Understanding the Challenges of Military Families

In this conversation, Cindy Hovington speaks with Matt Brown and Leah Blain about the experiences of military families and their children. The conversation highlights the need for awareness and understanding of the unique lifestyle of military families and the support they require. The goal of the conversation is to shed light on the experiences of military children and promote empathy and support for them. Military families face unique challenges, including frequent moves and deployments, which can have negative impacts on children's academic and social-emotional well-being. However, research shows that with proper support and resilience-building skills, children can thrive in these environments. Parents play a crucial role in helping their children adapt to new situations and develop the necessary skills. Preventative measures, such as teaching mindfulness and emotional regulation, can be effective in supporting military families' mental health. There is a need for better access to mental health support and resources for military families, as suicide rates among service members and veterans are alarmingly high.

• The experiences of military children can vary, with some developing resilience and others struggling with the stress and changes.
• Awareness and understanding of the military lifestyle are important for supporting military families.
• Supportive communities and resources can help mitigate the challenges faced by military families and promote resilience. Frequent moves and deployments can negatively impact the academic and social-emotional well-being of children in military families.
• With proper support and resilience-building skills, children can adapt and thrive in these environments.
• Parents play a crucial role in helping their children navigate the challenges of military life.
• Preventative measures, such as teaching mindfulness and emotional regulation, can support the mental health of military families.
• There is a need for better access to mental health support and resources for military families, as suicide rates among service members and veterans are alarmingly high.

Military Family Clinic
Chimney Trail

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

We have lost four times as many veterans and service members to suicide than to combat in the last 20 years. There's no reason that should be the case.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Hello, my dear friend, welcome back to another episode of the Curious Neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. If you are new here, welcome. I am a mom of three from Montreal, canada, and I have a PhD in neuroscience and, by the way, I know that I often start my podcast with if you are new here. So I also want to say, if you are not new here and you keep coming back every week, thank you. Thank you for being here. It means a lot to me, but I do always want to try to thank the new people as well.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Now, today we are talking about military families and mental health. This is a topic that I've had on my list for a very, very long time. We have six seasons of the podcast and I'm pretty sure that this was on my list by season three because of some emails that I had received and I was just waiting for the right person and the right people to have this conversation with, and I found those people, and that's why I brought on Matt and Leah for today's conversation. Now, if you are not a military family and say, well, this doesn't apply to me, I still encourage you to listen to this episode because I learned a lot from it. This is new for me. I am not familiar with this, although, as we realized by the end of this episode, I am kind of in a military family of some sort. My brother was in the military and my grandfather was in the Navy here in Canada. I didn't experience what that family, being part of that family was, because by the time I was born he was a retired undercover detective and so I hear the stories of what it was like to be part of that family through my mom and my uncle. But my brother was in the reserve here in Canada for two years, so I got to see a little bit about you know kind of the life of that. But we're're going to share everything and I think that it allows us to understand those families a little bit more, because you never know who's in your child's classroom or who you're working with as well, and experiences that they've had if they were in the military before, if they are in the military. So it's good to understand this a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Before I give you a quick bio for our two guests today, I do want to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute as well as the McConnell Foundation, because without these two organizations, this podcast would not be possible. The grant that we get from these organizations do not pay me. I just want to let you know that they pay the people that edit the podcast and take care of everything with the production. So it's important to me that we continue this, because without them, I cannot continue this podcast. So please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast, as well as leave a rating If you only have a quick second.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Leave a rating If you have about a minute, a minute and a half. Perhaps can you leave a review, because that would help. The metrics are what I have to hand into these organizations in order to continue getting some funding. So please take a moment to do that and if you do leave a review, send me a screenshot at info at curiousneuroncom, because I will send you a $10 coupon code for our reflective parent journal. And this journal allows you to reflect on different parts of your life. So, whether it's work-life conflict or the relationship with yourself, or with your partner or with your child, there is a chapter for each one of these categories and I help you think through and reflect these parts to know what can I work on? What boundaries do I need to set, how do I practice perspective taking with my partner or with my child, and so on. The link is in the show notes if you want to have some more information about the Reflective Parent Journal.

Speaker 2: 3:46

All right, so I connected with Matt, who is the CEO and founder of Chimney Trail. Matthew Brown is a commander in the US Navy Reserve, veteran fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and chief executive Officer of Chimney Trail Health. We connected because I had reached out to him on LinkedIn and, in fact, he had reached out to me a couple weeks earlier and I just hadn't gotten to my email, so we reached out to each other at the same time, which is very interesting. His work is fascinating and I wanted to learn more, which is why I wanted to jump on a Zoom with him, and now I just now that I've learned everything about him and the work that he does. I am just fascinated and look up to him very much in terms of the work that he's putting out there, and we connected.

Speaker 2: 4:35

He connected me with Leah Blaine, who is a researcher on his team, and her research is fascinating as well and very important. I'm going to put the link to some of the publications that she has so that you can read into that as well in the show notes. Dr Leah Blaine is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma recovery and the implementation of evidence-based treatments. She serves as a clinical director of the Stephen A Cohen Military Family Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania and, by the way, I will put the link to that clinic in the show notes because I know that it's an important resource for anybody to have, especially, obviously, members in the military. All right, my dear friends, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Matt and Leah and I will see you on the other side and welcome back everyone. As promised, I'm here with Leah and Matt. Welcome to both of you to the Curious Drone Podcast.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Thanks for having us All right. So I shared your bios at the beginning, but I'd love to understand how the two of you came together with Matt with Chimney Trail, to understand a little bit more about how this came about through a mutual friend.

Speaker 3: 5:49

Her name is Anne Kokos and she does research and development for artificial intelligence tech at Netflix, and we were talking about solutions for behavioral health challenges and can we employ technology, or is technology even the right place to be? And I was lamenting to her that I was in real desperate need of someone with like legit clinical chops, somebody that I could like have a real argument with about some of these principles and would be like sturdy enough to push back, and she was like I know, just the girl. And so that's how we, that's how we connected, and so, yeah, I went up to visit Leah in Philadelphia and then the rest is history.

Speaker 1: 6:24

Yeah, and it's been a treat. I don't know that we've had said fight yet, but we've definitely had some enthusiastic conversations. We're both really passionate about prevention and and CBT, so also excited to be here spreading the good word.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Leah, I had a chance to look over your research, obviously, and you do such important work, so thank you for the work that you do and, matt, we're going to have a chance to talk about Chimney Trail at some point through the conversation, but thank you for what you do as well. So, how about we get into this conversation? As I said, I've been talking about this on social media, and April is the month of the military child. Yeah, so I think many of us, including myself, really don't have much of an idea of what the day-to-day life looks like and some of the struggles that they have when it comes to military families, and then we will get into that of children. So would you be able to describe this sort of you know, different lifestyle that we are not aware of?

Speaker 1: 7:18

Well, I'll tee it up, but I want to hand it to Matt, who has actually lived the lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 7:22

I'm a civilian, I've been working with veterans and service members for a long time, but I think it's really important context. I really appreciated you bringing that forward and saying like I don't know, because most people don't right. So if we think about the proportion of people who serve less than in the States, less than 1% of the population serves in the US military. Less than 10% have served. So actually we are at a unique historical time where people are actually very disconnected directly from service. And so I think you know, as a civilian myself and you know I work with a, really with a lot of folks in the community who have served or just have a passion of serving those who served we feel like it's really our duty to understand what our service members go through and what our you know veterans and families may have experienced, because that does help to bridge that kind of gap right and make sure that we're really rallying and supporting. But, matt, having lived the life, I'm going to kick the day-to-day back to your way.

Speaker 3: 8:18

Right, cindy, I know that a lot of your listeners are Canadian, and so I've worked with so many Canadian military families uh just through my service in the U S armed forces, and I can speak uh relatively confidently that what I'm going to share is is consistent, no matter where you're from Uh. So with the with military families, I think um. So, first of all, they're not victims. Most of the folks that are in service are are there voluntarily and they're doing it out of a place of real altruism and patriotism and a desire to give back and do something good and, for better or for worse, the children that are associated with those families are along for the ride. You know they get to see mom or dad doing something to give back, and I think that that inspires them in ways.

Speaker 3: 9:07

But then also some of the things that we take for granted, like having a library card that you go and use at the same library, or knowing like the local grocery store, or like memorizing the home phone number, like these things you move so often that it is like each one of those is like a micro trauma on the kids that are in those families.

Speaker 3: 9:31

The good news is that this is all very well documented and people like Leah and her organization have researched it thoroughly. So there's a lot of risk mitigation that goes into play. And the other thing that's really nice is that the sense of community is way more like tangible, or like you can feel it in a way that you can't in other places because you fall into these different environments. Whether it's a remote base in Minot, north Dakota, or like a country that you're forward deployed, so you live in Japan or Spain or something like that, you really quickly identify with the folks that you're forward deployed, so you live in Japan or Spain or something like that. You really quickly identify with the folks that you're there with and you have a kindred ship that you might not experience elsewhere. So it's not all a bad news story Microtraumas, to be sure, but not all a bad news story.

Speaker 2: 10:18

I get that. I don't think I've ever shared this part. I've spoken about my grandfather quite a bit on this podcast. He was an undercover Nakata detective but before that many people don't know that he was in the Navy. And my mom talks about growing up where she wouldn't really recognize her father and she was. You know this was happening. He was in the Navy before she was born.

Speaker 2: 10:39

My grandmother would, you know, have a lot of difficulties because she was traveling and moving around a lot and not knowing anybody and away from family. So I think you know this is part of that experience that I partly understand, just because of my mom's stories. But I can't imagine that kind of stress. You know that is. I talk about stress, you know, in childhood and early childhood and how it does have an impact. There are different levels of stress, right, but just being away from that parent or not knowing you know if they're okay, or in those days they didn't have communication with them, so that was a very different story as well. But can we speak to maybe some families that you've spoken with, matt, your experiences with research? What are we seeing in terms of the different kinds of stresses that kids can experience?

Speaker 1: 11:24

One of the things that Matt and I have talked about on this topic is, you know, there is exposure to different kinds of stress. Everybody experiences stress in life, right, like that's not necessarily bad or unique. But this idea that you know what's that kind of right balance of then being able to hopefully cope ahead, build up those protective factors. And then also, how does that stress translate to resilience? Because we really do see both in military kiddos, right, we see that if we kind of can create that stability right that you have, even if mom or dad you know you spoke to those periods of prolonged separation, right Whether that's deployment to an active war zone or just separation, it's still a stress on kids.

Speaker 1: 12:06

Obviously there's another layer of stress if we're also worried about mom and dad being in, you know, an active theater and possibly being harmed or impacted. So there's this you know you said that layering effect. But we know, with kids, right, it takes one solid and supportive caregiver, right, it takes that emotional health and wellness beacon, it takes that person who takes care of you, you know you can go to. And so that's where we really do see that both and right If that person, if that beacon or that anchor is stressed if they're not coping well or doing well. That's where we really see an amplifying effect amongst kiddos, where you know their other parent, providing that it is a two-parent household.

Speaker 1: 12:45

We know that military members are actually almost in the States anyway are almost twice as likely to be divorced as civilians, but so we do. We see this kind of stress and fractures, but when it works right, when that resilience really shows up, when the family is feeling proud of their service together, when you know they're on board with the purpose, when that community shows up, it actually can breed that resilience in kids. And so that's where I think you know Matt was speaking to really identifying some of those risk factors and trying to sure up for folks where there are stressors and those protective factors are not intact.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Right, and with regards to the movement like moving around, I think that's another thing we might not be aware of. Why do we hear about them moving around so much? Why is there so much movement in the military?

Speaker 3: 13:30

So this is an ongoing debate, but there is a the movement sort of like the legacy rationale for moving military families. So much is that, like, every military service member is a potential senior enlisted leader or admiral or general one day, and in order to effectively lead the organization at scale, you really do need to have a bit of experience in each of these different arenas, like whether it's different fleet concentration areas, so that you can understand the unique challenges that they have or different posts and sort of the challenges that they have. So there is like a institutional literacy element that sort of drives us in these directions. The other thing is just that it's super high tempo and high stress and some people just can't like you just can't show up to these remote military installations and stay there indefinitely because it just wouldn't be sustainable, particularly in an all-volunteer force where you have to factor in families.

Speaker 3: 14:31

You know, one of the things that I was thinking about, as leah was talking just a minute ago, is the community effect that these remote installations have. One of the things that's sort of chipping away at that is, uh, and like our relationships with our mobile devices and access to social media, uh, because it used to be that you would be a part of this tight knit community and that would be your world for a little while and you would grow and move and then you move on to the next thing. But now it's like you can sort of stew or ruminate on what you don't have, because you're constantly seeing this feed from other places or friends and that sort of thing. So yeah, so there's some unique challenges to this generation that may be unlike others.

Speaker 2: 15:13

I get that. I think social media is adding challenges to many different communities and whether it's teenagers or even parents and civilians ourselves, just comparing ourselves to the other that you know doesn't have the same life as us, so it's really adding a lot of layers to the challenges we're seeing. With mental health, for sure, but, like Leah said before, we have to think about that caregiver and that person that is taking care of that child, because if they are experiencing some difficulties and some stress, it does trickle down to that child. What are we seeing? Again, I always want to know about the research or with stories that people you've met, or yourself too, matt, but when it comes to having a partner and being a service member, there's stress. Just that without the kids, just itself. Is there stress there? Maybe to help us understand as well, deployment? How often does that happen and is there a sort of preparation before that, with or without kids?

Speaker 3: 16:15

Well, so Leah. Leah is uniquely positioned because she gets to see, like, after all, the dust settles, like she has to put the pieces back together again. So I'm always really curious to hear Leah's settles, like she has to put the pieces back together again. So I'm always really curious to hear Leah's uh like percept, like perspective on these things. But so, from a from a military deployment standpoint, uh, the last 20 years have been very much forward deployed for both, uh, us and Canadian militaries. We've just been con like the op tempo has been extreme.

Speaker 3: 16:40

Uh, you can only, I mean, just turn on the news and you see there's like a conflict du jour and it's been very challenging for military families. There is a ton of support. We can't like gloss over the fact that, uh, things like the Cohen Veteran Clinic or Jimmy Trail Health or the actual stuff that's a part of the government organization, like there's so much resource. Uh, the challenge is that family dynamics are there are as many types of families as there are families and so we have been really putting an emphasis on quality of life initiatives in the US Department of Defense. I know Canada has been doing this for some time but like spousal employment, so the military moves you around so much.

Speaker 3: 17:24

But you know moms and dads want to work.

Speaker 3: 17:26

You know it's like a part of you know asserting some independence and having like self-actualization in their own right, being able to get out in the workplace and contribute. So there's a lot of effort to make sure that spouses can gain like legitimate employment, not just a job but like a career, can gain like legitimate employment, not just a job but like a career, and I think that that it's already helping but it will continue to help with the relationship with the person who's actually on the home front and their child. There's also a lot of stuff about like food security, making sure that families are like properly fed, because in the junior ranks of both US and Canadian militaries it's not a ton of money, so making that easier. Child development centers are being plussed up to make that a little bit easier, and it's all necessary because these deployments for the last 20 years have been six months on, a couple of years off. Six months on a couple of years off, so I mean in my time off, so I mean in my time in like 13 years of service.

Speaker 1: 18:31

I deployed about nine times, so you definitely stay hustling, yeah, yeah. And so and Matt shared, you know, at the Cohen Clinic here at Penn we do serve the entire military family and so it's been a really. We've really seen a lot of the gaps, where they exist, and it's different, right, so we were able to work with folks during service, during transition and after service, so we see folks throughout that deployment cycle as well and it really shifts. I think what Matt was speaking to, I think the thing that comes top of mind for me is actually with our guard and reserves versus our active duty folks, and so I think when Matt was speaking to that location and being able to have the supports of, hey, we've got, you know, 24-7 childcare right on base, right, well, if you're not on base, you don't. So I think that's where things get really tricky when we see and in the States I'm actually not sure the portion is in Canada, but over a third of service members are Guard or National Reservists, so they're in that reserve component and they have deployed as much as active duty forces in the past 20 years, which is unheard of. And so where we see the stress rippling out on families, our Guard and Reservists typically, and Guard in particular, tend to have poorer outcomes individually and at that family level. So I think that really does speak to what we know about, as Matt said, those protective factors and kind of where those ripples start happening.

Speaker 1: 19:51

But it really does come back to that person on the home front, right, because, as Matt said, if that's somebody's forward deployed, well, whether they're in a war zone or whether they're just stationed overseas, you're still holding it down. If you're home, right, and you're holding it down as a solo parent potentially trying to, you know, run a career, do these things. So it really is, it's just a lot right. And I think the, I think DOD has been really recognizing that and trying to step up into those spaces. And then, of course, you know, making those kinds of safety net supports available as well as well. Right, we want to catch it upstream, we want to prevent those sorts of issues. But the you know that secondary prevention idea, once some, once issues start kind of coming out, really targeting and making sure there's easy access to care and things like that Um, and I know, you know obviously you try care expansion and things like that Um, it's, it's trying to's trying to fill in those gaps and get care to people earlier and make it easier.

Speaker 2: 20:47

I do want to understand that sort of deployment cycle and some of the prevention that we're seeing, whether it's in research or being applied by organizations. But first I just want to ask, in case some people don't know, what that is. When you say Guard and Reserve versus the military, is that the same? Is it different? What are the differences?

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yeah, so national, guard and reserve. So there's an active duty component and a reserve component. For the US military. Some branches have guards, some branches have reserves, some branches have both. But essentially the way it breaks down is your active duty, that's their full-time job, right, whereas your guard and reservists there's that jokey weekend warrior kind of adage. So the idea is you drill for one weekend a month and two weeks in, usually in the summer, and so the challenge for those folks is they have to be civilian ready and military ready at all times, right. So if you have your drill weekend, you've still got to pass PT, you've still got to you know qualify for, you know whatever, you know whatever fitness and things for your specific, you know MOS or job duties that you have to, and then you have to go home and still be functioning on your civilian side as well as does the family. So it really is just. It requires a lot of flexibility and facility for the service member as well as their family, for the service member as well as their family.

Speaker 2: 22:00

But then both, whether you are in the Guard and Reserve or the full, you can still be deployed similarly with the same amount of time.

Speaker 3: 22:11

Yeah, it's been like that, particularly for the last 15 years or so, as a way of preventing this concept called stopgap, which is that there were so many people who were deploying so often in the active component that we needed to essentially neck down on the number of people who were allowed to get out. So the Guard and Reserve deployment increase has made it so that it's more sustainable to maintain an all-volunteer force for military.

Speaker 2: 22:38

I understand. Okay, thank you. I have to make sure because I do know that most of us don't know that language. My brother was in the reserve for a few years, so I understand that aspect as well. But I love that term you used Leah. I mean at the weekend, it's okay.

Speaker 1: 22:53

It gets mixed reactions but a lot of people know that term.

Speaker 2: 22:56

I love it. I don't know if we have it here in Canada. I'm going to ask him.

Speaker 2: 23:01

We do Okay, good to know, then he'll get mad at me and that's fine, he'll laugh. I want to touch now. I know we were talking about the kids and we're going to flip flop a little bit because we want to understand the family and then the children. What are some of the goals this month when it comes to understanding, um, or the month of the military child, what? What are some of the goals for this month? Is it awareness? Is it, you know? Is it focusing on mental health and just understand that a little bit more?

Speaker 1: 23:28

Yeah. So I mean, as you know it really is. As you said, it is that awareness right this is. You know we say a lot that the whole family serves alongside, right. And Matt said you know kids are along for the rides Sometimes you know spouses have consented but they're along for the ride in some ways, right, just because you say sure, it doesn't mean you know what it's really going to feel like when you're like three kids in tow and you're living in the middle of nowhere and you're like, oh great. So I think that it really is just that idea that we have. I think it's like 1.7 million kiddos who are children of active duty and reserves in the States. So you know it's a small but mighty force.

Speaker 1: 24:06

And I think that, again, that idea of just as we as adults, you know, might feel disconnected from our military or civilian counterparts, whichever way it slices for kiddos that's the same right. And so just having an understanding of you know if you're going to a DOD school, what's that look like. You know if you're moving every two years cause your dad or mom is PCSing right, permanent change of station. You know there's a PCS season, right. And if you're in the community, you know what that is. If you're not, you don't, right.

Speaker 1: 24:33

And so you know, taking it beyond that like army brat or military kiddo into like what's that look like for them, right, and I think you know, as civilian parents as well, or veteran parents, that idea that you know, if you have male kids in your kids class, you know class Right, just saying like hey, like you know you could pen pal with them, right, that's, that's another beautiful resilient factor within our military community. You know, yeah, folks move but they keep in great touch, right, and when they come back and they come through town they have great stories. So I think, for grownups and for kiddos alike, finding ways to still kind of stay engaged and be supports and not being intimidated by what we don't know, just kind of like respecting it, and then asking those questions like hey, where have you lived before? And like what's up, and like do you like it here? You know kids do that 10, I think, typically more easily than grownups actually Right?

Speaker 2: 25:29

Yeah Well, the whole point of calling Curious Neuron is because we truly are born curious and with age sometimes we tend to that curiosity diminishes. But it's so important to just ask those questions and I love that you said that because, whether it's a child who's autistic or a child who is a military child, just understanding their life and how it's similar or different than yours, I think, is really a good place to start with that.

Speaker 3: 25:49

I think my goal for month of the military child is to get us to replace the flower. Somebody thought that it was great to have the flower, the official flower of the month be the dandelion because, like military, kids will just like bloom wherever they go. But I'm just like this is a weed we got to, we got to get a different, we got to get a different flower. So, cindy, maybe your podcast could be like the official launch of our search for another flower to you know to like be the emblematic for this amazing group of like so, sturdy, and

Speaker 2: 26:19

remarkable a child so anyway, yeah, so are we emailing you directly my suggestion? Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 3: 26:26

Yeah, matthew, at Chimney Trail. So, like horticulturalist, botanist, whoever you are like, come up with something that can grow on Mars but is also beautiful.

Speaker 2: 26:35

Right? Well, you know that's been coming up quite often, that resilient piece, and let's focus on that for a little bit, because, as you know, civilian parents, will you know, write to me and say how do I make sure my child is resilient? And I've had this discussion with both, with both moms and dads. Once a father was telling me you know, my child needs to be bullied so that they can be resilient, and I just need them to experience that. So that that was an interesting conversation.

Speaker 2: 26:59

However, I do want to say, with everything you've been describing and the life that you've described, resilience does come to mind, because you have to keep re-adapting to your environment, to the new people. But, on the other hand, it can go both ways right, Like a child might struggle with changing that environment or struggle with that stress, whereas another child might build that resilience of okay, I is this, I've done this before. You know, I was worried when one of my parents left and now I get it, I can speak to whatever it is. You know like, I think that there are both. It can go in both directions, but that resilient, that resilience piece is really important.

Speaker 3: 27:35

So when Jen and I just from a very personal, like this anecdotal, but as we were researching, like military lifestyle, um, we were worried about moving with our children because there is a ton of data that show we are uh like imposing upon them a mildly traumatic event and there was a lot of negatives that go along with it, Like their ability, like outcomes, such as you know, difficulty, uh difficulty, maintaining their conventional pace in school, like academic challenges that they might, social, emotional challenges, all these things Behavioral.

Speaker 2: 28:09

I was reading some papers on that, yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:11

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:12

So there's a ton of stuff about this, but what I discovered is that most of it is about if you have one or two big moves in your life, so it's almost like you've allowed the child to get to a point where they feel some sense of like true stability, like their, their whole world is in bedrock almost, and then you uplift them from that, but I think, with a little bit of distance from the problem and seeing.

Speaker 3: 28:36

You know my friends who are still on active service and they have families of their own uh, if you do it like regularly enough, then the child develops like a core competency for being able to like adapt in these environments, and so that resilience does kick in. I think that we would do very well to teach it to like give kids the tools that they need in order to process these challenges that they're facing in a more healthy way, and then and then just and then just admire their ability to thrive in each of these new environments, Because I think if you build up the skillset, then those traumatic outcomes that we originally were worried about may might not be so much of a risk factor after all.

Speaker 2: 29:15

Right, thank you for mentioning that. What about how the parents approach it as well? Right, because I'm assuming there's some sort of support and conversations that you have with the, with your kids, as you're having these transitions and these moves.

Speaker 1: 29:28

And I would say that really I think it's so heartening. The best predictor of how kids do with any mental health, emotional health challenge or just life challenge is actually how the parents do, not just how the parents do, but how they do it right. So if parents have gone to therapy, kids are more likely to go to therapy, right. So these skills are both taught and modeled. So if parents have that skill set to be flexible, to be adaptable, right. So if you think about oh my God, we have to move, versus hey guys, dad or mom got this really exciting opportunity, or do you guys know how important it is? Do you know what we're doing as a family, how we're supporting our country? Like isn't this amazing? Like get them involved with the why, Right, and so you can, you can kind of make those shifts and and just approach it adaptably Like no nonsense. Yes, this is going to happen, there are going to be sad parts and and supporting them in that. But it really is a skill set, right, that a parent can teach. Show that within a school system, right. Especially, we know male kids are going to be moving more right. These are skills that they can bring on board, that cognitive flexibility, that kind of adaptability. There's ways that we can kind of think about that ability to self-soothe and to be compassionate with oneself if you are upset about pieces of it, and so that's really where you know this is, as Matt said, it's teachable, right, and then the multiple moves just makes it repetition right, that then you just get to kind of hit go.

Speaker 1: 30:53

I think the interesting part that both of you highlighted is this is not an all or none right. This is not like mill kids are good at this or mill fams are good at this. So looking and having those you know, having that ability to screen, everybody could do well with a preventative dose of tools right, to help figure out, hey, what you know, what are the skillsets, what are the things that I need? Right, and so making sure that folks have that out of the gates. We're doing a lot more teaching in schools, for example, around mindfulness or around kind of paying attention to what we're thinking or what. What are our emotions, how do we label them before they turn into actions that we might not really feel great about, and so teaching those same skills to parents, you know, ideally like ahead of major stressors, so parents can reinforce that at home.

Speaker 1: 31:34

I think we're getting a lot more facile with this as a culture. And then having those kind of higher level of interventions right, having, you know, therapy or whatever form of support it might be to be able to be kind of reserved for the folks who like at it. That kind of preventative level might hit, you know, 75, 80% of folks. But then there might be other folks for various reasons where that's not quite enough. Maybe it's a military family member who's also caregiving for a kiddo with autism and they have an upcoming move right. They might need some more support to wrap around. So it is really a complex situation but it does feel like the skills are building as we go.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Well, that's the word I'm picking up from what you're saying right, the skill set. These are skills that we want our children to develop, and I think that's key here, because even just thinking about what causes us to feel stressed, it's when we've lost control or something, or there's uncertainty, right for something. And when I talk to parents, I talk about like there's something we have control over. We might not have control, but there's an in-between, there's the influence piece, and I think that when we see that, we realize we might not have control over something. But, taking that same situation, what can we influence? So understanding that we can try to make some friends in a new area, or I do have control over you know, speaking to the kids in the classroom or talking to my teacher, if I am having a thought or a worry about something I can influence, you know how I'm feeling that moment. I think that helps kids, regardless of being in a military family or not. I think it's an important skill.

Speaker 3: 33:15

It's really important in the military community because the parents are very likely, over the course of their career, going to do dangerous stuff, and so it, like building this reserve of like self-reliance and self-soothing, as Leah was pointing out, and just ability to process really like things that you would consider unconventional, I think is, you know, very important, particularly for that community, but not just them. It could also be for first responder families or any anywhere where you're not sure, like, what mom and dad are up to. There's some self-efficacy type stuff that needs to come into play.

Speaker 2: 33:52

Yeah, definitely. You know, Leah, you touched on prevention. I just want to touch on that a little bit because I'm curious to know whether it's in the States or we don't have to be specific about the country, but what is there out there that exists in order to support these families with what they're going through? And you mentioned being on the base of the reserve versus not. I'm assuming there are different types of support depending on where you are. Is there enough support? Are we needing more of this to support them?

Speaker 1: 34:22

This is. I think this is a um, a monster question and I think you could, you could really put it to like all of the behavioral healthcare field right now.

Speaker 1: 34:30

Right, I think we keep hearing like we need more and more, um, and I, you know, my kind of call and response is like we actually need better, better, better. Um, I don't. I just, you know, personally, my um, you know, when I look at like just the, the economics and the scale of the issues that we're facing, um, we're not going to be able to provide enough behavioral healthcare for all of the concerns that people are having in the world. And the fact that people are more likely to, you know, stigma is decreasing, people are more likely to reach out, those things are amazing things. But how do we kind of thoughtfully respond to the call, right? And so I think that's where, for my, you know, my heart and all of my, you know, research and kind of passion in this area keeps going back to.

Speaker 1: 35:10

We have to go further upstream, right, we have to really look at how are we supporting people to have those skills on board and to be able to kind of use lower level interventions as early as possible?

Speaker 1: 35:23

And then, you know, in healthcare for a long time there's been something called like the stepped care model, right, so, like, you go to your primary care provider, you screen a little bit high on a depression or anxiety, say, how do we then you know, get you some supports, whether that's, you know, four half hour sessions in your primary care office versus having to go to a specialist for 12 to 16 weeks and start medications. Right, that might be needed for some people, but for most people a small dose of something is going to be good enough. Right, that's going to be sufficient. That's going to help them get to their goals. And actually for most of those people, if they had gotten that training in school or through another mechanism right, if they had had those skills in the first place, they might even have not needed that much intervention. So I think we really have to kind of respond to that, just demand that we're seeing in a different way. Sorry, that was a Leah Blaine soapbox. That wasn't exactly the answer to your question.

Speaker 2: 36:18

No, no, I want to stick to that actually, because you know that's part of the work that I do and something we've had. You know a topic. We've had a conversation together, matt and I, where this preventative piece. I focus on parents, because I just feel that we end up, you know, having our first child and then we realize that it's not about their tantrum, their emotions, it's about ours. So I just feel that if we had not the training but certain skills, or if somebody would have told us to just like take care of ourselves first, then those big emotions when they happen for the first time, might be a little bit easier for us. So I think that preventative piece is truly important.

Speaker 2: 36:57

I think this is a good time to bring in Chimney Trail, matt, if you're okay with that and how you started that, because when I think of that preventative piece and having those conversations and having the right tools and services and skills, I think of you, matt. So how did it come about and what you know? Maybe give us a bit more of details about what it is.

Speaker 3: 37:13

Sure, so it came about. So I always joke that for your listeners. I did not grow up wanting to be the CEO of a behavioral healthcare company. When I, when I grew up, you know that's not what kids you know baseball players, baseball players, race car drivers, astronaut Um anyway, so I got into this because, um, I did get to do my, my childhood dream.

Speaker 3: 37:34

I got to be a Naval officer and I was the captain of one of our ships in San Diego and it was everything I dreamed. It would be incredible experience. And I rotated, as all captains eventually do, off of that job and I went to work for the Navy SEAL teams. And I was in that job for about nine months and I got a phone call from my previous ship and it turns out that our best young officer, a kid that we thought was on a rocket ship, to success, he had purchased a firearm and he took his own life. And I was just like, completely shocked, because this is the type of kid that I say kid. He was like 22, maybe like not very old.

Speaker 3: 38:12

Uh, and if you would have come on the ship and said, hey, captain, point me in the direction of somebody who needs behavioral health intervention, I would have grabbed him and asked me to ask him to help me. Think of somebody. It would not have been who I thought actually needed it. Uh, and so at the at the time that I was doing some innovation work for the SEAL teams, and they said, hey, you're already out, you're already talking to people about different operational things. Why don't you just investigate this and figure out, like, how we can solve suicide as a problem in our armed forces? And I happily jumped at the opportunity and so I get to talk to all these wonderful psychiatrists and psychologists who were studying it, were treating it, and they all came back I think to like yours and Leah's point. They all came back and they said we have to get left of this problem, we have to go upstream. And many of them came back and said if I had a magic wand and I could just tap everybody on the head and teach them CBT, you know that would be such a game changer because, to Leah's point, you might not need it if you have the skills sort of, if you're educated in these skill sets before you establish the rumination patterns that would lead you to a destructive state of anxiety and depression.

Speaker 3: 39:24

So with that knowledge, we just said how, what is the best way to get this information in people's hands? Because we know that they're not going to crack open cognitive behavior theory by Judith Beck or something written by her dad or Feeling Good by David Burns. They're not going to spend time reading those, and so we came up with like HelloFresh and Stitch Fix delivers food and clothes to your doorstep in a little box. We deliver a little outdoor activity that you can do by yourself If you're in a really like a bad depressive funk. It's like got easy to do it with your family and friends and it teaches you about the cognitive distortions that lead to destructive anxiety, depression. Why you have them to begin with, like sort of it calls into question your assumed rationality and then it gives you strategies for how to overcome those things and it's a we call them waypoint set.

Speaker 2: 40:24

It's five boxes and each of them addresses to the 10 most common cognitive distortions such a brilliant idea and I love the work that you you are doing with chimney trail. Um, I know that somebody listening to this is saying is this available to everyone? Is this just for the military? How does, how do I get this? Um, but right now it's it's I miss. I from what I remember, it's not available to everyone, right?

Speaker 3: 40:46

so it is. It is, it is available to everybody with a catch Um. So, right now, like our, our company is uh, yeah, I mean, it's been around for a while We've been at it for six years but a lot of it was research and development and product market fit and all the business-y stuff that has to happen to make like a real thing, uh. So we're a real thing, um, but in order to get it, you have to uh go through your employer. So, um, if you're in the armed forces, that's easy. Uh, even with Canada, we have like a foreign military sales channels that we can explore.

Speaker 3: 41:18

Uh, within the department of defense, we have uh like active contracts um that that we uh that we're in the middle of uh fulfilling. Um, but we also but we also have contracts with like fortune 100 level companies. So it doesn't matter like your scale, we can come in to whoever your employer happens to be, and the good news is that you don't have to pay for it yourself. You could just ask your employer to include it as a part of your wellness benefit, and it's relatively inexpensive when you consider everything that you're getting. And and so, yeah, we're available to everybody. You just have to go through HR.

Speaker 2: 41:51

So go to HR please. I will have the link in my show notes. It's definitely worth it. Thank you for sharing that. And then I think we can kind of segue into that the reason why it exists. Right, you mentioned the why behind it and the person. How common is this? I do want to shed light on that because maybe, again, people listening are not aware of that.

Speaker 3: 42:13

Shockingly common. So more than 45,000 US service members and veterans have taken their life or died by suicide is a proper way of phrasing that. They've died by suicide since 2001. And to put that in context, that's the equivalent of an entire army corps. So if there was an enemy out there that was killing a corps of your service members, you would be moving heaven and earth to combat that enemy. And so I sort of get myself in trouble a little bit, because I'm a you know, a naval officer by trade. So I'm very like, offensively minded when it comes to combating enemies. So my language around this topic is quite aggressive. But I think that we need to attack it and we need to, like root out the problem, get left of the problem, find its source, kill it and then make everybody happy.

Speaker 2: 43:07

So it's huge kill it and then make everybody happy, but it's huge. I get it, you know. But I have the same conversation with parents because dads often struggle to ask for help. I've looked at postpartum depression and anxiety in parents. I've worked with a researcher here in Montreal and still am Deborah DaCosta, and dads struggle to say I'm not well, because they feel that they should be well. They're not the ones who carry the child, they're not the ones who gave birth.

Speaker 1: 43:33

so you know, that mental health piece across the board, whether it's parents or dads in particular, and men, is something that we need to be talking a lot more about, I think in in general yeah, and I would only add to that, just with the gender dynamic piece, the thing that is always it really stands out to me in any time I have the opportunity to talk about it is. So just to circle back for one second to what Matt said. He said, you know, he gave kind of a military quantification. I will give a civilian quantification. We have lost four times as many veterans and service members to suicide than to combat in the last 20 years, which is abhorrent. I think we can all. I mean like there's no, there's no, there's no reason that should be the case and we we can start. We have started digging in on the risk. People Matt and I were chatting about this just yesterday People often think oh, it's combat, it's really not, actually the there, it's cuts across.

Speaker 1: 44:27

Whether you've deployed ever, never. People are more likely to die by suicide in their first year outside after transitioning out of the military. We think that's that loss of camaraderie and purpose. But there is risk throughout and everywhere, and actually so. Us military members and veterans are 1.5 times more likely to die by suicide than their civilian counterparts. For female veterans and service members, that is 2.2 times as likely. They're vastly higher risk than their civilian counterparts, and the one clear mechanism that has been indicated is comfort and often access to firearms, and so for any.

Speaker 1: 45:06

You know, I think we need to, we need to translate that out right the lethality of the means.

Speaker 1: 45:10

If you know someone at risk, if you feel like you're at risk, even if it's just hey, I'm not doing well and I'm not feeling confident right now, making sure that folks are not having access to something that can give a very permanent solution to what is hopefully quite a temporary problem.

Speaker 1: 45:25

So you know the proliferation of things like gun locks and things like that, and you know for us, you know folks who might be civilian side, who might be kind of in lefty cities, right, maybe that's not as common, but we know that. What you know, I'm sure you have listeners all over and you know much like in the great state of Pennsylvania where I'm sitting there. You know folks are out, folks are hunting, folks are doing their things and so thinking about those easy access ways to prevent, right, so just like having that mental toolkit of hey, how do I catch when that thought is really leading me down a rabbit hole, where, where's that gun lock, right, not only for my own safety if I'm in a tight spot, but also just for kiddos, right, and I realized this looks very different north of that US border.

Speaker 1: 46:07

But, yeah, pretty different, but again it's that same preventative mentality. Right, we don't have to take people in our case, we don't have to take weapons away necessarily to make sure that they're secured and safe, and it increases safety throughout the family unit.

Speaker 2: 46:21

Thank you for adding that. I do think it's important for us to touch on that. Like you said, it is different for us here in Canada, but it's still an issue and there are still lots of listeners that are in the States, so it's definitely something that we need to say as well. So when you touched on the risk and we're going to have to end this conversation, unfortunately I'm really enjoying this. I wish I could keep learning more from the both of you. You mentioned the risk factors. Besides the firearms. You said that they're not always deployed. It's not always. We hear often about like PTSD after somebody was deployed or I had studied concussions for about two years in military families that come back and just the impact sometimes nothing straight on the head, but there was a lot of concussions. I was studying that with them for a little while. But you hear about the mental health issues, but now you said that it's not only when they're being deployed. Do we know the other risk factors? What is happening that is leading to these mental health struggles?

Speaker 3: 47:23

Leah's got such great perspective because she sees so many different types of families, whereas I have sort of like a very specific experience. But I'll just give you an example when you join the service, you're joining the service, uh, and you have aspirations of being top gun Maverick slash, charlie's Sheen and a Navy seal movie or whatever. The most glamorous job is but the. But the department of defense, uh, and militaries in general are behemoth. They have so many different types of jobs and there can very often be a mismatch between what you end up doing and what you envisioned your reality would be.

Speaker 3: 48:00

So there's this huge you know, delta, that you have to figure out how to overcome, and I think that if you go into harm's way and you get blown up by an improvised explosive device and you have TBI, then you can like immediately address that. You're like wow, that was an injury. I have brain trauma. I need to get that fixed because I'm going to have a lot of consequences if I don't start getting looked at right away.

Speaker 3: 48:25

Instead, you are not necessarily in a combat environment, but you're nevertheless a very high op tempo. You have very long hours and, in replacement for basic things like sleep, good nutrition and exercise, you're doing things like eating fast food, drinking monster energy drinks, relying on nicotine, failing to get good rest and exercise, and you're giving yourself like a post, like a self-imposed traumatic brain injury, by consuming all of this trash and expecting your body to be able to function properly and it just can't. And so you end up like on these caffeine induced anxiety. You know, journeys that you have to like right the ship. You have to, you know, eliminate those sources of anxiety and depression from your life in the form of these like chemical additives. And that's hard because the job is hard and it's labor intensive and, for better or for worse, leaders are mission oriented and a lot of times like your rest, and you know it takes an enlightened military leader to understand that like it's better to invest in the person if you want, like positive mission outcomes.

Speaker 3: 49:31

But anyway, that's my soapbox too.

Speaker 2: 49:33

You know, I have this image. Like you said, you, you painted a picture of, like the, not on the other side, but as a leader, somebody in the army. You know my brother and I would talk about this and you know they, they weren't always very kind and and he, he said this was part of it and he said he had so much respect for everybody that was there with him and all the leaders as well. But when once I became a parent and started looking at the science of parenting, I was telling him, like authoritarian parenting, we need to move away from that. We need to move away from, you know, or move towards the boundaries, of course, but also mixing in the sensitivity towards emotions and needs. And he's like absolutely not, this is not the way that I work.

Speaker 2: 50:10

He's an RCMP officer now. So he's like this is just like, this is bananas, you don't talk about this stuff. Like, this is how I'm going to raise my child. So we often have really enjoyable conversations that we're on the opposite sides. Is there room for change? Is there? You know, when I think about the way you know, I, I, I again like is there, can there, is there space for those emotional needs, or is it just not the way that it was designed?

Speaker 3: 50:38

No, there's space.

Speaker 2: 50:39

There is. Okay, that's what I was. Yes.

Speaker 3: 50:41

There is, there's, it's, it's not only there is space, like investing in the individual is a guarantor of operational excellence.

Speaker 3: 50:51

Right Like Lord Horatio Nelson, like back in the old days of the British Navy was like beating up on all these other warships and they couldn't figure out why and it turns out that they just fired more cannonballs than the other people. And then when they dug into why did they fire so many more cannonballs than everybody else, it was because he was like one of the only people that treated his crew with any sort of dignity, Whereas everybody else it was like forceful conscription and like putting them in shackles and lashing them and just treating them like hell. There is definitely a place for more authoritarian leadership when it comes to safety and combat operations and making sure that when you have to execute your time on top and you're hitting what you need to hit, but that in the grand scheme of a person's life is so infinitesimally small that it's just silly to live like that. So, Leah, I'm sure maybe you can add something from your clinical experience having to unwind all of us crazy vets. You know, after I get finished with this.

Speaker 1: 51:54

I only know amazing dedicated, service oriented folks who constantly put others before self and then come to me when they're like uh, I just probably should have come here 10 years ago. Um, which is the best part of serving this community?

Speaker 3: 52:08

That's very kind of you to say. It's true, it's absolutely true.

Speaker 1: 52:11

But I think that is really. I think Matt said there's room and I'm seeing this in so many ways. You know, I've been working with veterans for, you know, over a decade, but they've served over many decades and so, just hearing what it's like on the outside, you know what their experience has been, what that aftermath has led to it is shifting. Getting the opportunity to train and work with, you know, naval ROTC members who are about to go and take, you know, commands and kind of take up their first posts and really seeing, you know, they're asking, hey, how do we do, you know, emotionally informed leadership? You know what should I be looking out for my folks? So really I think there is just a different generation and a different mindset that has started taking shape. And that's where, you know, I think Matt and I are really hopeful that there is room for more prevention right Now, that it's not this like, oh gosh, you're going to, you know you're going to be sick, you're going to be out, you're going to be not fit right, in fact actually flipping that on its head and looking at, hey, if we give you these tools, you can be more fit right and not using this kind of I call it like the kind of double-edged sword of resilience being said like it's not, like you should be more resilient, as in shame on you if you're not, but in fact, hey, how can we help you be more resilient?

Speaker 1: 53:20

How can we actually use these tools now that we have enough science behind it, to say here's what you probably need. It to say here's what you probably need, given that you're coming in? Military service members face more trauma in childhood than their civilian counterparts, right? So we're coming in out of the gates with more of those stressors, and so how do we just help folks deal better and better? So, yeah, we really appreciate the conversation because I think that that piece is. There's a hope there, right. There's a lot of room, and what's good for the service member in turn ends up really good for the family.

Speaker 2: 53:50

I know that when it comes to mental health, a lot of us struggle with either the insight to our mental health or even being open and honest. I spoke about dads before. I'm assuming it's similar in the military. Is everybody willing or open to sharing what they're going through or reaching out for services or help?

Speaker 3: 54:08

through or reaching out for services or help. The answer to that is, historically, no. So there's a great book called City on Mars and there's a chapter in the book that's called Astronauts Lie. And the reason that there is this chapter is because when astronauts are trying to qualify for NASA, they want their medical record to be as crystal clear as it can possibly like and spotless, just like no sort of any history of anything, because they don't want to jeopardize their professional prospects and I think a lot of folks when they are pursuing a military career, it's a very purpose forward sort of profession, so they want their record to be spotless, want their record to be spotless and they think incorrectly, by the way, but they think that it will jeopardize everything about their future trajectory in the armed forces.

Speaker 3: 54:56

And it used to be that if you wanted to deploy overseas to a really cool place like Spain or Japan, you had to be overseas suitability screened and a part of that screening was making sure that you had no psychiatric intervention that might require treatment that they didn't have available in those locations. But Leah's talked at length about, like the advent of telehealth and making things more accessible, and now that's not the case, so far better to get the treatment that you need, get the interventions that you need and worry about your security clearance and worry about your next duty station, like after the problem is solved. Because it does two things One, it makes you a better warfighter, but two, it makes it so that your superiors the people making the decisions about your future, can see a level of maturity in your decision making and can and can consider that when it comes to putting you in leadership positions.

Speaker 2: 55:52

You know, what's interesting is just from what you just said just because everything is okay now doesn't mean that everything will be okay while you're deployed in these remote areas. And then what Then? What happens then? It's not a weakness or something that you had control over, possibly right.

Speaker 1: 56:05

So that's difficult, yeah we're asked all the time to attest to fitness for duty, right, fitness to deploy, right, and as a, as a psychologist you know I'm not a, I'm not a, you know, I'm not clairvoyant, right, I can kind of look at how is somebody doing right now and go, ooh, I think that line on your hand is too long, it's so I think what we say is you know, and the questions will be like you know, periods of prolonged stress or this or that, or you know these kinds of things like, would it be likely to increase, you know, increase symptoms? And it's like, yes, we're all humans, when we add stress and decrease resources and supports, they have more symptoms. But that idea of yes, right, how are we making those supports more accessible? Helping folks prep, but also making the supports more accessible. And that's where, as Matt said, like that telehealth intervention, being able to reach folks even pretty far down range, actually has been really a game changer. So those supports can be available on demand and it doesn't take people out.

Speaker 1: 56:56

And I think that as we create that access and people are seeing that again it's not just access to something we're not doing rent-a-friend, it's therapy that actually works, gets people well, gets people back and moving towards their goals, then command becomes increasingly likely to say, yep, go, take that. You know you need six weeks to go up. You know you're, we're down range. You need six weeks to go up. You know, hit the bob, do the thing, okay, great. And then you're back in. So it's not intimidating, right, you're not losing somebody for, you know, three months, six months, 12 months. So there again, just to that hope of there's a lot of change and hopefully it's it's kind of compounding.

Speaker 2: 57:32

I promise this is the last question. Leo said something and I I'm really curious where is the line between mental resilience and suppressing our emotions? Right, because I think I've sorry, I've had this discussion with people where they believe that they are mentally resilient but there's a lack of insight and a lack of wanting to express their emotions, thinking that that is weakness. Right, we can maybe talk about this for another podcast, but I'm just curious what your your view would be on this. I'm just curious what your view would be on this.

Speaker 1: 58:08

I think it's you know, I think everybody knows, right. I think, like, if you take that time you talked about, like becoming a parent and like wishing that you had had that thing, that like somebody was just like, oh, it's actually your stuff, right, it's the mirror, right, it's the mirror of the experience of going like, oh, I can't hold it together when my kid's screaming in my face and I think it's taking, it's having that catalyst right, having that thing that makes you go ooh, oh, ooh, right. So if I think the tell is different for everybody, right, if you can't get to sleep or stay asleep, if you have to drink to cope. Right, if you are, you know, flipping out road rage, or can't get along with coworkers, can't get along with spouse, right, everybody has a tell that helps you to kind of figure out is this just a period of high stress?

Speaker 1: 58:50

This was a really tough week at work, or, ooh, this has become more days than not that these things are showing up and I think for so many people, especially our service members that focus on the mission, that focus on, you know, their brothers and sisters, who they serve next to uh, pushes them to kind of put themselves into the background and ignore those early warning signs. So again, increasingly, I think, as we can say, hey, you know, this isn't going to knock you out. Right, this isn't going to, it's not. You don't have to choose between your wellness and what you were called to do and to serve. And I think that then allows people to really approach and kind of recognize those like I'm off my game in this way and I can get tuned up quick and get back to it better. Right, that's the, that's the promise of really effective treatments or of preventative, you know, tools in the toolkit.

Speaker 2: 59:35

Thank you both for sharing this with me. I will add chimney trail and any links that you think would help anybody who's listening to get to know and understand this topic a lot more. But also, if there are military families that are listening, perhaps there are resources that we can share with them to support them as well. So thank you both of you, and I really appreciate this conversation Same. It's been great.

Speaker 3: 59:57

So, great.

Speaker 2: 59:58

I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Please take a moment to review the podcast, to subscribe, and send me an email at info at curiousneuroncom. You can also follow us at curious underscore neuron and Instagram at info at curiousneuroncom. You can also follow us at curious underscore neuron and Instagram, or come join the Facebook page Curious Neuron or the private page the Reflective Parent on Facebook as well. You can visit our website, curiousneuroncom for any articles or resources or to purchase the Reflective Parent Journal. I hope you have a beautiful and lovely week. See you next Monday. Bye, Thank you.