The Exchanges

Q And then you, you started teaching. Only everything you had found out about what you learned about teaching turned out to be not true?

A Um, the area of behavior modification, because that was big, uh, in the late sixties, uh, Um, and that again, uh, getting kids to do what I want them to do by using rewards and bribes and threats and punishment really went against actually what I was learning in my theology and philosophy courses, which were required as a nun, and they ran headlong into that. With this is how we should bribe children and threaten them and reward them and punish them. And so, um, in my real world experience in the classroom, um, I realized that I would far better rely on my philosophy, sociology, and theology training, uh, to work with kids. And I came up with, um, three basic tenets. One, kids are worth it. Uh, I believe they're worth our time, energy, and resources to help them become all they can become. Um, second, I won't treat them in a way I myself would not want to be treated if I wouldn't want it done to me. Um, I'm not going to do it to a child. And the third, if it works, it must leave my dignity and the child's dignity intact. Not just if it works or appears to work, but does it work and leave both of our dignity intact?

AI assessment note: “the area of behavior modification... really went against actually what I was learning”

Q We're also reinforcing not thinking, right? Like, you're just blindly following some sort of rules or procedures, and you're not exercising any sort of judgment. I mean, you might as well be working. Yeah.

A That's what zero tolerance is all about. It's zero thinking. So what would a deeply caring teacher do who's, the rule is a rule, it's a good rule. But there's a time to bend, to go above the rule, not because the rule isn't a good rule. So you see the child with the cell phone, you say cell phone, and he looks at you said, but it's my mom from Iraq. And a deeply caring teacher whose ethic is rooted in deep caring, and rules are rooted in deep caring says, I'll talk to you when you're finished, and hangs around And then when, uh, he's done with the phone call, say, how's your mom doing? And how are you and grandma doing? It's been a long deployment for all three of you. Is there anything I can do to help? That says I care. And that, you know, the rule's there, but there's a time to bend. Um, another kid comes up and says, how come he gets to use a cell phone and I don't? And I say, when your mom's in Iraq, you get to use your cell phone too. You have a child with cancer, needs to wear a hat, but you have a hat rule. There's a time to bend. It's like two yellow lines down the road. That's a rule. Um, not a guideline. Uh, and I, we have to trust the highway department. Rules are about trust. I have to trust you stay on your side of the road. You have to trust I stay on my side of the road. However, an ambulance comes down the middle of the road. They have not violated that rule. T…

AI assessment note: “That's what zero tolerance is all about. It's zero thinking.”

Q I want to do a huge deep dive into that. What does it mean to hold them accountable? What does it mean to make them own their decisions? Can you walk me through what that means? Not only in the classroom for the teachers out there listening, but also at home for the parents like myself who, um, you know, probably default to this sort of like reward punishment.

A Um, it's part of our culture. Um, well, let's look at, um, first, uh, giving them choices and decisions. I don't say to a two year old, do you want to go to bed or not? Um, that's not a decision they get to make. But I do say, do you want to go to bed now with your red pajamas or now with your blue pajamas? And they show up red bottoms, blue tops. I've always said if it's not life threatening, morally threatening or unhealthy, let it go. Stick with the big stuff you need to get hysterical about. And so they show up with that mix. Then you constantly increase responsibilities and decisions. Both at home and in the classroom. That gives them the opportunity to make those choices, uh, real choices. Um, so I go from red pajama, blue pajama to three outfits. Pick one. To here's your school clothes, here's your play clothes, pick something from your school clothes. And regularly, our middle daughter would show up with a layered look. All school clothes, just definitely layered. Now, I know a lot of parents who would say, go pick out an outfit. Oh, you can't wear that one. Now, it's not life threatening to a kid to wear the layered look. It's painful for a parent, but it's not life threatening. You'd let it go. It's with shoes on the wrong feet. If they hurt, they'd move them. But we worry, worry, worry. I've yet to see a senior with shoes on the wrong feet. But there's a lot of their…

AI assessment note: “our goal is to constantly increase responsibilities and decision making, decrease limits”

Q Does that eventually foster a sense of responsibility in kids for their actions?

A That's the whole thing. It's from red pajama, blue pajama, through all of this, both discipline and choices, you are helping young people say that I have agency in my life, that what I do matters, and that I can affect Uh, change in the world, and it can be for good or for ill, and that's a choice I get to make. I want them to see they do have choices that they can make. The third step is probably the most difficult, to heal with the person you've harmed, when the person who was targeted is ready. Now, if you dunk the kid's head in the toilet, he may never be ready to meet with you, and that's what that child needs to live with, the kid who did the dunking. Has to live with is that kid doesn't even want you around.

AI assessment note: “That's the whole thing... you are helping young people say that I have agency”

Q Did you have family meetings? And if so, what, what was discussed? How were they run? And what was the frequency of them?

A Yes, we had family meetings, and they were loosely put together when there was a need to come together as a family, uh, to decide. When they were older, we talked to them about options for holidays. Now, they didn't get to choose, oh, we want to go to Australia. We had limits and boundaries. We said, we're going to go to this place, and what can we do and talk about it? As they got even older, you know, they were better at planning, uh, trips. When they were five, it was a matter of, uh, who's going to do the map reading, um, And what do you think we need to put in the cooler to get us from this point to this point? Problem solving, basically. If there was an issue in the family, um, where mom or dad had to leave because, uh, somebody was ill or something, Um, we had a really big issue where our kid's godfather was kidnapped in Lebanon. He was, in 1983, he was one of the Lebanon seven, and, uh, we held many family meetings over what do we do to be effective, and our kids were, like, 10 and, and, um, nine and seven at that point, and so we, we, uh, decided, we've always had family meals at the table, TV was off, but when Marty was kidnapped, Um, uh, Ted Koppel used to have a show every night, uh, um, this will date me, uh, and so we watched TV, uh, while we ate to get caught up on what, what's happening with the hostages. So, you know, every family's going to deal with different…

AI assessment note: “Yes, we had family meetings, and they were loosely put together when there was a need”

Q In your book, Kids Are Worth It, you talk about the difference between doing good and feeling good. Can you elaborate on that for everybody listening, and what does that mean, and how does it change how you parent?

A Um, I want to teach young kids to do good, as James Nashway said, because good is good to do. That you do it because it's the right thing to do. Uh, he, he goes on to say spurn threats of heaven and bribes of hell. You do it because it's the right thing to do, which brings us back to bribes and threats, rewards and punishments, and looking at the alternatives to those, um, what to do instead. Uh, feeling good about yourself. It's about yourself. When kids understand they have agency in their life, when they sit next to the new girl, no one can take away how good they feel knowing what they did for that other little girl. No one can take that away. Um, but if you bribe kids, then it's an external approval that will help them feel good, and I don't want external approval. So let's look for a moment at what to do instead of bribes and threats and rewards and punishments, because they are insidious part of our culture. Um, you know, it's again, if I don't get caught, what I did wasn't bad, if I have to be caught being good. And remember, nice kids often get caught being good in the classroom, but they're not been kind To the new girl, or to the child with special needs, or the child with an allergy. I'm not into nice, I'm into kind. Uh, and kind often happens, uh, I will walk up to a child and I say, I want to thank you for inviting that new girl to sit with you. Um, she feels a pa…

AI assessment note: “I want to teach young kids to do good, as James Nashway said, because good is good to do.”

Q What should, how should a parent respond to that when their, their kid comes home and says that, um, or hints at the fact that they might be getting bullied at school?

A I stop everything I'm doing and sit down and say, talk to me about it. Tell me about it. Very soft voice. Talk to me about it. Tell me about it. And I listen. And I say, what can you and I do? Oh, mom, don't tell anybody. Don't tell me. They'll make it worse. Kids tend to know that if schools aren't handling it well, it will make it worse. And that, but there are things that we need to know. I'm an educator. If somebody, bullying tends to happen under the radar of adults, so if a parent would come to me and say, uh, that my son said the boys are calling names in the bathroom, then I change the bathroom schedule. I make sure that it's one at a time kind of thing, and then I keep an eye on those boys, and I say to the parent, I'm going to keep an eye on those boys. I thank the young boy for telling, and I also say to him, nobody's ever going to know you told. And nobody, I tell a parent, nobody's going to know you told. I'm going to watch them, which means I can't deal with it, what they did in the past. But I tell you that the snow, the playground aid, the lunchroom people, we're going to be on our toes watching for that. And once we're tuned into that, we usually can catch them doing it and we can nail them. And I do. I, I, You know, normal conflict, we're going to have lots of that, and you just get through it and help them get through it. But bullying is our job to stop and d…

AI assessment note: “I stop everything I'm doing and sit down and say, talk to me about it.”

Q What are the other things as parents that we can do to help our kids learn to make, uh, age appropriate decisions and prepare them for the world where they have to make their own decisions?

A It's looking around every situation and saying, is this a choice he can make? And we have to give up some of this, uh, uh, efficiency control, but we got to get it done right now. Sometimes we have to sit back and say, it's going to take a little bit longer for him to fix his own lunch with us helping him fix it, but pretty soon he's going to be able to fix his own lunch on his own, which is our goal. Um, you know, and you're going to have mistakes. I remember my oldest daughter, um, doing the laundry because she was old enough to learn to do it, and she, um, put all the whites in and put bleach in. However, her, um, brother had taken off his red shirt with his t-shirt at the same time, so it was white on the outside. Inside was a red t-shirt. Everything turned pink, including her dad's underwear. Everything. And so Dawn's underwear was pink. And, and, um, I said, well, one of the things we can do is put it through the wash again without the red shirt, but you got to fix your brother's shirt. And now she could have blamed it on him and said, have you had to put it in the laundry with the separate? No, you know, Hey, you did it. You did it. And, um, I, quite frankly, I helped her out with buying him a new shirt, but, uh, cause it was a mistake. It was an honest mistake, so I helped her out. But she went to her dad and said, Dad, do you have pink underwear? He said, well, it woul…

AI assessment note: “It's looking around every situation and saying, is this a choice he can make?”

Q What's the difference between punishment and consequence again?

A Uh, and discipline. The difference between punishment and discipline, yes. Discipline has consequences. Punishment may too, but I always say we need to use the French term RSVP, which means please respond. Uh, discipline is not something we do to a child. It's something we do with a child. Punishment's adult-oriented. It is imposed from without. It arouses resentment and teaches kids to respond out of fear or fight back or flee. Um, discipline, on the other hand, if you go back to its Latin roots, means to give life to a child's learning. So consequences need to be RSVP. Reasonable, simple, valuable, and practical. But let's look at discipline again. If it's a mistake, own it, fix it, learn from it, move on. If it's mischief, Uh, and this is where consequences, you say, but why do we need discipline when it's a mistake? Because discipline is giving life to a child's learning. Um, whether it's that sixteen-year-old with the beaker, or the three-year-old with the glass, giving life to their learning. So, discipline is an integral part of what we do with our kids. Um, uh, the, uh, let me give you an example of, um, I use my son again, when it's mischief. This is where consequences come in. Um, our son did something that wasn't on the approved behavior list on a field trip. He broke the beaver bait jar at the Natural History Museum. Could have been worse. Could have been an irrepla…

AI assessment note: “Discipline is not something we do to a child. Punishment's adult-oriented.”

Q And is that where you learned to teach at the convent?

A Yes. I got my teaching degree after I left the convent, but I was pursuing it. I was a year away when I left the order. Um, And anyone listening to me would know that we take three vows, chastity, obedience, uh, and poverty. I grew up very poor, so that wasn't an issue. Chastity, I was too, um, um, young to know what I was really giving up with that, but the obedience was a difficult one for me, because all along, in all of my work, I talk about raising, um, people who will stand up for values and against injustices, And, uh, at that point, uh, in my life, it seemed like I was to be obedient to the bishop. I know better now, but it just seemed like that, and I was not going to do that. Um, it's obedient to the gospel, and that's what I live today. Um, but, uh, yes, that was the beginning of my journey. That's where I got most of my special ed training, and then I left the convent and finished up at the University of Northern Colorado. Uh, and that's where I met my husband at a, um, migrant protest march, uh, with Cesar Chavez's group. Um, and I had been involved in civil rights as a nun in Milwaukee.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I got my teaching degree after I left the convent, but I was pursuing it.”

Q I want to end with a question on sex and drugs and how we should talk to our kids. I mean, my kids, we can use my kids as hypotheticals. They're sort of like eight and nine right now. Walk me through how I should, um, talk to them about that over the next 10 years. And what, what do I need to be doing now to lay the foundations?

A I would start younger using the proper words. Um, very young. Um, a little three-year-old in the garage, she started momming by vagina itches. People are like, ugh, you know, and, and we have a 105 words for penis, 20, a 125 for breasts, and one for ankle. You know, we have to start young teaching kids to use their, their proper words. I want a little boy to say that there, there's something, uh, my penis feels funny, and, and instead of using all these euphemisms, uh, We, we, uh, uh, sausage and bacon, or twigs and berries, and all the different words that we use, uh, junk, family jewels, to use them. And you say, but why? Well, when they reach middle school, they won't be calling one another a slut, whore, fag, queer, or bitch, which are derogatory sexual terms. So we start young. You said, well, eight, nine. No, we start even younger. We start giving them the proper terms. We talk to them about limits and boundaries, just like we talked about limits and boundaries in every other part of their lives. That sexuality is an integral part of their being. So that instructions, how do we treat them? How do we treat their bodies? How do we talk to them when they're real, real young, uh, about proper words? Then as they're getting older and we're seeing puberty drop with especially our young girls today. And so the talk, Quote, unquote, has had to come earlier, but if we couch it in …

AI assessment note: “I would start younger using the proper words. Um, very young.”

Q Do all these techniques work with autistic kids as well as ADHD kids and regular kids, or are there different ways to apply them?

A The work that's in Kids Are Worth It was originally written for kids with special needs, and then I was asked to write the book, and what I found was, uh, with kids with special needs, in that backbone that gives you flexibility you don't get from a rigid brick wall, but it also gives you structure you don't get from a jellyfish model, and We need as parents and educators to have both flexibility and an environment that's conducive to creative, constructive, and responsible activity. Um, with kids with special needs, we often have to have, uh, a smaller distance between vertebrae and a whole lot more vertebrae. So we break it into steps, um, and know that there are moments with kids with special needs when they would be horribly frustrated. And, and you're worn out, um, and making sure that we get a break as parents and a little respite, but also to understand that your kid is struggling at school, and that's a lot of struggle for them, uh, and you want to be very tuned in if a kid says, the kids are calling me names, and bullying can be devastating.

AI assessment note: “with kids with special needs, we often have to... break it into steps”

Q Would you talk to your kids about examples like that, or would you hide them from it?

A Oh no, I would, I would. Um, age appropriate, ability appropriate again, but he goes to Google and Twitter and Yahoo and the latest app producers and And Facebook and says, you've got to help us out. You've got the money. You've got the resources. You need to help keep our kids safe. Because educators and parents cannot do it alone, and the police department will be overwhelmed. Um, and so we need to be able to have that conversation and demand that these companies that are developing these tools help us help our kids be safe. Um, it's more the issue of safety. Uh, but also, you know, we have an obligation to teach our kids to be savvy about these tools. Not be used by them, but to be able to use them effectively. And civil. Probably civil is the most important. Um, sometimes kids will hide behind the anonymity of, um, the net. But other times, people say, well, it's that anonymity. No, sometimes they can hardly wait to get to school. To see how the targeted kids responding to their vile comments to her the day before when they've used their full names because there's nothing going to happen to them. Now, I was a part of developing David's law in San Antonio, Texas, drafting that law for cyber issues because I think he was, uh, what is that law, sorry? Uh, it's on cyberbullying. It's called David's Law. You can look it up in the Texas state legislature. It was one of the first …

AI assessment note: “Oh no, I would, I would. Um, age appropriate, ability appropriate again, but”

Q Can you walk me through what would be age-appropriate chores for, say, six to eight, eight to 10, 10 to 12, 12 to 14, 14 to 16?

A Well, remember, our goal is to constantly increase responsibilities in decision-making and reduce limits and boundaries. So you don't, ah, let us two-year-old play with a gas stove. Um, but you, ah, let them help, ah, put peanut butter on the celery and put the little raisins on top for ants on a log, you know, that kind of thing. Ah, it's again, age appropriate, and I would impress upon your ability appropriate. You may have a child with special needs who's the oldest, but the second oldest Is more capable of getting more responsibilities and decision making. They ought to be allowed to do that. And not because, oh, I'm worried that the other kid will feel bad. No, we, we honor each one's differences and seek out one another's gifts as well. Um, I, it was interesting to me. I had a niece who's a doctor, um, say that she was talking to some of the, her patients and And, uh, some of them who came from third world countries, those children were more likely to do more chores and be more helpful around the family, because it was expected, now that even they live in a first world country, uh, than our children. So we have to take a serious look at, if our goal is for them to be independent, what chores are we willing to take the time to teach them to do and hold them accountable for? So, you know, I couldn't give you exactly. All I know is your goal is when they leave home, they kno…

AI assessment note: “So, you know, I couldn't give you exactly.”