Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Parenting with Impact. I'm Elaine Taylor-Klaus.

Diane Dempster: And I'm Diane Dempster, and we're here together today to talk to you about a fun time of year. We're recording this in the middle of back-to-school time 2021. And so those of you who are listening to this later will remember.

 Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Remember what we thought last year was a year like no other, and now we have yet another year like no other?

 Diane Dempster: Like no other. I feel like I'm going to jinx it if I'd like to say anything.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So what we're doing in these episodes, where we're going to chat with each other, is to really talk about themes that we see that emerge in our work as coaches and parent educators. And clearly, back to school is a time where things come up, and this year is different from other years. So what we thought we'd do today is tell you a little bit about how we do events at Impact Parents and plan for these kinds of things and then some of the topics that we're anticipating being hot topics this year. Where do you want to go with that, Di?

Diane Dempster: Let's talk about back-to-school time because I think that that's a big thing for everybody. And I remember we've been doing this for ten years, and one of the first years a year, I wrote a blog that was called why I love back to school.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And I remember thinking you were crazy.

Diane Dempster: I know. I've always loved back to school because it was like a fresh start. I got to talk to my kids and really kick it off and figure out, okay, so in fifth grade, what's going to be different for fifth grade than fourth grade or whatever it was? I love resets. My brain likes that sort of, okay, start over, and back to school time has always been that for me. But I think a lot of times right now, we feel like we're kind of on this treadmill of like the hamster wheel. Here we go again. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We've been going back to school every other week or every other month for the last year and a half.

Diane Dempster: Some of you have been back in school. Some of you have not been back in school. Some of you may still not be back in school, or you may be back out of school. I mean, it's this sort of, we've been doing this thing where everything is different, and we're trying to make it consistent and helpful for our kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I just want to stick with where you were a second ago because you were saying you love back-to-school season. And I want to say very clearly I always hated back-to-school season. So I want to speak to the parents who are like, oh, man, we have to get back into that routine. We have to start waking up early, which I'm not an early-morning person. And I don't know whether this is you're not having ADD and me having ADD or what it is, but for me, I saw back to school as an end of my freedom as a parent.

Diane Dempster: And I was the opposite because my kids were back to school, and I was like, woohoo, I'm free again. They're out of my hair.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Summer, I could do what I want. And in the school year, I had to follow somebody else's routines and rigid protocols, which I always hated. So wherever you are, and as I say that in the last year and a half, we've all been going in and out of school so much. And sometimes they're home and sometimes not. There's a lot of confusion. And what we've seen, we'll talk about this in a few minutes, is we're dealing with very different issues this year in particular. We've got a lot of kids who have had a lot of school refusal, who have gotten used to being at home and are now going to go back into a classroom. So there's a lot of different challenges this year, even from typical years.

Diane Dempster: I was going to say some of you are like your kids are really excited to go back to school because they were really struggling in online learning, and some of you had kids that completely shut down and just stopped doing online learning. And so you're excited to get them back to school to hopefully get them in a situation where they engaged. Or you're scared because they didn't do well last year, and so are they going to be a year a year and a half behind? And how are they going to do keeping up? And I guess I want to promise you that everybody's dealing with that. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Can I just speak to that for just a second? Here's the author's message, everyone is going to be "behind or not behind or ahead in some areas and behind in others. There's not a single kid on the planet who's going back where they would have been otherwise without the pandemic." So just set some realistic expectations for yourself and your kid.

Diane Dempster: Really, really. And I think about this. We were talking in a group the other day about summer reading. And I remember the way I was with summer reading. It was so stressful because my kids so didn't want to do it until like the last week before school. And it was always this fear of mine that, oh my gosh, if they don't do all their summer homework, they're going to end up behind all their peers. And they're going to have to get caught up, and it's going to be so much harder. And this was just for summer. And when I talk to my teacher friends, they're like everybody is behind. Everybody is in a different place. So give yourself permission to trust that wherever your kid is right now, this sounds right. It's going to be okay.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It is going to be okay. No question that wherever they are is right where they're supposed to be. And our goal is to meet them where they are and help them move forward from there, wherever that is. And so try to let go of that stress of, I should have could have, because here's where you are. And if we can relieve that, let go of that should it'll really lighten the load for the whole family.

Diane Dempster: And it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not going to be challenges and struggles, because we know that there is, and I believe there's always going to be challenges and struggles. And it's about resilience and creativity and not about avoiding struggle. What were you going to say?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I want to talk just really quickly if I can, Diane. So every year, at least a couple of times a year, we do a major event. And we actually do a lot more than just those two. But those are probably two big events, one in the back-to-school time and one in January, February. And I thought it'd be interesting for you to hear a process little bit because what we do to prepare for these events. We have one coming up this year called school success 2021. For those of you listening to this beforehand, on August 28, and we hope you'll join us.

Diane Dempster: Join us on August 26.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: August 26. Thank you, and if you're listening to this afterwards, keep your eyes open for our next live event. But what we do when these are happening is we sit down first, and we anticipate. We talk about what we've been hearing from our clients, what we've been hearing from our colleagues. And we start to anticipate what are the issues that are coming up now. And then we plan an event every year, twice a year, based on what's going on right now with parents. We try very hard not to give the same thing again and again. I know a lot of educators do that, but we're constantly changing it to meet exactly what's going on in the world in that moment.

Diane Dempster: Well, and here's the thing that's cool about it because Elaine just said we don't talk about the same challenges because they're always changing. And the thing that we do is we pull the strategies and the tools and the chips out of Sanity School, which is our core program because the tools and the strategies and the tips are the same regardless of what the challenge area is. And I know that's hard to believe, but that's one of the things that I love about our work is this it's not a maze. It's a really simple process to say okay, what tool do I want to pull up? What strategy do I want to pull up? Here's the model; what do I do? So your challenges are different all the time. And your challenges this year are different all the time. And your challenge with one kid might be different than your other kid, or the challenge that you had with this kid last fall is different than the challenge you have this year. And the way you look at it, the way you approach it can be the same, and you just figure out which tool to apply to the situation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. I want to give you a little heads-up for those of you who are going to make the webinar on the 26th. Sorry about that. Some of the topics that we've identified for this year. Here are the challenge areas we can anticipate families dealing with that we know we're going to hear a lot about in the coming months. And then let's just talk about it a little bit, Diane. Is that good?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So the first one most of you have heard that kids with complex issues like ADHD, executive function challenges, anxiety, etc, our kids tend to have problem with transitions. They have trouble stopping, when they're starting another, finishing something, beginning another. When things don't go as they plan, that can throw our kids off base. We call it trouble with transitions.

Diane Dempster: And that's the thing with a lot of our school situations now. I remember this. It's like block learning if your kids don't know where they're supposed to be or what they're supposed to be doing. And a lot of you are going to have kids that are maybe not going to school every single day or going a few days a week or whatever it is, and so your transitions are going to be very different. And you've got this big transition from maybe not being in school to being back in the classroom. And so you're really helping your child and yourself navigate this complex move from into the fall, which we do every year, but into a very different environment than I think many of us have ever been in before.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And I think we often don't realize what qualifies as transitions. So oftentimes, we think about mornings as a challenge area in families. Morning is a transition time. We think about homework as challenge areas. Bedtime as a challenge area. Getting off technology. Those are all transition times, and our kids typically struggle with them anyway. And then, we've added all of these other transitions on top of the daily transitions. It can create a lot of stress for our kids.

Diane Dempster: And we talk about this a lot in Sanity School, but that transition disappointment. If a kid thinks one thing is going to happen, and then all of a sudden, they're surprised. And it's like, oh, wait, no, you have to be at school today, or I thought I was going to be able to do this, but I got to do my homework. Disappointment is a transition. And so we're helping our kids navigate that because our kids don't know what to expect the same way that they used to because we're a little bit out of our routine.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So one of the things we can anticipate this year is to really pay attention to transitions. Be aware that transitions are hard for kids. And again, in the webinar, school success 2021, we will give you some very clear strategies for how to navigate this. And we'll talk a little bit in a little while about a few of those. But that's one place we can anticipate some significant challenges this year.

Diane Dempster: So the second place is about anxiety and avoidance. And I think we alluded to this a few minutes ago, but some of these kids are really anxious about being back in school. I mean, a lot of you, as parents, are anxious about having your kids back in school. A lot of us who are educators are anxious about being in the same classroom with kids and having to navigate some potentially difficult situations. And so there's this error of whoo, kind of anxious, and maybe even when we get anxious, we avoid, or if we get anxious, maybe we get real controlling. I get controlly when I get anxious. I'm like, I got to take care of everything. [inaudible] So some of us coping mechanisms know what your coping mechanism. If you're anxious, which we all are likely to be, you're either going to go into control mode, or your kid might go into avoidance mode. And that's probably a lot of what we see is these kids are having a hard time.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and I think we've seen a disproportionate amount of school avoidance in the last year and a half, I think. I mean, it's always been there, but we're now having parents of six and eight, and 10-year-old kids come in and say my kid won't go to school. I can't get them out the door. And that's hard as parents because the number one directive for us as parents is to send our kids to school. We know we're supposed to send our kids to school. So if they're saying no, like, what do we do? How do we handle that?

Diane Dempster: How do you get your kid to go to school?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And it creates a stress environment for everybody, not just them but for you.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, and there's some level of anxiety and avoidance for you, too, so keep a check on that and figuring out what you're doing to keep yourself calm. I mean, that's always the job. Number one is keep yourself calm so that you can then help your kids stay calm. Notice when they're upset, notice when they're avoiding, and help them re-engage instead of what we normally do is like, we get mad at our kids, and we get frustrated that they're avoiding, and then we try to make them do their work. And then they get even more frustrated, and it ends up in a hot mess.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right, just escalates all the stress. Another topic we anticipate people dealing with this fall, and sometimes it helps to just know this is common. Our kids are going to be anxious, and we're going to be anxious. Kids are, therefore, likely to avoid, and so might we. So let's anticipate that. Know that. Call it what it is. And again, we'll give you some strategies for managing it. The third one, y'all. This is the kicker is somehow we all need to figure out how to get our own work done in the midst of all of this. 

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think it's interesting because companies are now talking about some people are going to be remote employees forever. I mean, we've gotten used to it. Other people are trying to come back. They're trying to come back part-time. And again, this is navigating the change of your work situation with your life situation. You're now maybe going to have to be doing with carpool and with getting to the office, and you haven't had to do that in the same way, or maybe you have. But we're not just navigating back to school, but we're navigating back to a different energy and pattern of life, I guess, is what I would say. And part of that is about you and how you're navigating it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I was just thinking, I've got a really, really good friend who's the CEO of a large enough company. She's got like 2-3,000 employees, and having conversations with her about making the decision about when they come back and how democratic to be. And when people come back into the office and who wants to come back and who doesn't? We're going to be in transition around this for several years, is my anticipation. And so getting clear on what works for us as parents and how to make our life balance work is part of taking care of our kids. And sometimes, the decisions are made for us, and we have to figure out how to navigate it, but at least thinking about it and anticipating it is really key.

Diane Dempster: And what's coming up for me as you're saying is that word advocating. It's we as parents don't always recognize that it's our role to advocate for our kids, whether it's about their schoolwork or about their school environment in the little middle of a pandemic that role of advocating. And I think that the piece we lose track of is that we've got to be responsible for advocating for ourselves as well. I mean, I think employers want to be as accommodating as they can be. And if you don't have a concrete way of communicating to them what you really need and have those conversations, your employer's never going to know. And I think that that's the piece of it is to take that time and to understand what is it that you need, so that you can be there for your kids or so that you can be there to support your kids. And that there's conversations that we're having with our co-parents, with our kids, with our employers that we've really never had to have before. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. And it ties back into that challenge area of transitions because it's not just transitions for them; it's transitions for us. So those are the three key themes we're anticipating are going to show up a lot in our community this fall. And we have some great ideas and strategies about how to address them. We're not going to give it all away yet because we have to land it with these other for sure, but we're going to talk about resilience. And we're going to talk about flexible structure. We all hear we need structure for our kids; our kids need structure. And that's really true. And in the world of complex kids, what we've learned is that our kids need flexibility within structure. And so we're really going to explain that to you and help you understand how to create that in your family.

Diane Dempster: And then the other two things we know that we need as parents, we talk about all the time is taking the marathon view and knowing that even though this is a school year, and your kid is in grade, whatever it is, they are this year, that we're really looking at long term helping these kids to develop independence, skills, and to become successful adults and happy adults, which is what ultimately what we want. And so marathon view and then the last thing is about self-care and about watching to taking care of ourselves in the midst of this because if we're empty and our cups not full, our ability to support our kids is going to be completely different than if we've got the energy to take that marathon view when we're not exhausted and stretched and then frustrated.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Look, y'all, we know that nobody wants to talk about self-care because we all think it's a luxury, and on some level, we all know it's not a luxury. And so, we're going to talk about that in the context of the whole thing.

Diane Dempster: We need to come up with a new word for it because we were just talking to somebody about this today. It's like this sort of we're not talking about going to the gym. We're not talking about bubble baths. That's not what this is about. It's about really recognizing what you, your body, your brain, your mind, your heart needs to refuel. So that-

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So that you can parent from inspiration instead of desperation. So that you can stay calm and inspired and positive as a parent and set the tone for your home and model for your kids what it means to manage yourselves and to really manage the anxiety and the transitions and all of these other things that we've been talking about.

Diane Dempster: Well, and the reason that's so important that when we parent from desperation, and even if you don't think you're in a place of desperation, if you're frustrated all the time, or you're angry with your kids, or you're overwhelmed, your brains going to just naturally go to this, oh, my gosh, this is terrible. I've got to fix this. I got to fix it right now. There's this part of you that's got that desperate, sort of, something's wrong in the world. And if you can get to okay, wait, I've got this, or it's okay. Or it's going to be okay, or whatever kind of the mindset shift is that you need, and we're working on this a lot in this podcast and all of our programs. And that's really what we're all about is that mindset shift. You can get to that place where you're inspired to say, okay, wait, I can do this. We can do this. We can do hard things, whatever it is that you need to say.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So Diane, we need to wrap this conversation, believe it or not, so here's what I hope that you glean from today a little bit about how we work at Impact Parents. We look for the themes of the challenges that our families are facing. And then, we go to our toolboxes, and we pull out the tools that we think will best suit, best help parents meet the needs of the challenges they're facing. That, in a nutshell, what we do at Impact Parents. And so that's what we're doing once again this year with school success 2021. We do hope you'll join us for that webinar if you're hearing this in advance. And if not, keep your eyes open for our next live event because we do them regularly. And we're always looking at what are the themes that are happening that are facing our families and how can we support families in addressing them. Anything else you want to add?

Diane Dempster: No. Thanks for what you're doing for kids, and thanks for being here with us.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What you do makes a difference y'all. Talk to you soon.