Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. We are thrilled to be here. And Diane I'm going to let you introduce our guests in the conversation today.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, so Sylvia and Jarrid Hall from GAB-on! and we met Sylvia, this last year talking about students and advocacy in the school and getting involved in their own support. It's funny because we were just recording another podcast.

We were talking about kids in school and getting support so this will be a good adjunct to that. Start by telling us a little bit about how you guys got into this world and what you do for parents of complex kids. 

Sylvia Hall: Well, first, thanks for having us here. We're absolutely thrilled to be chatting with you and to be sharing our story and just talking about what is so important to all of us here listening. I'm Sylvia Hall. He's Jarrid Hall. We're Team Hall. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Team Hall. I love it.

Jarrid Hall: Absolutely.

Sylvia Hall: And we are founders of GAB-on! And most importantly, we're parents and we're parents of a child who is a complex kid and a generally educated kid.

They are both in their teens now so hard to imagine. We're not educators but we are lifelong learners. When we discovered that we have a complex kid I went into study mode.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I was going to say you went into research mode. We know those moms.

Sylvia Hall: Totally. Yeah, I've heard the term helicopter parent. And then someone once said to me, you're a Blackhawk helicopter parent. I'd take that as a compliment.

You know that? So yes, I went into studying the diagnosis and understanding how I can not fix anything, but how do I support my child who learns differently? How do I put scaffolding in place? How do I understand what he's going through and how do I help him navigate the world he's in? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Can I just stop you for a moment? And just say, bravo. Just that notion of how do I help him navigate his world instead of how do I get him to fit my world? That's a shift that a lot of parents take time to get to.

Sylvia Hall: It is, and when we talk a little bit later about GAB-on! and what we do that's exactly the whole gold nugget of it is understanding who they are. What brings them joy?

Where are their struggles and how do we help them as you say, in this world, I went right down that road, and helped our son develop and learn. And Jarrid was kind of feeling a bit on the outside looking in so I'm going to throw it to you now.

Jarrid Hall: Yeah. So in the point about learning about his world, or learning about a complex child's world, I guess the reason why this started was because I didn't understand his world. I didn't understand him. He and I are very different people.

I was trying to connect, I loved him deeply and dearly, but I could not connect with him. I saw Sylvia being that Blackhawk helicopter parent, fully engaged with him taking the therapies and doctors. I was outside looking in and I wanted to be a part of his world and I wasn't connecting so I went in to talk to one of his teachers.

I was trying to use school as a way to connect with him because he was gone for six or seven hours a day. And I thought, hey, let's talk about what you're doing all day and he couldn't remember. And I was kind of like, what's going on?

So I went to talk to his teacher and the teacher looked at me and she said, you get that when you ask Austin to remember his day it's like asking a blind person to try harder to see. He can't do it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I love that.

Jarrid Hall: So I was that parent trying to get him to be part of my world. I had to flip my model to become part of his world and let him tell me what his world was all about.

So that's where GAB-on! started. I'm kind of getting emotional about it. I hated that feeling I had in front of that teacher. That was a dad I never wanted to be. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And here you are sharing that story so that a whole ton of other parents, who may have started there, can see that there's a path to shifting it.

I feel the emotion, yeah, I get it. And we had a coach once who used to say make a mess of your message.

Sylvia Hall: Oh, wow. I love that. Okay, that's a second...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It may have been a little messy for you at first, Jarrid but you turned that around. So what's important for parents here? What do they need to understand that they don't understand that many may not? 

Jarrid Hall: I'll keep going a little bit, and then I'll hand it back to Sylvia. I think one of the big things to understand from my perspective, and what we experienced as we went through this was giving our son a voice, giving him agency, giving him the voice to tell me or tell us what his world was all about.

What his context was, what his perspective was, on what he was experiencing every day and that was just a world opener, especially for me to really start understanding what makes them tick.

We work with a woman by the name of Dr. Pam Cantor and she talks a lot about the power of the relationship between the child and the parent.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: [inaudible]

Jarrid Hall: Yes, but one of the things she's writing about is that when kids are on their flywheel, they're in their zone in a world that they understand and they're creating, and they're leading a conversation about something.

The oxytocin, the neurology kicks in others, there's this cognitive growth, literally biological cognitive growth of the brain, then that dialogue is being led by the child. It's so powerful when that child can lead a conversation about something that they're passionate about or interested in from their school days.

So I think that connection, but also the student-led aspect of it is so valuable and so important. 

Diane Dempster: I'm sorry, Sylvia, there's a piece of that that is about that foundational relationship piece. And I think that a lot of parents want that but they don't know how to build that and it sounds like this is something that you guys had.

Sylvia, you want to shift to that and talk a little bit about what you think it is that parents can do to create that connection.

Sylvia Hall: Yeah. I was going to go down a little bit. Parents matter more than they even know so I think parents don't really matter, but they actually matter more than they even know, particularly with their child's education day. And people talk about parent engagement and family engagement and it's really hard to do with a complex kid, how do you get into their school day when they're coming home with just bits and pieces of it?

With all the executive function challenges, how do you get their perspective, because that's their reality on what they're experiencing? So these kids think differently so they solve problems differently. They look at things differently. And I always say, well, we need more than that today in this world. But I think it doesn't always have to be difficult.

I think it comes down to a conversation. And there's a doctor at MIT Dr. Gabrieli who talks about how conversation literally neurologically grows your brain and he's proven it. He's a scientist. He's proven this so a 10, 15-minute conversation every day led by your child is probably the most powerful form of family engagement you can have in their education. It can be around a dinner table, but not a lot of people do that these days. It's hard to do. Everyone's busy. It can be walking home from school. It can be in the car. It can be in the waiting room at a doctor's office.

These conversations led by your child about their experiences, about how they're feeling about things, these smaller moments that are happening in their school day about math about science about what's happening at lunch, they often become bigger conversations, about pure relationships, about social situations, about what's happening in the real world and what did they think of that and how do they feel about that?

Does it worry them so that you have this window into what your child is thinking through roots through a simple conversation? We are such a tech, heavy world. I literally want to pull my hair out some days when I see how much time my teens are spending on their phones. I will say we built GAB-on!

We built this technology to put technology down and have face-to-face eye-to-eye conversations with our kids because that's when you get a window into their day. It is so important. 

Diane Dempster: I'm going to spin that just a little bit Sylvia because I think that our kid's tech is their life, and it's so it's not just about finding out about their life at school, which some kids are really open to talking about their days and other kids are like, I'm home. I don't want to even think or be around school.

But part of what you're talking about is just getting into their world, regardless of what their world is. Their world might be Minecraft, their world might be some game that they've been obsessing over and really enjoying. But what you're saying is that if you let them lead and you go into their world, instead of trying to pull them into yours, it shifts the energy of the conversation.

Sylvia Hall: 100%.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So here's what's coming up because I'm listening to this conversation. I'm playing Diane's role. I'm stepping in and saying, but what about the parents who are going to say, the kid won't talk to me? I asked them questions and they didn't answer. Read, interrogate or who's like, my kid doesn't talk? 

Sylvia Hall: That's a great point and that's actually exactly why we started GAB-on! is because we weren't getting any information from either of our kids. And often, their day is busy. They have a lot going on at school. They have a lot going on after school. I don't remember what I did at nine o'clock in the morning, by the time I got to the dinner table. I don't know how we can expect them to.

So what we did was again, we built a platform where they can just put in a few words throughout their day that act as a hint a prompt, or a spark. And why that's important is because they're inputting three to five words, whether it's math, history, or lunch.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: They're taking little notes that are trigger reminders for us to come back later and say, tell me about this. It's funny because I'm hearing you. I'm thinking what I used to ask my kids every day was what happened today that made you laugh. Because they can always remember what made them laugh.

Diane Dempster: And not only that but because you're asking them the same question. I think the other piece of it is like if your kids know that you're going to ask them the question at dinner, they're going to start paying attention to their day in a different way.

So it's like, oh, wait, I gotta find, oh, that was funny. Make sure I remember that for Mom tonight instead of just kind of blurring through their day. It's that sort of expectation of needing to communicate or wanting to communicate.

And I think that the other piece of Sylvia Jarrid that I'm hearing underneath that is finding ways to make it easy for them to communicate but appealing to them to communicate as well.

Sylvia Hall: That's part of the agency piece is that they are choosing what they're inputting at school. It's not you asking them specifically, how was your math? How was history?

They're putting in what they want to talk to you about and that's part of the agency piece, and then they come home and get to lead that conversation with you.

Jarrid Hall: When we started doing this, we had instant reminders, it was all about the classes that he was taking math, science, English, art, all those kinds of things.

At some point during the day, he would write in math triangles, or science, onion skin and lake water and that was the very first time he actually wrote onion skin and lake water. And when he came home, I looked at it. I pulled it up, and I said, onion skin and lake water what's that all about?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What?

Sylvia Hall: Well, that's the point. 

Jarrid Hall: It requires a conversation and it requires him to tell us a story. With his executive functioning and working memory challenges he couldn't remember. He had to walk around the kitchen, get active, get mobile, then he came back and sat down and told us this amazing story about how he used a microscope, looked at onion skin, got some water from a pond, looked at it under a microscope and found a water bug. He created a cartoon and editorial staff named Robota.

The story went on and on and then we started telling stories. So what happened was we started having a family connection around three words, maybe four words. It started this [overlapping] That started a whole thing.

Sylvia Hall: That's our future book.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Onion Skin and Lake Water that's a great title. But something happened before that that got his buy-in to want to bring you that information. So what started it? I know there's a technology but what I'm really asking is at some point, you got his buy-in to want to come home and say to you onion skin and lake water.

That's where it starts. That's the key that a lot of parents are struggling with. That's why we do so much work with parents. You talked about agency, giving them agency but initially, it was your agenda. So there was a collaboration going on, where you were trying to invite him to join your agenda. Do you remember that? Can you talk about that at all?

Jarrid Hall: Yeah. When I was trying to connect with him, I was talking about school and he couldn't remember it. I think he wanted to have a conversation. I think he was as eager to talk to me about something that was interesting to him as I wanted to hear but we weren't able to connect. He wanted to participate in a conversation.

So when I gave him the idea of what we could try and it was basically no tech at the time when we first did it, it was just very simple. Put a reminder, and we'll talk about it at home. And I think he was so excited about it afterward. They started getting in the car after school and said, "I can't wait to tell you about my gab. I'm the coolest.

Diane Dempster: I've got a shortcut because what it sounds like is this sort of, we want to connect with you, we want it to be around things that you're interested in. We want to create a way to make it easier for you to remember some things to take the lead in the conversation.

Instead of just saying, well, what do you want to talk about kind of thing which we're getting a blank stare. It's a sort of these kids don't know, but it's a sort of how do you help them to become conversation initiators?

Sylvia Hall: Right. We held a focus group with a couple of middle school grades locally here in Rhode Island and we were amazed by how eager they were to go home and have a conversation with their parents. They just didn't know how to start it.

They didn't have a break-in. Some teachers now we'll assign this as homework, but it's really just go talk to your family, just go talk to your parents but the feedback we've had from parents is tremendous. We have a couple of things. When we built this, we built it with educators, but we also built it with parents and parents of complex kids.

And we have a family who's been using it for a while now. And when she originally started she used it for a couple of days with her son, who was just heading into middle school, I think. She came back. She actually called Jarrid and she's like, I'm really sorry, but I don't think I can use it because my son has autism and he feels like he's coming home and he's reporting, and that causes him some anxiety.

So I don't think I can use this, and Jarrid being you know that the guy who wants to solve problems, and make connections, said, well, how do we make this better? How do we make this work for you? So she said, well, let's ask some questions. So we put in what made you laugh today to your question, what made you proud today? 

Jarrid Hall: What challenges did you overcome?

Sylvia Hall: What challenges did you overcome today then we added a gratitude gap. So we let that happen for a few days. And she called Jarrid a couple of days later, I think she said to you, you've just changed my world because the gab that came home was a fire drill.

So she knew immediately how her son would react to a fire drill. It'd be scary and loud and not anticipated. And she was able to say did you have a fire drill at school today? And he said yes. And she said, did you cry? And he said, yes.

And then he asked her why he cries and other [inaudible] And what she told Jarrid was that this was the first authentic conversation about him having autism.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I just got chills.

Sylvia Hall: Yeah, those are those moments. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It's beautiful. I know we've got a few minutes left. I want to go back to what you said about conversation growing the brain because really what we're talking about is conversation and connection. And it's funny because as we're filming, as we're taping this, I'm about to run a coaching group on communication and conversation with parents, just a four-week group.

So it'll be over by the time this airs, but probably still be available in some way it's one of the most fundamental pieces to a relationship and it's hard. 

Diane Dempster: Because relationships build communication and communication builds relationships. I mean, there's this kind of interplay between those.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So I just like to talk for a minute because there are a lot of parents listening, they're like, I would love this. I want to be able to connect with my kid and I don't know how.

Sylvia Hall: Relationships are just the foundation of everything that comes after. And as you said, those conversations lead to connectedness and family connectedness and building that trust in being able to talk about anything between child and parent.

Jarrid Hall: Yeah. And what some of the parents we've talked to I was just thinking, as you said that what was interesting was some parents have said this conversation between the parent and the child in this format, creates a safe space.

Different experiences create different spaces and create different moods and experiences in what they're doing. The parents said, this is a safe space, the child feels safe to share what they're thinking and to lead the conversation.

The parent feels as if the roles are defined. The parents are in listening mode, question mode, and curiosity mode and it's a back-and-forth. It's the dialogue that goes back and forth that parents say is what was so interesting to us and that's what I felt with Austin.

He felt safe that it wasn't my conversation. It was his and he had to tell me. He had to bring me in. He [overlapping]

Diane Dempster: Let's bottom line that Jarrid because that's that's it. It's a safe space, where they can communicate what they want to you. Elaine, you used the word interrogation before. I mean, we go in there, it's like we're working so hard to get information from our kids.

It's a very different sort of energy than what you're describing, which is like, tell us something you want us to hear. Connect with us by sharing. We weren't with you all day, Share something.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You know what reminds me of you? When we do family meetings. I had a family meeting agenda on the refrigerator. And whenever they'd have a fight or kerfuffle or whatever and they'd say, Mom, it's like putting it on the agenda for a family meeting.

So when we got to family meetings, it was never my agenda. It was always theirs. It's the same concept. It was this notion that if they feel like there's a place they're going to be heard, kids just want to be heard, and seen and heard and acknowledged. 

Jarrid Hall: When our kids are jumping in the car at the end of the day saying I can't wait to tell you about my gabs. We hear that from other parents too. One day when my reminder pops up and says you have gabs, he's like, I want to call my son right away. I can't wait to hear about it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

Jarrid Hall: And the kids are excited to tell them. So it became a safe space, but also very engaging. Very energetic.

Sylvia Hall: As a parent, I think we often assume what our kids are thinking or feeling, we assume that we know what they like, what they enjoy doing, what makes them fearful. I think we make a lot of assumptions about what we've learned.

What we have other parents telling us is when their kids are talking to them about what their struggles are, but where their joys are suddenly they see their child through their child's eyes, and it opens up possibilities. So it opens up possibilities for us to get to know our kids better, but then it opens up the possibilities we see in our kids, and that the kids see in themselves.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely. So we've got to watch our time. Tell people how they can find you and find out more about this.

Sylvia Hall: Great. Thank you for asking that then they can find us at gab-on.com, which is G-A-B hyphen O-N.com. We didn't make it easy. Gab-on.com

Diane Dempster: The hyphen is a dash.

Sylvia Hall: Dash, yes, thank you. We're also new in the Apple Store and on Google Play as an app.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Congratulations. And by the time you're listening to this, it will be still free in the App Store through the end of 2021. I've already downloaded my copy so I encourage you all to do the same. So gab-on.com. It's in the App Store.

And if you want some other way to foster communication with your kids, you may check it out. It could be fun.

Diane Dempster: Details are in the show notes as well. You can [overlapping]

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: In the show notes. So as we wrap up this conversation, anything else you want to make sure of or do hope that listeners will take away from today?

Jarrid Hall: There's one thing I'd like to share from one of the parents. We're doing a research project with the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

So through that process, we're interviewing parents, and I would like to share one of the quotes because you brought up a question about how parents get this started. Like what is it that actually allows this conversation to happen?

And a quote from one of the parents said, "GAB-on! is a key to a door for us. We are unable to lock and unlock a door that I've been wanting to unlock desperately for years." So it's that little key that turns. It's very simple but it unlocks that door for a child and...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Unlocking the door I want to be clear whether it's GAB-on! or notes or text or however you're doing it is really having open clear communication with your kids and creating an environment for that to happen.

Diane Dempster: This enables you to have a connection with your kids, which is what all of us want.

Jarrid Hall: Yeah. So it's a great cycle that just grows itself in a very positive way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Great.

Diane Dempster: Awesome. So as we wrap up, why don't you share with us a favorite quote or a motto? You may have different ones you can each obviously share a quote if you want to.

Sylvia Hall: I keep a quote on my phone. I actually also have a frame in my living room. I need to think I would know it but I'm going to read it too. Is that cheating? No, that's not cheating. I just don't want to get it wrong.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Consider reading a GAB-on! It's all good.

Sylvia Hall: Okay. It's by Mary Haskell and I think she wrote it for a different purpose but I always think of our kids when I read it and it's "Nothing you become will disappoint me.

I have no preconceptions about what I'd like to see you be or do. I have no desire to foresee you only to discover you. You can't disappoint me." And it's just one of my all-time favorites.

Diane Dempster: Wow. You give me chills. Thank you, Sylvia. That was amazing. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You can't disappoint me. I love that. Take a screenshot and send that. Will include it. That would be great. It's beautiful because it's a little long to capture them.

Sylvia Hall: I know. Nothing I do is short.

Diane Dempster: So, Jarrid, I don't want to cut you off. You don't have to have a quote. But if you have one that you want to share, give you the chance to do that.

Jarrid Hall: And I think we'll stick with that one with Sylvia.

Diane Dempster: Awesome. Sylvia, Jarrid Hall, thank you so much for being here sharing with our audience, sharing about GAB-on! Talking about communication and connection, which is something so many of us are hungry for with our kids. So thanks for being here. 

Sylvia Hall: Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure.

Jarrid Hall: Thank you. We appreciate it.

Sylvia Hall: It's a pleasure.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: To those of you listening, thanks for what you're doing for listening, for engaging, for being here for making the effort to have these conversations with your kids to seek the connection that you want. That's what sets the stage for the family dynamic you want so glad you're here.

Thank you, Jarrid and Sylvia Hall for the work you're doing, and everybody, have a great day.

Jarrid Hall: Thanks. You too.

Diane Dempster: Okay, bye.