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
Season 1 Top 10 | #4 Nurturing Resilience. A Conversation with Lael Stone.
We're continuing summer break with #4 of our Top 10 Season 1 episodes.
Join Kaity and Adriane as we discover how to nurture emotional resilience in children with guest Lael Stone, an expert in emotional intelligence. In this episode, she shares invaluable insights, from staying calm during emergencies to fostering emotional well-being, illustrated through a touching personal story about her daughter's injury. You'll gain practical advice on creating a nurturing environment that helps children thrive both emotionally and mentally.
We also explore the lasting impact of childhood experiences on adult relationships and behavior. Lael emphasizes the importance of emotional awareness and trauma-informed practices in education, detailing how our early imprints shape interactions and stress responses. This conversation sheds light on the necessity for adults to heal their wounds to offer better support to the younger generation. By adopting these practices, we can create compassionate spaces that enable children to grow into emotionally healthy adults.
Lael even shares her journey with trauma and PTSD, underscoring the significance of somatic experiences in the healing process. We also discuss transformative educational practices at the Woodline Primary School, which focuses on emotional well-being and connection.
This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for parents, educators, and anyone interested in fostering resilience and emotional health in both children and themselves.
So what are you waiting for? Join us for this enlightening conversation and start your journey toward a more compassionate and emotionally intelligent future.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Lael Stone is the co-author of Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children. Lael is an educator, TEDx speaker, consultant, and counselor who has been working with families for over 20 years. She is the co-creator of Woodline Primary School, an innovative new school based on emotional well-being and connection. Lael is the co-host of The Aware Parenting Podcast and a sought-after public speaker who talks candidly about her experiences and her great passion for creating wellness in families through connection and communication.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
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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Okay, so this is our spot number four, but for me, this is my number one favorite episode. It has left such an impact and imprint which we talk about imprints during the episode, and so this is a re-release that we're doing with Lael Stone and it's called Nurturing Resilience. A conversation with Lael Stone. Were you familiar with her?
Speaker 2:work before we interviewed her. No, and I'm like shocked that I had not run into it before, because she does so much amazing stuff and her work is so aligned to everything we're doing on Kindled and Apprentice, so I was really surprised I hadn't heard of her before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it could be because she lives in Australia, not in America. But I found her just on a Ted talk and it was about emotional intelligence and was like, yes, and she just has this very gentle spirit about her and she doesn't have very non-shaming, non-blaming. Hey, like wouldn't you want someone to treat you this way, kind of way. And she the story that she tells about her daughter breaking her arm.
Speaker 2:It has been so impactful for me, yes, and I've like many times since this episode, like had kids get hurt and like I've told them that same thing, like I just want you to like listen to your body and do whatever your body wants to do right now, like cry or shake or like whatever that is and I've almost entirely I won't say entirely, because I know I still struggle with this, but I'm really close to not saying like stop crying anymore, which is a big step for me, because crying is very triggering for me. But I'm getting better and lots of it is because of this episode and just learning about how the body like stores stress and trauma.
Speaker 1:So super, super helpful shaking like uncontrollably, the way that she described. We did have to call 911. He was flown to a children's hospital because we were in the middle of nowhere and like three hours away from any trauma hospital. And so this I'm telling you like this episode and the conversation with her impacted that moment so that I could really show up for him. And they weren't going to let me on the helicopter, katie, but the reason why they did, they came back for me because I was so calm and I was able to really tend to my own nervous system, because it was really windy and they did not think it was like the safest to have me on, and so they were like, if you can remain extremely calm, and I was able to just be there and co-regulate with my son, and it would have been a totally different experience if I couldn't be on that helicopter with him.
Speaker 1:So I'm very, very thankful for Lael and the work she does and the books that she has, and she just continues to do some really amazing work in this world. Okay, let's listen. This is episode 17,. Nurturing Resilience a conversation with Lael Stone.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling the motivation, curiosity and mental wellbeing of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 1: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. Katie, how's it going today?
Speaker 2:I'm good, how are you?
Speaker 1:I am good Tired today, but good, it's been a long day. I would love to know who are we talking to today?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I'm so excited to tell you about Lael Stone. She's like totally new on my radar, like I've just started digging into her work, and it's like blowing my mind, so I'm super excited. I will now read her bio Sound good.
Speaker 1:Sounds great.
Speaker 2:All right. Lael Stone is the co-author of Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children. Lael is an educator, tedx speaker, consultant and counselor who has been working with families for over 20 years. She's the co-creator of Woodline Primary School, an innovative new school based on emotional well-being and connection. Lael is the co-host of the Aware Parenting Podcast and a sought after public speaker who talks candidly about her experiences and her great passion creating wellness in families through connection and communication.
Speaker 1:We cannot wait to welcome Lael to the show.
Speaker 2:Lael, welcome to the Kindle Podcast. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Welcome to the Kindle podcast. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yes, welcome. We would love to start out by just telling us a little bit about who you are like, what's your background and how did you come to the work you are currently doing? We would love to know like what is your big? Why?
Speaker 3:It's such a great question to start with. So I have been working with families for nearly 20 years. I started 20 years ago working in birth, so I was a childbirth educator and a doula and found myself working, or being drawn to working, with families that had had really challenging birth experiences and trauma. So I would work a lot in that kind of postnatal trauma space with mums and babies and dads and families, all that kind of stuff. So I did that for a very long time and then my work kind of slowly shifted into working more with families, so moving, working with toddlers. I worked with the Aware Parenting Model, which is Dr Aletha Salter's work, for quite a long time, which was really about, you know, the beautiful elements of attachment, parenting, but also taking it to that next step of helping children unpack trauma and stress and how we support our children so that they're not carrying that in their bodies. You know, so we don't all end up being adults who need therapy. And so I worked with that for a really uh, for a really long time, you know, teaching workshops all over Australia and working one-on-one with people.
Speaker 3:About six years ago I had the opportunity to build my own school. It's called Woodline Primary. It's here in Victoria in Australia and it was a school. It is a school based all around emotional intelligence, trauma-informed practices, choice and autonomy all the beautiful stuff that I think we know is so vital in helping children to thrive and also to learn well. So I created my own school. We opened three years ago, so we're three years in now. I also spent about five years teaching sex education to teenagers, so I worked in secondary schools teaching pleasure based sex education, which was really all about relationships, consent, how we navigate being human, our connection to ourselves, our bodies all that kind of stuff. So that was an amazing experience to work with teens for a really, really long time, and I've had my own podcast, the we're Parenting podcast, which I've just finished up, so that we've had that for a few years, which has had a beautiful success.
Speaker 3:I wrote my first book with my co-host, marion, called Raising Resilient, compassionate Children, which we launched just last year, and these days my work involves a lot of public speaking, so I travel all around Australia talking about emotional awareness.
Speaker 3:I talk a lot to educators around how we can have trauma-informed classrooms and compassionate classrooms, and I'm writing my second book at the moment, which is really exciting and probably my biggest job of all of that is I'm a mama to three beautiful humans. So I have a 23-year-old son, a 19-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old daughter, and I'm a mama to three beautiful humans. So I have a 23 year old son, a 19 year old daughter and a 15 year old daughter, and I'm just in this next gorgeous, delicious phase of what it is having adult children, which is so beautiful. And just currently, for this last month, all three of them have been living at home, but one's about to go travel for seven months and one just came back, and so for this kind of beautiful little magic period, all my children are at home and then they're all about to go fly again, that's me.
Speaker 2:I love it. Thanks for telling us your story. I just love hearing all about the interesting paths that people take into this work, and I love that it's beautiful.
Speaker 3:I probably didn't even really explain what my why was within all that, but I often have a bit of a catchphrase which says I work for the kids, which I kind of mean that so much of my work over all the years is about helping adults understand children better and helping them understand the inner child within. So so much of the work I do is around helping adults understand their own stories and imprints, tune into what their pain is, and if we are projecting that onto our children and really it is about creating safe, beautiful spaces for children to thrive, whether that's in the family or in the education system. I really look at it that if, if we could really hear what children had to say, then, then then I feel this is what they might be saying and that's really what I feel like I'm that bridge between, or try to be that bridge between, for children to adults to help them understand better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I noticed a lot of the people that I listened to in the education scene like it's a lot of adults talking about adult things and not a lot of people talking about kids, and I love just bringing it back and just grounding everything that we do in what's best for kids and how we can be advocates for them. Because if you look at the world we've built, like we haven't left a whole lot of room for their voices and for them to like help co-create the world that they live in. We talk a lot about like the mental health crisis in the youth population right now and it's just like they're trying to tell us that it's not working for them and we're just kind of sadly keep talking about adult things and yeah, and I think it's.
Speaker 3:It's such an interesting point, isn't it? Because I think so many of us as adults have our own trauma that is unhealed or it's not even recognized, and so we keep coming from that space. We don't come from the embodied, empowered adult. I often joke that most adults are just like five-year-olds in adult bodies, and the way that they respond to each other is coming from that wounded child space, and so I think the work is always with the adults to unpack their stories and to do that healing work so that we then can turn up for children in the way that they need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about this. I love this is a theme that I've noticed running throughout your work the type of childhood that you have, the experiences that you have set you up for either success or struggle. As an adult who is trying to relate to kids, right we bring our own kind of stories and trauma and our underdeveloped nervous systems and all of the things you use the word imprinting in your work, I think, to talk about this. Can you tell us what that means and kind of what you've noticed?
Speaker 3:around this I look at it through this lens that we all come into our family of origin or wherever we are raised, and we are these beautiful little sponges just watching everything. And so right from the moment, even in utero, you know we pick up feelings and emotions. And so right from the moment, even in utero, you know we pick up feelings and emotions. And so, once from the moment we are born into this family, we are watching to understand how the world works. So if we're born into a family that has a whole lot of feelings around trusting people, for example, and what we learn as a little child or is perhaps in our family of origin you don't trust anyone. You know, maybe your parents had their own traumas or they escaped from the country they were in or who knows what's going on and their story has been constantly. You can't trust anyone. Like people are sketchy, you've got to be careful all the time, and so the imprint we get, just purely by watching and listening, is you can't trust anyone. People are not okay Now that those imprints happen across everything.
Speaker 3:It's our relationship to money, it's our relationship to our bodies, it's a relationship to food, it's our relationship to feelings and emotions. Is it okay to be angry, is it not? Is it safe for me to cry? Is it not safe for me to cry? Do I have an imprint that says success equals earning a lot of money and driving a fabulous car, you know? Does success mean looking a certain way and getting the top grades, like everything that we often believe in our world comes from these imprints of what we've watched in our family of origin. Now, some of them are brilliant imprints, some of them are amazing, which are about kindness, or perhaps it's about caring for others, or perhaps it's about taking care of our own needs or having healthy boundaries. But from working with thousands of adults for a really long time, I say the majority of them are not necessarily healthy and the majority of them come from this place of deep trauma where we're all just trying to protect ourselves, where we're all just trying to keep ourselves safe.
Speaker 3:And so often, when we are coming from that lens of protection and keeping ourselves safe, we don't sit in a place of trust, we don't sit in a place of deeper intimacy and relationship and all the beautiful stuff that we know help humans to thrive. So, as children, we watch all these things and all of us have imprints and then often what happens is because we watch it again and again and again, we believe it to be true and then we keep looking for evidence that it is true. So if we did grow up in that family of origin where you were told don't trust anyone, people will always lie, people will cheat. We walk through life looking for that constantly. You know we don't walk into situations open to trusting, or trusting what life is, or trusting our bodies or trusting our children. As parents, we're constantly looking through that lens of that. This is not okay.
Speaker 3:I often find that people will come to my work because they've got challenges with their children or a crisis has happened, and it's usually through that adversity that we go. This doesn't feel good, like what's happening here, and then we start to look at well, where are you sitting in life at the moment and what have you believed to be true, and is that even true and what do you actually want it to look like? So I do believe we all have the power to change these stories and to move into the life that we do want to have. But so often we have to go back to the past to understand what our imprints were or how we were raised, in order to be curious around what we make things mean in the future, and then, as we can begin to unpack that work and look at those stories and do our own healing, that is when we begin to shift the stories and we also, as parents, get to go. Well, what do I want these imprints to be for my children?
Speaker 3:And I always love to say you know, there is no perfect. We can't have like a 10-step plan to go right. If we do all of this right, then our children will never have any drama or story or trauma. That's not the case. We're all going to have story. We're all going to have our traumas because we're human. But our ability to work with it, our ability to lean into it, our children's ability to have consciousness and awareness around it, makes the path a whole lot easier. So there is no perfect. We're never going to nail it so that we only just feel happiness. We're actually meant to have the contrast of all of it, but our ability to roll with it and move through it is what we want to work with.
Speaker 2:I have a question about trauma, the word trauma. We hear that word thrown around and we don't always know. Like I think that if you are kind of new to this space or kind of this approach to parenting, that might be kind of a new or different usage of the word. Like when we say trauma, what do you mean when you say?
Speaker 3:trauma. I think for a lot of us what we've thought trauma is is bad stuff that happens to us, and there is no doubt that we can have acute traumas where that could be an accident or we're in hospital or somebody we love dies or they're those big kind of events that often we can go. That was really traumatic. We can also have complex trauma, which is where we grow up in an environment that often doesn't feel safe. You know, perhaps we grew up in a family where there was continuous violence or we didn't have enough to eat, or perhaps we were homeless at times or there was abuse or there was a lot of yelling and the child basically goes through their journey always on very, very high alert because there's often a risk to their safety. And so you know, we can see that with children who are often hypervigilant or perhaps they are, you know they often blow up really easily. You, you know they often have difficulties learning. You know, we know that often children who grew up in those environments do struggle greatly. But I also have seen over the years what I call connection trauma, which is the times perhaps when we were children where we didn't get our needs met so we may have lived in a safe environment and perhaps, you know, we were fed and we were clothed and we had shelter, but perhaps our parents weren't able to meet our feelings. You know, when we got upset or we were angry about something, we were shut down or we were sent to our room, or maybe we were smacked because we were told we were being naughty, and those little micro traumas add up for us in our bodies that send a message that say, well, it's not okay to be like this, it's not okay for me to be angry, because when I get angry then my parents get angry and then they yell at me and then that becomes more about the fact that my parents are mad with me, not what I was actually mad about in the first place, and that becomes very scary for a child. So they learn to suppress their feelings and push them down in order to be loved and in order to be good. And so I see those traumas.
Speaker 3:A lot play out with adults, which you know. We can have grown up loving our parents and feeling loved by our parents, but we can also have spaces within us where we didn't feel seen and heard and we felt the pressure to be something in order to be loved, and I see those as little traumas that most adults I work with carry. You know, it's rare that I meet an adult who grew up in an environment where all their feelings were welcomed, where the parents were able to own their own stories and baggage and and be really centered in their own nervous system and be able to meet a child's feelings with calm and compassion and just hold the space for whatever the child needed to feel. It's rare that I meet adults that grew up in environments like that because our parents were doing the best job they knew how, which was usually just like be good, be good and I will love you, and if you're not good, then I'll take something away from you, and that is the result of the behaviorism paradigm that we've all been part of for a really, really long time. So it's beautiful and rich to see, I think, adults these days doing their own work and understanding this and being able to do their own healing so that when their beautiful little three-year-old has a meltdown because you cut their sandwich the wrong way, we're able to take a deep breath and get down on the floor with them and say, oh, sweetheart, I hear you, it's big and hold the space for them to express whatever feelings are sitting there in their body and then they find their way back into balance and then we're able to move on and the message we've just given our child is I love and accept all of you.
Speaker 3:You know, you're not just lovable when you're good or when you're doing things I approve of. I love you when you're angry and when you're sad and when you're frustrated, and also when you're happy and when you're joyous and when we can meet our children in that space. Then what we do is we create this deep, beautiful safety within them that says all of me is welcome, like who I am is enough. And when we're operating from that space of I am enough, then we can go into the world with incredible potential and opportunity to interact with life in such a free and magnificent way.
Speaker 1:It sounds like there has to be this huge paradigm shift, right? If we weren't raised in that and as you were talking and using the word imprint, that was new to me. It just helped me realize this is why I'm doing this work. This is how I got into the parent education world, into fighting for the kids. Like you said, this is about the kids, because I did have imprints of kindness, I did have these small little imprints, but I had a lot of imprints of trauma, as you mentioned.
Speaker 1:And so, just as I started making sense of how I got to be where I am today because that's why I would say to therapists I was one of those you know people that had to go to therapy, but and I welcome that and I'm very thankful for for that world but I it just it makes sense to me because I'm like, okay, if this all happened and this is what the books are telling me and this is what how I should be behaving, but I'm able to access this.
Speaker 1:Why is that? And I think, just listening to you, I'm like, okay, cause I did have good imprints too, and so they can show up, and I think it's really powerful once we just stop and reflect and make sense of our story. And then the paradigm that you're talking about with the. You know good and the bad. Where do you think you know that comes from? Like you said, it's just like because this is what our parents did, but do you think it's coming from like anything else, or what is good or bad? Or can you maybe like break down what behavior really is?
Speaker 3:Well, I think we kind of need to pull back a bit and look at the society and the culture that we've grown up in in the last, you know, 100, 200 years, and that has very much been about we want compliance. We want our children and adults just to do what they're told. And so if we want adults just to do what they're told, well then that's what we imprint them with when they're little, which means we say to you when you're good, we will praise you, when we will reward you, and when you're bad, we'll take something away from you. Now you think about it as a five-year-old. When you have been locked out of the house because you've been so naughty and you feel terrified, you know the story you're going to get in. That moment is oh my god, I should never do this again, because this again, because I'm scared and I'm out here and it's dark and this is not okay. And so that five-year-old who's got that trauma inside them, who most times didn't get the chance to process it and say that didn't feel fair and that wasn't all right, they just hold onto it. And then that little five-year-old with him gets carried around and grows up to be an adult. And so whenever they upset someone, they're like, oh God, this is not okay, I must be good again.
Speaker 3:And so that's how we get compliance right. That's how we get adults to do what we want them to do by often scaring them when they're little and creating that fear. And then we grow up and we be compliant. I mean, that is really when we step back. That is the world that we live in, and most of our systems are set up in that way. The education system is set up in that way. Most of our systems are set up to create children to be good boys and good girls, and I think what we have to come back to is going okay.
Speaker 3:Well, does that serve us as a culture now? Does it serve us in the world? And it actually doesn't, because we see how far we've swung into disconnection of ourselves, of our bodies, to the earth, to other people, all those kind of things. Because we've swung into disconnection of ourselves, of our bodies, to the earth, to other people, all those kind of things, because we've been conditioned to just be good and be, to do what we're told. But actually, what the world needs now is beautiful critical thinkers. We need people to go. Actually, that doesn't feel right for me. We need people to go, hey, that's not cool what you're doing out there in the world and that corruption's not all right there, and you saying that is actually not okay, that is not what's best for mankind. So you know, I can see that as we are waking up as a human race, we're beginning to go that actually this doesn't feel good.
Speaker 3:And you think about the power of the beautiful internet and all those things that has made information so accessible to us. I mean, the learning and growth that we have done in the last 20 years is way more than our parents or grandparents ever had access to, right? So the amount of people now who understand trauma, who understand emotional awareness, who have insight into wow, this is how we work as humans and this is the impact of what it's having is amazing, because there's more and more people waking up to go hey, we shouldn't treat children this way and this is not okay. So for a long time, I think we have seen behavior as basically good and bad. When you're good, I will reward you and you have my approval, and therefore the child goes okay.
Speaker 3:Who I am as a person is based on whether you think I'm okay or not. So children grow up constantly scanning and searching and looking do you approve of me, am I okay, am I enough? And when that person goes, good boy, good girl, you're amazing. We go I must be enough, right. But then what happens is we grow up to be an adult and we want to try something new and and someone says, well, I don't like it. Then we go into complete crisis because we're like I'm going to be judged or nobody's going to like me or I'm not going to have any friends. And again there's that beautiful little child within us going. This is really, really unsafe, because I need everybody to approve of me. And that is a lot of the adults that I work with these days. You know, we have really poor relationship to our boundaries, to self-care, to all those things, because steeped underneath it is this story that says I'm only lovable when I'm good, or I'm only lovable if you approve.
Speaker 3:So when we look back to, I guess, how behavior has been conditioned into us we have so been indoctrinated into that. When a child is acting up, when they're having a beautiful, glorious meltdown because their sister has more ice cream than them, or our teenagers is getting really angry because they're so overwhelmed with all the pressure they've got to do. We look at them through the lens of you are bad and that is not okay and you need to go to your room and be quiet and come out when you're happy again, or you need to do something to you know that I approve of, and really what we need to do is take a step back and go. Actually, all behavior is communicating something. When a four-year-old is having a meltdown because of, you know, the wrong colored cup, well we can presume that there's probably something else going on besides the cup right, because it's a cup. And when our teenagers are flying off the handle because we asked them to take the dog for a walk, well, could we look behind that behavior and go gee, I wonder what else is going on here, because that's a pretty big reaction to just taking the dog for a walk. So I think what we need to do is take a step back and look at when a child is upset.
Speaker 3:When an adult is upset, there's always a reason behind it, and usually the reason behind it has usually got to do with worry or fear or stress or trauma or anxiety or sadness or grief, or just pick your feelings. You know I often say anger is just this beautiful mask for a whole lot of sad and wounding that usually sit underneath. And when we can begin to look behind the behavior and when we can begin to look at every human with curiosity to say I wonder what's going on for them there, because they're not in their most anchored, balanced self, there must be something going on. Then we open up the possibility of this beautiful communication and beautiful opportunities for connection to help people feel safe, to move through whatever's present in order to come back into balance.
Speaker 3:And I absolutely and I'm sure both of you would stand by this there is no such thing as a bad child. There is no such thing as a naughty child. There are just children that are out of balance. There are children that have got a big backpack full of feelings and emotion and trauma that they're trying to move. And if we could look through that lens towards children, then I think the world would be a completely different place, because we would be coming from this place of our heart and compassion that says, hey, I see you and I can see that hard things have happened to you and I'm here to help you and make it safe enough for you to feel what you need to feel and let it go.
Speaker 1:And what we end up doing is we make it harder on ourselves and we create so much more strife than I think we even need to create. I was thinking about just this morning trying to get my son to get in the car. Mornings are hard for him. He's, he goes to Montessori school but he has to leave early since it's far from our house. And he just walked over to a cabinet, sat down Cause I was like hey, can you go get your shoes on? You know, I'm like bright and ready to like go, and he sits down and he's just sitting there like this, and I could have just been like go get your shoes, you know, and getting into demanding mode, cause I recently had a parent say to me but it just takes so much time, I don't have time to sit and connect with them and ask them how their emotions are. But I was thinking about that and I was like but don't you think it'll be a lot quicker though if you connect? And that's what happened this morning.
Speaker 1:I got down on this level and he was grumpy. So I was like, maybe I'll try, play and see. So I had his shirt and I started putting it on myself and then he like, you know, a little smirk. So I was like, okay, I got him, like we're going to be able to connect here, and if he wouldn't have smirked then I probably would have, you know, tried something else. And so I then I took the shirt and he had a little Lego guy in his hand and I was like, oh, let's see if it fits the Lego guy. And I like tried to put it on the Lego guy and he's like no, it goes on me. And I was like, okay, and then he put it on.
Speaker 1:That was probably less than 20 seconds, whereas if I would have had this thought about him of he is being bad right now. He needs to go get his clothes on and get his shoes on and get in the car and all these judgments instead of he just needs a little connection. He just woke up and he is not ready to go to school yet. It's amazing how much more time we can save ourselves. Number one and number two just we can find more joy and happiness. Because if I would have gotten to that mode, then I probably would have climbed down the ladder of the autonomic nervous system into my sympathetic and I would have been setting my day up to not be very fun either. I love that you give that example.
Speaker 3:It's so perfect. I think every parent could relate to that, and I guess the challenge or the trick within that is that we have to be anchored and centered enough to be able to see that and to be able to respond in that way, and I think that is one of the biggest things that I just wish I could just wrap all parents in a big hug and go it's hard.
Speaker 1:It's been such hard work to get to this place, for sure, absolutely Because of all the trauma, but it's not impossible.
Speaker 3:It is not impossible and I think it's such a beautiful point you bring up, because most of us were never modeled what this looks like. Most of us have never actually experienced that in our own bodies. Having someone look us in the eye, you know, be playful, be compassionate, not judge us, hold space for our feelings. Most of us as adults have never actually experienced that. And then we're trying to do that for our children, and then we find it challenging at times, which is really understandable. And then we're trying to do that for our children, and then we find it challenging at times, which is really understandable. And then we get really judgmental of ourselves and then we beat ourselves up and then the cycle continues.
Speaker 3:And so we need so much space for compassion for ourselves as adults, because we are parenting in a way that often we've never actually experienced before, and so that's why so much of my work comes back to how do we meet our own needs, how do we take care of ourselves, how do we fill up our own cups? So we can do exactly what you did so beautifully Be playful, be curious, lean in, hold space for it. So I love that example you gave. It's so spot on of the possibility of what we can do. But because we're often so hardwired to see it through the lens of hard and difficult and time pressures and all those kinds of things, we can often forget that and then we get so stuck in our own stress and then it just spirals.
Speaker 2:I love when you say kids can't be what they can't see, because that's so powerful and then just to like, reflect that back, like, and you can't be what you didn't see, and that's why you have to do this work in yourself. And so I'm wondering why you think I mean we've touched on it. But if you want to go deeper, like why is it so hard for us to see you keep using the word anchored? Tell us what you mean by that. Like why is it hard for adults to regulate their own emotions and kind of be able to show up in that way and kind of be able to show up in that way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, when you think about it, if you were to review your story, if you had your timeline in front of you of all the things that happened to you right from when you were born up until now, we would see these touch points through all parts of our story where perhaps we didn't get our needs met, where we were yelled at, where we had trauma and stress, that we didn't get to move through our bodies, where we felt scared and terrified. We didn't get to move through our bodies. Where we felt scared and terrified, like you know, we would have a story. We'd look at our story and go, whoa, it's kind of a miracle that I'm here and I'm doing okay and that I can be remotely nice to people, right, because all of that is sitting there. So when we firstly look back at our story, we have to have compassion of gosh, it's been a lot and there's been a journey, and so then I think we then start to go, okay, well, how do I become what I want my kids to see, right, and I want them to be? And so I think then we have to look at well, I've done, this has happened to me and I have to have compassion for my story and then we take a look at, well, how do we heal whatever may be still may parts that still be there for us, and this is where therapy can be brilliant. This is where we can have things like listening partners, where we get to just talk about the frustrations and hard parts about being human. The more we get to be heard and the more we get to feel like it's safe for us to be heard, the more we begin to change that story in our bodies and it increases our ability to actually hear others.
Speaker 3:So when I talk about being the anchor, I often explain it to parents, like our children, in this beautiful little boat out on the ocean, and sometimes it's smooth sailing and it's beautiful and we're connected to them and we're like, yeah, this is great. And sometimes it's super rocky and the waves are crashing, and it's in those moments our children, they need to know that we have got them. They need to know that we still love them and we're connected to them, even amongst the storm. And so I use the analogy of being the anchor, which means you are rock solid, like you are grounded, you are anchored so that when things are rocky, you know how to take a deep breath.
Speaker 3:You kind of imagine your feet rooted on the earth. You might even put your hand on your heart and your belly and say you know, this is not an emergency, it is okay. I'm the adult here. I can meet my child in this and we begin to train ourselves to actually go. Hey, I can see in the storm and it is okay. But a lot of the time we need to work through our own stuff first, and that's why therapy is brilliant, or doing courses or understanding our journey. Sometimes we need body work to help let our bodies move the trauma and story that it's still carrying.
Speaker 2:Can you talk a little bit more about that? Like you keep saying, like you're feeling this in your body or move it through your body, can you tell us more about what?
Speaker 3:you mean I often look at it this way is, you know, when we have traumatic experiences, the way our body's set up is, we have these beautiful responses that allow us to process and survive in that moment. So many people hear about that fight or flight response. So if something dramatic happens, we've got the ability to protect ourselves or we can run away. If a tiger was chasing us, we've got that freeze response which makes us kind of play dead on some level, which just protects us. We've got that fawn response which can be I've got to be nice and got to be liked here in order to survive. So we have these inbuilt natural mechanisms within us that are all about survival, because we're hardwired for survival. But so often what happens is we have a scary experience and we will have that adrenaline rush or we'll have that response in our body, but then we actually don't complete it. So our body does what it needs to but then actually gets stuck. So I often love to tell the experience about. Many years ago my youngest daughter was outside in the backyard and then I heard this big yelp and her friend comes running in going oh my goodness, she's hurt herself and I go outside and we had a hammock and she kneeled on the hammock and then the hammock swung and she just kind of basically hit the deck, fell on her arm, and I went outside and she's laying on the ground and her eyes are big and wide and I can see she's like in full, like shock, trauma, and she's hurt herself. And so I went up to her and I said, sweetheart, I'm not going to move you, I'm not going to touch you, I'm just going to be with you, but I just want you to do whatever your body needs to do for the next few minutes. And so she instantly started shaking, right. So her body started shaking, which is so beautiful. This is the body's inbuilt, natural mechanism to heal, to go. Oh my God, there's so much adrenaline pumping through my system. How do I move it? Well, I'm going to shake. So she starts shaking. And then she started crying. And then she'd start shaking again and she'd start crying. And so for 15 minutes I just sat beside her and then said I'm right with you, darling. You said I'm right with you, darling, you're really safe, keep going, you're doing a beautiful job. Let your body do what it needs to do. And so for those 15 minutes she shook and she cried and then after about 15 minutes, her whole body softened and relaxed. And then she looks me in the eyes, her eyes are bright, and she goes I think I broke my arm. And I go yeah, I think you did too. And I go let's go to hospital. So we get up, we got a hospital and that was it. And again she had a bit of pain, but there was no story around actually what happened, because in that moment her body got to do what it needed to do.
Speaker 3:I worked in birth for a long time, so I was with women often when they had their babies, and birth is a huge experience and we need adrenaline to help push our babies out. And often it can be stressful experiences and so often I would see women would give birth and then they would lay there shaking and often midwives well, many go oh, you're cold, I'll give you a blanket. I'm like, oh, no, no, your body is just doing what it needs to to complete. So I would say to the women keep shaking, you're doing a beautiful job, keep going. Now our body releases this stress and trauma through crying, through laughing, through shaking, through um sweating, through yawning, through all these incredible sweating, through yawning, through all these incredible things that our body's designed to do to move the stress and trauma. In these moments, and when we think about so many times, we will have incidences where we've had a shock, where something scary has happened and the people around us well-meaningly go, shh, it's okay, it's okay, and they stop what our body's actually doing, or we stop our children from crying when they hurt themselves, or we go, it's okay, don't worry about it, it's fine, instead of actually like, oh, what do you need? Just keep going, keep going.
Speaker 3:And if we can bring the spaciousness to it to allow the body and the person to feel safe enough to complete the process, then we're not necessarily storing that trauma in our bodies. And so when I look at trauma, I look at it in a few ways. One, whenever I'm unpacking a story with somebody or you know, I did a lot of birth trauma work we have to often understand what happened to us. So people want to understand the story, so they need to tell the story, to make sense of it. They have to understand in the brain well, that happened next and, and then that happened and that's why this happened. And they need to often make sense of what's happened in the brain, but then their body also has to have the opportunity to complete and feel what it needed to feel and and we want to do that in ways that are really safe. And we need to do that in ways that feel really safe and contained so that we're not re-traumatizing the body but we are letting the body know hey, it's safe for you to move whatever you need to move here, and so that can be somatic experiencing. It can be things like TRE, it can be other body work. You know I work a lot with cranial osteopathy that do some beautiful work with babies and moms around, particularly around birth trauma and stress like that. There's some beautiful modalities out there that support the body to actually complete what it needs to complete.
Speaker 3:I mean, many years ago, when I had my third child, I ended up having quite a huge journey with her. It was a bit of a life and death experience for both of us and I came out of that experience and you know I remember going yeah, there's a lot of trauma here for me, but I wasn't ready to deal with it for about a year and a half, like I remember. Finally, when I got my baby home, I was like right, I've got three kids, now I just have to be a mom. And it wasn't until about 18 months later that the trauma began to surface, and it began to surface in really high anxiety. I would start to feel panicked about stuff and all of a sudden I remember thinking okay, now it's time, it's time for my body actually to it's enough distant, enough time has passed.
Speaker 3:I feel safe enough now to actually work through what's happening, and I had to spend nearly a year working through the trauma of that experience through my body and understanding it, and it was challenging, but it was incredible because I got to really experience PTSD and then the completion of that and the movement of what that was in my body and at the same time, help my baby heal from her stress and trauma in those spaces as well. So I think we have to look at it from many, many angles when we're looking at trauma, and this is why, again, we have to have so much compassion for ourselves as parents, because we've all had traumatic stuff happen to us and most of the time we did not get the support and the holding and the love that we needed to help process whatever happened yes, what keeps coming up for me is this is how we create resilience.
Speaker 1:this is how resilience happens in the brain. I read once it was was Dr Tina Payne Bryson's book on I think it was attachment, and Dr Dan Siegel, and it was just a one sentence. But it says something like resilience can't happen if there's stress present, because there's so many times with kids where we just push right, we just push, or we're told don't rescue them or don't do something for them if they can already do it, but then under this lens, if you understand, okay. Well, if they're flooded with adrenaline and cortisol and they have all this stress in the brain or they have all these emotions trapped inside and we're not allowing them to get them out, then resilience isn't going to happen. They're not going to be able to bounce back from these things, and that's why I think all this work is so interconnected. Once you start really looking at it, it really starts to make sense. But it's not until we make sense of our narrative and our story, like you're saying, for us to be able to get there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, totally. I love what you say about resilience because it's so true and I often say this to parents. I'm like resilience is not our ability to kind of suck it up and get on with hard things, it's not grit. Resilience is our ability to feel whatever we need to feel around the experience that happened. Ask for support if we need support, process it and then move on. That's what develops that beautiful muscle of resilience.
Speaker 3:But if we and this is our culture in particular here in Australia we have this really strong grit culture which is like get on with it, it's fine. We praise people who are stoic right In the biggest adversity. We're like, look at them, they're so amazing, they're back at work the next day. I'm like, oh God, no. What we have to take a look at is what resilience is, is our ability to feel the hard things, and we are so very good at not doing that. We are so very good at repressing those feelings. We are so good at holding onto them and pretending they're not there and then they kind of leak out the sides, in places where we don't want, when it's anger or aggression or violence or those kinds of things. So that beautiful resilience. I love that you connected in with that is, it is safety. We need safety first to feel the hard stuff so we can process it and then move on.
Speaker 2:This is all so helpful in parenting, but I want to shift the conversation to talking about the classroom a little bit and to hear more about your school that you've started and just kind of how you've taken all of this and embedded it into school.
Speaker 3:Our school really came about just because one of the women I built it with was a client of mine and her child was starting school. And she just came to me saying God, I just hate the way that all this unfolds. You know, he's not allowed to move his body when he wants and he can't eat when he wants. And you know, she proposed the idea to me of what if we built a school based on all the things that you've taught me, and I was well. Firstly, you know, I was like I know nothing about building a school. So I was like are you kidding me? It took a while to get me over the line.
Speaker 3:Building a school is hard. It is so hard. It is so hard. It's like one of the hardest things I've ever done. It took us three years to do it, but the whole basis of our school is around a lot of the stuff we're talking about. One of the core pieces is just choice and autonomy. As humans, we need choice and autonomy, which means wear what you want to wear, sit where you want to sit, go to the toilet when you want to, you can eat when you want to, you can take your shoes off if you want just the basics around humans. I mean, I often joke if we as adults had to go to school like most of our children do, we would last an hour and then we'd be outraged and get up and walk out right?
Speaker 1:I've heard Katie say that before, for sure yeah we'd just be like what is this?
Speaker 3:This is crazy. Like one of the beautiful little students you know I've chatted to once. We're talking about school. She's like I just take orders all day and I'm like, yeah, you do right. So we're looking at just basics around choice and autonomy, but also around learning what ignites them and learning the way that feels best.
Speaker 3:So in our school we follow the Australian curriculum. You know we are, you know we are a school that has to abide by all the kind of government rules and regulations, but the way we deliver the curriculum is is, I think, makes us unique. We're a really heavy playboast learning school, so we do a lot of Reggio Emilia stuff with our play. But our philosophy is where can we do it outside? If we can do it outside, let's do it outside. And our beautiful leader of learning always has says, constantly with everything, nothing without joy. How do we make this joyous? How do we make it fun? How do we make it interactive? How take it outside? How do we incorporate nature? So we're always looking at that in how we deliver the curriculum. The other piece that we are big on, which is non-punitive discipline in our school, so we don't use punishments and rewards ever. We are always looking behind the behavior. So when a child is having a hard time, we're always moving into curiosity. What do they need right now? Do they need to go move their bodies? Do they have to go jump on the trampoline or have a swing? Do they need to go outside and play basketball with one of our guides for a bit? Do they need a limit, perhaps, that we have to set lovingly so they can push up against it and they can release some big feelings? We welcome tears. We welcome all the frustrations we really are about how do we help children come back into balance so that they can learn, and what we see already in the three years is in so much in our holding and our philosophy of doing this.
Speaker 3:What is so magnificent is children are now able to walk into a space and go. I'm feeling like this, I need this and then they go and do it, so they're not having to act out and they're not having to disrupt, because they're actually being able to identify. I've got something going on inside me. This is what I need to do Now. That was so much. Part of my goal in building the school is if we can get children to be connected enough to themselves to then be able to ask for what they need. Then they're going to be in alignment with who they are and then they're going to be free to be who they need to be. So that's one of the big things, and it's not easy to do. It takes a lot of unlearning, particularly for the adults who work at our school, because most of them were brought up in punitive environments. So it takes a lot to not power over children and to undo it.
Speaker 3:But we are always coming back to looking through the lens of where is the child? Are they in balance, are they not? What do we need to do to support them to do it? What can we see the bigger picture here? So you know, there's all that as, I guess, our basics and fundamentals of our school. But we are on a beautiful 20-acre farm as well, so the children have a lot to do with animals there. They take care of the farm. You know. It's the most beautiful property, so there's many trees that children climb and create with and all those kind of things and really bringing them back to connection to themselves and the earth.
Speaker 3:We're also in no tech school, which means our children don't learn on ipads or anything like that, which is pretty standard here in australia and, um, I mean, I often joke, children know how to open an ipad and use a computer, like we don't need to teach them. Um, you know, they learn how to do that when they're two, uh, and so again, we come back to those kind of basics of keeping them connected to themselves. And, yeah, and it's a really beautiful, extraordinary place to be and we have some amazing guides that that come work there and bring their gorgeous expertise and, and you know, even though we're three years in, I think the school has far surpassed ever what I ever thought it could be, which is a pretty amazing thing, and that's got to do so much with our leaders who our principal and our leaders who run it. You know they took my vision and went right now let's do this, and it's just extraordinary to watch actually.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. It makes me wonder why we're still doing school the way we are, especially hearing what you're able to I almost said what we're able to get the kids to do but it's not us getting the kids to do. They're able to run and be who they were created to be, which is so powerful. I just wish I mean one day, one day, this is our one day all schools are going to be like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I have a lot of compassion of why. Why we can. We are a fee-paying school, which means, you know, parents have to earn money to be able to send their children to school, which really only works because we have to pay enough adults to be there, to be present, to hold the space, like it's a really tricky thing. I completely understand that so many of our systems are not set up that way. They're not set up to support the adults. In the schooling system we have maximum 16 children in a class and we have two guides in a class. You know, most standard schools in Australia have up to 28 children and one teacher and that's it, you know.
Speaker 3:And I think it's really hard to meet children with connection and compassion when you've got 28 children. Like it makes sense of why it doesn't actually work. So I think we have to change our environments, we have to change the whole complete structure of how it looks, and that's a massive overhaul because we've been doing this education thing the same way for a very, very, very long time and I think if COVID showed us anything, it was about how many children were being left behind, how many kids were slipping through the cracks and how we actually it's time to look at it and go does this even actually work and what are we teaching our children Like? Do they really need to know about some of these things that we set up a long time ago? The world looks completely different now, and what does the world need and how do we support children to make that beautiful impact in the world? For the way you know, for the big, for the bigger picture.
Speaker 1:And we can start with very small changes. You know for the big, for the bigger picture, and we can start with very small changes. I would love to continue to talk to you. This has been so fruitful and just such a beautiful conversation. I would love to end with our last question that we ask all of our guests. It's who is someone in your life who has kindled your love of learning, curiosity, motivation or passion?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a good, good question it doesn't have to necessarily be someone you know. It could be an author or anyone that's inspired you two people come to mind.
Speaker 3:One is actually the principal of our school. I have just the most unbelievable respect and admiration for her for what she took on in our school, but how she runs with it and the job that she carries and how she always comes back to right. What else could we do? How could we make it even more amazing? I love that she's got this incredible blank slate and just is looking at through what is possible here. So I, I love that I have so much admiration for her.
Speaker 3:I think the other person is actually my son, who's 23 and who he is in his spirit and the way he looks at life constantly blows me away, because he is just constantly looking through a lens of curiosity and possibility and never sets any limits for himself. He's like, oh, that's possible, and that's possible, and I could do this and I could do that, and he just jumps into life in that way and I, I just I love his connectedness to himself. It inspires me. I'm like I wish I was that at 23. I wish I was still that now. I mean, I'm getting there, but I think he does it with even more grace and ease and that's who. That's who really, really inspires me as well, so they are good questions, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for your time. So tell our listeners how they can learn more about your work.
Speaker 3:So you can find me at laelstonecomau. I am the only Lael Stone on Google at the moment, so thanks parents for giving me a weird name. So, if you Google me, you can find me, and I'm on social media as well, and so I have lots of different Uh, you Google me, you can find me. Uh, and I'm on social media as well, and so I have lots of different online courses on my website, which is for parents and educators, my books on the website and connections to all the podcasts and stuff I've been on. So, yeah, probably best is um through my website. There, you can find me there.
Speaker 2:Lovely Well. Thank you so much for your time. I've learned so much from our conversation.
Speaker 1:Yes, Thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. That's it for today. We hope you enjoyed our conversation with Lael Katie. So I would love to know what was your biggest takeaway from Lael Cause you said she's like completely new on your radar and what they're doing at Woodline is so in line with what we're doing at Prenda. So what was your biggest takeaway?
Speaker 2:I just love that quote kids can't be what they can't see because it just makes it so clear that our first job is not to affect change in the child's behavior or feelings or academic performance, anything like that. Our first job is to model and to be an example, and that means that we need to be able to get to this anchored or grounded spot in our system internally so that we can then show up and be that for them.
Speaker 1:So I think that was my biggest takeaway yes, mine definitely was the letting all what's happening to you and your emotions to be released, the shaking because animals do this, and it's just amazing how we stop that. And then it makes sense to me of why we are in such a mental health crisis is because we're not allowing our bodies to get all of this junk out of our systems. That was really huge for me.
Speaker 2:Totally, and that's exactly. It's like emotions and big feelings like that Like if I saw my kid like crying and shaking, that would be very like alarming to me because I've been imprinted with big feelings and emotions aren't okay. You need to repress and like control yourself all the time. So then I get worked up in those situations and can't stay calm. So I need to like re-script what that means for me so that when I see that I can like hold space, like Lael was talking about, instead of reacting or trying to like encourage them to repress or control.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is super powerful information. It's not just in parenting either. We can apply this into all relationships, especially relationships with kids. It just takes a little awareness and understanding. If this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda Learn. If you have a question you'd like us to address, leave a comment or email us at podcast at Prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group called the Kindle Collective and subscribe to our weekly newsletter called the Sunday Spark.
Speaker 2:The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the things that we talk about here on the kindle podcast. If you want more information about guiding a prenda micro school, go to prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling. Thank you.
