Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact Podcast. I'm here today with my dear friend and colleague and mentor and an compatriot in all things navigating the world of ADHD, John Wilson, who many of you know is the executive director of SOAR. I've known John for a lot of years, we had the privilege of working together on the chat board back probably a decade ago. And, so we've had a long and lovely opportunity to work and share this world together. And so John, it's a pleasure to have you as always.

John Willson: Well, it's great to be here. And in the meantime, during all those opportunities to work together, we've become great friends, I appreciate you so much for the work you're doing and Diane and so it always brightens my day, when I get a chance to see you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I feel the same way. It's always good. And it makes conferences all the better as well. Okay, so we're gonna talk about the world of, navigating, enjoying loving, supporting, and empowering complex kids, which is what you and I spend all of our day, almost every day doing when you're not out on a water rafting or kayaking or something. How did you get to be doing this work? What got you here?

John Willson: In the late 80s and early 90s, 1991, In fact, I got a brochure in the mail that a friend of my mom sent me, and it was from SOAR. And it had at then it had just a couple of pictures. And it was a big topographical map. And it was all the fun things that I was sort of looking for in a career, I was actually at the University of Colorado, getting a master's degree in experiential education and outdoor programming and, it looked just fascinating. And so I called Jonathan, who was our founder and just fell in love with the idea of what we do here. And I came for a summer I had been a camp director before and I came here as a field instructor. And then about halfway through the season, he said, Hey, listen, I've got to take a group to Colorado, I want you to take over this portion of the program. So I'm doing okay. The next summer I came back and when I graduated, I finally finished my master's degree I, in outdoor Therapeutic Recreation Administration, from Aurora University, Jonathan reached out and said, What if I carve off a piece of it, and it's yours. And so he wrote a grant and I hiked the Appalachian Trail with a group of students years, many years ago in 93, and have been here ever since. I took over as executive director upon his retirement about 10,11 years ago. And it has been an extraordinary journey. But it was, I'm an adult with ADHD, we serve kids with ADHD, I am passionate about being in the outdoors, and the SOAR is an outdoor-based program. All of the recreational sports I enjoy require the use of a helmet. And so adventure is my middle name. And so, it just has been a really good fit, and like, many folks in this industry I was really good with the kids. And so my passion for it led to nurturing other adults as they became individuals who mentored and mentored kids to have one quick, funny story. When I told my dad what I was doing that first summer, he just he was gleeful that I was gonna have to endure kids like myself. And, you're getting your comeuppance. Now. Boy. And then I told him all the things I was learning and the strategies I was using, and he was both happy and really frustrated at the same time because it was working and I was able to reach kids and I could understand what they were going through. And it was a very powerful summer. In fact, I would say that there was my life before the day I drove up the road to SOAR in my life after. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Wow, that's a powerful demarcation. And I'm hearing your story and I'm laughing it I remember saying to my mother-in-law once she was like, when she was wishing on my son, my husband to have kids much like him, I was like, What did I do? Exactly? Why did I get it done? the middle of this, but there is something powerful. The other thing I'll share with everybody is that we had this beautiful opportunity. My middle child actually worked for John one summer at SOAR and so I got the privilege of watching her go through his training. And those are the faculty at this camp and I'm gonna use the word faculty. This is not your everyday run-of-the-mill camp counselor, right? The most of your faculty are teachers, I believe.

John Willson: We have teachers, we have folks who have graduated, we and it is rare that we have a 19-year-old kid who's a summer camp counselor, the it's a pretty intense experience. And we have really quality, dedicated people coming every summer to help.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, and that was really my experience. And I think it kind of made an exception for my child, in some ways, because you knew me well enough and knew and she is so amazing. Let's be. She is, in so many ways. And but I can tell you guys that the training part of the reason I think John and I have really done so well and collaborated so well is because there it is foundationally a coach approach to what they do at SOAR, it was so in synergy with as I watched what Sidney was learning it was what she had witnessed with me growing up, and then she was learning to implement it was this really nice flow, right? So it's very much in line in alignment with what we teach in terms of the coach approach and a really empowerment based approach. You get to do it outdoors in beautiful places and so let's talk a little bit about sometimes it's residential and a camp or a school, and then sometimes it's out in an adventure. So talk about what's important about those today.

John Willson: So, what we found, and SOAR basically, is a program that said, hey, we want to work with kids that have learning disabilities and ADHD. All right, now, what's gonna be the best way to do that? And then so we started looking for ways to best serve these kids. And what we learned is that most of these young people are kinesthetic and tactile in nature. And they are experiential learners. And there is no greater experiential, kinesthetic learning environment than the outdoors. And these kids notice everything. And so by creating environments in the outdoors, kind of following very loosely, the concept of our bound established by Kurt Hahn, with a twist of making sure that we weren't just pushing kids to their limits, but instead, we were pushing kids to their achievable limits, and creating opportunities for them to have success because success was the thing that for many of these young people were eluding them. And success breeds success. And so by creating opportunities where these kids were doing these extraordinary things in the outdoors, and having these sort of mountaintop, clifftop experiences, and then we found that we could translate those lessons, those learnings, those opportunities back to a home environment through what we call the metaphor transfer of learning, by using metaphors. I'll give you a quick example. You're rock climbing, and what does the rope represent? It represents the trusting relationship you have with the people who are keeping you safe. Who are those people at home? Are there things that we can there are words that we can use to communicate when we need a little bit of room to kind of maneuver? Or maybe we're gonna try something out of our element we need more support? And those those words on the rock side? And what are the words you use when you're at home? And those metaphors just naturally flow into these life lessons that kids have that allow them to develop and maintain those coping mechanisms that help nurture success for them and their real home and school environments. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, and in some ways, what I'm hearing from that is that kids, the kids learn that at camp, and then they go home and almost become the teachers.

John Willson: And yeah,  we another sort of remarkable way that we helped manifest that, Elaine is that we don't send home an evaluation. We sent home an achievement report, and the achievement report highlights the things that your son or daughter did really well, the accomplishments that they had, along with, we created, I think 120 different strategies and the instructors pick, seven to ten of their favorites that would really apply to your son or daughter. And so we send you home with a template for these are the incredible things your kids did. Here are some strategies that you can use to continue to nurture those those strengths and abilities.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, So hang on a second, we're gonna take a quick break, and then we'll be right back.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody. My guest is John Wilson, also known as Big John to those who know and love him well, especially in a camp environment. And we're talking about really the benefit to complex kids, because with ADHD and learning disabilities, and I'm assuming sometimes kids on the spectrum, what some people might call high functioning in using a life learning experience of camping and being in the outdoors, to really learn how to manage other aspects of their lives. Right.

John Willson: So yeah, and I would say that one of the things that I'm seeing more of than I did when I first started in this industry is anxious kids. Kids are more anxious today. And so, some parents are anxious about the anxiousness of their kids. And I often say when you have a chance, whether you're doing it through a program like SOAR, or you're stepping out of your own comfort zone, and taking your kids outside and doing something, that whenever you create an opportunity, that a young person can work through some of those anxious moments, and find success on the back end of that is the only way that we nurture the ability to overcome those anxious feelings, you cannot just one day manifest, that your actions be gone, you have to work towards being able to break through and overcome obstacles that allow you the belief that you're going to be successful and that you can do this, it's an extraordinary thing to watch somebody go from anxious and a disbelief that they have abilities to this idea of I can, I did, nothing can stop me now.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, one of the things we talk to parents in life a lot about is this notion of holding a vision for our kids, when they struggle to hold the vision for themselves. And to see what's possible for them, and to acknowledge that you may not see it as possible yet, but I see it for you, and I'm gonna hold it for you till you're ready. And that's kind of what I'm hearing here is that you're really holding this extraordinary vision for their capacity, and then love the language you use pushing them to their achievable limits. And that's not saying lower the expectations, that's a meet them where they are what they're really capable of helping them push to that full extent of what they're capable of. Is that fair?

John Willson: Yeah. Absolutely, the gift of self-determination, the gift of self-belief, the gift of believing you can overcome, and then being able to draw on those experiences, that you can then when you're faced with other conditions that seem beyond comprehension, and you draw back on experiences that you've had, that you were able to overcome. I mean, that's, as a leader, I've been doing this now for over 35 years. And, sometimes when I'm presented with really difficult crises, I draw on the fact that I've overcome many situations that were difficult. And those are the kinds of opportunities in a safe and facilitated way. Programs like SOAR can create for kids. And the only way you learn is by trying by doing by overcoming, and one of my favorite quotes that a kid once said here, they said, your comfort zone is a nice warm, safe place, but nothing grows there.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Interesting. It's barren. So, what came up for me as I was hearing you talk about that is this notion of self-determination and the gift of self-belief, right? And I believe in that so powerfully, and I believe that kids need their parents and the adults in their lives to see that for them. And I actually have had the beautiful benefit of a 20 something year old kid of mine coming to me and saying, Thank you for holding that vision, because I couldn't see that, right? Like, it really does make a difference. I'm curious if you can talk about how kids the process of transferring it from the physical to the psychosocial, and emotional, how does a kid translate from, I climbed that mountain to I can write that paper, or I can regulate the emotions when I'm really upset.

John Willson: Okay, when we do put a group of eight kids with learning disabilities and ADHD together a group, you're going to have some turmoil. And through that turmoil, they're going to have a chance to work together to overcome some of those challenges. And one of the things that we'll do is we'll process that. Now I'm gonna give you I talked about the metaphor of transfer learning, I'm gonna give you an example. Sometimes when I take a group rafting, I will purposely get stuck on a rock. And sometimes that can be sort of a panicky situation for kids, the water is flowing all around us, and we're stuck on this rock. And so sometimes I'll say, Okay, relax, hold on, we're fine. But we have to figure out how to work together to get off this rock. And so people start throwing out different ideas, and we brainstorm. And eventually, by doing a mix of all of those things, will eventually peel off the rock. And there we go. And I'll catch Edie on the side of the river. And I'll say, do we ever get stuck on rocks at home? What are some of those rocks? Some of those emotional challenges that we discover? And kids will share what some of those are? And I'll say, what kinds of things do we do sometimes as a family unit, when we get stuck on those rocks? Do we do what we did problem solve? Take stock of what our situation was. riff off each other's ideas? Or do we better fuss and yell and scream at each other? And that aha moment comes on? And does baking? If while we were on that rock, we all yelled at each other and blamed everybody, and blamed me? Would that have gotten us off the rock? No. But John, what did we do we worked together, we problem-solved, we talked to each other, we listened to each other. Do you think just maybe that might work to help get you unstuck off of some of the rocks that you find yourself, that you all mentioned earlier, and the light bulb kind of goes off? Now social relationships are a little more intriguing. Because what we do with social relationships is our staff-to-student ratios, one to three, one to four. And so it gives us the opportunity to kind of pull alongside and nurture a conversation say, hey, what went right, what didn't go right, what could we do differently? What do you think they were saying? What is it you were trying to communicate? What about what if you use statements instead of statements? And so just having some of those conversations, and then getting a chance to practice those in the moment can be a really powerful way to help nurture those things. The other thing, though, that I think is really important, is that in the real world, you don't have unfortunately, you don't have adults that are making sure that they're facilitating a safe experience for kids to sort of grow into each other. And sometimes, they'll just let kids bicker and fuss and gripe with each other. And then, it just becomes a circle of dysfunction.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Sometimes, they don't know what to do. And they don't know how to handle it. Right?

John Willson: Right. And that can be exhausting, right, you just don't want to deal with this right now. And so but because we are creating so much energy and time in culture building, and we do something called a full value contract, where we're valuing each other, where we develop as a group, what the rules are going to be the expectations that we have for each other. And then perhaps one of the most important things we do is one of our rules is that if you put somebody down first avoid doing that, but if you do, you'll improve put-ups and put-up is a nice thing that you're gonna say about somebody. Now the way that I manifested that in my real life. Elaine with my kids, we played every day on the ride to school we played the favorite thing about your game. And so when we spend time really actively celebrating each other and talking about things we appreciate about each other, we change In the conversation, and in a remarkable way, but you have to do that consistently. And you have to mean it. And, sometimes our kids will fall into the three products. And they'll say, You're nice. You're cool. You're funny. Now my son is working here this summer for the first time. And he stopped a group. And he said you will that young man, three pushups. And the kid said, You're nice. You're cool. You're funny. And I'm so proud. Jay said, what's nice about him? Why do you think he's cool? Tell me something funny, he said, and really kind of made the kid dig a little bit. And he said to me, I guess I pick some of that stuff up. I am your son, after all.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: My son called me from camp who was working at a different camp one summer as a counselor, and I remember him calling and saying, Mom, you're coming out of my mouth. Slick.

John Willson: I want to remind parents, that as challenging as it is, sometimes your kids are watching and you've sort of taken the best of your parents and incorporated that into yourselves. I mean, we do that naturally. And so there's hope.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely. There's so much hope and a sense of humor doesn't hurt much either. My son will also call and say, don't tell mom and then he'll tell me something, that I'm not supposed to know because he actually used to list or whatever it was. Okay, so we need to start wrapping this conversation matches, I could hang out with you all night. How can people find out more about you and about sport?

John Willson: Well, you can find soarnc.org and we've got lots of web by webinars and podcasts on the website that are free and available to you. You can see all the different programs that we operate, we have a summer adventure program, we do a residential boarding school, and we have a gap year program for young men who are graduating women who have graduated from high school or are 18 and older. We have a summer, we have a Christmas in the Florida Keys course just after Christmas, and we brick the New Year in down the beautiful Florida Keys. And so yeah, you just go on our website, soarnc.org, and take a look. There's lots of great information there.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Paper and it's definitely in the show notes. And I think you'll probably even find some maybe some webinars or podcasts with the end on.

John Willson: That's right. We do collaborate?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We do have a tendency to do that. Excellent. So I want to give you a chance to complete the conversations. Is there something we talked about that you want to highlight or something we haven't talked about? You just mentioned it, I want to kind of reiterate that there's a wide range of services. And this is not I'm not John's not here to do an advertisement for SOAR. We've done a lot of collaboration over the years to help parents understand what are some of the programming kinds of things that really support this audience of kids. And so part of what SOAR reflects whether you go to SOAR, you go someplace else is going to a camp where the where the staff is educated to support kids with ADHD and related issues, adventure programs, gap, your programs, you happen to have a residential boarding school that I've visited, it's so lovely, it feels like you're in a little red schoolhouse in the woods. But what's really important when you've got a kid with ADHD and related issues is making sure that you find a place that can really support the psychosocial emotional needs of that kid and the executive function needs of developing that kid. And that's one of the things I think so important is it's not just any camp, right? It's finding the places where people are really well educated to understand how to support complex kids and help them reach that potential. So that's maybe my little what?

John Willson: Thank you, Diane, mean, Elaine. Diane isn't with us where she was. The what I would say is that what is our unique differentiator is that we start with kids that are eight and we have to program all the way through 24. And I just don't know a whole lot of other programs that are doing that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Now. So, as I talk about all those different various kinds of programming and making sure that whatever the programming is people are well educated. What else would you add to that? Like, what am I missing? It's important for parents to understand when they're looking for support for their kids. Well, 8 to 24

John Willson: Yeah, and I'll just, I'll share this with you, regardless of whether it's sore or anybody else, but what you're looking for is, you're looking for folks that can understand your child and be really open, honest, and very candid about your child's strengths, abilities and their challenges and get a sense of what their, philosophy is regarding managing impulsivity, managing behavior, managing medications, how do they? How are they going to find ways to celebrate and bring out the best in your kid? And how are they going to help your child overcome some of the obstacles? One of my, personal philosophies is, and I just love, Ross Greene's work and collaborative parenting. And one of the things that he says is,  all of us, want to do better if we can. And so we just have to help find ways to remove the barriers to success for kids, and then give them those opportunities that they can excel. And as parents, maybe the best advice I can give is, to keep trying different stuff, you don't know what's gonna work, something's gonna work. And you're like, I've got it figured out, and then that thing will stop working. And then he's got to come up with a new thing. And you just, you absolutely never know.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: No, you really don't. And that's and they're likely to get something that really works, and then maybe get bored with it, or get tired of it or need a different kind of novelty or something new. And that's part of their learning process. Sometimes once they've got something, they're ready to learn something else, they may not know that consciously. But on another level, their experimentation is part of their development. So anything else before we call this one?

John Willson: You mentioned you were gonna ask me what my favorite quote is.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I will I just wanted to make sure you didn't have anything else first.

John Willson: No, I've been driving and thinking what is my favorite quote, and I'm gonna give you two. As it goes, Asimov, who wrote a sci-fi writer, wrote a quote that I just love, and he said, that most of humanity's great discoveries were not heralded with the word Eureka, but instead, that's funny. And I love that because I want folks to just, you never know what's going to work, and sometimes that I can't believe that worked, and you'll keep trying new things. And the other one came from a young woman who worked for me years ago. And, she looked at me, and she said, Big John, if you can't keep me, we can't convince them to confuse them. I, someone said, What does that mean? And then I say, Here, I'll show you and I said, a guy called the kid over, I say, Robert, come here. Hey, remember that time we were walking down the street, and there was that guy near the monkey with a Snicker bar? You were there? Right. And he, everyone was dancing. And the kid just looked at me like, I had lost my mind, and kids misbehaving. And now and then he was done misbehaving. He was just too confused about the conversation. And it totally redirected him. So if you can't convince them, confuse them.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I love that. I think I might use that with my husband. Is that okay? All right, thanks, John. Thank you, for the unbelievably beautiful work that you bring to hundreds 1000s of kids over the years and to the staff who gets to work with you in this environment and learn how to be with these kids in such a profoundly empowering way. It's beautiful work. And I'm very privileged that I've gotten to be there and see there, see it firsthand. And I've had a lot of clients who have gone over the years. So thank you for that work.

John Willson: Feeling is absolutely mutual. Elaine, I appreciate you and Diane and your husband and all of you I really, love the opportunity to interact with all of you. You're doing very important work. And I love your message because it's so important to my message exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Enough about me What do you think about me? All right, but I want to ask you guys who are listening to take a minute and think about what you heard in this conversation that John and I were having, what are the insights you're taking away? What are those moments those gems, those awareness, and how do you want to bring that forward with you and to your parenting this week or to your work this week? What do you want to do with these insights? And how do you want to apply them? And as always, thank you for what you're doing for yourself and for your kids. You at the end of the day make an enormous difference. Take care, everybody.