Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. We're thrilled to be here with you today. And it may look like it's just Diane and me, but it's not. We have a secret guest today. Our guest is Kayla Taylor, and she is off-screen to protect the privacy of her family, and of her children and the children involved in the story we're going to talk about today. So I think we should dive right in. What do you think? 

Diane Dempster: I think so. Kayla, first of all, we're so glad to have you with us and glad to have you be a new friend with us. And tell us a little bit about how you got into what you do and the backstory.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And why you're here? And let me preface by saying Kayla is the author of a book called Canaries Among Us, and we will have a link to that in the show notes.

Kayla Taylor: So, Elaine and Diane, thank you so much for having me here today. I'm honored to be here. And yes, my background is in business and strategy and finance. I actually never intended to write a book, but I had an experience that just rocked my family's world, and it dealt with bullying and learning differences, and anxiety. And the issues were all conflated and confusing and isolating, and no one would talk to me about them. I was gaslit a lot when I was told something was happening. People tell me, no, that's not really happening, or you're perceiving that wrong, or your kids are just fine. They'll will outgrow that, or they're being too sensitive. They're not really being bullied. And so I started writing, I started journaling, just to help work through the morass of feelings and emotions and thoughts in my head. It was really pretty cathartic. I just bled my experience on the paper. And I was simultaneously try to address to find a mix between what I was feeling and experience and what I perceived to be my truth versus what other people were telling me was happening. I started doing a ton of research. I was a huge nerd, who read all the help self-help books, and then went to all the footnotes and all the endnotes, and then paid 2,995 to read all the journal articles for one nugget of information. And so, after about three years, I was able to get my kids to better footing. I started to call my deep dark hole. I felt so isolated. But when your kids are feeling better, you can start looking around. I came out of my hole, and I started looking around, and I realized I was not alone.

In fact, I could see so many other families going through the exact same things. They, too, thought they were all alone, but I could see they were right next to each other. And I wanted to do something about that. I mean, I think as you have probably discussed many times, one out of every five kids has a learning difference. Bullying affects about 20 to 30% of all kids, although most don't report it, and we can get into that later. Before COVID, anxiety was expected to affect about one in three adolescents. And if you pile all these statistics on top of each other, it was confounding to me that parents weren't talking.

And then it became apparent it was because of all the stigma. And I just wanted to address that stigma. So it actually felt a little bit of a moral obligation because I so wanted a memoir or story to help me feel less alone. And so I felt an obligation to pay that forward. And then I also thought every parent shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel and spend hours and hours and hours doing all the research that I did. So I wanted to package that in the book as well. I imagine it's somewhat similar to how you got to doing what you're doing. You just had an experience, and you just didn't want other-

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I was going to say the story feels familiar. I call it my Scarlett O'Hara moments, that moment when I looked up and said as God is my witness, no parent should ever have to go through what I went through alone for the last 10 years. So I really, really get that feeling, and I really want to acknowledge and honor what it takes to stand up and say this isn't going to be just my experience alone. I'm going to use this to do something to make the world a better place with it. 

Kayla Taylor: That is exactly the goal. Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And I want to take it a step further because I know we're going to talk a lot about kids in school and bullying and challenges. And I want to give you permission as you're working through this, Kayla, to talk about the impact that it had on you as well because a lot of our listeners are feeling it themselves, and we forget that it impacts us as well. And so I want to just lay that and preface that as you continue with the backstory and how, as you were journaling, what were some of the key things that were going on that you wanted to capture for yourself and then ultimately for the world.

Kayla Taylor: Diane, that is such a gift that you just said and gave because I can tell you that even as writing this book, I obviously wrote it for the caregivers' perspective. But the number of times I felt and also that I heard that the victim here is the child. People will have no sympathy for you. You're the adult. You need to be tough, and let's talk about the child. And I get that. And I agree to an extent. My priority was my children, mostly because they were more vulnerable than I am or was, but the impact on me was no less significant. In fact, people who, for example, were both neurodiverse and raised neurodiverse children that I've heard them say it's their lived experience but that it was harder to raise children than to be the person. I'm not sure where that comes from; maybe a sense of responsibility. Maybe you feel like, maybe you know more, and you understand the long-term implications. But, as they say, you're only as happy as your least happy child. And so anyways, that's a huge gift, Diane. So thank you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: As a parent who was neurodiverse, and didn't know it as a kid and raised a bunch of neurodiverse kids, as you're just saying that I'm like, yeah, I do this work, because I don't want other kids to grow up feeling the way I did, or my kids did those first 10 years. But I can't do anything about that. I can do something from here forward. And so a lot of it, I think, is our experience is important. And what I hear you saying, what Diane is speaking to, is that it's not just what happened to your kid and to the kids in that class environment with your child, but it's what happened to you and how you responded to it, and how you chose to deal with it. And that has an impact, and it's a very important part of the story. 

Kayla Taylor: Right. Well, I think as a parent, you see more all the systemic factors at play, and so that can be even more discouraging. You aren't up just against one or two kids who are mistreating your child. You are against a whole system that does not choose to make an effort to honor individuality in a way that's humane and that's daunting.

 Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So we're talking around it. Let's get a little bit more specific. Full disclosure, I haven't finished your entire book, but it's gripped me, and I have I'm certainly well into it. And the story is that you had a child who was impacted by bullying, and through your own learning and supporting, your child discovered, then your child's neurodiversity and then began to see and understand a larger relationship between neurodiversity and bullying, and ultimately, larger levels of victimization, and sort of from there. So let's pick it up from you at the point where you're aware that you have a child with both neurodiversity who has been experiencing bullying in a school environment that you were trying very hard to stay connected to because you wanted to support and be part of the school environment. And yet you weren't getting the support you needed from there. What was the experience? 

Kayla Taylor: I think the biggest aha moment for me is when I read, like I said, I was the nerd who did a ton of research. And I was treated often, even by friends, that my child was being overly sensitive, and I was too. And we just needed to toughen up. But then I read that the experts classify bullying as a form of victimization and it's a matter of social justice. And this is particularly true because actually, the definition of bullying is that bullying is the act of repeatedly causing physical and/or emotional harm to another person with less power. And so that power piece is really truly important. And in this context, affects kids who are neurodiverse because often they are treated as less than at school. They are isolated. And so it's easier for them to be targeted and for other people to disregard it as okay. In fact, often, they're treated as though they somewhat asked for it. They deserve it. They didn't conform and they didn't toe the line, and so people have less empathy for them.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It's interesting in my eldest child, second grade class were something similar, but not the same happened. The two kids who are most impacted were the bully and the bullier. And both kids were neurodiverse. And so we've dealt with it in a way I think that it from your reading of the book you wanted to, which was bringing the parents together to talk to each other. And we were very lucky that we were able to address it. But what really jumped out at me then was that it wasn't just the kid who was being bullied, who was neurodiverse. Both kids were different and so both kids were struggling.

Kayla Taylor: And both kids needed support, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly.

Kayla Taylor: think that one of the key takeaways I had is that there's actually a huge layover with restorative justice. We can label a child as a bully and another child as a victim, but that doesn't honor each child. I mean, these are children, right? So everybody deserves more than what was done to them. So calling a child a victim really strips them of their autonomy, the rest of their identity. So it's really important to talk more about the behaviors in a way that suggests they can change. So, therefore, you wouldn't just label a kid a bully, which fixes them as this just awful person. But if you talk about the behaviors, then you can start getting behind the behaviors and what caused them. And it sounds like, in your case, it was different ways of being different neural wiring, and maybe each of these kids could benefit from different tools and perspectives to help grow into their best selves. But you also talk about it's really important that it's not just the child who is targeted, who is affected, though that is significant. It's probably worth noticing to talk about the consequences. I mean, I think, kids who are bullied are isolated socially. Therefore, they have lower self-esteem, academic impairment, substance abuse, delinquency. They get stress-related ailments, like headaches, stomachs, problem sleeping, mental health issues, like anxiety, depression, and in really sad, terrible cases, bully side. But also, the chronic stress of having to manage bullying causes inflammation, which can lead to things like diabetes and heart disease. So these are long-term consequences.

And what is fascinating to me, not necessarily in a good way, but worth noting, is that bystanders often have many of the same effects. They, too, don't feel safe environments where adults don't enforce community codes. And they also can feel a sense of moral failure when they don't step in and help. Now, personally, I can't blame them if it's an environment where the adults in charge aren't helping the kids evolve into their best self. Then a child is probably scared if they step in, they'll be targeted themselves. So I don't blame them for that. There are things we can do to help them. But to your point, the youth who target others have many, in fact, many of the same outcomes that we discussed, but also, later in life, they have a higher propensity to have difficulty maintaining relationships, jobs, if spousal or child abuse and even criminal behavior, so the outcomes can be even worse.

So the big takeaway for me, and I think for all of us, is we're doing nobody any favors when we gloss over bullying, or say, oh, they'll figure it out, or boys will be boys, or oh, she's being too sensitive. The whole community benefits not just now but for their entire lifetimes when we really address bullying compassionately and excuse me and kindly.

Diane Dempster: And the place I want to go is, like, what are the support? We could talk about this for hours and hours, but I want to get practical support to really inform parents so that they can become advocates for their kids on honestly on either side. But what are the supports that effective schools have in place or need to put in place? 

Kayla Taylor: Right, so it's probably worth distinguishing between bullying prevention and bullying response. So I actually looked because I was desperate for it the one guide I could give to my school that they could implement and that everybody would be okay. That guide did not exist. In fact, one of the preeminent researchers in the topic basically did a review of all bullying research to date and all the studies to date. And to me, the highlight was basically we need to do more work. Some things work, but some things don't. And we don't have a program. But as I started reviewing all the research, there were some common themes and some common elements of cultures where bullying is much less likely to happen. And that is, in particular, in cultures that are authentic, and they authentically care for people, they have mutual respect and include everybody, and differences are valued. In these cultures, the caring culture is role modeled on top. You can consider an authoritarian culture versus one of mutual respect.

So teachers are respected because you can imagine if a head of school or principal is disrespectful to a teacher, then they're going into their classroom and not being their best selves. So it really is role modeled on top. And in these cultures, students are empowered. They're empowered to define their own culture and norms. They're trained in empathy and social skills. Every child is considered worthy and capable of learning and achieving. And they also highlight and reward acts of kindness to demonstrate that that's the norm because sometimes when there's bullying, that can grab a lot of attention. And so kids can assume that that is the norm of the culture. But if you instead highlight kind acts, kids can see that there's actually more good than bad, and that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I'm just going to interrupt for a second because we need to go for a quick break, and then we'll come back, and then you wanted to finish that thought as we go forward. So give us just a minute, and we'll be right back.

Kayla Taylor: Okay, great.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So welcome back. You were about to say another. 

Kayla Taylor: Another really important part of bullying prevention is that the efforts are pervasive and long-term, and integrated. So they don't just tell the students what to do. But they train all the teachers, the administrators, the playground monitors, the bus drivers, and the parents on how to respond compassionately and to respect all children. In a lot of schools, they have the one-off assembly, and they put a poster on the wall. And as you can imagine, that doesn't really work. 

Diane Dempster: Well, I'm guessing the answer is both but education versus management and are we doing better on education and just not on the follow-through? Is there opportunities on both sides?

Kayla Taylor: I think there's opportunity everywhere. In our case, there was no bullying program. No one had been trained in bullying. Nobody knew how to identify it. I was told it wasn't existent. I was told there's really no such thing as bullying in elementary school that there was none. It's typical. And so, how can you address it? If you don't even acknowledge it?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That's mind-blowing to me.

Kayla Taylor: Well, I think there's a fear, and we see this in a lot of different cases. There's a fear that if you acknowledge it, then A, that will tarnish your reputation and B, you might be liable. So there's a huge effort by administrators just to look the other way or not acknowledge it, but really brave, compassionate cultures acknowledge. One researcher said he would be much more worried about a school that acknowledged no bullying than one that documented many cases of bullying because bullying happens. Kids are testing boundaries. Kids, some of them are dealing with trauma at home or trauma different places. I mean, there's a lot going on with these kids, and if we don't acknowledge that, that's when the real problems come into play. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me that I'm much more worried about the denial than I am about the acknowledgment. We've had a lot of people in our community Diane, and I'm sure you've worked with people I know I have, who have had to move to different school districts because of bullying who've had to move out of state because of bullying, who has a lot of really difficult situations because they're neurodiverse kids, for a range of reasons for getting bullied and not getting the support. 

Kayla Taylor: Right, and that's a huge injustice. I remember my child saying to me, when we finally left our school, why should I be the one to have to leave? What did I do wrong? And processing that was heartbreaking. What do you say? Life isn't fair. But at this point, my kid was used to hearing that about differently-sized cookies and distributing those. This was uprooting our whole family, everything my child knew, and it really felt shameful, but the alternative was staying in a school where she wasn't safe, and we didn't feel that was an option.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: One of the things that you talk about in your book is this notion of institutional betrayal. So before we wrap this conversation, and believe it or not, we're going to have to wrap this conversation soon. Can you explain what that means? We've talked about neurodiversity and bullying and victimization and integration and compassion and respect, but can you explain what institutional betrayal means? What is that?

Kayla Taylor: So institutional betrayal is a concept that was coined by a woman named Jennifer Freyd, Ph.D. She's an amazing person. And her work actually initially dealt with this sexual assault, but she has found that it's relevant. And many researchers have joined her work to find it's relevant in many contexts. And basically, it's the idea that institutions can do a huge amount of damage when they don't support the people who are dependent upon them. So we actually see this in many cases. In our case, I thought addressing bullying would be easy. I thought we could go to the teacher, and our teacher was kind, but we went to the administrator, and I thought they would help the child who was targeted, help the aggressor learn to be kinder, and the whole world would be better. But as I mentioned, that didn't happen. And this happens in many cases, I started watching the news and saw that Boy Scouts and altar boys. For example, the Sandusky sports fans when they came forward, nobody took them seriously.

We've seen issues at boarding schools in university. For example, Chanel Miller or Lacy Crawford wrote a beautiful book about her experience in boarding school. Athletes, we've seen gymnasts and soccer players when they try and come forward to talk about their abuse, they were mistreated. We've seen it in the military. We've seen it in schools. We've seen it with Harvey Weinstein. And basically, the concept is, it can be devastating, obviously, to be victimized. That can be hugely traumatic. But when you try and get help and realize the whole organization, your whole community is effectively complicit in it, the psychological impact of that is even greater. For example, they have shown that soldiers and it affects both women and men, but the soldiers who were sexually assaulted in the military versus who were assaulted in a civilian context, the long-term health consequences are much greater for those that were dependent upon the military to support them and then didn't. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It's like a double mistrust or double betrayal.

Kayla Taylor: It's a double mistrust, but it's more than double because if you think about our case, two children gamed up and repeatedly just went after my kid, and that is awful. And there were a bunch of bystanders who didn't step in because they were scared of being targeted themselves. But that was essentially two kids hurting my children and other kids not doing much. And that's not good. But when a child looked around the entire school, all the way up to the principal, the entire community didn't support them, I mean, that can make people doubt basic humanity, basic goodness in the world, their own right to civil treatment. It makes people doubt everything. So the long-term health consequences can be much more significant even than the initial awful assault. 

Diane Dempster: And so I want to bring us wrapped by talking, Kayla. Most kids, I hope, are not in a situation where they're facing institutional betrayal. And if a parent and a kid ends up feeling like they're in a situation where they're trying to get support, and they're seeking support from all the right channels, or the traditional channels, what are some of the out-of-the-box, things that that a parent should explore? 

Kayla Taylor: Right. Well, in an ideal community, the parents can talk to officials at the school, and those officials take each and every report seriously. They'll document it. They'll use compassion. In particular, I think the ideals of restorative justice, where you help the child who was injured reclaim their rightful place in the community. So you actually center that child. And instead of like stripping them of their autonomy, you actually ask them what they need, and you help give them what they need that often entails, like authentic apologies, and not just words, but attempts at repair and that the child and family can often be very instrumental in defining what that is, and then also helping the child who hurt others understand the consequences of their actions, helping them take responsibility for them, and moving forward pro-socially in their own community. And this is when it happens, a beautiful thing because then that child has learned how to be kinder, so they too have learned a lifelong skill that will benefit them as they go out in the world. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. What about when it's not in the ideal community? What's your guidance for parents who may be struggling with the school community that doesn't feel supportive? 

Kayla Taylor: The best thing I can say is one of the hardest things is in my personal experience, and I'm just speaking from my heart because I hope nobody gets here, but finding anybody who believes you finding any sort of community who can validate your experience, who can bear witness to what's happening to you, because one of the most mind-bending thing is to have these things happen and have people look away, or people flee. A lot of times, it's hard to see a kid be bullied. And there's a lot of psychology behind this, but a lot of people will look the other way because it gets them anxious to think about another child being bullied. And so people will often choose to say, oh, everything's fine, everything's fine, because the witnesses, not because they're awful people, but they too, don't want to feel anxious. So if you can find anybody who believes you and supports you, that is huge. I do know parents have hired lawyers. If you have to go that way, ideally, it might be necessary. Some people can't leave the district. There's only one district in the school, and some people might feel the necessity of doing that so the school learns and other kids aren't injured. But that is a tough go. It's a brave way to go. I honor anybody, but that is not easy hiring lawyers, going to head to head of the school, and then sending your kid to that school, where the school is upset with you because you're suing them. It's not easy. It's really not easy.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: No, it's not. And we see it a lot in our community. I mean, it is not, maybe a lot, so it's an overstatement. But it is not uncommon for parents of neurodiverse kids to be in a position where they end up at odds with the school system, sometimes working together with their colleagues in the school system and still at the same time as adversaries with the actual "system." So we need to start wrapping up this conversation, and you're bringing so many really impactful and important issues to the discussion.  When we asked you how can people find out more and get in touch with you, as we said at the beginning, we're going to put Kayla’s book in the notes. And you can also reach her at kaylataylorwrites.com, and we'll have canaries among us in the show notes so you can link directly to the book. 

Kayla Taylor: It's probably not worth noting that I'm donating all my personal proceeds to nonprofits that support neurodiversity, bullying, prevention, and mental health. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Beautiful, beautiful. And the other thing we mentioned at the beginning that Kayla is off-screen at this because Kayla Taylor is a pseudonym, and to protect the privacy of her family and community, she is writing under an assumed name. And so that highlights the challenging complexity of the situation and the lengths that you'd have to go to in order to be able to have this really difficult conversation without putting your kids at greater risk. And Kayla, I really want to acknowledge your effort here.

Kayla Taylor: Thank you. It's not just risk. But I think, as you talked about so eloquently on your show so frequently, it's also about respecting my children's identity and their right to self-actualization, to defining who they are to, living their own life, and coming for their own story. So I felt the need to support other parents going through similar things. And I also wanted to allow all children involved tell their own story, and this is the only way I could find to do that eloquently or efficiently. 

Diane Dempster: Makes sense. So, Kayla, as we wrap, is there anything either that we haven't talked about that you want to make sure we cover or something you want to bring back from earlier in the conversation to put in our conversation today? 

Kayla Taylor: Sure. I think one of the most important things I learned is the research talks a lot about the impact of the bystanders, the children who are standing by that has been shown if a child steps in and supports a child who has been injured, that has a huge impact. That can be hard in the moment, but a child can actually also go back later and say I saw what happened. I didn't think you deserve that, and the emotional impact of that of telling someone that they're worthy of their dignity that has a huge effect on limiting the trauma had an effect of bullying. So I'd recommend that for kids. But one of the thing I realized is maybe even more important than the bystander is the bystander's parents. I mean, what I would have done in the moment to have parents call me and be supportive and bear witness and even maybe help me advocate. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

And that is not the case usually with people who are victimized and set aside and considered less worthy, as neurodiverse often are. But if parents can do simple things like not use words like weird and strange when describing their friends and their kids, their kid's friends, they role model for their kid's disrespect, that is so necessary, and help their kids learn to value all types of people. And also, they can even more actively reach out to parents. If they've heard of a parent who has claimed that their child is being bullied a lot, he will say, oh, that mom was being an oversensitive helicopter.

But if parents instead stop and said, wait, that must hurt. Let me see if I can learn more. Maybe I should call that parent and say this; this sounds really hard. Can you tell me more? Is there anything I can do? The impact of that, I think, could change the whole dynamic and really validate so many people and be key in terms of building the societies that we care about where we truly honor all people. I just don't think that parents realize their impact. Parents whose kids are being hurt know when they need help, but the parents whose kids aren't hurt, don't realize how important they are. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely. And as we link to the show notes, we'll link to Kayla’s book and to her website. We'll also add there a couple of pieces on the website, including one specifically about how to talk to parents, your kids' friends' parents. There are a couple of articles from the years of working with other kids who have dealt with bullying experiences that we will highlight for everybody, for the listeners as well in the show notes. Kayla, thank you for being here. Thank you for being so passionate and engaged in this really important topic and moving the needle forward, making a difference in the world. We always like to end with a fun wrap. Diane, do you want to bring us there? 

Diane Dempster: Yeah. Do you have a favorite quote or a motto that you'd like to share with our audience, Kayla?

Kayla Taylor: I do. But first, Elaine and Diane, I just want to thank you so much for the work you do. It is so important. I think it's really changing the world and validating people who are important who are part of our humanity, so thank you for all you're doing. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Kayla Taylor: As for a quote, I'll draw upon Mahatma Gandhi, who said the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members. In our case, none of these kids should be vulnerable. Everyone is worthy of their dignity, and that which makes them different actually makes them more interesting, in my opinion. But unfortunately, we do live in a society right now that does not value difference much of the time. So I think that when people reach out and value these members of our community who should not be more vulnerable but are made to feel vulnerable, it can be quite beautiful and very important work. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. 

Diane Dempster: Thank you so much for being here with us, Kayla. Thank you for those of us who are listening. Let's take a minute as we wrap and do some reflecting. What caught your attention in our conversation? What do you want to capture for yourself as you move into the rest of your day from listening to this podcast? 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Is there any insight that you've gleaned from this conversation that you want to bring forward into your coming week? How do you want to use this? And to all of you who are here who are listening, we want to acknowledge what you're doing for yourself and for your kids. Being engaged being in conversation, listening, learning, thinking, processing, it makes a huge difference. And as Kayla's saying, the role of the parent is often under-recognized and undervalued, and you make a huge difference in the lives of your kids. Little things can have a profound impact. Thanks for being here, everybody. 

Diane Dempster: Thanks, everybody.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And see you next one.

Helpful Links:

-Parent Expectations: 2 Steps to Success 

-Parenting is Leadership Guide