and learning needs of students there so well I am a huge supporter of teachers leaders support staff and parents and how we're taking care of kids in terms of the world of academics it's been what's going on outside of the world of academics and how that's impacting in academics and our kids that's really been resonating with me for the last couple of years so despite the grand narrative at work I think it's fascinating that so many persons suggest kids really don't want our support that they'd like to be isolated that they got this figured out that they have it on their own and at the end of the day we know that's not true teenagers sites adult support as one of the most significant predictors of their own well-being so whether we're a teacher a coach a principal a leader of a district a parent a member of our community in any capacity that's significant also significant is that we know if we can get our kids connected to their schools to their school community to their community they're likely to demonstrate more resilience fewer risk behaviors have a more positive well-being and tend to outperform others who maybe aren't that that research isn't new we know that students that feel connected to one adult are likely to exhibit more resilience than those that don't my interest in this also is comes from that of being a parent I have two beautiful boys clay and Cole that's the College World Series in Omaha this summer I have a millennial and an I gen or Gen Z and the difference I saw and continue to see I mean the behaviors of both of my children same mom and in their kids has been fascinating to me and I think it warrants paying attention to it something we didn't anticipate we didn't see the spaces the interactions of kids changing quickly enough so I'm grateful you're here is thinking about that because you've got more time to be responding to that than some of us did snuck up on us quickly how social space changed and we're going to talk more about that site your superintendent has been fantastic to suggest that the social emotional well-being of our kids is something we need to be paying attention to and so at the kickoff a bunch of us Katie McPherson had arranged to be working with the teachers and leaders and support staff there got to hear his message where he reiterated students need safety belonging and love to succeed in school in life so all of the message messages through parent University all the speakers that Katie McGee resan has lined up are in step with this so in order for us to be successful and in the shared space that we have here and we just can't invite you to think and adhere to two norms and our time together to be here now fully fully present and to care like crazy not just for your own kid but for the community of learners and community of parents that we have with us this evening so let's get started in 2018 Tim Elmore started doing research and paying attention to what's happening with how adults are situating what's going on with our kids and across the country overwhelmingly there was a one common response to this I want you to think about how would you respond to that today American adults top emotion about kids the regarding kids today is since we're a small group anybody want to popcorn that out I don't yes fear well exhaustion anybody else distracted I think there's that we could make a case for all of those but the most common descriptor was concerned but across the country most adults feel concerned for the state of where kids are at right now I think we could stop right here and talk about that for the rest of the night because how we are responding to that is pretty significant turns out there's reason for that kind of concern this is research from ASU there has been a hundred and forty percent increase from 2010 to 2018 in students that are being treated for anxiety 118 percent increase for depression same time and not as much of an increase in terms of kids and the way that they are suggesting they're experiencing stress I think that's really really important for us to think about so while they're feeling a little more stressed out the way they're responding to their stress over the top kids are having or struggling more with how to deal with being uncomfortable than ever before that's real Generation Z the 18 to 22 year old portion of Generation Z we'll talk more about who they are in a bit is significantly more likely than any other age group to say they experienced feelings associated with loneliness seventy percent of our kids in this little bucket believe no one knows them very well and I would argue the next group of kids underneath that would say similar things so how we respond to that it's gonna be pretty darn important because typically when adults a get concerned what do we do what do you say usually one of two responses tough-love suck it up we got this or we over support some of us are very good at the over supporting come on just a second when we over support we tend to further disempower kids and we actually move the needle further in terms of how they experience anxiety it disempowers them all together yes I'll take a quick question like it's a great question so self-reports same thing so much of the research comes in two ways either kids self-reporting they feel that way or kids that are going to get help and what we do know about kids right now those that are are being deemed most resilient they are more likely to get more help so that's absolutely correct and important context to bring up I appreciate you sharing that even the self report report studies I think we have to think about that too because more people are talking about it so even if they're not getting help if they're reporting it it could be a bit of a celebration in the uptick that kids are recognizing it about themselves it's a great question okay so in three chunks tonight gonna situate kind of how we got here Mental Health metrics indicate we're not likely being as successful as we hope to and growing resilient kids and how that's connected to mindset so how did we get here and what actually is it how many feel like you have a pretty confident understanding about what mindset is a growth mindset is fairly confident okay we're gonna revisit some of that because we're at different places in the room doesn't appear that we all have a common understanding of that but mindset alone in absence of the context isn't gonna get us as far as we like so we're gonna talk about the context piece as a part of the conversation tonight - so growth mindset matters we know it we know it can help we're gonna talk about what it is then we're gonna talk about what we've learned we've been talking about this for the better part of 30 years and it hasn't taken root and isn't pervasive across our country at the minute so what is it that we've learned about that what are those changes in context and what are the newest leaders in thinking inviting or asking us to do better differently and finally have five top recommendations for what we can do as parents and educators to foster resilience moving forward so with that Carol Dweck is kind of the mother of all mindset research she started about 30 years ago when she paid attention to the way that kids respond differently to failure it was fascinating to her that some kids it seemed to do alright with that and not let it become part of their identity and others would abandon whatever it was that they were doing and not bounce back as quickly as others so in her research she established one simple belief about ourselves guides a large part of our lives not just academics relationships career choice performance without the athletic or otherwise how we parent and we can cultivate change it choose it differently all the time so there's a lot of Hope in her message she noticed it she identified it she said there's two different mindsets a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and they're not fixed in and of themselves huge that it wasn't fixed she noticed that persons that exhibit a growth mindset tend to be more resilient and she defined that as being more optimistic to continue in times are tough her third big piece is that she started watching how we as adults parents teachers educators otherwise would praise kiddos after they've succeeded at something about how smart they were how talented they are and she started to disrupt that by saying maybe we take a look at praising the effort how hard they work to get there versus what the outcome was so given our minds that's changed all the time I'm just gonna pose two questions to you instead of having us to take a mindset quiz to kind of gauge where yours is that today remembering it can be moved at any time thinking just about yourself my intelligence and skills are something very basic about me that I can't change very much would you strongly agree with that agree disagree or strongly disagree I'm not gonna have you share out just want you to self-reflect and I am a certain kind of person and there isn't really much that I can do to change that the latter one speaks to more like what persons would call personality traits and funny I'm artistic I'm good at math so the degree to which we strongly agree with those is the degree to which today our mindset is more fixed there's a bajillion quizzes online free that go deeper into this but they pretty much ask questions about two things intelligence and skills personality traits how do you think your kids would respond think about the different ages of your kiddos and if you were to pose that question today where are they at I'll fix today in thinking of those two I do have a favorite quiz because it's not so repetitive I'm happy to share the resources afterwards really like this one because it teases out the difference between where kids might be on a continuum for different traits so happy to get it I have a resource list that I'm happy to share with you but do you want to say that's a free one online it's not copyrighted and I'm happy to show that as a resource afterwards one of the things we shared with your teachers is that whether or not or what their mindset is about whether or not they can make a difference with kids tends to make a real difference and impact kids learning so we asked your teachers my students intelligence and skills are something very basic that they can't change very much and regardless of the circumstances of the kids we serve I can make a significant difference in their success and well-being this is super important because our parents can impact this as well again I'm a teaching and learning person been running around helping teachers and lead perfect the craft of how we serve kids for a long time the number one factor attributed to correlate to student learning is whether or not a teacher has the efficacy to believe he or she can get it done if teachers believe we can get it done that is the highest correlation to whether or not our kids will have learning gains that's overwhelming for me for a person that has been running around helping teachers improve their craft and we know that matters too but what we believe about our kids and ourselves matters more I think there's a direct extension with our parents to worried about our profession right now and we know we have a teacher shortage here teachers are working awfully hard and anytime I get to talk to parents I like to invite them to think about how we support our teachers and wellness and taking care of them so they can continue to take care of our kids in ways that are gonna make the biggest difference okay so there's two mindsets the fixed mindset and the growth mindset and the growth mindset leads to a desire to learn because we believe intelligence can be developed we are not born with the fixed amount of intelligence it's interesting when Dweck did research with two groups of kids with no other controlling for as many variables as possible when they taught kids about growth mindsets versus the other group that they didn't they outperform their peer group just by learning that their mother intelligent wasn't fixed we can't control for everything but that's pretty interesting from her early research like I said it's all on a continuum for all of these things they're they're kind of correlated characteristics of a fixed mindset tend to believe intelligence and talent are fixed in growth we believe that they can be developed character said the fixed believes effort is fruitless isn't gonna matter how hard I try character is another growth and remember these can all be developed believes effort is the path mastery it matters repetition matters think about your own kids or your in your own experience where it didn't matter characters have fixed beliefs failures define who we are in a growth mindset view failure as temporary fixed mindsets tend to hide flaws characteristic characteristics of growth believes mistakes are part of learning it's interesting we talked about this with your teachers on in pre-service too the one thing that we know separates our country from other countries is that because we tend to be kind and supportive and and super well intentioned we give help faster in the classroom than any other country around the globe and what that does over time with the best of intentions is our students start to think there's a right answer they start to get nervous about getting things wrong they get frustrated more quickly and it actually supports the development of a fixed mindset that productive struck struggle and allowing kids step two to let kids know that we're gonna allow them to productively productively struggle super important in their classrooms characteristics of fix tend to avoid challenges have a growth embrace challenge same thing when researchers study our kids with kids across the country or across the globe when we put different learning tasks out on tables in our country our kids tend to go to the ones that they know they're going to be able to do in other countries kiddos will go tackle ones that might challenge them they're conditioned to try to reach for a higher bar it's really big interesting I think for parents to think about - and what that looks like in our own homes as well characteristics have fixed we intend to ignore feedback growth persons have a growth mindset welcomed it and use it to change we view feedback as personally critically if we're more fixed we improve and grow and sometimes we feel threatened by other people's success if we have a fixed mindset versus if we have a growth mindset we can view other's success as inspirational just take a look at that think about where you're at with that well your kiddos might be out with that remember the intentionality about how we can move and grow quickly significant to the conversation of mindset so how do we teach it to our kiddos depending on that how old your kiddos are in most online curriculums if you google search the free ones or even in some of the the ones that we've the site districts or sites pay for Angela Duckworth is still coming up as interesting and a valuable resource to teach kids about grit she went one step further from Dweck's work study people that were successful in the military and she determined or coined this word grit in her definition grit means to persevere she made it clear that grit is a behavior that happens only if you have a growth mindset so she took Dweck's worth where resilience is still defined as being optimistic to do so and went one step further saying grits can be the drive that allows you to persevere what's interesting her research is champion all over the place people are buying curriculums it's actually become a test at some schools where persons take a grit self-assessment and admissions places look at that to determine who might be most successful it's an absolute counter intuitive way to apply grit because we know it can be developed but it's fascinating that the research has kind of gone that way for certain places people actually get a great grade on a report card in places across our country there's a spaceport on the report card the second great solid resource that talks about mindset in references Dweck's work is eduardo Briceno he very much coins this I can't do it just ad yet it's a simple thing with our kids to teach if we can't do something just add the the key word yet and we support work towards it moving forward this is on the resource page again to share but just two quick little videos they're short they're pretty impactful lots of high school kids have seen them but they're a great resource to be showing with upper elementary and middle school as well okay so what's going on we know mindset super important we know we've been talking about it for 30 years so why is it that we're not seeing resilient kids popping up it's complicated it's not gonna be simple three stakeholder groups are teaching us kind about what we might want to be thinking about and learning from in terms of if you want to get better at this back up just one slide wanted to make sure there's a couple buzzwords and education rigor being one of them we all think that we have it everybody thinks they have a common common understanding what it looks like and the reality is we all think very differently about it same thing with mindset it's been very very misunderstood so we're gonna listen to and pay attention to what teachers are telling us we might be able to do a little bit better about what researchers are telling us we might be able do a little bit better and the third one that I would argue is the most important is what the current context that's happening right now that we might be wanting to pay attention to if we want to get better at supporting and developing our resilient kiddos so teachers are saying we know it works ninety-eight percent of our teachers said they know that when they see kids exhibiting a growth mindset it makes the difference twenty percent of teachers said I think I'm good at it or I have the resources I need eighty five percent said they want to learn more about this I think a huge part of this is just having a conversation with the principal yesterday who said we're all in our school is all in social-emotional learning and we are constantly talking about in developing the whole child but at the end of day if we don't have a partnership with the home I'm not I'm not sure we're gonna make it I'm not sure we're gonna get as far and move the needle as much as we want to so the partnership I think with the parents is really important equally important researchers agree with teachers saying whoops we might have missed that at the implementation starting thirty years ago when we started talking about growth mindset hasn't been very good what we know that we're we missed up those educators is we worked really hard to teach the concept well to our kids in isolation we put up posters we talked about growth versus fixed mindset and the difference that could make in a kid but we didn't necessarily always look at the practices of our schools or our classrooms to see if they supported that nor is adults in the classroom did we get transparent about our own and kids have called us out on that saying you know what you've been talking about that but if I'm not seeing that modeled and the vulnerability in that in a classroom or even from our parent group kids are actually moving and saying that they they kind of check gave up on that and move over to the fixed mindset growth mindset got reduced to simply praising efforts and it's more than that we know understanding what's going on with our kids and not just learning the difference between the two mindsets it's gonna take more than that our kids also said we're struggling with when teachers or parents just say just keep trying harder just keep trying harder that can position them as not adopting or wanting to adopt a growth mindset too I think additional research has talked us about if we're only praising kids when they succeed about their effort we we might be miss stepping there too we can learn from that if we're thinking about how we celebrate and appraise their efforts and their strategies even if they're not successful that's healthy as well again on the resource page one of my favorite little videos I found this summer is this little soccer coach who was coaching four-year-olds and he watched the enthusiasm of his four-year-olds come into the game not sure that they loved the game but they sure loved being together he talked about having a dandelion picker and a hugger and they were just all out loving the opportunity to be on the field together until he started to watch during the game the enthusiasm at its peak involve the goalie upon a breakaway picking up the goal and rather than moving it over to the side to make sure that the kids didn't score moved it over so they did because he was so helping the other team and so he watched all this enthusiasm and how excited the kids were playing and then he watched the kids emotions change and their love of the game change and they're even liking of being out on the field change based on where the attention was coming from parents so if kids kicked it hard in a long ways and there was a lot of that going on of course it's a part of the game of soccer that we're gonna clap for and cheer to teach the game but he watched in a series of one game in the course of one game four-year-olds come off crying didn't want to play anymore because they weren't getting cheered for for their efforts only some kids were and only some behaviors were it's it fascinating it's fascinating to think about again in the resource page I'm happy to share with you ok but most important people that are rethinking mindset are taking a look at what we found to be significant amongst kids the four factors found affect ongoing resilience ingridt students tend to believe about themselves they set goals either with support or on their own their feelings they have strong feelings about their social connectedness and they can self-regulate in the earlier research we saw this so I'm just gonna have you pause and think for a minute which of those do you see affecting on our kids most positively today and which one of those might you be most worried about I'm just gonna have you think on that first a few seconds how many said that one is the one that you're most concerned about the third one students feeling about their social connectedness is um the biggest change we've seen in the last decade for sure 68% of the gens ears indicate they feel like nobody really knows them well we talked about that earlier what we know about getting them connected in-person gatherings are crucial for reducing that loneliness and yet young people's preference for face-to-face communication has decreased substantially over the past six years participation in prom alone the needle is moved this I think is the most interesting dichotomy of our kids self reporting they're saying you know what I don't need to spend time face-to-face I'm feeling lonely don't want to go to something that might require that face-to-face that interaction I think this is significant for us to be thinking about in terms of parents and educators and the kids that we serve I just this weekend tucked my um youngest in to you know murder University of Minnesota was overwhelmingly happy to see an apartment situation where so much of it was common ground tons of common ground where peeps go out and share living space even though it's an apartment like thing rooftops grills study places to get kids out of their apartments and in the common areas as an intentional effort to do so so who are these i Jenner's they are born between 1995 and 2012 how many have a 1995 to 2012 kiddo the bulk of us let's see if this resonates with you they're also known as Generation Z or post Millennials most grew up with a smartphone had an Instagram account before they started high school and don't remember a time before the Internet pretty interesting right if you've not been in the common sense media how many have ever been to common sense media it is a fantastic free source I think it does a really good job of balancing research it's not inflammatory it doesn't tell you exactly what to do with your kids it gives a kind of a balanced approach saying here's what our kids are saying here's what research is saying here's some resources and tools to help you and it's all free so over the big overarching question because we know context is significant over the last decade is all right how much is social media playing in this whole development or disruption of resiliency other persons in the parent series we'll talk more about that but the end of the day it's both it depends on the kid depends on the researcher it depends on what kids are engaged in beyond social media for sure it's very complex it's a hard time to be a parent or educator because there's a lot of conflicting research out there we know we kind of got it wrong the needle move pretty solid like we're gonna be all in digital everything schools went that way we have online textbooks we had all kinds of we're all in and then the needle kind of went all the way back to say oh my gosh look what we've done look what we're doing to our kids and now I feel like the needles kind of in the middle and we're acknowledging it depends on the kid oh we do know there's a positive correlation between the use of digital media and mental health problems especially if we get up to over set the better part of seven hours a day where we're spending it that much time on that that seems to be the magic number okay so what are new people telling us we might want to be thinking about in terms of mindset and resiliency how many of heard of brené Brown she's my new fave she's doing an awful lot to expand on previous research on resiliency mindset and kids and adults she's not just about kids number one thing that resilient people have in common you think she's gonna say that in her research a tolerance for discomfort so when you think about your kids right now and to what degree are your kiddos comfortable with being uncomfortable because I can tell you my youngest isn't he has created he's used the word cringe as a noun verb adjective everything he walks the room and sees something he's like that's cringe that's to cringe that would be cringe this is cringe it's all about the cringe so we talked a lot about this all right where's that coming from and how do we get more comfortable and being able to tolerate that discomfort Renee says these are the most common factors of resilient people they're resourceful and have good problem-solving skills I think one of the most important things we can do as parents is think about how do we teach our kids what does it look like to allow them to practice solving problems in our home beyond academics they're more likely to seek help which goes back to the question that was posed earlier it's a really good thing they hold the belief they can do something that will help them manage their feelings and cope they have social supports available to them and they're connected with others family or friends when you think about that and think about as a parent which one of those you have the most influence to support if you're not familiar with Brunei she's kind of gone mainstream beyond her TED talks she has one of the top three most viewed TED talks in the world she's got a host of books but she's recently just on Netflix it's about an hour long that's pretty good too it's great for us as parents as educators there's pieces of that but depending on older kiddo is might be relevant as well highly recommend er okay so we're gonna jump into the five strategies to foster resilience in our kiddos first one researchers are saying is to recognize that we all have one affixed in a growth mindset about different things and to get familiar with our own so I'm gonna have you reflect for just a minute not gonna ask you to be sharing this out cuz it's personal but in terms of our own mindsets where or in what situation they be taking a risk embrace the challenge admitted a mistake or welcome feedback or where might that be a good opportunity for you to do so and I would ask do your kids know about it the one thing our kids are telling us is they learn best about resilience when they have an adult that talks about not just that they should get it done or that they need to do this but that shares their own stories maybe where something didn't work very well and this is what we did to get through it or maybe it was something that did work pretty well and this is what we did to prepare for it but how is sharing our own experiences about how we overcome challenges well what we can over do do to overcome something now resonates with our kids significantly second one share the neuroscience behind the value of the growth mindset with our kids that's interesting because neuroscience does just know people didn't just think it up it's rooted in science there are brain scans brings change when we practice having a growth mindset and learning new things letting our kids see what that looks like there's all kinds of little videos that allow for that to resonate with our kiddos the good news is it doesn't ever stop so for those of us that are aging well it might not go as quickly as we'd like it to we can always continue to remap our brains in such a way third one identify fixing growth mindset language and respond when we hear fixed mindset language our teachers tend to be pretty good at this part if they're focusing on a mindset so I'm gonna have us practice that just for a minute if you hear your kiddo saying one of those things what might you say to redirect or respond I'm gonna give you a good minute half to do that by yourself or with the shoulder partner behind you or beside you pick a couple how could what might you say to redirect that fixed mindset language it's no right or wrong answer but I'm gonna give you a minute to take a look that - did you say something like that I'm gonna thought you two take it one step further so well this is what I can what we can use to disrupt and we here fixed mindset their own kiddos are in our classrooms if we're gonna go one step further what do you say if your kid oh no what might you say to your kids that really worked hard and when they really work hard cuz it happens to all of us and they didn't do well so beyond disrupting the fixed mindset language our feedback very much can help support a positive growth mindset what we say in those settings so I'm just gonna have you think about that and I'm gonna give you a three my face stolen from other people what part of the process taught you the most I know I didn't go as well as maybe you wanted it to what actions can you take to get there my favorite of the three anything worth doing often doesn't come easily what support do you need so that you can be successful I'm here to help I'm here to help okay fourth strategy to foster resilience creating a culture of belonging getting kids connected to other kids and our kids connected to adults I think as parents this one is overwhelmingly huge we notice a big change in my life I've disrupted in a in a divorce the better part of 10 years ago and the change to the context of how quickly I could get my kid back into the same kind of connections we had with families pretty huge still talked about it with my little yet today so when you think about that what is it that we do or what can we do to get kids connected to other kids and adults because we have a lot of control over that as parents no right or wrong answers but I did that I was talking with a friend the other day and the way that they get connected around their dinner table resonated with me sometimes I think the intentionality behind the questions we posed at the dinner table might afford us them some of the biggest space to be connecting with our kids and my friend shared that he and his boys do highlights and bummers every single meal so a highlight or a bummer and a detail and then each kid has to they've just been doing it for so long it's a habit or a routine they pose a question about somebody's highlight or bummer so not only are they connecting in such a way that's a habit I think it's also interesting that they allowed space for the bun so it's not always just about everything that's going well and allowed space for them to be sharing feedback and an offering support not too and finally I'm going to show the bus video - in part I'm not showing videos because this is being live-streamed and if I show a baby then they have to edit it out because that's a copywriting fraction so it's okay for me to have the links there and I can't post them as a part of this or that's a snafu so that's why I'm happy to share the resources with you but we're not showing them here why number five create a safe space for our kids to take risks to solve problems and to navigate conflict and allow space for them to practice this one's generating quite a bit of tension I would say maybe in the last six months to a year thinking about alright so if our kids are having an issue at school certainly we want to support them but how have we allowed them to navigate that on their own first did they go talk to their teacher first if that's where the issue resonated with has they tried to connect with that kid and work it out with the kid and resolve it with a kid I know in my own parenting I stepped in way too quickly the better part of a decade best of intentions trying to support my kids but talk all the time about this with my kids now so just stepping back enough to pose the question because a lot of times when a kid comes to us they want us to help them they want some support they want advice that whatever but to pause and do that one question what do you think you should do you think would be best here before we offer our own sage advice and years of experience there so I want to think about that for a minute what does that look like to create a space in a home where kids know and some of you likely have it going on all the time where kids feel it's like it's too safe to take a risk to solve a problem or to navigate their own conflict I think it's interesting to think about the degree or the line of which we decide to enter because it's something our kiddo can't likely handle on their own in a way that they're gonna be able to be successful if something got too big and finally the last one is to carry like crazy I don't think we can love them up too much I do think it's interesting to be thinking about what researchers and esteemed parents and colleagues that have are being successful in developing resilience kids are telling us find that balance keralite crazy but allow our kids to be empowered at the same time walk in that balance so with that I'm gonna open it up to a little invite you to think about instead of concern if we were going to create the conditions collectively together what would we hope the narrative or how adults would respond to this look like instead of concern not a right answer anybody want a popcorn went out I'm gonna have to have you say that louder pride confidence anybody else action resilience not a wrong answer actually like all those better than just the one that I had tossed up there hope what might be intent what what we be more intentional about as parents if we're gonna generate that within our own families and beyond what does it look like to make that kind of collective impact in a community I know some fantastic families that their home is a community for other kids they have this going on open doors kids are collecting all the time it's a safe place kids feel empowered there for those of you do that kind of thing huge gratitude for making a difference to kids but just takes one little start I do think it resonates with me big again being the teaching-learning supporter we talked a little bit about this before that we know that the biggest factor for kids and learning is whether or not teachers think that they can get it done I would argue the biggest factor in whether or not we're gonna be making an impact creating more resilient kids why than whether or not we think we can get it done and the collective efforts we take and actions we take as a community to do so so with that I'm going to wrap up and thank you for being here and I do want to take questions at the end embedded some time for that happy to try to respond to some of those large group if you have some or I'm happy to stick around afterwards and respond to any you might have in a one-to-one setting as well anybody have a big question they'd like to pose big yes I actually appreciate you bringing that up and I don't want to put your super intent on the spot but I don't know if you have a curriculum here across the district or at grade levels would you want to respond to that did you hear the question I would help repeat the question I think as I captured it you were posing the question about some of the classrooms or teachers have some growth mindset materials that they're using that involves some sort of interactive journal or journaling responses that actually go home to the parents to involve the parents as well and so big picture my question is do we have some sort of social-emotional curriculum or mind set expectations so that's pervasive or is that just happening at the classroom level so the specifics in terms of the journal but a be right there director student services um we redefined her job role in terms of what she along with the social workers and along with teaching and our educational services is doing what we're trying to emphasize is a lot of the strategies that we've been doing with teachers for so long connect with the social-emotional learning the Kagan strategies where there's cooperative groups the ability to think pair share the ability to connect and have that opportunity to move what we're trying to do is we're trying to connect those dots to these teachers to help them understand all of that is part of the social-emotional learning as well so Abby are you in the position to let us know exactly what we are looking at and in what direction we're going one of the things that you guys might be seeing your kids may be coming home talking about 5 radical minutes it is a program that really starts to open up those dialogues about connections and relationships and helping kids find to connect with their peers with our teachers and be able to also find safe spaces in their schools the other thing that we are piloting is mindfulness so at some of the schools you may be aware that they're doing mindfulness projects and activities mindfulness is also part of the five radical minutes and so within the five radical minutes there is some journaling and there's some opportunities to make those connections but do we actually have something yet no but that's some great feedback for me to be able to work with the social workers but that's pretty much where we are right now but we are continuing to evaluate and look at what else we need to do to support our students as well as our staff our governing board is very committed to the social-emotional learning of our students as a matter of fact a collective design team has just revised our vision and our mission statements along with creating our values and behavior statements and if you think that part of our mission statement includes academic social and emotional growth it's not separating those three it's connecting those three and as you've heard tonight from dr.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Craig Zena everybody hear me okay I can see you almost okay I'm gonna be wandering around the stage mostly just so I can make eye contact with most of you if those of you who are in the back want to move forward we will watch you do it if some of you in the front now want to take an opportunity to move to the back fine so it's my pleasure I'm honored to be here today an important topic that I'm glad to dialogue with you about and I would like this I think we can even pull it off in a room that's 900 seats big a little bit of a give-and-take and then at the end I'll hang out sometimes people want to talk about something in particular you know or something that I referenced and we can go from there but I'll save time for some Q&A as well so intro was exactly right that is Who I am I've spent my career really in that intersection of Education and emotional and physical well-being I didn't really know that that's where I was going to end up I thought I was going to be an engineer and then I visited some engineering schools and I had no idea what any of the other students were talking about on the tour we would be walking around I was with my dad and they would be asking questions and that likely were about engineering stuff but I didn't really know that and so we were I remember we were at Rensselaer Polytechnic upstate New York and the tour made a left around a corner in a lab and we just like stayed behind the corner and ditched the tour and they went on their way and I don't even know you know now I work at a university and I could just imagine what they thought like what happened to those people but so we're driving home I grew up in Vermont we're driving home it's about an eight hour drive from from there to where I lived and I remember just like really panicking and like I thought I wanted to be an engineer but this didn't feel right and things like that so my dad's talking to me it's like what is it that you thought you liked why would you want to be an engineer what I really wanted to do is I wanted to build prosthetics like that was in my head like I want to build prosthetics like why do you want to do that and it wasn't because I was interested in robots it wasn't because I was interested really in any of the other there was something about the building of advanced prosthetics that led to somebody's life changing and being something that would allow them to achieve things that they might not have otherwise been able to achieve or or solve problems from them that was really interesting to me he says well there's other careers like that so we started just kicking around those things and that's how I ended up basically taking psychology courses because there's the least amount of math requirements associated with that major and also had the intersection of helping people where their things so since that day that became my freshman year at the University of Vermont I kind of kept building a psychology career but I've had all sorts of different roles in in psychology and education and I find myself in this really privileged position in this current role and being able to speak to folks like you where we're really taking a broader look at what ails our societies I don't I don't do direct service in the same way anymore that was an important part of my career and I was glad to do it to provide direct care to to college students or others but now I get to be in this more supervisory advanced strategy space and also get to have these kind of conversations in which I'm dialoguing with families or districts or teachers or other educators about how we tackle some of the most pressing issues and so that's that's me and that's why I keep doing this stuff because it still goes back to that day my junior in high school and I ditched the tour which is all I want to do is try to advance other people's opportunity to achieve whatever it is that they want to achieve in their life so onward we go so we're talking about youth mental health and you don't have to even be that savvy a media consumer to know that the media is paying attention in fact there is media paying attention right now hi everybody wave at the media some of you are even interviewed by them earlier the media is paying attention because it is real there's an interesting movement right now in the media's portrayal of youth mental health crises there was a there was a period of time about five years ago where it was all like the sky is falling and it's just like everything's a crisis it's all terrible and a couple years ago it moved into like it's pretty bad and some people are trying to figure this out and now we're in a really good space open space that's much healthier as a society which is there are real solutions that there are real things that we can do and we can host events like this and we can be in these dialogues we don't have to just absorb the pain and the suffering and the difficulty and then just wait for something magical to happen and we also don't have to just bandy about like searching for solutions there are real solutions available to us that we can adopt or we can invent them ourselves and that's that's amazing the reasons for this circumstance are not crystal clear I'm going to talk about some of that and of course the solutions are not straightforward they t they take all of us working on that and I'm I really look forward to you all telling me your ideas and how we can move things forward so the reality is though as we think about the reasons these things are happening is there's a lot of blame going around so just we have a small enough group here and I can see all of you I'm a little blinded by that one but I can see all of you who wants to throw your hand up and yell out what you've heard the the reason the blame about why it is that youth are struggling with mental health in ways that they might not have before yes so technology devices forcing them here that was a very loaded sentence technology devices forcing isolation all four of those matter and you line them all up so and then therefore related to increases in some of the symptom ology good okay what other blame parenting yeah so tell me more yeah what about them to helicopter parents yes oh the hell look at the idea of helicopter parenting if people couldn't hear it the idea of helicopter pairing is hovering over them or over something over someone managing monitoring not letting a make mistakes you said in there there's helicopters parents there's lawn mower parents oh there's run you right over and chop you to pieces you know there's there's all this so parents are blamed often what else social media so not just the devices but like maybe what's the the devices are capable of what about social media yeah so the social media you don't know what's real and what's not you don't know and particularly young people might not be able to be good at discriminating the difference between sort of a cultivated profile and one that's not by the way adults aren't very good at that either but children are especially bad at that and so social media has some toxicity in that regard is that is one of the things that's blamed what else yeah yeah what about rapid changes to blame absolutely so the idea that there's rapid change in our society and it's accelerating is really really it's true and then often is pointed to as the blame what was thought of as like how you would understand like a generation of young people was often you know 20 years 15 years and now it kind of feels like five years like for those of you who have children of different ages you can see like how different that child is and what they grow up around versus one that's five years older or five years younger or if you work in education you can see like yes freshman in high school and seniors in high school or freshman in college at senior cons have always been different but they seem like they're from different planets now because they're they're engaging with the world in such radically different ways they're consuming information in such radically different ways in such a short period of time what else what else is to blame yes yeah traumatic experiences so there's a heightened sensitivity to the fact that many people and especially children have experienced trauma particularly in childhood and then that has these cascading impacts and so that's been to blame another thing that's into blame is kids these days all right has anybody heard like basically the generation like this i gen or gen z like something's wrong with them or like i was on the radio last week and the people the question was like you know when you when parents asked like or is everybody just like a snowflake now and that term is out there like people are coddled maybe it's because of parenting or their they don't know how to relate to other people maybe because of technology but just like something wrong with them and so that that blaming of of kids is really pervasive and we don't have a lot of kids in the room right now but they saw a couple but they can feel that they feel that blame they'll say it to us when we talk to them they can feel like they are that the the social context of the depression anxiety increases they're somehow their fault even if we might not always say that out loud that's enough in the ether and that's actually pretty common and so I'm gonna play a little game with you just to test this theory it'll be easy for you because you're you're well informed group so you know indulge me in this easy one sometimes I do this for groups that are not as involved but you know I'm gonna I'm gonna name some quotes that are from like op-eds like media reports keep talking about the media where's our meeting again so I'm going to name some things that I've seen in op eds and I want you to guess the generation okay and I'm gonna put up which generation so you just we're gonna vote you tell me which one it is a little game be easy okay actual quotes just to show what's in the ether to close with their mothers mothers getting a lot of weight too close for their mothers selfish and self-involved to focused on technology lack sufficient work ethic you know lazy unmotivated to achieve okay to go through their mother's selfish technology lack work ethic unmotivated to achieve alright here are your choices is amazing here are your choices the greatest generation right so this is the generation that fought in World War two or surrounded the war effort in our country so born between 1901 and 24 ends up around teenage to 20s around the time of World War two the Silent Generation which almost nobody hears heard of and that's why they're called that and so we don't need to spend a bunch of time on them but that's the group right after World War two baby boomers we've heard of them there's some boomers in the room Generation X I'm a gen Xer yep with some generation yeah we go Jen ik Millennials up to about 2004 again these numbers aren't perfect but Millennials is that is that group these are like a little bit of college left and then people after college kind of the early 20s early 30s and then Jen Zi Jen so if you have children in school right now this is how they're naming your generation whether you're if you have like kindergartners whether they'll be part of that it's hard to tell right now but you know like the middle school to college age right now okay so those are your choices too close to their mother too wrapped up in technology no work ethic what it is who thinks it's the greatest generation but a show of hands okay silent we'll move on we got one back there we got one person voting for it for greatest generation without your vote okay you're on the record look at on the record baby boomers got a couple Gen Xers naming their parents Millennials who thinks this is describing Millennials alright that's a majority opinion right there and then I'm sorry and then who thinks Generation Z okay a couple people maybe a gens ear right there nice job yep takes one to know one buddy so well the reality is these quotes were about generating the GI Generation generate the greatest generation so these were quotes that I pulled from newspaper articles written about that group of people when they were young too close with their mothers too wrapped up in technology do you know what technology they were wrapped up in radio so when radio came out and it became popular American households It was as if all of society was going to end and the stories that we're told was like this is destroying the fabric of a family now people come home and instead of farming or whatever it is that we were doing before they gather around this box and a disembodied voice speaks to them and they don't relate to each other and they just listen to this thing they sound familiar right and so those of you who said you you can relate to this in the other generations the story has not changed it's identical too close to their families around this time there's a big change in America as it relates to where the population centers were and how the American family change also around this time is when public schools started to form as a little bit later than that as children were no we're less likely to be in factories because the laws associated child labor had changed and there were fewer farming communities right so we had to do something with his children and so they would go to school so everything's changing and you get this like to close with their mothers well children prior to that didn't talk to their mothers that wasn't part of the engagement of family so the family structure changed and now they're being shamed for having a relationship with their mother technology already talked about sufficient work ethic now look how times have changed that generation in the United States is lionized as the most selfless they defeated the Nazis right the most selfless whether you fought in the war or changed your life to work in a factory or any of those things that happened in our country they were seen as completely antithetical to this stereotyping and yet the stereotyping persists today because there was enough diversity and credit to you for voting for the right one this happens to every generation it has not changed it will not change the reason it won't change is that old joke that we all tell which is like every generation thinks the generation after them is the worst although this time we might be right because that's so I'm Gen X well Gen Xers in the room what was what were we called slackers we called slackers so I don't think I've slacked in my life now it's true when I was 20 I was sitting on a couch on a flannel shirt at the University of Vermont so I kind of fit the stereotype of a gen Xer but that doesn't mean that was a good representation of my generation or of me these are stories that we tell because of the changing nature of our society and the rapidity of that change often accelerates this and so this is more intense now maybe than it was before plus we have more channels to look down on a generation in the old days it might have just been the New York Times which is where I pulled most of that now you have thousands of channels to shame i gen and millennials for the lack of work ethic or that they're too wrapped up and their technology or any of that other stuff so most of you did think this and if you go on google it's sort of affirmed now you know how Google's algorithm works Google is that Google's algorithm work so it's trying to guess what you're gonna write but it's not just like you know guessing other people have written these sentences into Google so now it's trying to guess based on that and they're trying to put it's trying to put things together to give you a little head start into where you need to go so if you type in Generation Z are you get all sorts of stuff now I don't know what this generation Z are millenials why so many people are typing that because it's not true but maybe it's very confusing out there but then you know the worst and depress and useless and not Millennials so those people are arguing you know killing Facebook doomed and then look at the bottom line generation Z is stressed depressed and exam obsessed which is a big part of what drove you to come here today right this this thing of like what's happening with this generation and how are we stressing them and how are we preoccupied with certain things and not others and this has been mainly on our mind and borne out by by the evidence of Google if you type in Generation Z will now starting to look a little bit more positive which probably means a lot of Gen Z people are using Google they're like we're gonna we're gonna tackle this thing transform the future of the workplace and pay you know these things well that I like all right that's nice about Jen's eats I'm like let's look at millenniums they've gotten a lot of grief you Millennials in the audience you know from what I speak you've gotten a lot of heat in your life so Millennials are killing these brands I don't know what brands losers killing the doorbell industry how dare you how dare you kill the doorbell industry it's probably like the GI Generation killed the horse and buggy industry there's Google existed back then it probably said that you're growing horns apparently this was interesting I wrote Millennials are so and then so helpless how about that with Millennials with sociopaths it was it I wasn't using it at not I was using that the word so but it must people were like Millennials are really sociopathic and then I spelled Millennials wrong and Google's still movement at what I meant I didn't catch us until after I made the slide but Millennials are ruining look wait look at what Millennials are apparently ruining the wine industry you're ruining Applebee's I haven't been in Applebee's in a while but now I'm afraid to go cuz it's like probably ruined ruining brunch you ruined Halloween Fox whatever that is Sara Halloween Fox so this is born out this is like pervasive in the environment so why do we do this why do we engage in this it's critical as we move into like what are we going to do to support our children we engage in it because there's a tendency as humans to do something called the confirmation which is we seek information that confirms something we already believe it's why we're in the political challenges we're in right now is like everybody's existing in an echo chamber and some of the technology exacerbates that but we also have a human tendency to seek that to be confirmed by it and so if we see some so if I believe that Generation Z is too wrapped up in their technology and then I see a child on an iPad it confirms the thing I already believe I don't know anything about why that child's on that iPad I don't know anything at all but it confirms this preconceived notion that I have we also do engage in what's called the vividness effect which is things that are more vivid are more memorable more noticeable so I can I'll confess with you so I have this thing about people walking around in public like facetiming while walking around you've seen people do that maybe you do that right so there's like video chatting while walking around it drives me crazy like I look at it I'm like it's so like I turned into like the oldest demand I'm like I hate it and you know kids these days and and unbearably of why I get most annoyed because they're in they're younger than me which increasingly is most people and so I'm looking at it like I just don't like it and because it's so vivid and it confirms things that I deeply help me but the reality is that there's no actual difference between the person talking to someone else on a video and then talking to someone next to them I can't even reasonably make a case where there's a difference because I can't say like I don't need to hear your conversation well I can hear your conversation if you're talking to another person walking down the street I just sort of attuned myself through my life of that's not what I'm intending to but this somehow is distracting me because it's so vivid but if I just tuned into your conversation and you were next to me I can hear your conversation it's just two people talking but there's something about it that really gets to me and it's vividness and it's confirmation are there and it's not really their problem it's my problem but I know based on how when I said this and I some of the nods I got some of you have the same fights so there's the availability heuristic which is just easier to think of whole generations of people as something it's just harder to see differences it's harder to be more nuanced in our verse Asians it's just be like you know how millennial Millennials they're ruining Applebee's right it's just an easier thing it's like it's a it's a talking point for us particularly amongst Jenner between generations it allows us to join other people in our generation and really slander those people who are not in our generation which is the ethnocentrism of generations it's in-group out-group stuff alright so if I'm around a bunch of Gen Xers we can vibe on what it's our parents and then you know kids these days be like you know might you know my day and you hear yourself talking like this be like wow they don't know what hard work is those people who defeated the Nazis right it's like he engaged in stuff you're like oh that's and all of this is just human psychology this is just a tendency yes but I'm highlighting it because everyone in this room because you're human is engaging in this and when you're aware of your tendency to engage in these behaviors you can catch yourself doing it and you can back up you'd be like oh well this is me doing that thing I have a bias about younger people because I might it's changing so fast and I don't necessarily know what's happening I have a bias because it's very vivid it's confirming something that I want it doesn't mean you're wrong necessarily but it doesn't mean you're right and it gives us a chance to slow down enough and notice these biases and ourselves so that when we're approaching young people our children especially we have a way to relate to them that is not infected by some of this really natural human behaviors but we have enough awareness of it we kind of short-circuit it but yet this current generation ijen has some significant challenges that are real there are rising rates of depression and anxiety suicidal thoughts self-injury those are true that's those are true data points and so in the most recent API stress in America survey when they're surveying teenagers young adults middle adults middle-aged adults older adults they ask them what are your top stressors and the top stressors for young people teenagers right now way more than any other generation are these social issues gun violence climate change immigration and interpersonal violence these are stressing them at rates very different than any other generation right now so I care about all four of those issues but I'm not stressed at the rate that young people are generationally I might be in I could be individually stressed by that differently but as a group my generation versus theirs as a group they have a higher anxiety higher stress about those things they're more preoccupied with it than that's they my generation or others there's rising income inequality which creates pressure on all this stuff and then there's the impact of technology as we talked about already both the good and the bad of Technology and I'm gonna get into that in a second so gene twins wrote a book not too long ago called ijen there's a lot of good what I would call correlational data in this it's not that causal it's not saying like this caused this but she highlights some important stuff like the advent of smartphone use in America the introduction of the iPhone and then it's pervasive use is related we don't know the direction of the relationship but is related to all sorts of problematic changes in young people's behavior not hanging out with friends away from their parents by itself for an individual may not be bad but as a group it's restricting opportunity to engage in some additional social skill building that those of us who didn't who were in that circumstance had to do earlier than later so it doesn't mean that this generation won't build that but they're building it maybe later so it's kind of like a delayed adolescence in that regard related to social skills and hanging out with friends away from your parents and you can see how it tracks with when the iPhone was released more likely to feel lonely loneliness is upstream of all sorts of mental health issues and it's also downstream of those issues so mental health issues can cause loneliness and loneliness can cause those issues and this generation is much more likely to report feeling lonely and you can see how it's tracking with the introduction of the smartphones and then sleep is one of the also upstream and downstream of social emotional experiences and problematic ones and then we're the iPhones released 2007 you see this up chicken people are less likely to get us to sleep so these are you know again the causal direction of this is we're not gonna get into too much unless people are interested the more important is that these things are connected somehow they matter and they matter at things that are very very important for the mental health of young people and we need to look at their the technology's role in their lives technology has all sorts of positive benefits I mean I again I went in universe in from out I grew up in from I grew up in the woods my town of 3,000 people if I was a member of a historically marginalized identity group there and I didn't know somebody else who had a similar identity as me I would feel utterly alone I would actually think I was the only person on the planet who thought that way felt that way behaved that way believed that way I would be utterly alone that is not the case anymore for many people because they're able to connect across distances it's still difficult to be part of a group of people whether it's a a sexual orientation identity gender identity race culture class religion where you feel like you're alone in your community that's still extraordinarily difficult difficult but more people have access to other humans who match their identities or at least are similar or will provide support the other side of that coin is they're also in touch with way more toxicity associated with whoever they are so what gets in can be support but what also can get in is harm and so that's a really mixed bag of Technology over the good and the bad and that's just one example you all have plenty of other examples so what do we do is and now we're getting into the practical stuff well here's what we're not gonna do I'm not gonna do what you get a lot even if you wanted it even if this is why you're here I'm not gonna tell you how to parent what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk to you about the complicated nature of parenting and maybe give you some mindset things to then look at how your parenting and see how that might have influence on your child and if you want to make adjustments with that you do because parenting how to media right now falls into three categories all of them are kind of problematic one is an enormous amount on skills here's what you do and so I'm the parent and I'm an anxious parent and so I was am still but often preoccupied with reading everything I can about what to do about everything and all you have to do is read more than one thing to see where they start to contradict and even the books that everybody swears by and you all have that - you have a book you might recommend to someone else and then they've all recommended books to you you read those things and you're like okay and then you try and do some of the things maybe maybe not actually a lot of people read books and don't even try the things but even when you try them it may not instantly work despite what's written on the back this changed my life I know we were we were the worst family and now we're the best family or whatever and there's all this like how-to stuff and most people when they engage in the how-to part of the of the marketplace they end up feeling worse about what they do because they end up comparing to this idealized state written down in a book and then comparing themselves to that and that is often very defeating because of course all how to's are building over time all skills have to be built over time but these books and most of them how people consume them it's kind of like what I did the thing and it didn't work and it's like obviously there's something worst about me because there's so that's I hear that a lot from parents the other is the inspiration books I sold everything we moved to Costa Rica and that my wife oh she sends me those things all the time she's like look they sold everything and I was like have you seen our stuff like I don't think we generate enough money it's like you know here's our IKEA table with scratches and paint all over five bucks we're that much closer to Costa Rica so it's like idea that there's this way to be if you just were more centered if you're just a mindful parent it's in the spiritual space without I have nothing wrong with those people there's nothing wrong with people it's just not useful it's not useful for most people in terms of consumption on these issues it might be useful as an ethic it might be useful as a North Star but when your child is depressed that inspiration thing rarely leads to a parent going I figured it out because I read you know the mindful parent they want to know like do I take them to the doctor do I just wait right they're looking for something in that practical space and then there's an enormous amount of shame in the media in the parenting how to media a lot of blaming blaming of children even books I like like the how to raise an adult kind of books there's an element of their like if you don't your child will not be an adult right there's an undercurrent of that and I think that books actually still pretty good but coded messages in there is it's up to you we're all counting on you because I've raised an adult and if you don't raise an adult you've ruined it for the rest of us because now we got to take care of your baby adult you know or you will they're gonna move back you know like god forbid your child loves you enough to want to move back all this that goes back to the shame space right if your child returns back to the to the nest you've failed and they've failed and like not necessarily because there's cultural variables there's also economic variables all sorts of complicated things but the shame industry is powerful so I told you why you can skip that so what if we did this instead what if we used our strengths the things that I already know exist in this room and what if we parent through those strengths so the first one is what if we use their sense of humor I'm going to go through these in depth build upon our natural human capacity for empathy really trust our gut which that's advice you've gotten a million times trust your gut but I'm gonna show you what I mean because that's that's sort of trite advice you know what you're the parent trust your gut you're like well there's lots of stuff that I trust my gut on and I was totally wrong right and so it's like how do I know what part of my guts or two minutes a little bit different than that oh I bet 1 to 2 I obviously wasn't very being very mindful while making these slides those are tied for second most important and then all of us have a desire for personal growth I know that because you're here tonight so there was something else you could have done other than this so some of you've got a babysitter some of you can test that to me some of you got a babysitter and what you could have done was use the opportunity to have a babysitter and go and gun on for dinner you probably passed the casual pint on your way here it's like right down the street so you could have gone there instead of this but you desired personal growth you want to grow as a person all of you chose to do this because this can't be the most fun thing you could have done and there's other things you could have done instead as responsibilities and so I know that's in the room and we're gonna capitalize on that now I've got five and then there's advocacy and now we're gonna at the end we're gonna talk about what you can do as parents to advocate for your children and other children to solve these things on a macro level so let's find some humor so this wasn't very hard to do it just went on Twitter to look for some people commenting about parenting so I'll just put them up there I can relate to this one yeah me too I show this one to my wife well both of us were on our phones texting about whether we should let our kid watch YouTube so I'd like these in and they're relatable because if we don't have a sense of humor about our circumcision we don't really understand why it is that we do the things that we do and don't really have grace and appreciation for that we're just constantly shaming ourselves or shaming each other into an idealized state that we can't achieve and so laughing at ourselves is very very good for parents it's it's increasingly rare or sometimes we'll do it like in a fit of sort of like shrieking hysterics like it's all so bad he just like burst out crying laughing like that whole thing like we can laugh at ourselves way before were dissolved into a puddle on the floor you know laughing like a lunatic like we can back up and be like this is absurd earlier tonight the the gentleman from the news SP said to me why is this so difficult likewise and I said to him parenting is extraordinarily hard and he was like waiting for me to say something else that's it it is ridiculous it is absurdly difficult it is if you described it to somebody else you would stop halfway between you'd be like well I've said enough right because I want to go on and on the things that we've done to try and raise people even if we're not a parent just being parent adjacent is ridiculous and you would never do this thing except for all the reasons to do it and we should laugh at that and we should help each other just find humor in it so there are communities that do that really well our online like Facebook groups and things like that are not particularly good at this they actually make things a lot less humor they're humorless if you trade in those spaces it's a lot of like I've got this problem with my what's the brunette like DD or des is that right darling son in these things I've got this problem and then it's a bunch of like super advice or it's kind of that like you got this mama it's like well no I honestly don't because I just spent four paragraphs telling you that I'm not going to um and and there's opportunities in these online spaces and in each other to actually short-circuit that and just just joke around a little bit more about it because it is so hard okay so now let's think about empathy and perspective ticking so empathy is a skill but it's born out of a human capability that almost all humans have not all of them but almost all humans have there's this developmental period in which we figure out as children that my mind and your mind are different like I start to understand that you have your own thoughts and can see things with your own eyes and I have my own thoughts and could see things my own eyes and that's not automatic early on children can't do that so this this in development psychology it's called theory of mind so the idea is that I have a theory that you have a mind and I have a mind and there's a period in which that develops and so development psychologists had to figure out their to figure out how to determine when that happens because it's very difficult to interview a child and be like do you think I have thoughts and they're like what are you what when you look at me do you imagine that I have my own internal world like you just can't ask children that and not that young so you got to devise like an experiment to do it so here's how these amazingly clever developmental psychologists did it they built this mountain playset and has old each side is all different like one side there might be like a goat and a barn and a little bit of snow on the top of the mountain on the other side there might be a waterfall and or in a lake and a cow or winner I don't really know if it was a goat or a cow was a long time ago that I was in graduate school but whatever bear with me goat in a cow on one side River barn on the other and they bring in children at different ages and then they let the kid kind of play with the mountain playset and the kid is verbal so they can talk to them about what they see and they like what's this thing oh it's a barn and what's that thing it's a goat so they can name the stuff and they explore the whole site and each side is different and then and it's a very tall mountain so then they have the child sit on one side of the and then the interviewer sits on the other side of mount they can see each other around the mouth and the interviewer says the child what do you see on your side of the mountain and the child can name it I see a goat and a barn and then they say and what do I see on my side of the mountain and there's a age in which the child can say what I as the because they know what's on that side because they were over there can say you see a cow in a lake and there's an age where they can't and so that's when the theory of mind develops the ability to take the perspective of the other theory of mind is the basis for empathy I have to know that the other person has their own thoughts and feelings in order to be empathic towards them empathy is different than sympathy sympathy is kind of an intellectual understanding what you're going through empathy is the capacity to feel it and feel it with you and communicate that I also recognize that you are feeling those things and do so in a way that you as the person I'm empathizing with can feel that to know that I'm being authentic and honest and so that's empathy and it's built on that theory of mine and what we can do with children is we can remind ourselves and we can seek to see their side of the mountain a parenting challenge for us is we will start with our side of the mountain and then maybe we'll ask them what they think think or what they feel and so we in many ways are short-circuiting this ability that all of us have which is to see their side of the mountain to see like tell me how you saw that so that there's all sorts of advice that goes with with technology if you see something problematic on your child's phone or their tablet a lot of parents will rush in me included I did this morning and then tell the child that it's inappropriate which is really my side of the mountain and not particularly empathic and I have no idea why what he thinks of that thing I don't even know I don't even know if he understands what it is that he just saw I could have started from his side of the mountain hey what's that because maybe he'll describe it exactly as it is or maybe he'll describe it completely differently I've already judged what it is I've already told him what it is and now I have no way to retreat from there to find out what his thoughts are even about it because maybe he's scared by it or maybe he's not bothered at all by it maybe he didn't even notice it and we can pause on him so that's that's something we're just kind of before you get into all the complexity of empathy and struggling with another person's difficulty pausing long enough to remember this talk and this idea of their side of the mount and saying start with them describing their experience before we interact ours because I don't have to maybe tell you what's on my side of the mountain sometimes the child will be able to say what's on their side of the mountain and you say how do you think I might see this and they'll surprise you with what they'll tell you because sometimes they'll tell you exactly what they think what you're thinking and sometimes not now if they're telling you exactly what you're thinking great you can say you're right that is what I'm scared of and you're in a dialogue there or maybe they're wrong and you can say well actually I was thinking okay I get that but actually I was thinking this which could surprise them because they may not be able to see your perspective yet and but you got to start there and there's so much fear and there's so much concern about how they're doing that again I did it this morning I jumped in and I told him what my concern was before I even checked with him about how he was consuming whatever it is I was worried about there's time for that it wasn't going to instantly harm so two minutes so although I just like joked about all the books and all the whole like parent improvement marketplace there is an area that I do recommend and that is keying in on human development and understanding where your child is in their development and a tuning yourself to that now as part of a research lab when I was in graduate school that looked at maternal child abuse mothers getting their kids the number one predictor of mothers hitting their kids was a misunderstanding of their child's developmental capacity what I mean by that is mothers who saw their children as developmentally older than they actually were or more capable than the actual were were more likely to abuse their children is if as a parent today I think about her all the time because when I'm frustrated with my child and I find myself I'm never gonna hit him but what I find myself escalating my own things it's giving me something to retreat back to and be like well what's a seven-year-old supposed to be doing what is reasonable to believe that he and then even if some seven year olds can do that can my seven-year-old do that which really is like did we ever teach him how to do that did I ever really focus on who this human is in front of me and what he's capable of and if he has proven capable of this before and he's not doing it now that's one thing but if I have no evidence that a seven-year-old could even do that or like be worried about I had a hard day or any of that other stuff that sometimes happens when we're not attuning to the developmental level of the person that would come up all the time in our lab mothers would hit their kids because the kids wouldn't be sensitive to how hard a day they had and then that idea of a child being attuned to an adult day is late adolescence if that those are you a teenagers know what I'm talking about like if that but some of these mothers were thinking about it in like a four-year-old would understand that when mommy comes home after a hard day that they should now that sounds bizarre except as a parent I bet you can relate not maybe to the hitting part hopefully but to the part where you you get like you should be able to so what you need to do is you need to educate yourself in my opinion on all sorts of developmental psychology there's great the internet makes it so easy now just like looking at different ages that it's appropriate to do things and immersing yourself in that less on how to just know what development looks like it also will help you if things are if your child is struggling and knowing like oh this is something that maybe I want to talk to somebody about because they're not where I think they might be I don't want you preoccupied because a good developmental psychology does not put a bi6 they should they give big ranges and so that big ranges can help slow us down between the ages of five and nine not by nine the age of the seven and eleven and because there's big ranges in development by immersing yourself we get in touch with concepts like the zone of proximal development this is a one of the premier developmental psychologists of our time then Vygotsky he came up with this concept which is our job is to push on young people a little bit harder than they currently can do but not so hard that it overwhelms their capacity and you know if you're a parent in the room you know that you can see where that's working you can also know where you've overextended them and you've gone too far and pushed them too far and then they retreat and they pull back or they have the failure experience and they refuse to do it whether that's homework riding a bike doing chores in the house all of us have these experiences of like oh that I kind of I kind of hit it right and other ones were like I way overshot what I how hard I push them over shooting is not the problem staying in that space is the problem those parents who stay saying like I don't care I'm gonna drag them to the finish line there's more problematic outcomes for their children those parents who don't do anything who don't push at all there's more problematic outcomes what we want to find is and then what that requires is to be so attuned to the other human that you're watching how they're doing how they're feeling backing off when you feel like in your gut it makes sense to back off pushing a little harder when you make sense there's no perfect way but the person in front of you will tell you all right so let's talk personal growth this gets a little hairy a lot of particularly as you see online and other things a lot of the issues that I hear as a professional and then doing this kind of stuff from parents about how to parent are actually their issues not their child's issues and the desire for control the desire to make this go right is born out of the fears that we all have that something's going to go wrong some of its more acute and some people than others but control is an effect of that and we I'm an anxious parent so I have to work on my tendency to hover like a helicopter I have to observe myself doing it I have to helicopter above my helicopter and won't be like oh you're overly monitoring this thing back up those are your issues not his and you keep doing it it's gonna hurt him also we the the isolation that children are telling us about themselves is true about us as parents too and I use these Facebook groups as an example of so much of the online conversation amongst parents about parenting looks to me like these people have nobody to talk to and I know that's true for the majority of us in this room it is incredibly isolating society right now we are on a very bad trajectory as society in terms of social isolation it is housing it's having catastrophic impact on not just teenagers but on middle-aged people and particularly the elderly the United Kingdom just a few years ago named a minister of loneliness because they see this as a social problem amongst the elderly minister of loneliness by the way sounds like the worst Monty Python sketch ever but the the idea being is they recognized that they needed somebody to manage this condition of older Brits living by themselves in a tiny flat somewhere getting money from the government and never leaving their house and they were getting sick at a great early or dining at a faster rate because of that well we have those same social problems in the US and technology makes that more difficult and our political challenges make that more difficult than we're getting more isolated so I read those things and so much is basically shouting can anybody hear me I'm struggling and they post unbelievable things I can't even believe sometimes with the things that make posted people will post in a group with a hundred thousand members my husband's such an ass never there what does your husband know that you posted that because they just have no one to talk to so they would take something do something so silly like that where they're just sort of throwing out their personal business maybe their husband knows most the time they don't and then sometimes they'll get reflection hey you might not want to share that and they'll say that people say things like oh he's not on Facebook as if that's gonna prevent anything from ever happening but it's this distortion we live in in this isolated society in which we start not even understanding how social networks work or how acute relationships work we have to look at that isolation and reach out to each other and give each other comfort and be able to take those risks and be vulnerable with each other to be limit that isolation limiting that isolation will make us better parents not just because we'll have a babysitter although that helps but also because we'll be able to release some of that stress when I talked about earlier about the ridiculousness of being a parent because we'll be able to bring that forward to somebody else to have it someone empathize with that and help us through tough times and then projection projection is I take my issues and I put it on you and in the academic achievement space as it relates to that right now the stress depressed and exam obsessed most of the academic achievement challenges that are happening in America related to preoccupation with like AP and other things like that those are adults projecting those things onto children it's not the children themselves that came up with it you know what I'd like these are adults have created these systems we're projecting them onto children because of our beliefs about what school they should go to or what it means to achieve and all that other stuff despite all evidence to the country so we're doing it to them and we have to look at that we have to go through that alright so advocacy then I'll go through this and then if there's questions I'd be I would love to hear them so you also exist in a very powerful space as as parents and members of this community any community your voice matters and you can push for things and so I'm gonna give you some recommendations some things that I think we should all push for we can treat mental health issues as a diversity and inclusivity issue not only a problem to be managed away not only something to find and fix but actually part of our diverse the diversity of our society that some people are struggling at different times and some people have different neuro capacities and some people and some people and some people and some people because it's all of us some people have experienced traumatic events some people have not some people grow up in families in which they're struggling economically and some people have nothing and all of that downstream is all sorts of other impacts on our social emotional well-being and if we look at that as part of the fabric of our community we D stigmatize those challenges and we make it part of who we are that some of us will struggle with some things at different times and that's okay it doesn't mean they don't deserve our help we don't just look at it be like live and let live because that's not inclusivity that's tolerance I'll get to that in a second inclusivity is like and there are responsibilities we're part of this together we can do this in policy we should look at all our school policies all of our community policies all of our municipal policy our laws and look at how this is playing out in the social-emotional lives of our children and ourselves where is it that we're restricting access in ways that may are intended or unintended and change those things there's movement right now in the state of Arizona in that regard I'm very proud I was I've been here a long time it wasn't always the case where you could kind of push through legislation and municipalities or at the state level that would be in the service of things that we're looking at now like mandatory training for mental health yeah it's gonna be difficult yeah we're not a hundred percent sure how that's gonna go yeah there's not really a budgets that are going to work attach to that but it's a line drawn in the sand that says we are not going to exist in an environment in which people who are responsible for children's well-being are not trained in children's well-being that's a gigantic advance for Arizona and I'm proud of us for doing that we could recognize that the history of marginalization still affects our groups and affects them majorly and affects them differently and that part of our communities are people who have experienced these things in greater intensity or greater numbers than some of us some others of us and that we can recognize that affirm that recognize it and seek to change it it's not a it's not enough to not be racist we must be anti-racist it's not enough to be not sexist we must be anti-sexist it's not enough to be tolerant of mental health difficulties in our environment we must seek to change those things now this group you're already there but not everybody is and that's our advocacy to say we need to take an active role there's no cavalry coming we're in and so you're on the frontline of that because you chose to come here today and a whole bunch of other people did not and so we need to help them get to that space that you got to so that we can advance all right let's talk tolerance acceptance and celebration of strengths so one of the things I'm proud of with your school I've been a part of it a few times your district and others is that they're really moving towards the celebration of strengths of the community we've moved past for the most part in our society believing that tolerance is enough it's not just that I acknowledge that it's okay for you to exist it actually is not even where I accept you I need to be celebrating who you are and I also should expect the celebration of who I am at the same time and when we get to that point in society issues like mental health issues just look like part of a lived experience they're not as intense they can get intense but in general they're not as intense because it's like yeah you know she has bad days and here's how I hope as opposed to she said get to the therapist or she said that's her problem it's she said and what do I do to help because she has value I celebrate who she is I want her part of this community I don't want her just not to be depressed I want her and that's a shift because a lot of this stuff is really focused on minimization of the symptomology and this shift is maximization of the human of which sometimes they have difficulty so we can do these things that are proven to help we can build community better what we're doing tonight we can try and limit certain language I struggle with this tonight I even I put this on the slide and I'm still a work in progress I even called something crazy tonight and I'm working to try not to do it but I'm not there yet but I can keep working at it there's certain words we've eliminated we know we can do this because if anybody says the R word right now around children or around us for the most part it rings like a bell and we see it as problematic so we have a history of succeeding here plus all sorts of other words we can get there when it comes to things like crazy or insane I'm not there yet obviously I'm working hard but I'm not there and replace it with other things well one thing when we say like wow the traffic was crazy we can replace that with the traffic was bad or took a long time like we don't have to use that word it's just built into it right now and a lot of times people are like well what else am I going to use well they made that same case for the artwork we're calling things gay we have transcended that we're better than that and we can be better than this I can be better than this we can learn and teach micro skills everybody in this room knows some micro skill on how to calm down or center yourself or something like that we were doing a talk with some high school students about how they can take a more active role in their community and one of the students like wait a minute I know how to do four corner breathing and everybody in the room is like what's four quarter I mean I knew what it was I'm a psychologist she said which is I know how to do four corner breathing and everything what's that and then she taught everybody that's a twenty seconds and now everybody in that room has fundamentally changed because they learned a really critical breathing technique helps calm you down when you're feeling anxious it's a really good grounding technique if you're triggered and you have a history of trauma it's fantastic - 20 seconds and so in that regard all of us have these things we can put ourselves out there and teach each other this stuff these micro skills exist already in our community you don't need a psychologist to teach you that I can yes I will no yeah yeah I mean I would and then finally where I get to the rest before I teach you and then the rest of it we can adopt a public health model to all that we do this is a mindset you can even apply it to your family but let's apply it to like a school or municipality what do all of us need to do and know what do some of us need to do and know and what do a few of us need to do and know so I've kind of mapped it out with a little thing here so if you think of like a school students teachers staff families community alumni that's the that's who's connected to a school what's good for all what's relevant all what could all do where can I'll help what's relevant for some what's relevant for a few okay so here's some examples so if you're doing things on mental health awareness campaigns are good for everybody anti-stigma campaigns social norming social norming is giving people facts about something juxtaposed next to some other thing that they already might believe that's different than the facts I'll give you one from ASU it's less than it used to be but it's still there that sometimes people think that at ASU that our alcohol use rates are high for a cut for a university we're actually nationally in the lower end and so for example for underage students it's below 30% we have used alcohol in the last 12 months and for all aged students it's just north of half and that's for graduate students of every age right so including everybody over 21 so I share that and I know what happens in in groups immediately many people in the audience immediately doubt everything they're like well that can't possibly be true there's no way that's true your data it's something wrong with your sampling people are lying so there's one person in this room who knows how the survey works who's responsible for the data and is responsible for its accuracy relative to national norms who's that person me none of you are in that seat but some of you don't believe me because the perception that back to the biases the perception that you have is so powerful so I can't convince you because you know these are using the vernacular of nowadays times we were like well that's fake news right so this idea like I'm giving you a fact and you're like nope and I'd be like well how do you think that you'd be like I heard well when I like any any Sun Devils in here any graduates yeah well you didn't I mean some of you may have graduated recently but some of you didn't right and so when I was there or I why didn't say zero right so we use all of that inside of us to then doubt facts so that's doesn't work we have to do as a social norming campaign which does this simultaneously when we tell parents and orientation and students when we're welcome to the University these facts about alcohol use we also show them the data that we collect on the perceptions of alcohol use so we ask students how many how many of you have had this much alcohol in the last year they tell us and then we ask them in addition we ask them how many of you are peers how many college students are drinking so the rate of underage use is south of 30 percent they perceive it to be 92 percent just like you so we put those side-by-side that does some powerful stuff one it may even forces them to reconcile their own report because it's not make-believe it's their data we say we ask students like you you say this here you say this here which negates the whole worry about the sampling error because they relate to the 90s we thought everybody wait and then they're like well then how do you explain this it does another powerful thing it's really important in these kinds of public health campaigns when you are a non drinker and you come to college you're in a seventy percent more than seventy percent majority you think you're in an eight percent minority so what does that do to your experience you feel isolated you're more likely to drink it's difficult to find other people because everybody perceive you're perceiving them mostly incorrectly so you have 70% of people mostly miss reading the environment about other people doing the same behavior or the lack of the behavior in this case as them which increases risk and it increases isolation so by showing them this we short-circuits some of that and we say you know it's very difficult to see a non-drinker it's really easy to see a drinker like a proven right now if I did this talk and you sir we're listening to me and you were as attentive as you are right now and writing stuff down but while you were doing it you were swirling a martini in your hand it would be the only thing I could focus on I'd be giving a talk and I'd keep looking over there and I'd be like I like all of them set of onions and he's like he's swirling it the whole time and I would I would be like laser focused on it it would be so distracting because I could see him drinking because if you asked me and he described the room and I wouldn't be I would never say yeah I was in this room I was doing this talking and nobody was drinking alcohol people like yeah obviously but if I saw one person drinking one person out of a room of 80 people it would be the only thing it would be the story I would tell forever later tonight I'd be having a conversation with Katy McPherson Katy's over there and I would be saying to her Katie can't believe a guy brought a martini it's like a whole shaker he made it really look really good I wouldn't I wanted one myself I did felt weird asking it would be I would tell that story forever every time I came in I might at my next talk my next gig I might say you might want to remind people not to bring alcohol I would be so over responding to it because of how vivid it is and also with it with a child with someone joining in University they're already primed for that because like you they already proceed environment wrong so social norming campaigns compare those two things so with things about mental health or things about struggle of things about the idea of failure that not every not every test is gonna go well and all that stuff you got to put both the perception and the reality next to each other everybody thinks they're the only one who failed the test but actually it's pretty normal to struggle in math and put those things side-by-side that so people can do the reconciliation because if you only share one of them people dismiss it if you say to people it's totally normal to struggle there like whatever adult or if you say you know if you only put up the the messages about how it's going for them they can feel isolated in that regard or the perceptions of it so you put them over the top side so that's social norming campaigns and then there's always gonna need be a need for specialized services so it's gonna be need for social workers and special educators and and hyper involved parents who are running the PTA and like there's always a place for the few of us and in that regard we all fit somewhere in this space but we have to do it all at the same time some communities are really good in the few category they've invested a lot in specialized services they have ten out of a thousand super involved parents but not enough others others are doing better in the all category but have not invested in a few category they push out a lot of information to parents but they'd have no one really running the parent engagement strategy or the parents involve themselves using parents as anything we got to do it all you can advocate for that so here's an example for any issue as I've lined down one thing I'm very proud of is that we have started to work with local area high schools right now to help them start or accelerate existing or start new ones mental health clubs on their campus the mental health club is just a group of students who care about the mental health of their peers we train them up and awareness how to have good conversations we don't turn them into mini counselors we just turning into better friends they're already talking to each other about their mental health inverse um one is at risk other people other young people know in their environments someone who's at risk they might not know what to do or they're afraid that they're gonna be perceived as snitching on them or they're just overwhelmed with the pain and they just need more information about when to seek help from an adult and how to do that in a way that doesn't you know make you feel that you're ratting out your friend and all this like there's ways to do that we can teach that so we've been partnering with with some schools to come in and help start those clubs and do that as a way in that some category some students can get trained up in how to train others and how to influence others so that all students can get this good experience and it's a peer to peer impact strategy and always the clubs need an advisor and other things like that but by doing this we're seeding this in the environment where students can make a difference in each other's lives we're doing this with as many schools are interested in with us and one of the things I think it's cool is we're going to be matching over time ASU college students to those high schools as mentors so they have college student mentors for the high school students who are trying to make big change in their schools as it relates to the climate of social emotional difficulties so we're always looking for interest in that regard so if you are part of a school and you involved as a parent and you want to talk to me that I'll be happy to talk to you about all right so you wanted to learn Fall Quarter breathing breathing so you pick something with four corners that you can see and so if you pick the podium if you want and you just start on the top left and as you start on the top left you inhale four four move your eyes over to the top right hold until four down to the bottom right exhale slowly for a count of four don't inhale yet move over to the bottom corner inhale and just keep working your way around giving that why this works I mean deep breathing works for anything why four corners works does it gives you something to focus on and allow and a lot of people like the structure of just following it and there and honestly their squares everywhere so it's really easy to find and you can do it and you can do it really privately because a lot of times people teach deep breathing and they're like put your hand on your belly and another thing and then like everybody's sitting in class or in your office there was like I know nobody wants to do it but you could be sitting in a meeting and feeling upset or anxious or annoyed and you can just they're at a ceiling tile just calm yourself down or centered or put yourself in a little bit more exam space so there it is that was probably 40 seconds and it's it is it deep breathing I'm sure everybody in the room knows is important it's just a strategy to do it with a little structure because it's very difficult to remind yourself to do it so sometimes you'll see squaring it just decide to disagree so with that I say thank you and I welcome any questions that you have yes yeah so good one extraordinarily difficult question so thanks for kicking it off let me reframe your question it's a complex political landscape and how can I not indoctrinate my child but also not let other people in doctrine it's so they can live then and learn for themselves and I don't know but I'll give you an answer because that's what I do sure yep in any advice yeah any advice on how to talk to the kids about no but did did the the recommendation have any advice so so my recommendation without having seen that what you want to do is keep your kid talking and so asking them questions is good if they're a kid who likes to be asked questions and you know if your kid is one of those kids or not and that changes by interest rate so we don't they're not recommending interrogating them but if your kids open to that or priming that was saying because if you're supposed to talk to your cave which is a good idea saying what have you heard about the lockdown drill tomorrow so you ask kind of an open-ended question in that regard and then follow their lead now as it relates to social issues depending on the age of the child there's some times when talking about those in a more open way where you can kind of flesh out what they think or feel and then be able to handle differences of opinion that's that's a developmental thing so high school students can handle that differently than a middle school student or not at the same time you all have opinions about those things you have values connected to those opinions all the things that are up there are not disconnected from family values they all are and so I also don't want to stop anybody from talking to their children about what they value in the world and how that's related to something like gun control or immigration there anything else now you can talk about those values without it being talking about gun control or gun access or gun violence you can talk about what you think about things and then say and this is why we think this about this issue which de-emphasizes the focus on the issue and emphasizes your family values because all of those things are connected to those family values and people sometimes get that mixed up because it's so difficult and it's so hard and it's and it's fraught with such emotion those topics but if you trace it back all of your opinions about it that you have are all related to what you value in the world which is why in the political landscape it's so difficult for people to change their opinions about these things that's why we're at stalemates a lot because we're actually not talking about values we're talking about policy or we're talking about opinions of those things when we start talking about values we can get a lot closer together you can get a lot closer together with your child and say in our family we value these things this is what we believe now someday they may believe something different but early children they're just looking for what's my family about who are we what do we value and having strong values and your family is great and then of course then that extends into your feelings about social issues what else yes in the back so yes with a caveat developmentally four to seven you start to see the twinkling zuv that but a lot of it is still very egocentric kind of their world which is why you get more like young young children like cheating and games and things like that they're not really thinking about what cheating means or anything else that just kind of trying to win my son will like you will play Candyland still and he'll say I'll go set it up you know now he can count and read and everything and so then like he's like mom you go first and then she goes and then like invariably the best card is the third one in there it's pretty clever so he's either gonna be just like a lawyer or associate pathum I'm not sure yet that's if they're not anyway so that's not really someone not being empathic or not having a theory of mine that's just him trying to figure out himself in the world but there's elements in where he is being empathic and I can see that in other things less about a certain age range and more about the feeling of empathy is that other people matter and that works earlier like that hurts mom I don't want you hurt that hurts them that hurts the dog that kind of stuff can be taught even if the person can't quite understand that the dog has their own thoughts and feelings or that the dog has a brain that operates on those things they can get kind of like the approximate concepts on it so you can start that really early what kicks in later is sort of a natural tendency to have the ability to reflect on the inner world of the other person which is much more complicated but not necessary to wait for in terms of doing that and that's seven eight nine when you get you know what some parents talk about like I'm not there yet as a parent but some people have said like you know the children sometimes are at the sweetest you give it not all children are at that way at seven eight and nine but sometimes some get very very sweet because they kind of keep that sweetness of like caring about others and kicking in you know my son gave keeps giving his pokemon cards to this girl that he's his friends there and so it's fine it's very sweet and everything but it's like getting a little expensive and and so I was talking to him bad I'm like this is really good but you know it's she doesn't have any you know okay yes it's cool she doesn't need to get any and they and I said you know but you know we're spending our money on this so I was wondering like can we think about are we buying it for you and her or just you know we're trying to do that and he's like I don't care it's your money right she's not a particularly empathic thought but it's like this combination of like having empathy for her because she feels sad that she doesn't have any and then no empathy for us because it's my money you know it's like a whole mixed bag the attunement helps you navigate that what are you seeing in front of you what do they really have the capacity to do what can I really reasonably expect them and then in that middle school is when you can expect a lot more for their capacity to be empathic and this is not all children and some children with neuro differences that kind of it's more difficult for them kids on the autism spectrum and have trouble sometimes with with those experiences so this is not all kids but even for all kids there's ways to teach the skills associated with empathy even before they have the capacity of the internal working how about one more and then I'll hang on I know we're way over time we're under time I have no idea but I'll stop thank all of you and then yes okay I take right yeah I know the best person to answer yes there you are so all in tonight thank you again for all of your questions your attention for all the work that you're doing in the community I'll hang out a little bit if you want to talk some more thank you [Applause] [Music]
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Mullen our who's our principal and I remember this sinking feeling of oh yes that is my mom walking into the office with the principal and I wonder what that's gonna be about and I found out later when they called me to the this and we proceeded to have a conversation about how they were considering holding me back in seventh grade the next day my mom spent the entire day with me sitting in the back of the classroom to ensure that I was on task and doing what I was supposed to do and subsequently I did figure it out and got with the program a little bit and I did pass seventh grade and move on to eighth grade but I share that just to say that if you would have told seventh or eighth grade me that I would someday be a middle school principal and someday be talking to parents about this I would have thought you're crazy in fact my principal about three years ago ran into my mom and somewhere and asked what I was up to and when she told him he just started laughing he thought it was hilarious so I share that just to say that I am oh I'm one of the rare people that did not have a great school experience it was I was not successful as I went through school by traditional measurements but it's what I love to do I love middle school kids I love all of them the disenfranchised ones the ones that are struggling and I love to talk to parents about how we can help them do be successful and have an incredible experience before we get started a few things I want to reiterate before I even delve into what we're gonna talk about first parenting is hard it's really hard it's even harder in middle school because and I don't need to tell you that their prefrontal cortexes are not developed and they're making all kinds of horrible decisions and you're trying to manage that and I am NOT gonna say anything out of judgment I want to be helpful and supportive next I don't have all the answers I'll try to point you in the right direction I'm gonna do some Q&A at the end but I don't have all those answers and there's no way we could cover all this in an hour if we could I'd be a millionaire and I'd be traveling around the country talking about that we'll have some resources on the website after we're done tonight so I know sometimes people want to take pictures and do that feel free to do that if you want to but there will be a PDF of the presentation on the website and finally I'm gonna talk to you about some things and you're gonna want to walk out of here tonight and you're you're gonna want to go home and start making changes do not do that take your time really be strategic about that other it will end badly for you if you go home and you start trying to change things right away so those are some things to remember before we get started now again I talked about middle school years how to create an incredible experience I want to talk about that word incredible because I feel like we have to ground ourselves in that word what does the word or what does incredible look like when we think about an incredible middle middle school experience I wonder what sorts of things come to your mind and I looked it up on Google just to see what it said so the definition is impossible to believe difficult to believe or extraordinarily extraordinary and the last one which is informal I thought is what most people think of amazingly good or beautiful so when you think about that incredible middle school experience for your children I wonder what that looks like for most people they're gonna think things like they're getting great grades they're measuring up to their potential they are they're developing extraordinary relationships with both their peers and the adults maybe there's some successes you think of in terms of athletics or other academic accomplishment but you have this view of what incredible looks like and I'm going to ask you to reframe that tonight that's the most important thing because the reality is what I just described for you is not going to be the typical middle school experience and I actually want to tell you you shouldn't want it too you should want middle school to be a little bumpy for your kids because that is where they're gonna grow how many of you have heard of Carol Dweck has anyone heard of Carol Dweck awesome Carol Dweck talks a lot about growth mindset she's a professor out of the University of Stanford a researcher writer does a lot of work and this is a quote from her in a growth mindset challenges are exciting rather than threatening so rather than thinking oh I'm going to reveal my weaknesses you say wow here's a chance to grow and I'm so excited that many of you recognized dr.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Baca works in a high school district with 25,000 teenagers when your kids leave Madison K through 8 I want them to go to large high schools and move in and out of different groups of kiddos with ease standing up for themselves and standing up for others that's a true social justice champion that's a school that is safe the only way they can do that is if they know they have dignity and they know that they're socially confident and that they have painful messy horrible things happen to them where they rise up and say this isn't ok with me the last piece we've already talked about being literate and how to use this technology and so the reason that I bring school safety and home safety and dignity is it is where these devices rest if you've given them dignity in the use of their device and they have people coming at them and challenging them what they look like what they wear their height their weight their race their sexuality which is happening to them every day all day mom on Monday I did three assemblies for 1200 kids at Mojave middle school in Scottsdale and I asked them what do you think the average number of times per day that you get made fun of is and I got 5 times 12 times and 40 times a day and I asked them to really pay attention to how are you taking care of that and most of them are like I'm not I'm just letting it sit right here because I really don't have the skills to say something back so I'd like to just share with you this short clip from dr.
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Reynolds they have rebranded as razz Altria did they own these cigarette brands and they own views a cigarette so it's the same people who were dishonest with us previously and we're expecting them to be once again to be honest this time around they fooled us once before and they have a new target market with new nicotine containing products so maybe we're at this point in your thinking ok so big evil tobacco corporations what is the actual danger involved what is the actual harm for youth number one if they're vaping nicotine a liquid nicotine can be addictive to anyone of any age but here is what we see in middle school and high school students that we don't see in adult users problems with memory attention and learning because their brains are still developing if you put a stimulant in mix up there which nicotine is a stimulant they can have difficulties with memory attention and learning when you are a middle school or high school student it is hard enough to remember everything you have to remember for your tests for your quizzes for your homework or projects that you're working on adding nicotine into the mix can make that even more difficult what about just the flavored eliquid well the short term research that is scrambling to catch up with this fairly new technology has found that it can cause permanent lung damage and finally to me what you see here under vaping in general lack of long-term research we just had the first long-term study on vaping ever come out a couple months ago other than that we have no long-term research you cannot have long-term research on something that just became commercially available in 2003 we have the benefit of decades of research on things like alcohol or marijuana or street drugs or prescription drugs let's say a young person was using cocaine for six months and they hadn't had any health issues and they went to their physician and their physician asked them do you use alcohol or drugs and they disclosed yes I use cocaine I've been doing it for six months haven't had any health problems based on the long-term research we have that position could project out and say well based on the long-term research six months down the road this might happen to you a year down the road you're probably gonna encounter this this is a question mark so just because a young person is not encountering health difficulties in the short term does not guarantee they're not going to have issues in the long run one of the most telling and eye-opening things that I have seen about the lack of long term research came when I was doing some research myself on the internet and I was reading a pro vaping forum everyone that posts in there not only is in favor of vaping they all do it they were all trading tips on how to customize their big box mod vapes so somebody starts a thread in the forum and he mentions hey I just started doing this about six months ago none of the stuff they warned me about the lung stuff or whatever none of that's happened what might I be looking at down the road so guy replies to him and the guy that replies to him vapes himself as a matter of fact in his forum signature he's a picture of his box mod VAP and this guy who's all in favor of it he does it himself was honest enough and real enough to reply to the gentleman with this quote and this is not a paraphrasing this is verbatim we don't know we are the lab rats we are the generation this is being tested on we are the lab rats we're the generation this is being tested on now as adults if we want to enter into this understanding the potential gravity that we may suffer health issues down the road so be it but a young person that lacks the adult brain development that we have to weigh those future consequences that's a stacked deck that is unfair and we're starting to see it now as the primary way that THC is used tetrahydrocannabinol one of the many active compounds in marijuana the one most responsible for the high but also the damage to the developing brain we are not meeting very many kids that are smoking marijuana if we're picturing a joint or bong hits we're way past that point now what we're meeting is we're meeting kids who are using dab pens or wax pens and by the way it looks like this some parents we've met haven't found the dab pens haven't found the wax pens but they've actually found the dabs themselves and little containers that almost look like little Carmex containers or you can find a pre-loaded dab cartridge where the e-liquid that has the THC concentrate in it can be connected to a permanent vape pen with a disposable dab cartridge or it can look like wax which actually looks like wax this is a THC concentrate so if you your your team comes home one night or they're in their room and you get to see the bloodshot eyes the dilated pupils you can tell something's not right if you're looking around and you're looking for buds if you're looking for a dime bag or you're looking for a quarter ounce this is more what we need to be focused upon than at this point and these are the signs and symptoms that you're going to want to look for now most of these are self-explanatory what these signs and symptoms mean but let me hone in on one that you may not be familiar with lack of eye convergence now I know if you've ever noticed have you ever seen on TV when law enforcement does DUI stops they're not just testing the presence of alcohol they're testing for what's called DUI D driving under the influence of drugs one of the tests that they will do is where they will take a pen or their fingertip or any type of stimulus and they will do a circle around the person's face have them hold their face still and follow the movement with their eyes and after making a couple circles the law enforcement officer will move it away and then bring it slowly in about an inch away from their nose and tell them to look at it with their eyes generally people who are not under the influence of marijuana or under the influence of depressants or inhalants will cross their eyes as the finger or the stimulus gets right here under the influence of THC I convergence does not occur correctly and here is why you keep hearing me mention brain development why THC nicotine prescription drug street drugs alcohol why it all affects our kids very differently and in a much more damaging way than it does us anyone in here willing to raise their hand or an answer or just shout it out or guess at what age does the human brain stop developing finish maturing you all got 25 it's actually range 21 to 25 but research is beginning to point toward the higher end of a 25 years of age and the last portion of develop is the prefrontal cortex it is instrumental in higher decision-making weighing future consequences impulse control so for you parents that have preteens and teens if you have found yourself at some point saying to them why did you do that thinking you would never do it their manager is not online yet knowing that we have to be the prefrontal cortex for our teams it's not a matter of if they're going to be offered something they will it's a matter of when and if they haven't gained planned it or role-played it or talk through it and planned it out with you in that moment of crisis where a friend at a party's like here hit this wax pen if they haven't thought it out they are more likely to go into autopilot okay I'll do that with you they tend to in the preteen and teen years gravitate toward things they think are going feel good out considering the consequences we as adults will look at a piece of chocolate cake and will say that looks amazing but I'm gonna spend three hours in the gym working that off we do that pros and cons list naturally because we have the fully developed prefrontal cortex and tell the age it is developed we can't fall into that not my cake mentality we can't say my son's a great kid I believe he is my daughter's really smart I believe she is but even the best the brightest the most loving and talented and conscientious kids from great families can still be prone to impulsive decisions because there is a physiological reason so we can't disconnect from this and say oh I never need to sit down and have that talk they would never do that prepare them with it anyway just in case and to sum up what we have discussed so far and this will be the AV the largest major review of the research on e-cigs was published in the American Heart Association scientific journal in their research the scientists found formaldehyde propylene glycol and lead amongst other well known toxins in the vapor sound familiar it's just like cigarettes UC San Francisco's tobacco Research Center stated that e-cigs do not deliver pure nicotine and harmless water vapor it may not have tobacco in it but the e-cigs are still delivering the same carcinogens that are known to cause chronic disease and cancer and the second-hand vapor is emitting it as well then there's the most disturbing part of the study to me a growing number of middle and high schoolers report having tried ecigs instead of cigarettes users under 18 has more than tripled in the u.s.
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