AASR Live

5 Tips to Assist in the Emotional Regulation of Humans: Lessons Learned from a Therapist with Stacy G. York Nation LCSW

January 15, 2023 The Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint Season 4 Episode 1
AASR Live
5 Tips to Assist in the Emotional Regulation of Humans: Lessons Learned from a Therapist with Stacy G. York Nation LCSW
Show Notes Transcript

5 Tips to Assist in the Emotional Regulation of Humans: Trauma-Informed Lessons Learned from a Therapist a presentation from Stacy G. York Nation, LCSW.

Stacy has worked with families for over 20 years. Her passion is working with the "tough" humans, including adopted families and veterans. With intensive training in trauma-informed practices, Stacy excels at providing real-life, applicable strategies to parents, caregivers, educators, and mental health professionals. She wears multiple hats: international speaker, published author, clinician, Service Member, mother, sister, daughter, friend, co-parent with her ex-husband. The most important hat she wears:  HUMAN. Stacy earned a Bachelor's in Science Degree in Psychology Education and a Master's degree in Social Work. She became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in 2003. Stacy is also a Behavioral Health Officer in the Wyoming Army National Guard. She lives in the mountains of Colorado with her partner, 2 teenagers, and 2 puppers

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Guy Stephens:

Hello and welcome to the alliance against seclusion and restraint live. Really excited to be back with you. Here we find ourselves already in 2023 and excited about the amazing lineup of people that we have. That will be coming in joining us this year to talk to you about all sorts of issues. Of course, if you're not familiar with the alliance against seclusion restraint, we started a little over four years ago, the focus of the organization began around the use of restraints, seclusion, really expanded into restraint, seclusion, suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment, all the things that were often being done to kids very often in the name of behavior. What we've of course found is that a lot of kids kids with disabilities, black and brown children, kids with a trauma history are being subjected to a lot of disproportionate discipline that has been leading kids down at school to prison pipeline, and we're trying to do something to, to change that to lead to better outcomes for kids, for families and for others. So our vision is really about safer schools for students, teachers and staff. But hopefully, it's part of a better world as well. Very excited today, as always, any of you that have joined us on a regular basis. Know that every every two weeks when we do these, it's really exciting for you. It's really exciting for me, because we have amazing people that join us, share their expertise share their Joining journey as well. And today is no exception. Today, I have Stacey G. York nation joining us for a very special presentation. Stacey is a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of Goobie. You today's session, as always, is being recorded. So all of our sessions are always recorded. They're available after the fact on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. You can also listen as an audio podcast so you can go to, you know, Spotify or iTunes, and download these are listened to as well. So with that all said, let me go ahead and bring up our special guests for the day and introduce you to Stacy Stacy, it's good to Good to have you here today. I'm gonna give a little bit of background Hey, good to see you. Stacy, you've worked with families for over 20 years, your passion is working with what you call the tough humans, including adoptive families and veterans with intensive training and trauma informed practices. You excel at providing real life applicable strategies that parents, caregivers, educators, mental health professionals, of course, like many of us, you wear multiple hats, international speaker, Speaker published author, clinician, service member, mother, sister, daughter, friend, co parent, with an ex husband, and the most important hat that you were as human and I love that. And I love the title of your your presentation today. You know, often I think, you know, I think a lot about that about the importance of being a good human right. Of course, you've earned your bachelor's degree in science and psychology, education and a master's degree in social work, and became a licensed clinical social worker in 2003. You're also a behavioral health officer in Wyoming Army National Guard, and live in the mountains of Colorado, with your partner, two teenagers and two peppers. And I have to ask you, because you know, we're, we're big dog people here. I've got three, although they don't join me for the presentations, because sometimes it's it's actually that time of the day that Amazon UPS and FedEx show up. And if I leave the door open, they will come in and let me know when our packages arrive. But what kind of dogs do you have?

Stacy G. York Nation:

I have 140 pound Chocolate Lab named Holden. Michael, he needed a middle name because he was just a little naughty. And I have an 80 pound little black lab named Titan George. And there he was me. So sometimes it's the barking happens.

Guy Stephens:

And they're welcome to. And if they jump up, I mean, you know, the great thing about dogs, I like cats, cats will get up and you know what they're going to show you in the camera. Dogs don't think that same way. So that's never a concern. We had a chocolate lab for many for a number of years. Unfortunately, we lost her somewhere prematurely. Even Lyme disease, which is really a problem in in dogs, but particularly labs and in in this area, which was heartbreaking. But we have three now, two rescues and a mixed breed so big dog people. But anyway, we are not here to talk about dogs. We're here. I had the opportunity to meet you in person when we were in Tennessee. And I remember sitting across the table from you and you know, just having conversation with you about a lot of things. One of the things it's like an in my mind, that was someplace amazing. You mentioned to get doughnuts, but what really stuck out in my mind was kind of the work that you're doing. And of course, it's always such a pleasure to meet people in this journey that are doing, you know, trauma informed and brain aligned work to make a difference. And you know, you left an impression with me and just wanted to invite you in and have you join us and you've agreed to do a presentation today which is really exciting. So Again, just a huge welcome. I do want to let you know. And I mentioned this as we were getting ready, we have people that join us from all over the world. And I got to ask our viewers, in fact, Linda, thank you, Linda, Linda always helps me here because I, I often get on and say, we have viewers from all over the world. We have people from New Zealand and Australia. But Linda happens to be from New Zealand. And usually when I mentioned New Zealand on cue, she kind of pops up there. So it's great to see Linda there. But we have people that do join us from all over the world. And if you are watching right now live, tell us who you are and where you're joining us from. It's always interesting to kind of see who we're talking to. Jennifer has also joined us from Davis, California. But if you haven't weighed in yet, tell us in the chat, who you are and where you're from. So I'm going to bring your slides up here. And have you kind of take it away. And we've talked about you know, I'll stick around during your presentation. And we talked about, you know, potentially taking questions during your presentation. So people, you know, and you said, Well, you know, let's have a conversation. So I want to invite the audience, you know, let's let's have a conversation. As Stacy's going through this, if you have questions, you have thoughts, feel free to put those in the chat. I'll be keeping an eye on that and trying to bring those things up as we go. And, you know, I might also throw some questions at you. I'll try not to throw in so many questions that we can't get through the five tips. Who knows, maybe we'll even get a bonus tip or two. But we'll kind of go from there. So a couple more introductions before we get started. Mickey Marinelli from Austin, Texas. We have Divina from Connecticut. Suzanne, from Maryland, also here in Maryland. So a couple of other people joining us. So with that a huge welcome, Stacy, really excited to have you here.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for having me. I love the evening, we had together with our colleagues in Tennessee, and you too, left an impression on me. And there's a reason why. And so I'm gonna lead into that. So I have been so thankful in my journey to have found the work that I did pretty early on, as a clinician, and I started my job in my life in this work in school based mental health. And we were restraining a kid for six to eight hours a day as adults. And that didn't feel good. It didn't feel good. It wasn't right. It didn't align I was in my early 20s. This is a first job in the field. I was like, Is this how it's done, I had the opportunity to attend a training by Dr. Bruce Perry. And I was just going for continuing ed credits. And it changed my whole life, it changed the direction I've gone in my practice, it changed who I am as a human, it changed how I parent. And it really has given me the tools to really prevent exactly what your organization is all about. And so I landed in this whole entire job and field and information, because I was restraining kids. And I want to be really honest about that. I know better now. And when we know better, we do better. And when you invited me to chat about this, I thought Ooh, what a cross section of my past, and how far we've come and how much further we still need to go. And so I just want to own that there's lots of people who listen to this who've been in those positions. And we have new information, we have better information. And so I shared with you earlier, I could talk for hours. But I picked five tips that I think really do apply in all the settings I work in. And so when I say wear multiple hats, I do a lot of professional training. For educators, I do a lot of trauma informed practices, helping get schools to get on board with social emotional learning, and de escalation, understanding the brain, those kinds of things. I do a ton of research or a ton of support and education for parents caregivers foster adopt. Recently, I have a best friend who just adopted a baby and I got online real fast and was like, these are the things you need to know right now that are gonna help that brain development. She was like, I didn't even know you work with adoptive families. I'm like, I know. All the things I share in this presentation today. I've also taught my soldiers and I also have applied this in my own life. So I want to be really clear the things I have learned are usually because of the failures I have made. And that is the human part of all of this super messy human stuff. So with that being said, I'm so excited that you're here. I see some friends on board and I see some of our people if you haven't talked portunity to type in the chat box your role, I also think that's helpful. Are you an educator, your parent or your partner, your step parent, all those roles that brings us together. Because I think when we do these, it's so critical to realize we're not alone. And we're not alone, when we might feel like we're on these islands, being alone, some of you are working in environments where you're like, seclusion and restraint don't work anymore. And your teams are going well, what are we going to do instead? And that makes you a pioneer, about with this information, and so we're gonna dig right in guy, thanks for this opportunity. The first tip that I think all humans should understand is that we have a stress response system. I know it sounds obvious, but how many of you, when you're bringing your children home from the hospital, they were so intent on making sure that the car seat was attached in the right way, not one person talk to you about brain development. And that is like mind blowing to me. So we want to look at our stress response systems. When I talk to people about this, I let people know our stress response systems are like rubber bands, the more we're stressed, the more we stretch. And when we do something that releases stress, we released the stretch, some of us are living in stressed out states. And that is a big pickle. And so when we're living in stressed out states, what happens is any a bit of pressure that we put on, whether it's a school environment, whether it's, Hey, I need you to push in that chair, I need you to empty the dishwasher, I need you to go to school, when we're stressed, we can stretch and snap in big ways. And so we're starting to understand that that snapping, that we see as far as behavior and some kids is about how stressed is their stress response system. And so everyone has one, right? How many of you wake up and you're like, Yeah, I'm gonna rock the day and then something happens, you get a flat tire, you hit traffic, you get a call that somebody you know, you know, and love passed away, then we're stretched, what happens is that stress response system, the more we get in tune with it, the more we understand it, the more we really understand what releases our stress, and what helps us with that, the better we are at being human. And the better we are at interacting with humans. Now, here's a key tip. I didn't tell you this guy, but I'm going to give you five tips. And under each tip, there's gonna be like little other tips. So I hope that's okay. So a key tip is that kids have to have adults co regulate their stress response system. We can't just expect kids to act the right way to behave to just do what they need to do, right? We have to recognize a co regulation, which I'm going to talk about is a developmental milestone. We have to accept that stress, right, that stress response when someone offers us their calmness. That's an example of CO regulation. We as adults are what we call emotional crisis responders. Right? Have you ever been in a car accident? When you got in a car accident? The paramedic showed up? Did the paramedic say What the hell are you doing? You've ruined my life. No, we would kill the we would kill them, we really would, we would have these really terrible responses. What they've done is they've been trained to emotionally respond to us in a state of crisis. And so we as adults have to recognize that when a kid has really big feelings, really strong reactions, really big behaviors, it is a sign that they're stressed. And we have to offer our response and our regulation to them. We can't just expect them to automatically figure it out. Here's the thing. We want to teach kids to self regulate. No one can self regulate until you've been co regulated. CO regulation is a huge developmental task. And I think we're missing a lot of that in our teaching about child development. Right. The other thing I say is how many of you during the pandemic were losing your mind? You were like, stressed out your home, everything's been shut down. How many of you called a friend called Parent called you know, somebody that you love to support you? That is an example of CO regulation. We actually seek co regulation pretty regularly when we're walking through this whole human experience that we're having. Okay, what I'll say is there's a slippery slope between co regulation and codependency. codependency is like oh, that person has a Feeling and I'm going to need to walk on eggshells around that feeling or I'm going to have to match that feeling. So that I get love, I get acceptance, we're all okay, we don't want that. Well we want to recognize is that each individual can have these feelings and these emotional expressions individually, in the same home in the same classroom, we can all have and be in a different state of stress at one time, we don't actually want to become part of the emotional crisis. And so we really want to show up and offer co regulation.

Guy Stephens:

Stacey, I love the point you made it, you see, and I jumped in just so you could get a drink here. But I love the point you made early on about, like, you know, bringing home a baby, you've, you've studied how to do the car seat, you you've, you know, read lots of information on on, you know, parenting, but there's a huge piece of it's missing, right? And, you know, you sort of remember joking around with people like, you know, you need a manual, right? You need a manual for for parenting. And, you know, kind of in the vein of of all you're talking about here, I'm happy to say that there's something that's gotten closer to Emanuel recently than I think ever before. And that's a Mona della hooks new book. Yeah, brain and body parenting and fantastic book and really kind of gets into understanding the nervous system, probably behind me here. I'll grab it in a second, but really fantastic book that gets into this. But you're right. It's such a missing piece. And, you know, one of the things that we're always talking about here, the Alliance's, like how do we go upstream? How do we go upstream so that we're not getting into crisis situations that that require or lead to, and, and require was the wrong word there but lead to restraint, seclusion, you know, all of these negative consequences? And what can we do upstream to help prevent it? And, you know, there's so much it goes back to the childhood gaps, and, you know, even these basic understandings of the fact that, you know, we all have this nervous system, and you know, how does that, you know, when you're a new parent, how does the, you know, the screaming baby affect our nervous system and all of that. I love that point you made. And I think it's a place where we continue to need to go upstream is, you know, how do we get some of this messaging to parents and families?

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah. And I think we have to start looking at our own regulation system. We have to, and we're going to talk a little bit more about this as we get into it. But we have to look at what are our triggers? What is our stress response system? What calms us down? What does this look like? And when we start to normalize stress, and stress response, and we start to teach it and live it, it becomes part of a natural conversation and give you two examples. I was so thankful, I found Dr. Perry's work in the understanding of the brain before I had my own children. And so I was able to really put a lot of these things in place, as I've been navigating parenting. Now, keep in mind, I did not grow up that way. I grew up in a stressed out home, right. And so, so so many fears is apparent. I was like, I don't want my parents to fall out of my mouth. I don't want to say this. I don't want to do that. But we know that when we're stressed. We do what we what we were wired to do. And last we've dug deep into what it is we need to unwire and relearn. And so one day, I'm having a really bad day in the kitchen. I'm a single mom newly divorced, I'm crying my eyeballs out and my daughter walks in, she's like, Ma, you're pretty dysregulated what do we need to do to support you, you kind of get your shit together, we gotta get to school. And I'm like, You nailed it, sister. This is what I need. She offered me co regulation. Now do I think that kids should parent parents? No, I don't. But I do think humans can co regulate. And I think we have all sorts of little creatures that are these kids and students who know how to co regulate really, really well and are going to offer that up.

Guy Stephens:

You know, I'll never forget my my son. You know, we were, you know, big proponents of of approaches like raw screens, collaborative, proactive solutions. And, you know, I remember my, my son would begin to, Hey, Dad, I see you're having a difficult time with blank what's up? But, but at the same time, I mean, you know, you know, I've worked with done a lot of work with Dr. Laurie Desautels. And one point had the opportunity to talk to students, you know, and we're talking about third, fourth, fifth grade students that had been working with an educator who had been using a lot of kind of brain aligned and stress response system and all of that. And, you know, these young people understood their nervous system far better than most adults I've ever met. And they actually were taking some of this knowledge home with him. And that's not a bad thing, you know? So, I mean, it's really a positive thing. I think, when we begin to understand these things, we begin to to, you know, apply these principles to our I think you're really fortunate. Gosh, I wish I discovered Bruce Perry's work before I became apparent. You know, a lot of this work that, you know, it's funny a lot of this work that, you know, I've discovered, I was not aware of early on. And I wish I was, I mean, I wish I had Mona's book 17 years ago, 18 years ago now. But at the same time, what I do know is that I learned things in my journey, that were really critical, and now align with the things that I've learned, and the brain science that supports them. I mean, you know, for instance, you know, you know, not only co regulation, but the fact that our own emotional state is a contagion. And you know, I'll never forget, you know, when I learned with my son, how important my emotions, my feelings, my tone of voice, my facial expression, all of that was, there was a point early on, where I really kind of hit me that, you know, the approach I needed to take was a step backwards, a really calm and soothing voice and all of those things that my wife used to tease me like, why I don't understand why he responds so well to you. I was responding differently to him. And you know, of course, I later come to learn all of this through some through some of the approaches, but it's hard. And like you said, I mean, I was raised in a similar way. In fact, I even went to some private religious schools where I was spanked and had lots of things happen. But I'm a firm believer in your opening statement that, you know, when we know better, we do better. And, yeah, it's amazing. Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you. But what you're saying just, you know, it's me right here.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Well, and I'm just to build on what you're saying, I teach people to understand their own heart rate, right, like the basics of our nervous system, because the comments hurt, we in the room can calm all their heart rates. And if we're engaging, here's the thing about love and attachment when we love and attach to our own children, to our students, to other kids, like we do this work. And we're in these fields, we choose to be parents, because we want to love kids. When that love is activated in an emotional like distressing way, our heart rate is going to spike or it's going to decrease. And so we we want to look at what is our heart rate, and teach our own kids like, Whoa, it look a little stressed out, what's your heart rate. And so for a period of time, we had a rule in our house, that we didn't actually come back together and talk about things until everyone's heart rate was more relaxed, we take a pause, we all have the bits for checking our heart rate, and my kids are eight 910 When we're doing that, and that is such a critical piece of them learning their own stress response, but me really sinking into how was I wired? What am I bringing into this relationship as a parent? And what do I want to do differently? I gotta know my stress response system.

Guy Stephens:

Absolutely. Love that.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Okay, are we ready for tip number two? Let's go. Let's do it. Alright, tip number two, utilize your sensory system. This is like a game changer for me. So for those of you who know Dr. Perry's work, this is his brain model, I think lots of people in the field are very much using a similar model. And what we know is the bottom part of your brain that brainstem, that pink box up, it's fully developed by nine months old, it houses your fight flight, freeze, fawn response, and your sensory system. The next part of the brain to develop is your emotional regulation system. The next part of your brain to develop is your limbic system. And the last part of your brain to develop is your cortex. Your cortex is responsible for critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, reflection, introspection, and it doesn't fully develop till you're 25 or 30. When I train adults, the people on this, what I say is your cortex is your worst enemy. And it's your worst enemy, because you have one, and they don't, your kids don't have a cord to x, they don't have a cortex is fully developed. You can have a kid in your home who was bright, straight A student, their critical thinking is on point fully developed, you get an emotion on board with a teacher, a parent, a foster parent, that critical thinking is offline. And adults have to learn how to understand that. So when we talk about emotional regulation, we can do bottom up regulation. So the bottom of the brain you can engage with to the top or you can do top down. Adults love top down regulation. Tell me how you feel. Let's talk about how your behavior impacted the classroom. We love to process that guess what, it doesn't work as effectively as we want. So when I say utilize your sensory system, I mean that is a skill we can hijack that fight flight freeze in a way that nobody else really understands. Right? We Understand polyvagal theory now we understand nervous system stuff, your sensory system is king. So I'm a fan of bottom up regulation. So, in my daughter's IEP, we have mints written into her IEP, she can eat minty, spicy or sour anytime she's stressed. Because guess what your brain has to decide, am I going to keep being stressed? Or am I going to process this taste? It's all of a sudden apart. Taste wins every time. Movement, hugely important, right? I always say when you're a child of the 70s and 80s, you are moving your body and you're highly dehydrated. We barely got a drink of water in the morning and barely got a drink in the afternoon at school. I live in the mountains of Colorado, my kids are going through water bottles at school all day long, right? We need hydration. We need basic needs met? Are we getting enough food? Are we getting enough sleep? Are we getting enough water? What is the sensory system that's happening? Every single person on this call today watching this live YouTube video, Facebook, wherever you're watching it, you're engaged in some sort of sensory experience, you're looking at my lighting and saying that lighting is terrible. You're looking at my slides and saying Stacy needs graphic design or you're listening to guy's voice and you're like, that's so soothing. Somebody is having sensory, every one of you, you're you're feeling cold in the area that you're in, you're hearing people outside, you're engaging in tapping or doodling, or some sort of pattern repetitive behavior. Your sensory system wins every time. So the more you are tuned into your sensory system, the better you are at managing your own stress response. The more you understand your child's sensory system or your student's sensory system, the more you can regulate them. I recently took my kids to Vegas over Thanksgiving to watch Aerosmith. So good. So good. My son says to me, Ma, how in the world do you think it's a good idea to take your sensory system kid to Vegas? How do you think we're going to regulate that my son's 14 My daughter's 15. I said, bro, I got this figured out. We've built in regulation time. We've built in lots of downtime. We're taking earplugs, we're taking Pfizer's or taking minutes, we've got all these things in place, so that my kid who's activated by all the sensory system, things doesn't escalate. Now, if I had not built all that in, she would have lost her business and the whole trip would have been a bummer, right? The more you understand your own sensory system, the better you are, the more you stand, understand the children in your life, the better you are sensory system first, when I started going to the army, I had to sleep in all these weird places, and I did not have heavy blankets. It doesn't matter what time of year I need weights to sleep. So I started packing my blankie. And people were like you're in the army. What are you doing? I'm like, I gotta sleep. Sleep wins. But I know my sensory system. I don't have weight, I'm not sleeping, guess what the weight helped. We have to make sure that we do top up or bottom up. The other thing that's really cool is when you start to do with this kids, they learn about their own sensory system. They learn like, oh, when I'm in loud areas, I get really triggered. How can I process this? Oh, I have to go to a school assembly. What can I do to be successful there because those loud noises really activate me. If you're a teacher, my favorite thing to do with the hardest kid in your class is to do a sensory inventory. So you invite your kids into the class like in your classroom. You say, Hey, kids, I want to know what you notice in this classroom. What kind of go through your senses? What do you see? What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you hear? What do you feel? You're gonna have a kid tell you I hear the projector all day long. I'm so distracted by that. You're gonna have a kid tell you I hear so and so three doors down and their voice is so loud. All I can hear is what they're teaching. You're gonna have a kid tell you what rooms are cold. What rooms are loud, whose voice is the most annoying that you have coffee breath. Like the more you learn about sensory systems and you invite and get curious about kids and their sensory system, the more you can help manage regulation. Okay, I'll pause so I can take a drink thoughts about

Guy Stephens:

that. That's a good point. Pause and first of all, great choice on Aerosmith. I'm sure that was a great show. My son who sensory issues are certainly, you know, as you were talking about that. I remember in first grade, it was like the air conditioning unit down the hall. I mean, nobody else would be tuned into that but But he'd hear that and in a related note, his first concert was AC DC and he had a blast, but we had we had taken some precautions and he had a great time. But, you know, there's so much that, you know, I mean, some of it's about kind of a felt felt sense of safety as well and, you know, kind of having their feelings, you know, validated. I want to pause here, just a couple of things that I see here in the chat. One is, we've got something from looking at life through different lens, thanks for bringing up bringing awareness to this CO regulation, empathy, validation, and respect helped our autistic son get out of crisis, we unschooled as well, all of these things did wonders for our family. Jennifer said, we become cognitive, cognitive society, and yet it doesn't serve us well, especially our kids, they don't have the full capacity yet. And it's such a such a great point. You know, we often look at kids as if they're miniature adults, and, you know, have the same, you know, well fully developed prefrontal cortex, you know, I was, I was looking at something on a message, kind of a Facebook message group today, and it was a educator talking about a young autistic student. And, you know, they were, they were kind of talking about, you know, the fact that, you know, well, this kid wasn't, you know, this kid was intentionally having meltdowns was was they're failing to, you know, get what they want. And so, you know, we often, you know, kind of, you know, ascribe this idea that, like, they're these this complex thought process that kids are probably even capable of doing. But you know, these these young children, often young children, disabilities are somehow not capable of doing certain things, but are very capable of coming up with these really elaborate manipulation schemes, you know, and it just amazes me, but I think some of that is a lack of awareness about, you know, kind of the brain science behind it all. Mickey heads up in here. What do you do when kids resist to do these bottom up activities, these bottom up regulations do work. And they, let's say, and Kid acknowledges they do, but will resist doing them? One has to be extremely creative to do them without them noticing. But that's hard to do consistently. The only regulation kid wants to do is electronics to soothe. Yeah. Any thoughts on that?

Stacy G. York Nation:

All sorts of thoughts as you can imagine. Okay, great question. And it's a question I get often. So I want you to remember that CO regulation is a huge part of bottom up regulation. So we never asked kids to do anything that we're not willing to do ourselves. And so oftentimes, what we learn from kids who are dysregulated, is that all the kids are a little bit dysregulated, this kid just happens to have some behaviors that might be escalated more than everyone else. So starting to do regulation activities as a group is always a great plan. When we see adults doing regulation activities, it also gives kids permission to do regulation activities. So I had a dad that really got this. And he anytime he was getting ready to engage with his dysregulated son, he just started doing a yoga pose. And the kid would be like, What are you doing? And he'd be like, feel free to join me. We'll talk about what I'm doing. And he would engage the son by doing the yoga pose. And then the kid would match the yoga pose. And then pretty soon, they're in a regulating pose. And they're talking through the hard thing. I had another mom, she anytime her kid was dysregulated. She'd just walk right out to a trampoline in their backyard, and she'd just start bouncing, because here's the cool thing about dysregulated kids, they're gonna follow you wherever you go, to tell you exactly how dysregulated they are, and what they need. And she was like, come on up, tell me everything you need. And then pretty soon, they're engaging in some sort of pattern, repetitive activity that's regulating them. In a school setting. I have schools that have put these regulating activities outside of classroom doors, and they or they do women inside the classroom, they practice. And then what do we do with dysregulated kids, we send them to the hallway and what a dysregulated kids do in a hallway. They just regulate everyone in the hallway. And so we want to give them activities that show them. I have also learned that when you teach a kid about heart rate, use an oximeter. And you teach kids how to calm their heart rate through regulating activities. They love having that control. They love it. So here's the thing about, you know, refusing defiance, all those kinds of things is about control. When I don't feel good on the inside, I don't have control on the inside. I'm going to control everything on the outside, when you dealt with the cortex, teach me how to control my insides and show me through heart rate through various things that I can control that I'm going to have much more buy in because now I'm controlling and I'm learning about how to controlling me. So there's various ways to do this. Sometimes you got to build up to it. So I think that a lot electronics is a whole nother session in and of itself. I think we're growing up in a time where we have to figure out how to help kids manage that. I think they use them to soothe, I think they get lots of dopamine hits. I think that the electronics are such a sensory thing that we can't even compete with. So we have to also build on connection, relationship and CO regulation in order to do that bottom up regulation.

Guy Stephens:

You know, so I know we're not, you know, through our presentation here today. But as you said, that could be a whole nother session. I'm thinking about the false AC, maybe maybe we could do something. I mean, that's, that's something we hear a lot. And even even some of the work out there that I think is really good, doesn't always do a good job addressing some of these issues. And, you know, as you were talking, Jennifer Avanade, had jumped on as well. And so, you know, it's an indication kids looking for dopamine, and kind of said some of the same things that you said. So maybe maybe we can talk later about doing something else kind of really focused on this, because certainly in our modern world, the electronics, the phones, you know, it makes it really tough for a parent who is, you know, trying really hard to help their their child.

Stacy G. York Nation:

He was just a quick little tip on Wednesday, my kids did eighth grade Washington DC trip last year. And their school was not allowed. The kids were not allowed to take phones on this trip. And it was pretty remarkable how much I had a hard time not being able to get a hold of them, not knowing what was going on. And it gave me pause to go poof, when they got home. I said what was it like for you to be in Washington, DC away from your parents for four days without your phone. Both of them were like, it was one of the best trips of our life. We had so much connection time with our friends. And they said we're the only eighth grade group there that didn't have phones, they loved it. They said, Mom, we've committed to making sure that at least once a week, we're having a whole day without phones, at least, like building in these things. But, you know, their their cortex is more fully developed than younger kids to be sure. I was also really appreciated. I said, did everyone feel that way? She said my kids will said probably 95% of the kids didn't realize how much that addiction to the phone was getting in the way of their own connections and relationships.

Guy Stephens:

Yeah. Well for adults, with with fully developed prefrontal cortex, you know, I remember going on a trip one time and we were in a cabin. And there was no Wi Fi, which seemed at first like, what no Wi Fi. It was wonderful. It was wonderful not to be tethered to you know, our devices all day long. So definitely benefits for everybody involved. I just wanted to bring up Michelle said that she was sitting in with her kiddo who she had to pick up from school today, for a second time this week due to a meltdown. Michelle, what's good, good to have you join us? And hopefully you'll get some ideas out of today. That may may help. Alright, so let me let you keep going on because we know we've got to

Stacy G. York Nation:

I know we all right, we took three. All right. So for the last year, I've been talking all about to parents and educators about self care. And one of the things I realized in these conversations was we're not looking at our own triggers. We're always talking about what triggers kids. And we're always talking about what is it they need? What is it that triggers them? What's going on with them? This is all about us. And so I want you to just take these five questions, I want you to think about them. When we get triggered, these are five such important questions to really ask ourselves. And when I say triggered, I mean, like you're stretched to the point that you're not making decisions in the way that you want to be making them. Right, you're engaging in a way that you don't like, most of us can kind of be a little bit agitated. And we can work through that. Sometimes we get triggered, we lose our business and things fall out of our mouth that we didn't mean, or we engage in our relationships with in ways that we don't mean to. These are the five questions I want you to ask. Number one, are your basic needs met? Have you eaten? Have you drink? Are you tired, right? Like we know that when we wake up and we're tired, we're not our best selves. We also know that hangry is real, right? So we say 95% of all problems can be solved when you eat when you have something to eat. Keeping in mind if you're living with a kiddo who has a pretty activated stress response system, and their heart rate might be up there. And when I say up there, I mean like resting heart rate over 80 beats per minute, they're burning more calories, they need more fuel in their fuel tank. If you're living in a stressed out state, you also need more fuel in your fuel tank. Basic needs is huge. I read a study the other day that had this astronomical amount of how often like how much we're all dehydrated. And that is really important to listen to. Right so we're talking about health but sometimes we don't talk about basic needs. Our basic needs met that Clear. Okay, question number two is my kids sensory system triggering my sensory system? This is so important, right? Especially for you parents who just have kids that are on you all day long, right? When you get touched out, you get triggered when kids are just touching you all the time you get triggered. I always tell I could speak to a room of 1000 people 1000 People can be moving, they could be walking, but one of them taps a pencil. And I'm like, where was I? What was I thinking? What are we doing? Oh my gosh, like, I get triggered? So you want to know is your kids sensory system triggering your sensory system? Important question. Question number three. And this gets tricky. Okay, this is my therapy brain. And this is like, someone asked me how many 1000s of hours I've spent doing clinical work 20,000 At least so 20,000 conversations one on one with humans. This is so important. Who does my kid remind me from? From my own past. So I want you to remember that memory is in a filing cabinet. And sometimes when we're triggered, that means a file is out there wandering around. And it might be out there floating around because this kid reminds you of a teacher you had in your past person who perpetrated you, somebody who did the harm in some way, and caused you to have a feeling perhaps. So when I was going through my divorce, my son said something that would my ex husband used to say to me, and I just had to like walk away. He didn't say in a bad way. It just was words that fell out of his mouth. And I was like, and I he's like, Mom, where are you gone? I'm like, I just need a minute. I don't need a minute. Like, I don't want to engage in the same sort of responses that I used to engage in, I want to be aware of what this looks like. The next part of that question is when did I feel this feeling before, I often give this example that when we go to a funeral or a wake or celebration of life, many of us have the experience that we're sitting there. And we are thinking all the time who ever lost someone all the death or all the grief we've ever felt, what happens is you've opened up that filing cabinet of grief. And so in that filing cabinet, that feeling can often trigger us. So when you are with kids, and you have a feeling whether it's I feel like I'm losing power, I feel embarrassed. I feel like I'm losing control. There's so many messages that we get as we're growing up, that those are kids can trigger feelings, right? I have this example when my daughter was two. She used to say no all the time. What two year old does it it's the power of toddler they own us, right? And my mom came to visit my mom was really bothered by this, that she was like you'd let her say no all the time. Well, I have to remember right? Kids would be seen in a hurt. Kids follow instruction from adults respect their elders, never to be defiant. In my head. I'm like she has to learn how to say no to me, so that she can say no, when she's with her friends when she's a teenager. If she doesn't learn that with me, she's not going to do it later. But that feeling of like, I don't have control over my kid, my kids gonna be defiant. My mom was very much holding that like, what is that feeling? So we're gonna look at what is the feeling we feel? And when did we feel that before? Because rarely when we're triggered? Is it about the interaction immediately at hand? It's about other stuff that's happened. And the last question is, what age did I experience these hard things in my childhood? I grew up in a pretty chaotic home. When I was eight, all sorts of stuff went down when I was 15. All sorts of stuff went down. For a long time while I'm working through this business. I had to realize eight year olds were hard for me to work with. And 15 year olds were hard for me to work with. And that's because it pressed on my own wounds. Were to five talks about how to address your own wounds. But I want to talk like you have to know what's your story. What's your journey? What happened to you? We know that book but what happened to you that you're bringing into this relationship with this other person that could be so easily triggered? So I'll pause for a minute.

Guy Stephens:

And a pause gives me a chance to jump in here real quick with a couple of things. One, I had a comment here from Angela in Wisconsin. And Jill says Hi, I'm from Wisconsin. I was a teacher. Last year I pulled my child from public school fifth grade. I did the same at fifth grade is when we actually pulled my son to homeschool him. And now we do virtual school at home. I can no longer watch my child I'll be dysregulated all day, we're in a better place. Now we can meet the basic needs so much easier at home. We can work on social skills, we can modify assignments. And certainly that experience is one that we find a lot of the families that are part of our community have gone through where there's a point where they just realize that they can't and you know, a lot of people pull out and homeschool. And unfortunately, there's some other issues there in terms of not not everybody has that ability. You know, we've got to work to fix these systems. Because, you know, not everyone has the ability to say, Okay, well, you know, I'm going to homeschool. I mean, they might be working multiple jobs to, you know, keep food on the table, it's not always an option. I want to hit on a couple more comments here. Chantelle said yes, when my daughter has a day of a lot of yelling, I'm triggered way too much jelly in my childhood. And I recognize this is why how to rid myself of this trigger is the question and I think that's going to be something we get to within five, I think so. Is that right to five? Yes. Okay, great. I haven't even seen Tip five. But that's what it sounded like. So I'm looking forward to that. And then Michelle said, What about the psychology of segregation.

Stacy G. York Nation:

So I'm guessing that's in like response to homeschooling a kid kind of pull him out of school. And what I talked about, and I'm guessing you're you're we're probably on similar pages guy is that CO regulation and managing your stress response is so critical. And once that gets on board, in, we've created safety, they can go back into different settings. But if that's if that setting isn't safe for a kid, and they're dysregulated, they're living in this fight, flight freeze bond state all the time, it's more important to pull them out and create safety than to keep them in and get the benefits of what wouldn't be segregation, right? When we segregate kids, especially if it's hopefully not to homeschool. It's about safety. And it's about nervous system. And when kids are living in these stressed out states and environments where they don't feel state safe, they're not getting the benefit of being there anyway, because they're always on guard, and they can't build relationships that feel safe and connected. What are your thoughts? Yeah,

Guy Stephens:

no, I agree. I think I think that's really well said, I mean, you know, we didn't take lightly to doing homeschooling. But at the time, it was it was, I think, critical for where my son was. But my hope is, you know, let's change systems. I mean, my hope is, let's have kids in inclusive environments, you know, let's not have kids, even in segregated classrooms, you know, we want to work towards, you know, getting our kids included with their, their peers. And, you know, I think everybody benefits from that. I mean, there have been a lot of research around that not just kids with disabilities, but neurotypical kids as well are benefiting from that. Let's see. And Michelle just kind of clarified, I mean, segregation in schools, the danger of being separated from the pack. And I think you hit on that already a little bit, Stacy, is that, anytime we're separating people, you know, there's a cost to that. And certainly what we want to do is build systems that are inclusive, that are tuned in to the needs of individual students within the classroom. Other thoughts?

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah, I also think that we miss opportunities, where students can help co regulate other students, or we can create environments of CO regulation. And that's one of the reasons this work has really changed my life is that when we see that we have 30 kids or 25 kids in a classroom with varying stress response systems, and we start to talk about, hey, some of us are gonna show up, we're gonna have a bad day, what how are we as a family, as a team in this classroom going to approach that? How are we going to keep people safe, what not everybody has the same needs on the same day, at the same time, my son had this amazing teacher in third grade, who they had two T stools in their classroom. And those are the the school tools, you can rock back and forth on flexible seating options. And each kid got assigned a T stool for a week. And then the next week, another kid got it. But during that week, you could gift the T stool to another kid, if they needed it more. And by the end of the school year, the same kid had at school every week. And I said to my son, do you think that's fair? And my son said, Mom, why do adults think everything needs to be fair, if he's not regulated? We're not learning. He needs that more than we need it. And so that was a whole lesson in equitable versus equal, right, this and so I think when we segregate kids in schools, we're not always looking at how is the system able to help co regulate kids. When we teach these these skills, you'll see kindergarten kids co regulating each other. You'll see and you'll see third, fourth, fifth grade, middle school kids going, they're having a bad day, I need to go to the counselor or they need this or they need that and so norm realizing that experience of CO regulation is so important as luxury, but important.

Guy Stephens:

Alright, let's get on with the next tip here.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah, I want to just see, Michelle, you have a great question about fire drills and bells. I think when we talk about sensory system stuff, and we start to normalize what activates kids, these are the kinds of things that are pretty simple fixes. When we know there's going to be a fire drill, and we have a kid that's going to be like set off by that. Hopefully, we can partner collaborates figure out, what's the answer? Can we give that kid noise cancelling earphones before it happens? Can that kid have an appointment to go to that day? What does that look like so that we can create an environment that feels safe for those kids, and they don't escalate? But we got to talk about sensory system first. So I saw that that was important, because you're talking about triggers. Okay. Tip number four, put money in the bank. So what does that mean? This talks about relational money, every interaction that we have with the people in our lives, either puts money in or takes money out. And I we use this concept all the time in our daily life here at my house, are we putting money in? Are we taking money out? If we set that boundary, that limit? Do we have enough money in the bank, that when we set a boundary and there's a response, it's going to cash some of that money out? How much do we have in there. So a lot of times, especially when I go into schools, kids are having really big behaviors and a lot of time, that's because they don't have any money in the bank. With the adults that are in their life, we see that adult, an adult might be correcting behavior all the time. Or they might be prompting, or they might be you know, just like picking on the certain type of behavior that's escalating, but we don't have any connection and relationship. And it's so important to look at how much money is in the bank? And what are we doing that cashes money out of the bank. I think that each kid has ways that you can put money in the bank, big time, right? A lot of our most dysregulated kids want attention. And we'll say kids are seeking attention. What I say is kids who seek attention, need connection. And connection is what's putting money in that bank. And so if you're in a space, where it's like, oh, my gosh, every interaction with this kid is cashing out cashing out cashing out cashing out, you've got to flip that and think, How do I put money more in that bank? When I was going through my own divorce my children, I knew that was going to take a huge lot out of my bank. So I had to start really intentionally finding ways to connect. And I had to start figuring out where am I going to press on the boundaries, where am I going to hold limits, because there might be a big cash out. And I don't want to do that. When I got remarried, and I brought someone into my life, we use that term, we get to put money in the bank, we got to build relationship. And it's so critical to do that. In education systems. Oftentimes, kids become most dysregulated, when they're unsupervised. And when they're at a place, it's unstructured. And when there's way too many kids versus adult ratio. And so when you want to put money in the bank with dysregulated, kids, you look at those three areas, let's teach kids how to be in unstructured places, by small, making the group smaller and giving them structured things to do. Let's put them in places where you can get some one on one connection that puts money in their bank so that they don't feel that dysregulation. I also like to add in the piece for adult relationships, when you're engaged in adult relationships, you want to make sure the money in the bank is reciprocal. So when you're hanging out your friends, you want to have friends that are going to check on you as much as you check on them. When you are evaluating your relationships with your own family, family carries a pretty weighted word. And when we're evaluating relationships with our family as adults, we want to find out is that reciprocal? Do they put money in the bank? Or do they zap us because we might need more money in the bank and emotional capacity with kids? Okay, that's all I'll say for that moment. I'm looking looking to see what else we got over here.

Guy Stephens:

Yeah, I mean, there were a couple more comments here. You know, I think he's we're talking about this. You know, Michelle, coming back. Absolutely. It's all in the IEP. And Jennifer had mentioned recess. We also had Angela who said, you know, the shithole hurts from school son from school because school isn't a safe place actively working on CO regulation with my child now, but we're so isolated. Our local homeschool community is active, homeschool, tennis, outdoor science, hiking playdates, etc. Teacher in the same school, I felt a huge amount of guilt leaving behind my students who needed me. But I was on an island, talking about being proactive co regulation, trauma informed, eliminating price boxes, etc. Angela, for whatever it's worth. And I think you probably are getting that through this presentation already. You are not alone on your island, I'm on your island with you, Stacy's on your island. We've got a lot of people here on the island with you. And our hope is to take over the mainland at some point, a bad analogy. But you know, I mean, you know, we've got to work to, you know, change systems that are in need of an update. I mean, where you are, you know, lagging decades behind and a lot of our schools in terms of of what's being done, I mean, you know, concepts like CO regulation, and it's hard. Angela, when you're on the forefront of that. Sometimes there's a lot of resistance to change. But no, you are not alone. And yeah, hopefully you're getting that from stasis presentation today as well.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah, I'm what I would say to you, Angela, I really do use the word pioneer. And I'm from the western states, Wyoming native lived in Montana, I live in Colorado, if you've never been out here, Pioneer is like it's desolate. You could drive for hours without seeing another human, you can feel so alone. And it takes an extreme amount of like, I know this to be true. And I'm going to stay the course. And never feel bad for choosing your own kids. When you have to decide am I gonna stay in this place where my kids aren't getting what they need, and I know they're to be better. Or I'm going to leave behind these students I love and adore to meet my own children's needs your kids when that's just how it has to be. And so just know that you're a pioneer. There's a group of us that are pioneering with us. We're just so far away. We can't always see each other, but we're there. So you're not alone.

Guy Stephens:

Okay, great. And terrain said love the money, the bank concept? Yes, it's all about the relationship and connection. That's what really matters. Cool.

Stacy G. York Nation:

All right, number five, we've

Guy Stephens:

been waiting for number five here.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Okay, number five. I know I triggered you all about triggers. And now we're on the answer. Okay. So I just think it's so critically important for adults to really own your journey. We have these individual stories of things that have happened in our past experiences that we've occurred, that causes pain. And naturally, we want to steer clear of painful stories. We don't want to talk about the hard things that happened to us. We don't want to process the events that occurred. So often say, I can't walk into this room, this virtual room and leave every piece of Stacy's experiences behind. I can't do that little Stacy's their middle school, Stacy's their high school, college first date, like, all of the parts of myself are there. And my story is messy. And when we really look at pain equals opportunity, then we have an opportunity to grow, right, we have an opportunity to to heal. And so when you're going through those triggering events, when you're looking at like, who does this kid remind me of? What do I have the story off until I had this woman who came into my office and she said, Stacy, I think my seven year old is going to kill me. I'm like, Whoa, most seven year olds are not that violent. And when I had her go through those questions, and I said, When did you feel this way before we sink into your body? And we talk about how we feel? She said I felt the same way when I was perpetrated and sexually assaulted in college. So do I have a mom and a seven year old? Or do I have a coed who was sexually assaulted, she has to process that event before she can engage in being a mom in a pure way with all that other junk behind her. And so how do we do that? I get this question all the time. We honor our story. We didn't ask for growing up experiences. We didn't ask for the pain that maybe we got. We didn't ask for someone to hurt us or for us to hurt someone else. So these things just happens. We have to honor it. We have to accept that it's happening. And then we have to feel it. Nobody likes feeling it. I'm a therapist. Every day I have an appointment with my own therapist. I'm like, I'm sick, like kids are sick, I could cancel. What's my reason? Because nobody really loves feeling my feelings. And we're growing up in a society where all this messaging is like feelings are bad. Push it away. Depending on where you grow up and the messaging you had growing up, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, be strong, be resilient. Listen, I'm in the army, you all have paid me not all of you overseas. But you Americans have paid billions of dollars for our resiliency program to prevent suicide. The reason it doesn't work in the most effective way is because trauma and resiliency are two sides to the same coin. If we never talk about the trauma, we can't get to resiliency. And just like in kids, if we only talk about the trauma, we never talk about resiliency, we're not looking at the other side of the coin. So we have to feel we have to see where these things feel in our body. How do we release them? And then how do we let go, so I encourage you all to find a good counselor therapist, get online, find some you can talk to right we know all the Body Keeps the Score is such an important book for this part of this presentation. We know EMDR Neurofeedback trauma informed yoga, all of that stuff releases, the stories that we're carrying. If we don't release that, then it becomes these generational things that we're passing on. So I think it's just so important to spend time talking about ourselves and our own journey. And not just the kids we love and care about. I had this experience the other day, I broke my toe. It was bad deal. I dropped a piece of wood on my toe. And I was like screaming from upstairs to downstairs. Like, come help me. Come help me. And at one point, I texted my kids like I need help. And I can hear them downstairs like you go help her. It's your turn. No, you go help her. It's your turn, they finally get up and like my toes black and blue. I can't walk and they're like, Mom, you didn't yell. Well, I grew up in a family of yelling. And I was very committed to not yelling. And I haven't yelled it for a very long time. And they were like, No, this is the time you yell like this is how it works, mom. And I was like, oh, okay, that's another part of my story. You yell for help when you need help. But it doesn't mean I have to just shut down yelling altogether because I grew up in a family yellers. So we need to own our part of our story. And then we need to model how to heal from that part of the story. So that's my last tip guy.

Guy Stephens:

That's fantastic. And these tips I didn't know you said, you had more. And, you know, I think we'll have to talk about getting you back again, to share more of these tips, and also sharing about the the electronics addiction. But you know, these are fantastic tips. And I think very much at the heart of a lot of what we're talking about here. But I think is you kind of wrapped up with tip number five, it all comes back together, right? You know, you know, it's kind of taking care of ourselves, you know, putting our own oxygen mask on before we put the oxygen mask on others. I love what you're what you're doing and what you're talking about, I want to invite people that are watching this live, if you have questions or comments, feel free to put those in the chat. We'll just go over a couple things real quick, Linda, who's one of our our friends in New Zealand, they've been doing a lot of great work out there. In fact, you know, they've done some work with Bruce Perry and the neurosequential model, which of course, Perry talks about the indigenous populations in New Zealand as well. A lot of fantastic work happening there, I keep telling Linda that she needs to invite us out to New Zealand to give a talk, you know, but haven't made it out there yet. And Jennifer was very excited, you know, kind of agreeing with us and talking about, you know, play for kids and adults. This is fantastic information. And you come from it with such a interesting background. And I think owning our own, you know, kind of background and experiences, you know, this is about, you know, I think making, you know, at least I hope I think it's making positive change for our kids and future generations. But again, it starts with us. And, you know, I love the title of Bruce Perry's book, of course, you know, you know what happened to you, you know, kind of a, I think a really valuable reframing because, you know, growing up myself in the 70s and 80s, you know, that I think there was a lot more, you know, of kind of the What's wrong with you approach a lot more of, you know, really punitive approaches, you talked about kids being there, we have a lot of progress to make when it comes to kids. And, you know, to me, it's, you know, all these things that happen, the fact that we have corporal punishment that's allowed in schools and 19 states, you know, allowed in ohms you know, across the country. There's a lot of places where, you know, we really need to make progress but I think your message comes home with the starting with us, I think part which is so critical. Yeah.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Well, I just think there's so much about understanding our own story and and those of us who are raising children success, like in a successful school, a school that's trauma informed restorative practises social, emotional learning, those are few and far between, by the way, but those of us who have kids in those schools are seeing that our kids are valuing this experience. They're very much growing from these experiences. And what I'm seeing often is that our kids are outgrowing us in some ways, emotionally. And they're teaching us things. And when the kids become our teachers, it's such a lesson and value and like, we need to own what happened to us. And we need to own what our story is, and what kind of environment happened. And I'm not blaming about what happened. We didn't know all those things, right. But much like, I started this journey, because I was restraining a kid six to eight hours a day. And now I'm in a place where I'm like, I would never do that. Because I have all these other tools in my toolbox that can help me deescalate work through things, understand co regulation, understand the importance of dosing regulation throughout the day, like those are critical pieces that we just didn't know. And now we know.

Guy Stephens:

Jennifer just jumped in here and said, If there was one point to make to a leader in a school district regarding the this info about the nervous system and behaviors, issues, what would it be? So what is your what is your big take home message that you would want people to share with others?

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah, so I really talk about like the cortex being adults worst enemy. And when I speak to schools, that lands in a way that most of the other points I talk about don't always land. And so when we really get into brain development, and we really discuss where kids are in their development, why they can't reason why they can't reflect all those things, like adults are like, Oh, my gosh, just makes so much sense. This makes so much sense. They're like, yes, it makes sense, because we're asking kids to do things that they aren't capable of doing. And one of the things I often say to adults is like, when you see a kid, say to a kid, why did you do that? What did kids say? I don't know. And then what happens it could the adults go? Well, of course, you know, you've done that 100 times? I don't know. No, really, you we're going to talk about this until you figure out why you were doing that. Why, as a Cortex question, if we keep cortex in kids, we're never going to treat kids the way they deserve to be treated, and meet them at their developmental level. And so when I'm trying to, like when I'm speaking to school boards, when I'm speaking to administrators, when I'm trying to talk to them about these things, I say when we start to understand brain development, we use less cortex thing, we see behavior problems decrease tremendous tremendously, like off the charts. And what do administrators want, they want their teachers teaching, they want kids learning, and they want less behaviors to deal with. And the way to do that is understanding the brain base science behind all this stuff.

Guy Stephens:

Yeah, no, absolutely. Great point. And, of course, you know, Jennifer, I would also say that, you know, all five of these tips are probably great things to share. But, you know, appreciate you making that I remember when my son was pretty young, probably six or seven years old, asking that question you mentioned, you know, you know, why did you do this? And my son had an answer that now I look at, as so far more insightful than it probably should have been at six years old. But he would say, I don't know, my brain made me do it. And there's a lot of insight there. You know, I think, you know, again, as we're developing, you know, I mean, the whole kind of idea around brain development is, of course, that happens from bottom to top and back to front, the last part to fully develop as the prefrontal cortex or our kind of rational decision making brain, yet we we have this expectation that the kids are, you know, fully, you know, able to control and, you know, think of things that they're just not capable, they're not, you know, developmentally at the same stage that we often, you know, kind of think that they are a couple more things here. Oh, great. I see, you brought up your contact information. I was gonna ask you about that. Katie says, How can we help a child who self injuring themselves or others in a crisis moment? Is there a resource that I can go to for advice, ideas and tools? Any ideas on that, Stacy?

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah, this was tricky. But I would I oftentimes, I say, look at the sensory system. So offer a tool that engages a sensory system. That's another option besides self injuring, whether I mean, I have a kiddo that was self injuring for a very long time, and gave her a permanent marker and she started drawing all over her legs. And some parents were like, I would never do that. Well, would you rather have your kid drawing all over legs make these beautiful canvases with permanent marker or cutting? And so you want to start looking at what are the ways that we can look at the sensory system and engaging that the other question is start talking about stress. What is so stressful? Right? We miss kiddos, life that is causing them to want to harm that is causing them. So dissociation is a real thing. That's a whole nother topic also, you know, when we are so stressed out that we're checked out, then we can engage in self harm or self injurious behaviors, that tells us that that stress system is extremely activated. And we want to look at what are the ways we're going to release that rubberband for this kit? That's sort of a broad strokes answer. Yeah. And

Guy Stephens:

I will mention also, just just add to the conversation, you mentioned kind of in crisis. And there are actually, you know, crisis management programs that can address things like self injury, that are not restraint and seclusion based, you know, I think about things like zucchero, which is spelled UK e Ru, you know, they use specialized pads that can help prevent self injurious behaviors. So I mean, there are other things kind of that can be done. But, you know, the key with all of this is really what we want to do is do what we can to avoid an escalation that might turn into a crisis. So, you know, how can we get upstream? And I think that what what you're talking about Stacey is exactly that, you know, we get upstream through relationship, we get upstream through co regulation. And going back to kind of the Bruce Perry model, it's, you know, regulate relate reason, right? We've got to start at that, that lower level and, you know, it's the minute it's the, you know, let's let's tap into their, you know, kids beginning to escalate, let's let's tap into their sensory system, let's find a way that we can avoid this from happening. That's the ideal, right? The ideal is, let's get to a point where kids feel safe and well regulated. Let's see what else we have here in our chat. Okay, and sharing said occupational therapist can also help with sensory regulation. Great point.

Stacy G. York Nation:

I think they're super underutilized in schools. I think occupational therapists are like magic puppets, nerd puppeteers, and they can help us with so many things. And they're just not as valued as they should be. So please use your OTS.

Guy Stephens:

Yeah, I actually agree with you quite a bit. And I remember having a conversation, I think, was with Greg San to say about this. But, you know, I think in a lot of schools, the OTS are not utilized to their full potential. I mean, it's often about like grasping pencils, and augmented, you know, communication, you know, devices and things like that. When, in fact, you know, I think about things like, you know, when when schools begin to have concerns around behavior, and they do a functional behavioral assessment, and it's like, there's a step before that for an OT, like, let's do an environmental assessment, let's figure out like, what's getting the kids way, the examples that you provided earlier, we're right in that vein, it's like, before we start putting the problem on the kid, let's understand them in their environment, let's understand why they're having a hard time. But so often, that tendency is to go straight to, you know, straight to the kid, and then often what comes out of that process is a reward and consequence driven behavioral plan. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you. Thank you for the expression. I, if I only had captured as a steel frame, you know, we can make a meme on that. But but, you know, I mean, in really failed the kid, I mean, it's not understanding the needs.

Stacy G. York Nation:

Well, um, we talk a lot like rewarding consequences, behavior, charts reward, like, all those things. Those are cortex interventions. Yep. And they don't work with kids who have these huge behavior problems. What I asked teachers to do when they're doing a functional behavioral assessment, is look at how long kids stay regulated in between behaviors, because that's actually going to tell you way more than the behavior and check marking behavior, behavior, behavior behavior, know, how long are they staying regulated between the behavior because that's telling us what this stress response system is doing? Those are such critical questions. Yeah, I think,

Guy Stephens:

very often in a lot of places. You know, I mean, when people look at behavior, they look at the antecedent. They only look at the thing that happened immediately before, you know, they're not understanding, you know, was their past trauma. You know, where's this trigger? That's, that's coming back as a reaction amount of memory, where were things that are happening that might have influenced this that are beyond the thing that happened 30 seconds ago. So I think oftentimes, there's such a misunderstanding around I think a lot of kids are misunderstood. And that leads to restraint, seclusion, suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment, kids becoming disengaged kids ending up in the school to prison pipeline, you know, we need to do better. And I again, I'm with you, I, I love to see more robust roles for a lot of our occupational therapists. They have so much to bring into these conversations, but often, the focus is strictly on behavior and is missing the boat for a lot of kids.

Stacy G. York Nation:

I see Michelle had a question for us about is there a point of no return for students in districts? Ah, I think districts are driven by administrators. And I think administrators are chosen by the community and your board members. And I think everyone has a role in making your environments and your communities trauma and formed. And so when I've worked in districts that have top down support, right, they have board members on board superintendent or principals, administrators on board. And those, those school districts get gripped in this sort of environment. I have a principal I work with right now she she hires no one who does behavior charts. And that has been a little bit of a controversy. But I'll tell you what, they're on board, that school is a very regulated community, and they're doing all sorts of, they have lower behavior problems, less out of school, suspension, all those kinds of things, right. And so I do not rob people of hope. So I always believe that there's hope for every school district and every student. And I think it just takes a little bit longer for some people to get on board and buy in, because these systems are not created to do these kinds of things. So for both the system?

Guy Stephens:

Absolutely. Just get a couple more comments here. And then we'll we'll wrap up. Angela said, when I was teaching, I had a few personal mantras, what does a child do well, and focus on that first, instead of the behavior. If a child was my child, how would I want the teacher to treat them, both of these lead me down the path of CO regulation, even if I did not know that term at the time. That's fantastic, Angela, thanks for sharing. And also Angela mentioned you and mentioned to all of our educators that are watching, we love here at the Alliance to share, you know, things that people have learned in their journeys, you know, if you're a teacher, or even a previous teacher and want to share some of your experiences, reach out, reach out and contact me, I'm always looking to, because what we want to do is we want to take the knowledge that you have, and you know, even if you've had to leave the profession, as you mentioned, there's some real value to that. So feel free to reach out to us. Michelle had asked, Could I repeat what the environmental assessment was called? Well, I wish I could, unfortunately, what I was talking about, Michelle was really kind of more idealistic, ideally, that we should be doing environmental assessments, we should you know, prior to a budget, and this is my, my feeling here. And Stacy, you can tell me if I'm crazy, but I think before we ever get to an assessment, like a functional behavioral assessment, let's have an OT come in, let's have an OT come in and kind of understand the environment, do an environmental assessment, talk to the child do much of the things that you said, I mean, let's sit down with a kid in the room and see what they're noticing. I think there's a lot to be learned about, you know, a child in the environment. And I think OTS are really, as you said, underutilized. I think there's a lot of potential there. Yeah. And I

Stacy G. York Nation:

just believe you could do a sensory inventory very much. You know, I have a daughter who really struggles with quiet rooms. So we've built it in that she can listen to music. While right, and, and what the other. The other thing I think is really interesting is when you do trainings in your district, when you talk to educators, when you talk to teachers about this kind of stuff, start tapping into their own sensory system. Ask them, how many of you brought something to drink? How many of you were doodling? How many of you when you were writing your papers, listen to music? How many of you needed complete silence, which one of you are right? And then you start to go all we all have these different ways of learning. We all like and these are the students in our classroom. And we're telling them the there's only one way to learn and we're finding out that's true.

Guy Stephens:

That's right. That's right. And I see Jennifer said, changing environment, not the kid, it reminds me of, and I'm sure you've seen this as well, you know, kind of this idea that like if a flower is not thriving, you know, we don't try to change a flower, we move it to a different environment, we find out what it needs. We don't just say okay, well, you know, it's the flowers fault. You know, the kids are, you know, the kids are flowers, we need to figure out what we need to do to support them, what do they need to thrive and survive, not expect the, you know, them to change to the system, we need to change and individualize for them. Listen, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've so enjoyed the opportunity to not only meet you initially, but this has been fantastic today. And you know, I know I've joked about it, but but be reassured I'll be sending you a follow up at some point and saying, Hey, you want to do another one of these as it was a lot of fun. Where, you know, you do training and other things as well. I mean, what what other kinds of things might you do that people that are watching might be interested in?

Stacy G. York Nation:

Yeah. So on my on my slide, that's a next steps. There's a link to my website. You can get a hold of me any time there. I have an online parenting class that people it's about two and a half hours that people can access. I've an online six hour trauma informed teacher course. I've had about 800 teachers go through it. It's it's just good content, good information. Come in. I do a lot of trainings in schools. Do I currently I run a support group for administrators and a support group for teachers. I do a lot of clinical work and coaching with people who might want to dig deeper into their own story and their own like therapy kind of stuff. So I wear a lot of different hats, got a lot of different resources. I always tell people I'm in your life now. So use me as a resource as you'd like to, you can email me Stacy at Goby u.org and ask me the questions you have, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction, or serve you in some way. My goal is to serve as many people as I can, while I'm on this planet, because this work is so so, so important. And, you know, I've also worked with districts for entire years, where they bring me in for a couple years at the beginning, and then we do a monthly check in and monthly, you know, training throughout the year. It just really depends on what the needs of the district are, and the needs of schools and parents, right. If you're a parent, you're wondering if you're all alone, reach out to me, and I'll support you in that. So I appreciate this opportunity guy. I love that we got to meet. I think we'll be seeing each other again here shortly. Hopefully in February.

Guy Stephens:

You're gonna be in Houston.

Stacy G. York Nation:

I will for just a couple of days. I can't go for the whole event. But I hope I get to say hi to people and

Guy Stephens:

yeah, that's great. So in Houston is the attachment trauma Network Conference, crazy and trauma sensitive schools, their sixth annual conference, so you'll be speaking there. Yes.

Stacy G. York Nation:

I'm doing a an academy day the day before the event. So Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I, I got a lot to say, you're gonna have me there, I need three hours, one hour is never enough.

Guy Stephens:

I'm excited to hear that. Well hang around with me for a second. I'm just gonna queue up our next show. And then we can wrap up here. But again, thank you so much for joining us today. And being part of the program. I look forward to continuing to collaborate with you. I'm just going to mention everybody else. And if you're hanging around for one second, we'll wrap up the show that again, in two weeks, we've got another live event coming up. We've got Jody place who is going to be doing a presentation on discipline for learning not shaming, Jodi's another one of these amazing people that, you know, I've met through this work, and someone else who will be joining us there in Houston as well as I recall. So another great program coming up in two weeks. I want to thank everybody for being part of our program here today. I'm gonna wrap it up, Stacy, hang around, because we'll get off the air. And I just want to give you one more. Thank you. But thank you, everybody for being part of the program. And we will see you again soon. We actually have a special event next week, talking about the attachment trauma network. So I believe that's going to be on Thursday around two if I'm not mistaken. And in two weeks, we'll have our next regularly scheduled event. So thank you all and we'll see you next time. Thanks. Thanks