KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Episode 50: Igniting Greatness. A Conversation with Howard Glasser.
What if you could change your children's lives for the better by simply shifting your focus? Howard Glasser, the brilliant mind behind the Nurtured Heart Approach, joins Kaity and Adriane for a milestone celebration on our 50th episode of The KindlED Podcast. In this special episode, we dive deep into the Nurtured Heart Approach and its transformative power in fostering positive relationships and personal growth.
What to listen for:
- The core principles of the Nurtured Heart Approach
- Actionable advice for establishing clear, positive rules and the importance of calmness and co-regulation in maintaining healthy relationships
- How focusing on a child's strengths and building their inner wealth can empower them to tap into their true potential
- The importance of building a portfolio of positive moments to counteract past traumas and the role of personal adversity in sparking a lifelong love of learning and curiosity
- How to create boundaries that support and enhance a child's ability to thrive
Tune in to uncover how the Nurtured Heart Approach can help children thrive by recognizing and igniting their inner greatness.
About the guest:
Howard Glasser is the founder and creator of the Nurtured Heart Approach®. He is a voice of greatness for children so that they can ultimately find their own voice of greatness. Howard is the author of 15 books, including Transforming the Difficult Child, a longstanding bestseller on intense and challenging children. The Nurtured Heart Approach has been researched by Rutgers University, the University of Arizona’s School of Public Health, and New Mexico State University. He currently teaches at the University of Arizona’s School of Public Health and its Integrative Medicine Program. His upcoming book is an unfolding of the Nurtured Heart Approach from the ‘Inside Out’
Connect with Howard:
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About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Kids can accidentally wind up feeling meaningful and valued for all the wrong things. You know we say we want respect If I'm a parent or a teacher, and the only time I bring up the word respect is when things are going wrong. And when children are being respectful, which is the vast majority of the time, I hardly say anything. They get the truth. We could say we love respect, but they figure out. We love disrespect.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling, the motivation, curiosity and mental well-being of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 3:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. Welcome to the 50th episode of the Kindled podcast. My name is Adrienne and I'm here with Katie, and we are so excited that we've had 50 episodes of amazing conversations. So what does that mean, katie? We're at 50. So what does that mean for the podcast?
Speaker 2:One. I'm just like shocked that we've done 50 episodes like high fives and trophies all around to everyone Adrienne and I do not do this ourselves, there's a team behind us and to all of our guests, like thank you so much for just all of the support and time that you put in, that everyone's put into this. It's been a labor of love and we've loved every minute of it. This will be our last episode in season one and then we're gonna take a little break and we can't wait to keep going for season two.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we already have a few guests scheduled.
Speaker 2:So I'm super excited we're going to talk about so many awesome topics, yes, but today we were talking to Howie Glasser, who is the creator of something called the nurtured heart approach, and this is a really cool approach to parenting. There's like courses and so many books. We'll talk about all of them but just the general premise of this is that we need to be celebrating when things go right, when, instead of giving energy and a lot of attention to things that are not going the way that we want them to go and I love all of Howie's little stories and analogies that he uses to help us understand this kind of currency of energy that we give and take, um that you know that that is just kind of flowing between children and parents or adults um, as we seek to help support our kids and as they seek to connect with us and to figure out this crazy thing called life. So I will tell you a little bit more about Howie. You ready? Yeah, howard Glasser is the author of 15 books, including transforming the difficult child, a longstanding bestseller on intense and challenging children.
Speaker 2:The nurtured heart approach has been researched by Rutgers university, the university of Arizona school of public health and new Mexico state university. He currently teaches at University of Arizona School of Public Health and their integrative medicine program. His upcoming book is An Unfolding of the Nurtured Heart Approach from the Inside Out. Let's go talk to Howie Glasser.
Speaker 3:Hi, howie, it's so nice to meet you. We are so excited to have you on the Kindled podcast, so welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you, it's really a pleasure to be here. I love what we do.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you so much and we love what you do. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to the work that you're doing, and really, what is your big why? Why do you do this work in the world?
Speaker 1:If you can answer that, then I'll be happy. I came in a pretty circular way. I went to school for clinical psych. I was on that path to become, you know, kind of a analyst type person Like I would have been an idiot doing that. And I had something in me before, while I began working on my dissertation called me to take a year off and that year became 15 years and I never went back.
Speaker 1:I did cabinet making, I became a woodworker, which was really fun, and I had lots of life experiences and it kind of broke being open in the life I led the you know, burning the candle at every end, and it was important for me because I promise you I would have been the typical therapist that you see in movies that sits behind a big desk and is full of themselves. So I needed to be broken, open and humbled and live life, just live life. And that 15 years did it. And when I came back to the field, I was in my early 40s, I had just gotten married and, you know, about to have a family and, um, I just got a job at the only job I could, you know, re-entering a field I hadn't been in for 15 years, and I got a job at a family therapy clinic. So I wasn't on Fifth Avenue, you know. You know, you know. I went to school in New York City. I worked my way through grad school driving taxi cab. It was really an interesting life and but I was full of myself, you know or it was pretend full of myself even worse. So that was the route that I came back and, being humbled, so to speak, I tried to remember everything I studied in school and put it to use. But I think those years allowed me to see when something wasn't working.
Speaker 1:I have no doubt method A, b, c, d worked for the originators. It wasn't working for me and I was there with a family and one or more children and I could see they were working hard to make a difference, hard to make a difference, and that the advice I was giving him was not only not helping but making it worse, which you know. I'm happy to admit that to you. I say that to some professionals and they understand immediately what you know. A lot of methodologies are, you know, once I began understanding what's going on. A lot of methodologies are guaranteed to make it worse. They systematically make it worse through I blew through everything I'd studied in grad school. You know. Having them talk about their feelings, having them try and get it all out and understandable, tell me their story.
Speaker 1:All of it backfired and eventually I had nothing but me and the people in the room and I think that was the best thing ever, because under those circumstances there were times the adult said something to the child and the child visibly, at least to me, in my quirky way. I could see them, I could see the needle threading, I could see something happening, stirring, I could see the child energetically leaning in and typically the adult was none the wiser. They didn't know. They said something cool, so to speak. And then there were times where the parents thought they were saying something cool, where the parents thought they were saying something cool, you know, urging the child to get their act together, or whatever they were saying. And you could see, I could see the child going back. There was a disconnect and the way it worked for me is I'd wake up at three in the morning like ooh, ooh, you know, and I have, you've read, you've read some of my work, so you know. I'd have this metaphoric way of explaining like the toys are a story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell us that story, because our listeners won't have heard it.
Speaker 1:So, basically, you know we've all seen kids open a toy. We see their enthusiasm. They can't wait to get the packaging open and try it out and and they go into discovery mode and they're just simply exploring what's possible and it's not like a wooden train, you know that has. You know, simple features. Most things you know we get for kids entertainment or enlightenment have a lot of features and we could watch kids go through all the features and some features are uplifting and they're excited about it and some are relatively boring. And I've seen what kids do with boring features. They tend to. Maybe they'll go back by accident a few times, maybe they'll go back on purpose to see if you know how reliable the feature is. But once they discern a feature is truly boring, they don't go back and they stick to what works. Hopefully there's something worth what you paid. And so hold that thought for a second. Think about us as toys. How many features do we have? You know we're kind of the ultimate entertainment center. You know there's not only a gazillion ways we move through the world, but there's, you know it's not just happy, glad, sad. There's so much more to us.
Speaker 1:You know I was I in getting online today had my share of frustrations. Some of them were new and beyond anything I had ever experienced before. I can't say I know the word frustration because I'm never the same person. It's never the same exact scenario. So you know there's it can't really be categorized.
Speaker 1:We're a multitude of varieties of emotions and moods and and abilities, and kids watch us with fascination. They're, they're drinking in the truth of us, whether we realize it or not. So here's, here's, I'll make the point. Imagine a kid in a classroom or in a home, and the kid has a little more intensity than the next kid, which to me means they have a typically a little more intense craving for connection. And show me a kid like that, merely in a environment governed, so to speak, by normal, traditional, conventional, and I'll show you a kid who's likely to look at the adults in governance, so to speak us, and get very clear readings of the truth of the energy, very clear readings of the truth of the energy that we're so much more interesting and exciting, our features are so much more alive when things are going wrong than when things are going right.
Speaker 1:When things are going right we're kind of boring, we have very little to say typically, you know good job, way to go, thank you. Yeah, and they are vague. They're inherently vague. We don't even know what they mean. I mean, we can figure out somebody's approving of us, but when we get, when something crosses us, and we, you know, something goes wrong. We're poets.
Speaker 2:So true, yeah, and our facial expressions and our body language. It gets really exciting, right, when something goes wrong.
Speaker 1:We have a language that's vast when it comes to negativity and we think nothing of it. And then you know you have schools of thought in education and parenting. You know well, we don't want to get. You know we don't want to give too much. You know we're generous as can be. When things go wrong and our generosity can be thin, we get advised not to say too much of the good thing because we don't want it to go to there, not to say too much of the good thing because we don't want it to go to there. It's all being micro-examined by way of energy by the kids anyway.
Speaker 3:Before we got on I was telling you about. I met with a mom earlier this morning and she said she had read your book. And what she said was interesting to me is she was a special education teacher for quite some time and she's a stay-at home mom now three boys and she said that I read it. I could do this, like in the classroom, no problem. Like this makes sense to me. When I'm in a classroom, I could do this with students. I can, you know, find what they're doing well and give that a lot of energy.
Speaker 3:She said why is it so hard for me to do this at home? It's just not natural for me to go. Oh, you're sitting and watching TV. I'm noticing that you're staying, like she was. Like it's so awkward for me. She's been in a classroom, I could do it, no problem. So I would love to know you know, and you've been doing this work for quite some time so why do you think it is so difficult for her to do at home with her own kids and ignite that greatness, and whereas it's so much easier for her to do with other kids in a different and controlled environment where you know she's there to do a specific job at home. She's like but I'm cooking and cleaning and I have all these other things to do, I don't have time to ignite greatness. I don't. She didn't say those exact words, but I heard her say about the cooking and the cleaning and there's all these other things going on. It's just so much harder to do at home and she's had to be extremely intentional to think this way at home.
Speaker 1:Adrienne, you hit a nail on the head. It's the gift we're given, you know, from the loving universe. When I hear that, I hear well how wonderful it is that she can rise to the occasion in that role as a teacher. I'm thrilled that she's not experiencing, you know, the deficit, you know in her paid job and so we know it's there and she's pained by it and I think it's those pains If I had the superpower to take, like the like I had, like this morning vis-a-vis the frustration of getting online today and I'm so glad we're here, I had to dig in so deep.
Speaker 1:So if I had my druthers I would drink in that intensity. Everybody thinks intensity is bad, but if I could take it and extract the nectar? I mean we breathe air and we automatically extract the nectar called oxygen and we have a systematic way of sending that to every cell of our body. Could you imagine if we could extract energy at the same time? Oh, wait, a second, we can and then decide what am I going to do with this energy? I know I want to show up. I know I want to be here for this initiative that you, katie and Adrian, do. It's important, it's in and you have an audience that cares deeply, because you know they, for whatever reasons, have a second thought about school as we know it and they want some semblance of betterment of a school situation.
Speaker 1:So I knew I wanted to show up. I had to take, whether I realized it or not, imagine how productive I could be if I could take oh yay, energy. I don't love being frustrated, but I could celebrate. Good, you know. I mean we put labels on things as good energy and bad energy. You know, like when we finally got online just before this call, you know I could take all that, celebrate that If I could extract the nectar and go. I want to put this into greatness. What investment do I want to make? I want to put it. I want to fund. I'm going to show up, being very present. An hour ago I didn't know if I could do that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that. So what I'm hearing you say, well, I kind of want to take us back a little bit for our listeners, because Adrian and I know so much about your work but our listeners might not. So I would love, like, just a quick overview of like what the nurture. All of your experience in that psychology therapy room led you to create something called the nurtured heart approach, and so I'd like to it created me it created you.
Speaker 2:Perfect, okay, you found it, yeah. So tell us a little bit about that. And then I think we've used the word igniting greatness. I've also heard it said energizing greatness, um, but, but tell us a little bit about that. And then I think we've used the word igniting greatness. I've also heard it said energizing greatness, but tell us more about that one. So what is the Nurtured Heart and what is all of this greatness?
Speaker 1:talk. So it's really an attempt to have a child feel seen and heard and kids can accidentally wind up feeling meaningful and valued for all the wrong things.
Speaker 1:You know we say we want respect. It's one of those values that's shared by so many, understandably. And the only time I bring up the word respect is when things are going wrong. And when children are being respectful, which is the vast majority of the time, I hardly say anything. Kids start. Kids read energy like Braille. They get the truth. We could say we love respect, but they figure out we love disrespect. It's not what anybody would do on purpose. Nobody would give a kid a $100 bill for acting out disrespectfully. But accidentally we do. Because when disrespect happens, that's when we lean in and we get excited. We have so much to say and our energy is translatable. It's how kids put two and two together.
Speaker 1:So Nurtured Heart Approach is about taking that same craving for connection. Some kids figure out I get more consistent, better broadband through negativity. Nobody wants dial-up anymore. We better broadband through negativity. Nobody wants dial-up anymore. We want better broadband. So to me that's what kids can figure out.
Speaker 1:Nurtured heart approach comes out of my pain of childhood.
Speaker 1:I don't want kids to drift away from their parents where the parents get frustrated with them and at some point it's irretrievable. It can be and I'm sure you've come across, you know, a kid or two and a parent or two who just can't patch things up and it gets away from people and I don't want kids to go through. You know I was a smart kid who used my intelligence to annoy people and be a class clown and it didn't serve anybody really. So you know, I want kids not to lose themselves and I want kids to not lose the important folks in their life, and the corollary is I want adults to really see that they can show up, just like the mom, adrian, that you talked to today.
Speaker 1:I want her you know, as silly as it sounds, you know, ignite greatness. I don't have time for that. You know we ignite all kinds of alternative things that aren't going to work out really well because we're putting gas on the wrong fire accidentally. Nobody's doing this on purpose. So I told you my why. You know my own personal pain and my parents pain to my teachers pain nobody knew how to handle it and the structure of the approach is simple.
Speaker 1:It's it's just feel like step by step it. It was given to me at three in the morning and I'd write things down. I'd bring it into family one, two, three, four, however many families I saw that day and I kept honing how I approached the family and shared what I was experiencing and parents would go oh, this makes sense, and basically what I told them, what wound up formulating, developing over time with these three stance of the approach. It sounds like the woman you spoke to at coffee really wants to be positive. But that's not the first step and often it'll backfire to try and be positive Because if you haven't established, hey, I'm no longer available through negativity, this toy me doesn't work that way anymore. So stand one is absolutely no, it doesn't work that way anymore. So stand one is absolutely no, I'm not going to give you the gift of me for anything resembling negativity. Stand two is but what I am going to do, resolutely, as best I can. We're humans. You know it's a journey. I am going to give you the gift of me for not only the good things, but I'm going to go way beyond good job to being able to say you know, I see, I see what.
Speaker 1:What did that woman say? I see you on the couch watching TV. And what I could add to that as the important underlying truth is I was on the phone cooking a meal. I was on the phone and I was finishing a phone call. I was trying to get dinner ready and you didn't interrupt me. That was very thoughtful and considerate. That was very thoughtful and considerate and you didn't annoy your brothers in the other room doing something and your sisters in her room doing something. You were just relaxing on the couch. It's an important skill to learn and you were being, whether you realize it or not, very compassionate to everybody else in the family. That's a great quality I see in you. So I'm not talking about BS. If I could wave a magic wand, I would go. I never want to do that again Because kids can read that.
Speaker 3:I want to tell the truth, but I want to tell it in a way where it lands yeah, especially if they're not used to it, and that makes so much sense and it also takes a lot more intentionality because, like you said, it's so much easier to react to negativity because it's loud Katie mentioned like you could even see it on your face, we could feel it, the energy in the room. You feel that so much more than we have not really been conditioned to recognize the positivity or to recognize when things are going well. And so I do that a lot too with my kids. If I see them doing something, I'm like wow, that was so thoughtful of you, and because this has become such a practice, I now notice those things, I say those things and they're able to receive those statements because it's become our norm and that's like what our relationship is based on.
Speaker 3:I want to get to the third stand, but before we get to that I wanted to circle back to. You know, this is all about connection and this reminds me of the neuroaffective relational model. I don't know if you're familiar with the modality of norm, and so it's really. It's a therapy modality where it focuses on the five core developmental needs, which is every single human has these, you know, developmental needs, and it's connection, attunement, trust, autonomy and love and all of those things is what you're saying the Nurtured Heart approach does is goes. Okay, we're going to fill all of these needs that every single human has by igniting greatness, by recognizing you know that energy is not bad and by recognizing, like, when things are going well and feeding into that. So you said the first stand is you know you're no longer available to negativity. I love that phrasing.
Speaker 1:Yeah and you got to, and Adrian, you got to prove it. You can't just say it I can'tasing. Yeah, and you got it, and Adrian, you got to prove it. You can't just say it I can't, I can't, it doesn't count.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I don't even know if, like I would go ahead and say that to a child. I'm just only going to demonstrate that to them, like I'm like. You know, we don't even have to like, have a conversation about it. Just they'll learn when I push that button, there's no more fun reaction anymore, and then they'll leave that button alone, right, yes, so okay, stan too.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, yes. And then number two was what you are going to do. You're going to give that gift of positivity. Now, what's the third?
Speaker 1:I'm going to provide clarity in terms of the rules. I personally Personally love rules that Sark would know and I feel like I was inducted into understanding why they're better and I've had my fair share of challenges. There are many schools and many programs son for a few years, and and uh, they have national policy for respect the toys. You know. Respect each other, be kind. You know I work with a peace builder program.
Speaker 1:Positive rules, yeah tell us be a peace tell us more about that, but but you know, if you kids, what does this rule mean, like what's it mean to respect the toys? They'll jump in with two feet and they'll say no breaking them, no crushing them, no hitting people with them. I mean, when I moved to Tucson, I was the newbie at a clinic and I was volunteered to give up some Saturday mornings to co-lead a group. It was a scripted group and my job was to say what kind of rules do we need? And these were kids who all were not on. They were all kids who were prescribed medication Monday through Friday Friday. This was a popular group at that time and it was this Monday through Friday thing. Among this core of child psychiatrists in Tucson there were only a small handful back then. You know there were 10 or 12 of these kids on a Saturday morning. Look out, world, you know you could get run over like a freight train.
Speaker 1:My job on day one was to say what kind of rules do we need? And they would just spit out a litany. I probably did a dozen of these. It was so similar. No, no, bad words, no name calling, no yelling, no destruction, bad words, no name calling, no yelling, no destruction. No. Everything started with no. I personally had a hiccup about that because when I was a kid all the rules started with no, but they were used to. You know they were preludes to getting hurt, they were preludes to coming down hard, and so I personally had some PTSD around rules. I had no skin in the game to have rules as far as I would know. But what I noticed was that rules, that's, visiting classrooms, rules that started with yes, were super hard even for very positive teachers to enforce because they're vague. You know, be respectful. Where's the line?
Speaker 2:I think that's especially true because we're dealing with, like most behavior comes from a lagging skill or an unmet need right.
Speaker 1:A lagging skill, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lagging skill. So it's like, if I don't understand what respect is like, as adults we've lived in the world enough to where we have like social norms and kind of unspoken social agreements about what respect is and what it isn't. But to a seven-year-old they don't know that, and so to just use the word be respectful is very vague to them. And then we're holding them accountable and giving them sometimes like consequences or rewards based on them being able to live into something that's very intangible.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it makes it hard on the adult because they don't you know, if they're wired to be compassionate, they're going to give you know however many warnings, depending on how good their day is going, you know so. If they, depending on how good their day is going, you know so if they're in a crummy mood, they might give no warnings. Or if they're in a groovy mood, they might give 10 warning. When's a rule a rule, when's a rule count? And so there becomes this very chaotic framework as opposed to when the rules are clear, as opposed to when the rules are clear. You know, and I don't. I, if I have a rule, if I have a stand, no, I'm not going to, absolutely no, I'm not going to give me to negativity.
Speaker 1:A warning is actually a reward of me, Katie, Katie, Katie.
Speaker 2:I told You're feeding me.
Speaker 1:That's all energy that's transmitted. I'd much rather be consummately fair and have no warnings, but instead of coming down hard, I want rules that are clear, like if the rule is no bad words, how much of a bad word is a bad word? You know a teensy weensy bit of a bad word is a bad word. You know a teensy weensy bit of a bad word is a bad word. So if I'm really being loving, I want to have rules that I abide by and uphold and I just want some simple way of saying reset and unplugging me. It's like no me for you.
Speaker 2:I'm still loving this child. I want to point out that, like, by not giving energy to something you aren't like giving them a look or using a tone or doing this with your face, like that is negative energy, right. And so when we're like, people will say, like we'll just ignore that behavior, what we do is ignore, but in a in a kind of like subtly shaming way, and so we are actually still giving energy to that, I think because we're just not used to. I mean, before I read your work, I had never thought of energy as this type of like currency that I needed to be like an intentional steward over, right. I just thought, why should? Why isn't this kid like?
Speaker 2:This kid just wants to make my life harder, like I. I just am working so hard and I should just, you know, they should just be quiet and obedient and this should be the norm when I I. It took a lot of practice for me to realize like, oh, this is like the thing. The child that is driving the child is a need for connection that's not broken. They're they're not seeking attention in a bad way. They're seeking something that they were built to need and it is my role as an adult to fill that in a healthy way and I can use this kind of concept of communication energy as a currency to really help me develop a practiced intentional skills as a person who interacts with young humans who interacts with young humans developing brains.
Speaker 1:Wow, you need to teach this, katie. You have that so clear, your conveyor of that clarity, and that's greatness.
Speaker 3:I see, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Howie, it's staring us in the face. Qualities of greatness are staring and I like that they're vague actually, and I like that they're vague actually, that well, if I say to myself, wow, I'm being compassionate, I am the greatness of compassion and I just like air oxygen, I'm sending birth tens of millions of cells a day. Biologically, we're regenerative, where you know, what do we want to tell our new self, our new cells? Do we want to tell it some sad old story or some uplifting story? That's the same thing I want to do with kids, and the more intense what I? I don't have proof of this, but in my experience, the more intense a child, the more intense they're craving for that connection and intensity not being a bad thing. We couldn't get out of bed in the morning if our intensity went away. We need our intensity to live our great lives, our passionate lives. It's that life force, yeah exactly yeah, and I'm curious.
Speaker 3:So you're talking about no's, which I had neurodivergent kids and the no's actually send them into their stress response and so we've turned a lot of no's into yeses, as in instead of don't run or no running, it's walk, like it's like what can I do instead so that he doesn't have to rethink? I get that rules are really important, but what happens, especially in the nurture heart approach? I'm really curious what happens when they break those rules? Or because if we're not showing up in negativity, then what's happening? If we have these rules, they're not following those rules. We want to stay in positivity. What does that look like? I'm really curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, you know, and this is my my heart goes out to all the people who parent and educate from a place of um of love and and desire to do the best for kids. So the way I want to explain it is that when a choice happens that breaks a rule and the rules are by way of your sensibility as the adult, I mean, you know there's no such thing as a given, you know a scripted list of rules. It has to do with your household, it has to do with your educational environment and if a rule is broken, what I want to do ideally is just say something that issues the consequence, which is a signal of issuing the consequence. So I like reset, because it's an easy word for people to realize and it's come into vogue, in use over these last dozen years, so it's a very acceptable word and but I don't want to think of that as ignoring.
Speaker 1:I want, I want to, I want to alert the child a rule's been broken and I want to just unplug me momentarily, just long enough, because I want to be in the truth of energy. You know, if the three seconds from now the child's not saying a bad word, I want to plug back in and that's to me the learning moment. That's where I want to thrive and say you know, you may still be angry at me, but you're not saying bad words now and I don't know how you're doing it, but I could tell you my point of view is you're using your power, your wisdom, your kindness, oh wow, that's so different than the way that most of us are wired and trained to think.
Speaker 3:I'm curious as well about what's the difference between rules and boundaries. So I love this definition of boundaries from Dr Becky Kennedy of um. She wrote a book called good inside and she has a big following, you know, on Instagram. And so she says you know, a boundary is something you tell someone you will do and it requires nothing of the other person. So I have a boundary of, you know, a child not allowed to hit me, and so if you hit me, I'm going to walk away. So that's. I feel like this is kind of related, but how would?
Speaker 3:you.
Speaker 1:The one thing. Well, let me can I back up a second, and you know, one of my favorite metaphors, analogies is is is how kids play video games. You never see kids playing these games to lose. They want to go level level, level level of achievement, attainment, and to me that's equivalent to greatness If you look at how they play the game here I am. I'm not a fan of video games personally. Maybe, maybe you've made some education.
Speaker 3:We're not either. I'm hopeful that there'll be some. Hey, listen, howie, howie. Katie doesn't even allow her kids to have toys with batteries in them.
Speaker 1:So Bless your heart. So I I some of these insane bloody games. And it's all subterfuge. These games have programming where, while the child's not breaking a rule, while the child's in bounds, the game is just alerting them energetically bells and whistles, score, score, score. You know that game in, game on is alive and when they break a rule they're allowed to break rules. It's like have a field day, you know, but every time you break a rule, even a fraction, the game just shuts down for a second. But even though these games are made to look drastic and punitive, like blood spurting, heads rolling, who's back in the game in two seconds?
Speaker 1:So the game has a primary operational feature of wellness, of achievement, of success. And the kids been in timeout, so to speak, for two seconds. They can't wait to get back in and they don't just come back in, they come back ever more dedicated. I'm not going to break that rule and I'm going to use my upsetness, my frustration, to go level, level, level even more. So I haven't come across Becky Kennedy's work, but basically that's. I hate to sound mechanical because I'm coming from a more spirited place of I. I want to connect. I think it's easy to be a kid on planet earth and get disconnected from who we really are as wonderful people and and and just forget, and and I'm trying to help kids remember you know they're loving, compassionate, wise you know they're loving, compassionate, wise.
Speaker 2:Two things real quick. I'm reminded of playing Mario Kart when I was younger and if you go off the road, a little like, you get stuck and you're everyone's passing you so you're out of the game, but then this little cloud guy comes and picks you up and slowly, painfully slowly, puts you back on the road and I kind of feel like that's kind of what a reset is.
Speaker 1:And I'd love for you to talk about what reset is. And then I have one other thing. Yeah, I'm very deliberate in saying to a child like I want to be in the truth of the moment. I think people thrive when they're in the truth of the moment. So you know the child has said a bad word or been disrespectful. You know the child has said a bad word, been disrespectful. I want to, I want to say reset and I don't explain anything at that moment. I don't want to say anything to give the gift, accidentally, the gift to me that as soon as the disrespect isn't happening. And that's why rules that Sark would know are such a gift, because I could tell kids about the rules they're not breaking. Now you're not breaking that rule, you've figured out more about that rule, you've learned what that rule is. Now your reset's over, your consequence is over. Thanks for doing your consequence. I want to thank them.
Speaker 3:I want kids to have that skill of knowing you know, we can get on with our lives pretty quickly, you know, I, I. What about? Can I interject really quick? What about co-regulation? I have a son who's autistic and if he bad words come out of his mouth, it is means the limbic system is completely in charge. Amygdala is in charge. Frontal lobe is completely offline to the point where when he comes back online he tends to not even. He's so flooded with stress hormones that he tends to not even have full memory of the bad words coming out of his mouth. So in those moments he needs the gift of me to get him connected. So is this, what about co-regulation? I have an extremely intense child that needs my calmness and my regulation to get to a place where bad words are not coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 1:I would implore you to continue doing that. Do what you're describing when the rule is so. My experience with kids on the spectrum is that I want to hold the same accountability. You know, a bad word happened. I'm going to say reset and then I'm going to be in my calm when the reset Now, the bad word isn't happening anymore. However, many seconds later and that's where I want to bring it on. In that calm, you may still feel flooding on the inside, but you're not taking it out on anybody. That's being very kind, that's being very loving. You're being loving. I see the lovingness in you and I see that you're struggling to handle it. I like saying everything and I like building from the inside out. It's like I'm constructing, helping the child. Co-regulating could also mean, you know, co-constructing, because you know PSJA would say, as it internalizes from external, then the internal becomes more significant. I like the. I thought that we could build inner wealth in a kid and that you know, it's not the 99 or the 1%.
Speaker 1:You know, have wealth, it's everybody could be an inner wealth billionaire. It sounds trite but you know I I've seen spectacular things come To me. The real agenda is I want to build this kid up and I want to use it's like the bowling alley with the bumpers on it. I want to use stand one and three just to get that stuff out of the way. So I could have added building. And what I've noticed? I have a child who's now 33. She was on this from day one. So that's how all the nurtured heart approaches.
Speaker 1:And you know the gamble is you build inner wealth and the child doesn't become an idiot, grandiose person. You know who can't, whose head won't fit through a doorway. You know the gamble is that they become inherently aligned to who they are and then they just live it and you might feel out of control. You know, surely a parent who has a kid who's acting out feels out of control. And you might feel equally out of control with a kid who's acting out, feels out of control, and you might feel equally out of control with a kid who's acting out greatness. But it's a much better way to go. It's just fun. They may not be doing what you want them to do. That you may. You may want them to be an accountant, and and they say you know, but they'll say it kindly, mom. And they say you know, but they'll say it kindly, mom, you know, I, I'm going to that's, that's what I'm going to do, and then they may switch to something else in a month, but that's coming from their greatness, it's coming from their inner wealth.
Speaker 2:I'm reminded um Adrian, as you're telling your story about your son. I remember when I took the Nurture Heart training. There's this video and maybe you can give this more context or color, Howie, but it's this video of this boy. He's probably in high school, he's a bigger kid and he obviously has some special needs, but he's having a meltdown, he's not regulated and he's hitting a window. And he's actually hitting the window in time and I haven't seen that video in a long time.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, so then the, his teacher, using the nurtured heart approach, says you could be hitting that, something to the effect of I like how you're not hitting that window as hard as you could, like you're actually being very gentle in this behavior that we would want to stop because it could break the window, like all of these you know we could escalate. That he actually called out that it wasn't like, wasn't as negative, like the child was still using some level of inhibition and judgment in that moment, even though he was expressing his frustration, and so, while that behavior was going on, they were able to energize the greatness.
Speaker 1:There are times, like in that video, where this young man is, he's in the middle of a consequence. It's usually it's not the time to give relationship, but this man was so skillful at this building and that was his superpower. His agenda was to build this young man with developmental needs to the point where he could discern. You know, yes, I am angry. I still have anger, I am. I have calmed down a lot, I am just tapping the window and restraining myself, whereas I could have been pounding the window and endangering people. I mean, there were a lot of things said that were just build, build, build, build.
Speaker 3:And you know, this igniting greatness, then what I'm hearing is it leads to self-awareness. Igniting greatness, then, what I'm hearing is it leads to self-awareness, which we're seeing with my son. He used to, I mean, would have no remorse, no even understanding of what was happening. So we, I mean maybe not in the way that you're describing with the igniting greatness, but I'm getting there and I have read your books and I and it is a mindset shift for sure. Uh, but just the other day it was like two nights ago he started just I could feel the energy starting, you know the intensity starting to build and he said some unkind things. Then he paused himself.
Speaker 3:I didn't I, you know the consequence of kind of what you're saying. I'm like, oh, I am actually doing this. I stopped and give him the gift of me, and then he turned to me and said I am so sorry, those things came out of my mouth. I'm feeling really stressed right now and on the inside I was just like, yes, we're getting there. So this is what this looks like practically, because we can hear about these things, we can read about it, but it practically, and what it looks like is when the child can come into self-awareness and be aware of what's going on on the inside, so that that is going to reflect on the outside. And what you're saying is like, after doing this, you know, and being treated this way for 30, some years, they're not going to just, you know, have a big head, but instead they're going to be able to connect with others and give that gift to others, which I think is really powerful.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, and to themselves.
Speaker 3:And to themselves, yes.
Speaker 1:So I love your story about your son. That's I'm glad you could rejoice at that. And and that's where I want, if you know, just like it's so easy, when something goes wrong as a parent, to take a nosedive, that's where. I want to take a nosedive. I really want to go. What's his name?
Speaker 3:Nolan.
Speaker 1:Nolan, I want to tell you about your greatness. Now, you know, and then you let your emotion come up. I'd like to think that my soul can talk to another person. So if, if I get, if I just drop down below. You know the, the head, you know, I know a lot of smart people who know a lot of things, but they don't get anywhere. You know, I, I know a lot of adept emotional people, a lot of people who, who you know, there's the mind, the body, the heart. I know a lot of adept people in all those realms but they don't necessarily get to. You know the what's deep inside and and their purposeful being and I, to like in a situation like that. Nolan, you know, what you're saying now shows me a lot of things about you. It shows me I'm going to use the word restraint. I don't know if you can understand the word restraint, but I'm going to explain it.
Speaker 3:He definitely. He's twice exceptional. He has a very, very big vocabulary, bigger than mine.
Speaker 1:That mine Great quality, and let me explain why it's a great quality. And then and then, under the umbrella of restraint, there's probably 10 other you've talked a lot of. You've mentioned igniting greatness. There's so much greatness you can spark in that conversation. And and then your insight, and then your insight, you know, and your remorse. It shows me your heart. It shows me how deeply you care. It shows me how aware you are of how you affect other people and how it hurts your heart to having said that and I'm so glad you could say those things out loud. It just shows me what a compassionate person you could just have a field day. That's where I want to have a field day where parents or teachers have a meltdown and they give 10 minutes to you know the nonsense why? Why, as human beings, wouldn't we give 10 minutes? In a timing like that, where it's so ripe, it's like the greatness is just staring us in the face.
Speaker 3:Can you talk a little bit about portfolio of evidence?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I was a kid once upon a time, and you know, i—.
Speaker 1:You were yeah it's hard to believe. And whether you have a fireplace in your home or not, you know, I, you were hard to believe. And whether you have a fireplace in your home or not, you know what. What are the pictures, so to speak, hanging over the mantelpiece? You know, you know, recognizing, uplifting way.
Speaker 1:But if you think about it, there was a lot of celebration of me on some of the banner, many banner days. I had the day I tried to start my house on fire, the day I stabbed my brother with a pencil, the day I called my father henpecked. Should I go on, you know? Like the day they caught me flipping them off, you know, like, you name it, you name it, you know, uh, and that's when they gave me center stage, that's when they, you know, went on and on, and on and on. So to me, that was what was unfortunately in my portfolio, even though I didn't like it. I wound up replicating that, not only in my incursions in the world as a young adult, but how I treated myself. I barely gave myself any relationship for what's right, even though I wanted to and I read about it and I was attracted to being positive. My reality was I tended to dumb that down. But I could sure go on and on and perseverate on what's wrong.
Speaker 1:And I feel like that's the, that's the part that we want to. We want to. We get to co-create the software while we can, while we have access to a child Lucky you, you have young children, you have that luxury of participating in that field. We get to dance in that field. And you asked me a question. I probably blew right by it, adrian, and I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 2:We were just talking about portfolio evidence.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I want to. You know, and I also, as a psychology student, I went to therapy this and therapy that, and you know it's a fallacy to think that we can make that stuff go away. I'll never not be the kid who tried to set his house on fire. I'll never not be the kid who did all those other things. No, therapy is going to evaporate that. But what I can do is create a new portfolio that's stronger, that's vaster, that has more depth to it, and that's what I care about. That's. That's the nature of nurture.
Speaker 2:I love that. I'm reminded. I wish I knew which culture this came from and this is just a story I heard. That, I think, wraps this all together. There's a culture where, every time a baby is born, they the mother, sings, sings a song and that's like the baby's song. I'm going to cry when I say this, but um.
Speaker 1:I love your emotion.
Speaker 2:If that child in subsequently in his life, does something that is not right according to their the village's culture, they take the child and they put him in the middle and everyone sings his song at him to remind him of who he is, and I think that that is like the heart of your work, like there is so much greatness and so much goodness inside our kids and we focus on the systems and the culture that we've built around parenting and being a child, are pretty much systematically creating portfolios of not greatness because we don't understand this whole.
Speaker 2:You know currency of energy and the child's need for connection, but when we can really wrap our brains and our hearts and our energy around that, we can really redefine our role as adults and just unlock such an amazing power in us and in our kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's. I'm sure the people singing to the kid experience the unity and the um, the, the community that's a better word the community and the, and the, the true loving nature of, of everything, and um, it's. That's a great illustration. You made me cry too. So it is. I'm trying to sing that person's song and it's a unique song and and it's.
Speaker 1:You know, if I find myself being generic when I appreciate another human being, you know that to me is like that's one of my personal boundaries. To stand three is I want to be genuine. I don't want to be like just saying you know, if I, if, if I let myself say a few compliments from my head, only it's going to be the same two or three all the time. You know, if I use that as my spotter, you know and go oh, hold on, I'm going to breathe that, I'm going to breathe that generic version in, and what I really want to do is is just let it flow from like, a deeper place it's like, and then I get to sing a song and it feels so good to be the singer, and sometimes you could see a kid look like they sit up, I'm sure. Um, if you talk to your son the next time you know he says something stunning like that and and you have the luxury of carving out a few extra minutes, you'll see him like it's like, sit up an inch taller.
Speaker 1:It's something in us as human beings that wants to hear this about ourselves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, and sometimes I get caught in the trap of autism and what that is. And well, he doesn't really get it as much as I do, but he does and he feels on a different level, like his pragmatics may not be at the same as like a neurotypical kid where you know that social language, that understanding he'll have to sometimes stops and asks me was that rude? It's just, I was just naming what, what was you know? He sometimes does not realize or even really get if it's rude or not, and it based like social context. However, I have noticed, though, he feels so much deeper and I have to watch my own thoughts and mindset about what I, you know, what the world is telling me that autism is, and look at him as a unique individual child, and doing that every single day. So we could keep talking. We're starting to run out of time and thank you for letting me share and thank you so much for sharing your story.
Speaker 3:This is a question we ask all of our guests. So who is someone who has kindled your love of learning, your love of curiosity? Um, who has kindled that energy within?
Speaker 1:You know, I did see that question in your preparedness and in your guidance points and this will make me cry. I'm going to give credit to my mother. It was not done in a straightforward way. I mean, first of all, I don't Take it for granted that somebody could pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I think I'm one of the lucky ones, one of the four. I could have been dead many times over. I looked at my, my parents that they would have loved to give me what I really needed. They didn't know how. They just honestly didn't know how, um, uh it, I'd say a lot of my learning has come from adverse ways. You know, like it's just my style of learning, for better or worse. You know I have to. You know, you know I have to hit my head against the wall to to learn. But you know, by and large, learn some. You know my father came back from world war two um shell shocked, you know.
Speaker 3:you know he was in, in in the midst of it and and I don't want to be unconscious- and what a gift you're giving through living through that and having this understanding that your parents didn't know how to better give you what you needed and so you're taking that and you're gifting that to so many other parents to give them those tools. That is so beautiful.
Speaker 1:And my mother, just the thumbnail on her, she would harp on negativity for hours on end. I mean, I was the poster child for getting you know energy in an upside down way, getting connected in an upside down way. So, um, you know, it's made it. It's made it a longer, it's humanized me deeply, it's it's there's a word in cooking where you pulverize it or whatever. You know, uh, I, I, I have threats of that in my existence that maybe never go away, but they'll always be motivators when I come up for air and I have a moment of sanity where I go no that's not how I'm going to conduct myself.
Speaker 1:That's not how I am. I am the greatness of turning out using that as my ongoing fuel, my forever fuel.
Speaker 2:So what ongoing support resources does the Nurtured Heart offer? How can people learn more? Where can we send listeners?
Speaker 1:There's a bunch of things. There's nurturedheartinstitutecom. There's a bookstore there. There are a lot of books. I never planned on writing even one but, lo and behold, every time there's a gap I start writing. So it seems like there are plenty of gaps.
Speaker 1:There are a couple on Audible now and I know people like Audible and there are more to come that way and there is a couple of new classes. There is a class of a week long intensive that some people just take because they want to dive in deeper and get kind of the backstage pass to you know how this approach works, where you feel it from the inside out, and then there is a certified practitioner's course for those who don't want or need to teach this approach and it's led by advanced trainers, people who've studied with me for more than once, with me for more than once, and there's going to be very soon the notching in on how to use this on oneself, which I'm really excited about and, as of yesterday, I could send you a sample YouTube. It'll be open for the public soon, but there is now a inner wealth bot, because there are some kids who have no one to talk to, high school kids who are at social media and and they feel isolated and they feel toxic and, um, they're in toxic environments and uh, I and parents who feel the same way, I want, I want people to be able to ask a question and get an experience of their inner wealth, not necessarily get like, oh yes, do A, b, c, d to make things better and fix it. It's like you deserve to hear about, like, how you're, how you're, uh, beautifully, the beautiful qualities in you. So that's what that.
Speaker 1:How it's called the howard bot. It was recommended it was. Maybe it should be the howie bot to change it to howie the howie bot.
Speaker 1:There you go, and it was recommended that I have a personal name, so if you remind me after we're done here today, I'll send you the instructions on how to access it and you'll have to tell me yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for coming on today. We've learned so much. And thank you again for just all of your work over the decades that you've been doing this. It's made such an impact in our families and in Prenda, like I was telling you before, like your work is really part of the DNA of Prenda and what we try to instill in all of our guides and every one of our micro schools. So thank you.
Speaker 1:Can I tell you about your greatness? You're just so open and alive in your passionate approach to being a human being, like in your work, in your initiative, in your school's initiative, in your parenting. It's always astounding to me that somebody would be open to this alternative way of looking at things, and I don't assume that's easy, and I just love how you have this very refreshing way of conveying it and being in it and living it. So how not great would it be if you had walls up and you weren't open to anything. So therefore, how great would it be if you had walls up and you, you know you weren't open to anything. So therefore, how great is it that you have this beautiful?
Speaker 2:office. Thank you Love it. Okay, we'll talk more soon. I'm sure we'll stay connected. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, howie.
Speaker 3:That's it for today. I really enjoyed that conversation. Katie, did you have any light bulb moments? I?
Speaker 2:just you know when you like know something and then you forget for like five years to be doing the thing. I think that this has been a good moment of reflection for me, because I've taught lots of people about igniting greatness and all of these things. And then I look at my own parenting and I'm like I'm going to do a little bit better tomorrow.
Speaker 3:So yes, it's very hard to embody this. As he said, it comes from like the soul. It comes from within.
Speaker 2:It's not just saying, hey, go, ignite greatness, I we're not, I'm not used to allowing myself to think good things about myself, right Cause I'm just kind of stuck in this critical state of like I need to be better, I need to get this done. I like I'm just so focused on that, and so it was um interesting to feel that, and I I really resonated with something you said about how kids will like push back on that. They won't accept the greatness you know, because that's not true for them. They are used to seeing themselves as the class clown or as a behavior problem or whatever you know, a troublemaker. So I feel like there's a little bit of that in me that I kind of unearthed today too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could see it on your face, even your nonverbal. As soon as you said that, I could see you start to tense up and your face. I was like, okay, just receive it, katie, just receive it. And even though I struggle with the whole zoom camera thing, uh, and not being in person with you, I could feel like I felt so much in this room and I typically don't when it comes to being online so, um, yeah, just embrace it, just accept it and start coming into this, thinking of what he said as truths, because they really are, and I believe that everyone around you could probably agree with him.
Speaker 3:So you're the only one. Come on, katie, come to the party, get with it. No, come on, katie, come to the party, get with it. No, okay, so if you enjoyed that episode of the Kindle podcast, we would love for you to rate, subscribe all the things that help this podcast get put out and seen by others. So you can follow us on social at Prenda Learn. You can also email us with any questions or any challenges you have going on to podcast at Prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group called the Kindled Collective. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter called the Sunday Spark, just go to Prendacom.
Speaker 2:The Kindled podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all of the things that we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. If you want more information about becoming a Prenda guide, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
