On this episode of the Innovative Schools Podcast, we're sitting down with Brad Chapin to talk about self regulation, how you can build skills in yourself for self regulation and how you can build skills in your students. Come on. Let's learn together. Educators, Jordan, Innovative Schools Podcast. Got Liz with us today.
Liz:Hey, everybody. How's everyone feeling?
Jordan:I paused because I was waiting for their responses.
Liz:Honestly? Yeah. I wanted people to actually rest some fun. Didn't hear anything.
Jordan:Really hope that they did. If not, just pause it and respond and then Yeah. And then resume. Thank you.
Liz:Keep it going.
Jordan:No. Thanks for joining us today on this episode of the Innovative Schools Podcast. Liz and I just hanging out, talking different things. Our guest today, who we'll get to in a minute, his we know him mostly through his self regulation kind of program and practices and things Mhmm. Which I always find very interesting, helpful as a dad.
Jordan:Yeah. Honestly, I'm really looking forward to this episode because I feel like right now, not to spill all the tea, but my daughter is having some big emotions right now. Some
Liz:Okay.
Jordan:Not challenges makes it sound bad. But it's a challenge for me to help her
Liz:Yeah.
Jordan:In proper expression and getting through and, like, really getting to the heart of different things. But not from the parent side, but teachers run into this all the time too. You have kids.
Liz:Twenty four seven.
Jordan:They, you know, 30 different kids, 30 different home lives, 30 different ways the morning went for each one Less. Or, you know, whatever. And so being able to, like, regulate
Liz:Mhmm.
Jordan:And just kind of identify your feelings and talk about them in constructive ways. Everything things like that. And, like, be able to get yourself back to out of what I keep hearing as, like, lizard brain. Lizard brain. Like, that part of your brain that, like, takes over, like, and you're not thinking clearly.
Liz:I just think of that like TikTok thing where it's like lizard lizard lizard.
Jordan:I do not. I'm too old for TikTok.
Liz:I don't know. Okay.
Jordan:That's okay. Okay. Never We'll
Liz:skip past that.
Jordan:Okay. Never mind. But anyway, just yeah. Self regulation.
Liz:Okay.
Jordan:Just I have found how much it helps in so many different areas of life and things. But obviously, here on this podcast, we talk about it in schools. Yeah. Seriously. And that sort of thing.
Jordan:So I guess, let's just introduce you probably heard him because you made a couple sounds there while we were talking and chuckling his name. It's Brad Chapin. Brad? Yes. How are you, buddy?
Brad Chapin:Good see to you all. Yeah. I'm happy to be here. Finally, invited to be on the podcast. Whoo.
Brad Chapin:Yeah.
Jordan:It's some resent so you holding stuff in there. We I've known Brad for many number of years. We started the podcast, and I think every time I see him, which is about at least six times a year, if not more, through the Innovative Schools summits Mhmm. He always likes to just mosey on over
Liz:His cup of coffee.
Jordan:With his his cup in his hand. And he says, so when when can I be on the podcast? Very regulated. Very regulated he asked this question. He has not gotten angry or or anything, but
Liz:I can't imagine.
Jordan:We finally did it.
Brad Chapin:Yes. We're here. My emotional support cup is still with me. Yes. Coffee.
Liz:There we go.
Jordan:We we do make that joke when when Brad presents. He always has a cup. It's typically a nondescript paper cup. True. I'm not sure if anything's ever actually in it or if he just holds it.
Liz:I've seen coffee in it before.
Jordan:You also use it I don't wanna get into this. You also use it though.
Brad Chapin:I do.
Jordan:You use it as an explanation for something. But now that I think about it, we'll we'll get to that in a second. But let's start with you for just a second, Brad. I know you. Liz knows you.
Jordan:Many of our listeners may not know you. You have some history in schools. You have a big history in mental health. Give us a real quick rundown about Yeah. The Bradshawman.
Brad Chapin:So yep. Been in mental I'm a master's level psychologist, licensed clinical psychotherapist here in Northeast Kansas. So I've been in mental health for over twenty five years now. It's kinda wild to say. But, so I started out in community mental health as a, therapist doing clinical sessions, you know, Monday through Friday, eight to five crisis work on the weekends and evenings, and, stayed in community mental health for thirteen years and then worked right alongside.
Brad Chapin:We were actually one of the first mental health centers in Kansas to embed clinicians in the schools. So, very familiar working with teachers and the challenges in education around behavior and kids and parents and and, their own struggles, you know, and we can get into that too. But just as an adult and in challenging situations, how do they manage that? And then the last, over ten years now, I've been, director of clinical services for a large healthcare systems behavioral health department. So I help oversee care and treatment for 52 inpatient psychiatric beds.
Brad Chapin:We have 32 for adults and 20 for child and adolescents. And then full outpatient services. We have about 35 outpatient clinicians, med providers, and therapists. We cover about an 18 county geographical area, but we do lots of telehealth all over the state and even outside the state these days. Can reach out quite a ways to do services.
Brad Chapin:And then, of course, as you know, most of what I do is outside of that realm is try to do some preventative work, getting people some of these skills, hopefully, up stream on how to manage challenge. That the hope is that it doesn't, you know, become a bigger problem later on. So that's that's just been a real passion of mine is and then trying to get that into a practical skill set that you can teach to a five year old or, or a 15 year old. So we have those three evidence based curriculum guides out there for pre K through high school. And then I tell you, the last five years, I've probably had more requests to do training and work with adult self regulation.
Brad Chapin:Think the pandemic really exposed some of the challenges and maybe weaknesses there. You know, we ask adults to co regulate and help kids do things. If they don't have the skills or if, you know, they were brought up in the same system, how are they, how are they going to do that co regulation without knowing it themselves? So that's been a a real joy. And education is one field I work a lot in and then also health care.
Brad Chapin:So teaching these skills now to new nurses, new providers, and then of course, teachers along the way too. So yep.
Jordan:Yeah. I really appreciate how you kinda, in a way, have your foot in both both lanes, both pawns of still you're still kinda working with teachers, students, educators, but you're still in the mental health, like, you're doing a lot on kinda both sides
Brad Chapin:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan:To get both perspectives. You have a lot of study and training and things from the larger professional group of mental health along with, you know, the challenge specific challenges and things that teachers and educators run into.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. I really enjoy staying in the applied setting. You know, I I I know there's a lot of, things that come out of research, academic, universities, but I I have spent twenty five years in an applied setting. So working, directly with those who are serving patients or directly working with the patients or the kids, the students or the staff. I just really enjoy that.
Brad Chapin:I think that's really important too to inform the work that you're doing because it changes. The needs change. The the trends change. The the population changes. Mhmm.
Brad Chapin:Kids now are not the same as as we were growing up. So
Jordan:I think I have three goals for this podcast that I'm coming up with right now.
Liz:What are they? Okay.
Jordan:The first goal is to give tools and, like, talk about self regulation on the adult level. Mhmm.
Liz:Mhmm.
Jordan:Like, for for educators, administrators, whoever it is, that that kind of that level. The second goal would be to give tools, strategies, and things for the adults to help students work through self regulation. The third goal is to get Brad unregulated.
Liz:Oh, I'm so excited about goal number three.
Jordan:Oh my gosh. I think we can accomplish the first two. The third one might be a stretch. But
Brad Chapin:I mean, if the world suddenly ran out of coffee, that might Yeah.
Jordan:I just I always expect Brad at some point to be like the Hulk and be like he's
Liz:like Yeah.
Jordan:That's my trick. I'm always dysregulated. No. Do I Honestly? And just like, hulk out.
Jordan:But let's go back to those first two goals because I think those are the ones that are actually probably more helpful.
Liz:Helpful. Yeah.
Jordan:To everybody.
Liz:That one can be an experiment.
Jordan:Yeah. We'll see. Maybe we can get there. Maybe we can't. We'll see what's happening.
Jordan:But okay. Let's talk about a little bit of self regulation on the adult level, like the teacher. Maybe some of this is obvious. Maybe it's not. I think okay.
Jordan:I think self regulation is really important. Yeah. But I guess the question is, why would it be important? Why does it why does it matter on the adult level? Let's let's keep on the adult level.
Liz:Mhmm.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. And I think well, one of the things we've I can talk about why, but all also, I I think it's important to talk about that they just most of the time, and even when they go to conferences that I'm presenting at, most all the material is is about how to how more for them to do to help kids, honestly. And so I'm not sure the focus has been there, on how are they supposed to manage. And and same with health care. You know, it's I see so many parallels between health care and education.
Brad Chapin:So you've got nurses trying to take care of patients. You've got teachers with the whole attention is on how the student is doing. And these are two workforces that I don't know if you've, you know, these workforces are struggling. They're dwindling. We we don't have enough of either one of these.
Brad Chapin:Burnout is high in both categories, and these are also critical. What do we do without teachers or without nurses? So Mhmm. Yeah. Trying to take care of our people is, I think, it's it's gotta be on the table.
Brad Chapin:It's gotta be more of a focus. And we we started out, you know, when we started doing these adult trainings is to come to people, and it's really important to start here, think, is to acknowledge what they're trying to carry, what everybody has in their backpack. And I talk a lot about boundaries. All mental health people talk about boundaries, but the fact that, you know, do you think that your personal stuff impacts your professional life? And do you think that your professional stuff impacts We all try to say, you know, leave your work at work, leave your home at home.
Brad Chapin:That maybe a robot can do that.
Jordan:It doesn't happen. That yeah. Maybe a robot. Or if you're on the show Severance,
Liz:look it up later.
Jordan:Oh, Chad.
Brad Chapin:Every human I know, that impact cuts across those lines. And so what we've noticed is that everybody has challenge in their life and it brings us all together, but people aren't equipped with how to carry that. And there's if you think of it as a backpack, there's lots of ways to carry a backpack. I mean, I see some people kicking it down the road. Some people are dragging it 10 miles back.
Brad Chapin:Yeah.
Liz:That's some people have to it.
Jordan:Elementary school. Yeah. Stay outside of an elementary school at dismissal, and you'll see every possible way a backpack can be moved from one place to another.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. Some people have wheels and they're carrying it. Some people have it on the front, some on the back. So point you know, I like that analogy because there's a lot of ways to carry this stuff that way you've got, this challenge Mhmm. In our pack.
Brad Chapin:And the exciting thing is is that research and science over the last couple hundred years have given us some really good clues about most effective ways to carry that. You know, I I sometimes think of it as what people do before the wheel versus after the wheel. I mean, that might be a little bit I don't know.
Jordan:Big of a comparison. But
Brad Chapin:honest honestly, when you can show somebody, hey, you know, it's the same stuff. We're not gonna be able to make your backpack disappear. It's gonna be the same stuff in there, but you can carry it differently. Makes a huge difference. Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. I think from conversations with you, kinda first knowing what's in your backpack
Brad Chapin:Yeah. That's part
Jordan:of can kinda help a little bit. And so this is a bit of a, like, challenge and hopefully just like hope I'm hoping that what we're doing is we're kind of invoking some thought in our listeners right now of if you imagine that backpack, and correct me if I'm going the wrong way, Brad, but I'm thinking of that backpack and what might be in it that you might be carrying. And it can be it can be almost anything. Right? It can be long term stuff that you're carrying.
Brad Chapin:Oh, yeah.
Jordan:You know, kind of
Brad Chapin:I mean,
Jordan:rocks. Can be stuff that
Brad Chapin:First thing we start out is have the group talk about what are those challenges you're facing today. And people don't have any trouble listing challenges. We usually get two pages. I mean, from finances to relationships to other people to the demands of work to my own fears about failure and expectations for myself and my trauma, what I've been through, my experience as a human being on this planet, everything that you can think of. Mean, people list on and that's what's in our pack.
Brad Chapin:That's there every day. And research tells us that that's going to impact your mood, your behavior, your performance, your sleep quality, your blood chemistry. I mean, all the things. So that's why I love this topic. Why not get right to the middle of something that impacts all those areas?
Brad Chapin:How we manage challenge. Right.
Jordan:Yeah. And so there can be this stuff from years in your past to maybe something that just happened this morning.
Brad Chapin:Or the future.
Jordan:You got an email. Or or if or right. A fear or something of the future as well. All all in this pack. And so taking a minute to, like, think about what is all in in our pack.
Jordan:Yeah. And then I I hope I'm kinda taking this analogy the right way. I can imagine you have this pack and has all all this extra weight, all these things that you're carrying. And when you're when you're tired, you're a bit more irritable. So I can imagine to myself, my my mind, my soul is weighed by this pack, and then I have some kid who comes into the classroom who has their own pack, their own things
Liz:Yeah.
Jordan:And they're tired. And it's it's a recipe for a a challenging moment.
Liz:A mess? Is the better way of putting it on?
Brad Chapin:And the
Liz:sad thing is some
Brad Chapin:people fail. I mean, and and if you don't know how to if you're not carrying stuff well, not carrying one thing well, if you don't have a good plan for how to manage what's in that pack, the big picture is that it contributes to failure across the board. And so then you sort of see this snowball effect of I don't know how to manage challenge well in my life, and I keep struggling, and I keep failing. Then the worry for me in the mental health area is that that starts to chip away at hope for the future to do better. And so we know there's a link between happiness and hope and overcoming challenge and hope being the biggest motivator to keep going and to keep trying and to keep when things get even more challenging.
Brad Chapin:And, of course, links to suicide in in that whole other direction that that can go to. But to me, hope, really skills and understanding equal hope. And so that's kind of the bottom line for us with this.
Jordan:Mhmm. Okay. Cool. So let's let's talk about those two things, skills and and understanding. So we have this pack.
Jordan:We have all this stuff, you know, that we're carrying. Yeah. Where do you wanna go first? You wanna go with skills or do you you wanna go with understanding?
Brad Chapin:So once we sort of acknowledge that, then we we have this cool little intermediate task that we look at, which how much on that list of stuff in your pack can you actually control? So we we have them kinda label controllable versus uncontrollable. And so that actually, you know, points out a really interesting thing that probably over half the stuff in your pack is outside of your control.
Jordan:You can control it.
Brad Chapin:So we have a question or a decision. What do we wanna do with that? Well, we can accept and acknowledge that's out of our control. It's still going to influence us some. But then it's the other side where I do have some control over how things impact me, those things.
Brad Chapin:And then the next logical question is, what do I do? How do I do that better or differently? Or what's the most effective way to do that? And so that's where we've kind of outlined. That's where the skills come in.
Brad Chapin:So every step of the way, we're kind of trying to increase understanding of this process. So acknowledging the challenge, deciding where we want to work, controllable versus uncontrollable, and then applying skills to that. Yeah. So that that next little light bulb moment is, oh my gosh. This is a skill deficit when I'm not doing well, instead of something wrong with me, or a character flaw in me.
Brad Chapin:It's a skill deficit. Just like if you weren't good at basketball, you know, you're not gonna expect
Jordan:to be better. Which I'm not good at basketball.
Brad Chapin:You're not gonna expect to be better.
Jordan:Liz was holding that one in.
Liz:She wanted
Jordan:to say it. Really did.
Liz:And we were like, he's not good at basketball.
Brad Chapin:So Jordan, if I told you I was I told you, next week, you're gonna be better at basketball. And I'm just gonna say, hang in there. Keep your chin up. Could be worse. You could be worse.
Brad Chapin:All the things that we normally do for someone who's struggling, all this vague advice that we hand out, you're not gonna be any better at that. And so we that's the next step is is moving into this. Okay. Words aren't gonna fix this. We need to do some skill practice.
Liz:Yeah. Mhmm.
Jordan:Yeah. We gotta there's there's gotta be some I don't know a better way to say it, but movement. Maybe not physical movement, but there has
Liz:to be
Jordan:some some type of response
Liz:Yeah.
Jordan:In a healthy way to learn, to grow, to to understand Yeah. Mhmm. That kind of thing. So we move from kind of this we know where this pack, we have this acknowledgement of what it is, this kind of understanding. There's things that we can and we cannot control.
Jordan:Yeah. I think that's a huge one, honestly. That I was talking about my daughter earlier. I think that's one of the big ones trying to help her understand that there's things that she can control and things that she she can't control and kinda where to go from from here. But I think that honestly, I think that piece is in our conversation with you or my conversation,
Brad Chapin:the
Jordan:conversations I've had with you over the years is a big piece for me of just, oh, yeah. I there's nothing I can do about that. Oh, but there is something I can do Yeah. Over here.
Liz:Yeah.
Jordan:But then so then the next thing would be kind of skills. Yeah. Right?
Brad Chapin:And we see people flash. You know, that's a different conversation. And a teacher or a parent looking at a behavior as a lack of skills versus this is good, this is bad, this is a character issue, this is some problem. And these are some things we don't speak out loud, but it impacts our perception.
Jordan:And
Brad Chapin:when you come to somebody who's not doing well at basketball or at reading, your approach is different, right? Oftentimes than it is with behaviors. And so, I think that's kind of the next phase is getting this idea of, oh my gosh, I can train skills around this and you can get better and we can formulate a plan and you can practice. So we break it down. Then you gotta have a skill training framework, and that's what we love to teach, right?
Brad Chapin:So we have three skill training areas of self regulation, physical, emotional, and cognitive, just like you've got your skills for reading, your skills for basketball, dribbling, passing, plays, defense, offense. So we break it up into these domains, and then it's just a matter of how do you learn these skills best. We're still gonna go in the same order with everybody. But there's different ways to teach this for a five year old or a 10 year old or a 35 year old. And that's kind of the fun creative part.
Brad Chapin:How do you engage people in skill training and measurement? Yeah.
Jordan:Sure. Cool. So going back to my my first goal of helping the adult in the room, what can we get one kinda like skill activity? I'm not sure they're quite right thing to say if you had physical let me see. Physical Cognitive.
Brad Chapin:Oh, cognitive. Physical, emotional, cognitive. So if you think about three areas, when you have a challenge in your life, your body has an automatic response to that. Has you're hardwired physically to to manage challenges in your backpack. Right?
Brad Chapin:It's gonna do its thing. Mhmm. It's hardwired.
Jordan:It's a it's a natur it's a right. Everyone has something, some way to process
Brad Chapin:is gonna engage when it sees a challenge. It does its thing. So how do I manage that? What do I need to know about that? And then the emotional section, I'm gonna have feelings about these these things in my pack.
Brad Chapin:What do I do with, like you said earlier, big feelings? What do I do with emotion? How do I know how to navigate that? Where does it go? Where does this energy go?
Brad Chapin:Then the third area is the cognitive. I'm gonna have thoughts about all that stuff in my pack. How do these thoughts impact my behavior? So we really try to simplify this thing into those three areas. Yep.
Jordan:Yeah. So what is kinda like, I guess, one thing let's move into a little bit of, like, the practice of helping an educator. Sure. Maybe maybe we'll work through a couple different hypotheticals here. One is just, you know, a teacher who doesn't really have external it's not like a kid or an admit a fellow a coworker or someone.
Jordan:There's not like an interaction, but they can feel that they're kind of they're on they're on edge or maybe a little bit more Yeah. Maybe something personal kinda happened. But like getting themselves regulated into or kinda working through maybe before entering the classroom or even in a little bit. I'm just trying to set that basically Mhmm. There's not an external what's the word?
Jordan:Poke? I don't know what word I'm looking for. An external Irritant? Irritant. Sure.
Jordan:Yeah. There you go. Thank you, Liz.
Brad Chapin:I don't know. Yeah.
Jordan:That's not even That right may provoke.
Brad Chapin:Like an antecedent or a trigger or something like that. So
Jordan:Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Trigger.
Jordan:That's Alright. What I'm trying to get Anyway, said all that, what do you got, Brad?
Brad Chapin:Yeah. So I can actually step you through something. Let's say somebody's not doing what you want them to do. I don't know if this ever happens to you. Okay.
Brad Chapin:But they're not doing what you want. So in our world, that's interpreted as a challenge. Would you agree? Might be a kid. Might be a spouse.
Brad Chapin:Might
Jordan:be Yeah.
Brad Chapin:100 checkout line.
Jordan:Co workers.
Brad Chapin:The store. Might be the Co hosts.
Jordan:I mean
Brad Chapin:Person in front of you
Jordan:Take it. This
Brad Chapin:happens to me. Person in front of me at the stoplight that's not going, it's been green for fifteen seconds and we're still not moving.
Jordan:Ah, yeah. Okay.
Brad Chapin:So that's a challenge.
Liz:Brad, you a honker?
Brad Chapin:No. Do you want I don't honk. I so here's what
Jordan:I He's too regulated. He's too racking. So
Brad Chapin:let's step through this real quick. Let's step through the whole you can step through all seven skills for any challenge. So let's real quickly. So your body's gonna have a response to that. Somebody's not doing what you want.
Brad Chapin:Your body interprets that as a threat. So its threat response is gonna kick in. Your heart rate's gonna go up. Your face is gonna get hot. You're gonna start your brain is gonna change.
Brad Chapin:The bottom part of your brain takes over versus the top part. So you're gonna be more reactive.
Jordan:The lizard brain. I told you
Brad Chapin:that. Brain. You're gonna be more reactive.
Liz:That's what that is.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. That's why we might honk. It's very reactive, that part of the brain. So you do and say these things that you wouldn't normally do if you were calm and collected. So that's our first step is we we understand that that initial response, our body's response to today's challenging situations, is not gonna put us in good shape.
Brad Chapin:That was great for a response to a dinosaur or a grizzly bear or another tribe coming to take your stuff. But for today's challenges, most of those are need thoughtful, calm responses. They require a different part of your brain. So we need to get that shut down. We need to learn to calm that part of our response down.
Brad Chapin:So that's steps one and two. Recognize when that's kicking in, it's not working well, and then to be able to get calm and safe to turn that dial down a little bit. So you might do some box breathing. You might, listen to your favorite song. Those are all those calm, you might bring your attention back to what's going on in the current environment.
Brad Chapin:You might practice gratitude. You might do all these things to turn the threat dial down that we have. You know, we have a whole toolbox for that. And then once I'm calm, I can move into the emotion regulation. So how am I feeling about this?
Brad Chapin:Am I angry? Am I really scared? Is this really a big impact to me emotionally or not? So labeling that. And then how do I want to express that?
Brad Chapin:Do I want to honk? Do I want to yell at them? No, probably not. Do I just want to go ahead and accept that emotion and move through? Do I want to journal it later?
Brad Chapin:Do I want to share it with somebody? Get out. Oh my gosh. You wouldn't believe this person in front of me. They're not moving.
Brad Chapin:The cars are still not moving. Do I wanna share it socially? So those are kind of our outlets. But you have control of that outlet. Every step of the way, you wanna make sure you are in the driver's seat here.
Brad Chapin:It's called self regulation for that reason. And then the next component I might move into is what are my thoughts about this situation? Is this gonna keep upsetting me all day long? Am I gonna keep going back to this? How's my you know, am I thinking like, oh, this happens to me every time.
Brad Chapin:This is gonna happen to me all day. My whole day is gonna be terrible. Versus, hey, this was a two second thing. It's over with now. I've got a lot of the things I wanna do.
Brad Chapin:I really don't wanna carry this garbage home with me. I don't really wanna give that person that much control over my life for the next twenty four hours. That's how the thought process is gonna impact this whole situation. So right there, we moved through physical, emotional, and cognitive in a minute and a half or two. I mean, that but without prac that sounds real easy here.
Brad Chapin:And just like I could tell you how to go out and play basketball really well, without practicing and developing those muscles at each one of those stages, your likelihood for success, not great without practice.
Jordan:Yeah. It's really easy to just say, oh, I'm gonna yeah. In that in those moments, I'm gonna take my my box breathing. I'm gonna ask my my questions of do I want to let this bother me? Mhmm.
Jordan:You know, what what am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? Or all that stuff. But when you have that fifth grader in your face, you know, telling you Yeah. Telling telling you words that your mom didn't teach you but your classmates did, you know, it's hard to you can't necessarily just stop and be like, hold on.
Jordan:I need to do my breathing real quick so that I stay regulated and I don't go off on you.
Brad Chapin:That's one of the best skills to stop is to stop. Yeah. You can stop. You you can stop. And you would wanna do that because two lizards trying to solve a problem like that is gonna go nowhere.
Brad Chapin:Mhmm. So if you notice you're getting dysregulated, you definitely need to stop. Yep. It it you're right, though. There's a challenge.
Brad Chapin:I mean, you've you've got to and that's where the understanding comes in. Our bodies are hardwired to do its thing. So you aren't fighting against biology to want to do its thing. It wants to eliminate the threat or get away from it. That's simple biology of what fight or flight is.
Brad Chapin:And so we're trying to go a different route. We're wanting you to stay engaged with the threat, but in a calm way. So that takes practice. Right? That takes practice to do.
Jordan:Yeah. And to yeah.
Brad Chapin:So think of And need to back to Jordan. So I've been practicing mindfulness meditation calming for years and years and years. So I know what that feels like. So, I listen to some the same music, you know, fifteen minutes every couple of days, and I do this mindful meditation. What do you think my body does when it first hears the note of that same song I've been listening to for eight years?
Brad Chapin:It goes right to that spot. You could hook me up to a pulse monitor.
Jordan:Mhmm.
Brad Chapin:So what do you think if I'm in the checkout line and I notice that I'm starting to get my body knows exactly how to get to that spot, and I can get there a lot quicker versus someone who has not practiced that in the moment, those that's two different. Right? Skills skill levels. Yeah. I think we have high expectations with very little skill training, you know, and that that that does not set up well.
Jordan:That's a good word. That's a good word. Having those high expectations with low kinda low skill
Brad Chapin:Yeah. I see it all the time. It's a miss mismatch, you know. It's it's not doesn't seem fair that I expect you to play a high level of basketball with no practice.
Liz:Yeah. He tries. Trust I
Jordan:do try sometimes.
Brad Chapin:But practicing the wrong thing. You know? If you're not practicing well, I see that a lot too.
Jordan:Right. Right. Well, I think, you know, just this gets me thinking about, like, almost this feeling of, like, everything is practice. And so what are you practicing?
Brad Chapin:It is. Yeah. And how many times have you
Jordan:done it? In the same way of, like, teaching your your like, body you're saying, Brad, like, you're in those moments and you you know how to get to that calm. If you always elevate Yeah. In those situations, that's the only move your brain is gonna know what to do.
Brad Chapin:If you've been doing that for twelve hours. Thirty years? I'm yeah.
Jordan:I'm popping up there. And and I think there's just, you know, sometimes there's a lack of intentionality. I Mhmm. You're just not. I hope no one's out there saying, I'm just gonna practice getting really angry at any situation.
Liz:I hope so.
Jordan:But, you know, it just it happens over time. I think, you know, you're always practicing something. And so the encouragement is to put intentionality behind that practicing and find find your way to get into that calm so you can think through Mhmm. What what's going on, what you can control, and what steps you need to take next.
Brad Chapin:That's the perfect word in For being intentional. Yeah. Because we know what happens if you let the default play out. The the body's gonna
Jordan:do
Brad Chapin:It's its it's gonna do its thing what it's been doing for a long time. So
Liz:That's that can get scary.
Jordan:Yeah. So I love that we've kinda walked through these these different things, especially from the adult side. Before we go into the breakdown, I'm gonna ask a question. Mhmm. Do do we feel that we've kinda met that first goal of kind of approaching the the adult side of self regulation and giving some things to kind of the adult in the room, whether that's the teacher or the an administrator or whatever.
Jordan:Do you Liz, do you feel like we've accomplished that first goal?
Liz:I think we did. Honestly, I think it's really inspiring to know that something that can feel so out of control, like emotions or feeling like I'm all over the place or dysregulated. Understanding it's a muscle of skills that you can learn to even when you do have stuff in your backpack that a lot of us do that we don't want in our backpack. And we're having to learn to deal with that. I think it's it's so empowering that you choose how you're gonna show up in a space even though, you know, it's just a mess.
Liz:But I just think it's I think it's inspiring. And so you can take hold of that control in something that can feel so dysregulated, you can change the narrative. Yeah. So I do think we've given them, you know, it's something that they're gonna have to practice. Mhmm.
Liz:But I think we accomplished our goal. What do you think, Brad?
Brad Chapin:Well, I eat, breathe, breathe, and sleep this stuff. So I'm just here as a resource for y'all. So yeah. I could talk seven more hours on it if you want to. But yeah.
Brad Chapin:You tell me what you tell me what's not clear, and I'll try to fill in the gaps. Yeah.
Liz:Yeah. What do you think, Jordan?
Jordan:No. I think we did. I think we we sprinkled a couple, you know, specific things. Box breathing was one thing that comes to mind. If you don't I mean, Google it if you don't know what it is.
Liz:Is it the four four four breathing? Is that what that is?
Brad Chapin:Brad? You can do 444. You can do 242. You can do all kinds of different things. You have control of what you wanna do.
Brad Chapin:You can do the five six seven, eight kind of dance breathing. I've seen people do that. I I people bring a lot to these trainings about different ways to breathe. The point is, like Jordan said, being intentional about that because what we know is breath holding and shallow breathing are what our body's gonna do if it feels threatened, And that's not gonna lead us in the right direction. So yeah.
Liz:Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. So I think through that and the encouragement of being intentional and practicing, and even just the awareness of knowing that we all have some type of backpack. We all carry it in different ways and there's different things in it. Just that reminder whether that's, you know, the teacher to teacher adult kind of relationship. Oh, that person that I'm having this kind of issue with that's gonna get me frustrated.
Jordan:They also have a backpack. They also are carrying it. And I don't necessarily know what's in there, but I know how sometimes my backpack can be a burden. So Yeah. You know, giving a little grace.
Liz:Helps you
Jordan:be empathetic. Do you think Yeah. And
Brad Chapin:that do you think just normalizing it too is important? Does like, everything we talked about here is normal human behavior in the face of challenge. Like, I I Mhmm. Yeah.
Jordan:I I mean, I do. I really do think that normalizing is an important part of all this. And just that our responses to stressful situations, like, are built to have natural like, are built to have some type of response.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan:And so that's a normal natural thing to have some type of response fight, flight Yeah.
Liz:Kind of thing. But
Jordan:getting those in a healthy way, I think, is the the the challenge.
Brad Chapin:Yep.
Jordan:And that kind of thing. Alright. Cool. I think we have accomplished our first goal. I think we did.
Jordan:So we're gonna take a short break. And when we come back, we'll work on our second goal of trying to help the little ones in our school or big ones if you're in high school, either way. Just, you know, the students. The those are the important ones. Beast go to that.
Jordan:Yeah. Blizzards, hang out for a minute, and we'll see you after the break. Welcome back, everybody. Innovative Schools Podcast. Jordan, Liz, Brad, our self regulation expert.
Liz:With his cup of coffee. Mhmm. With
Jordan:his coffee, which he's thankful for the break because he just got to warm it up a little bit. So he's ready
Brad Chapin:to go. Regulate.
Jordan:And regulate. He had to regulate the temperature of the coffee.
Liz:Yes. He did.
Jordan:We just mostly finished talking about we've been talking about self regulation this whole time. We were kind of in the realm of the adult in the classroom, whether that is the educator or an administrator, just kinda like the adult. The things that as grown ups, how we can work on our skills of self regulation and things like that. And then we wanted to move into how the adults can kinda help the the the students, and we'll get there. But during the break, Brad mentioned something to us that we wanted to go back to when it came to the adults, which was in a way, kinda taking your basketball analogy a step further of you have, like, individual things that you're working on, but you have team practice Yeah.
Jordan:For basketball. And so practicing some of these skills in a team setting.
Brad Chapin:Right. And and since it's such a human thing, we we've had some really good success. And I think these have been really rewarding to do in a group. So maybe you have one skill of the week and you kind of step through this over seven weeks. That's how we've been doing it.
Brad Chapin:That's how we do it in our college course too. But people are coming together around, you know, how do I what what are my warning signs? What do they look like for me? But also, what can I learn from you? And then how do I practice safe and calm?
Brad Chapin:Maybe you do some box breathing, but I don't really like that. I'd rather just be able to give myself some space, some time to take a walk, or I just need to get out of the situation for a minute. Get myself cool and calm, talk to somebody. So we don't what we found is there's so much individual individual differences in the way that I mean, there's commonalities, but people learn from each other in a really supportive way. So it also provides a lot of understanding.
Brad Chapin:Say you work in the same building with, you know, twenty, thirty, 40, a 100 other people. Oh, that's why so and so does that, or that's why so and so you know, to to have some of that collaborative understanding. And like I think you said, Liz, some grace or some empathy for other people. It's comes up in these group sessions. So whether you get together on Zoom, you know, you read the chapters five minutes or less to read about it, get that understanding, and then come together around supporting each other on a skill set.
Brad Chapin:I just wanted to share that. This has been pretty rewarding to see teams do that. From a leadership perspective, it shows a lot of emotional intelligence to put some time and energy into helping support your staff in that way rather than more vague advice. Hey. We've only got a month left of school.
Brad Chapin:Hang in there. Keep your chin up. Okay. I mean, we say that every year. We say that every two months.
Brad Chapin:Oh, it's almost Christmas vacation. Oh, it's almost spring break. Oh, it's you know, those are, like I said, just words. And basketball teams don't get bad. People don't become better readers by just saying, hey, keep your chin up.
Brad Chapin:Hang in there. You know?
Jordan:You'll get them next time, champ. You know?
Brad Chapin:Seeing this as a skill is is critical. Yeah.
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I was going back and forth about if we I wanted to slightly plug this now or later, and maybe both. But just you you do have a book, Self Regulation Skill Set for Educators Yep.
Brad Chapin:Yep. For the adults.
Jordan:That kinda walks through make like, it's it's a plan kinda thing of making that working on those skills.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. And we've made it. I tried to write it super simple. Like like I said, you can read a chapter in less than five minutes and made the homework, like, super simple. We put QR codes to just short video clips, kinda teeing up the next skill and trying to make it as easy as possible because we I mean, if someone's backpack is already full I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but then you read a list of, like, I'm not feeling well.
Brad Chapin:I'm trying to get motivated to do stuff. And then the list of to dos is, like, 25 you know, the meme says I gotta do this, this, this, this, and this to feel better. I Yeah. I can't I don't have the energy to carry what I got going. So Yeah.
Brad Chapin:It's gotta be manageable or people just just won't do it. So Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. But then we've been seeing, you know, the the the feedback and the data from that, you know, being able to reduce our pre and post outcomes from that are 25 to 40% reduction in perceived stress.
Brad Chapin:That's how much control you feel like you have over what's in your backpack. I I honestly, I don't know a lot of medications. I mean, medications can do that, but, you know, without the side effects. And this is something people are doing for themselves. So just that feedback loop of and and that self esteem loop loop of of what I've been able to accomplish here just in six weeks is so fun.
Brad Chapin:I mean, I I probably got a little dysregulated there. I don't know if that was your goal, but that was probably get a little Number three. I get a little animated when we talk about the success stuff. That's just so rewarding.
Liz:I mean, that's incredible. Yeah.
Brad Chapin:It's
Jordan:Alright. I'm gonna put that's probably the closest we've gotten to three, but I'm not gonna mark it done yet. We'll see
Liz:if we Partial check. I mean,
Brad Chapin:I moved around in my chair quite a bit. I changed position.
Liz:Yeah. Think I saw some smile.
Jordan:Settle
Brad Chapin:down, I saw some teeth in here. I don't know. Yeah.
Jordan:Okay. So let's go ahead and make the jump into working on our second goal of the you know, that self regulation for students. Now I feel like and help me learn because that's what we're here for.
Liz:Mhmm. Come on.
Jordan:Let's learn together. Self regulation, as the name implies, deals a lot with the self. So there's only probably so much that a teacher or an educator can do. There's a lot of the weight that needs to be lifted by the student, but I feel like there's gotta be something outside of obviously, if a teacher can regulate themselves, they can make any situation kinda better if the adult in the room can be able to do that. But just launching into this student side of things.
Jordan:I feel like there's gotta be at least some little things that educators can do to be helping their students build these skills.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. And I think especially initially, because we come to this skill training with this idea that people are starting to kind of ground zero. Like we don't have a lot of expertise in this. So if you think about, again, sports analogy or any skills, setting up the playing field, setting up the practice, planning things, dosing it, I think is important sometimes. So think if if you're walking into a completely dysregulated group of people, you know, you're you're not gonna be, pulling out the most difficult thing to read first.
Brad Chapin:Right? Right? I mean, if you used reading as an example. Right?
Jordan:You're not going for war
Brad Chapin:and peace. Yeah. You're yeah. So you're not gonna be playing the NBA
Jordan:Some people may even think green eggs and ham is a bit of a stretch.
Brad Chapin:Not gonna find out the NBA finals, you know, game. So So I think being thoughtful about where you're starting from, you know, we start by teaching reading by saying this is what a looks like. This is what b looks like. Mhmm. So part of this is setting your expectations around and not everybody is starting at the same place.
Brad Chapin:We have some people that honestly have had, and I think it's probably the minority, have had very decent, I say very decent, decent examples of how to regulate from somebody in their life Sure. In certain areas. But very rarely have I met an individual that that has these skills kinda down from from the get go without, like you said earlier, intentional practice. If you have been fortunate enough to develop these on your own through a lifetime, man, feel very lucky that you that you've had that. But five, six, seven, 14 year olds, most of the people I come into contact have So setting those expectations up early can help you and can also help the students that we are starting at ground zero.
Brad Chapin:But visual cues, like we try to come up with as many ways as we can to engage. We did measure this when we started developing our evidence base for the kiddo curricula is teacher engagement in the lesson. So if it's like, oh, this is self regulation training time. The level of enthusiasm and engagement in the teaching of the self regulation lesson was a moderating variable in our outcomes. So those more engaged in the lesson, those using real life examples of how to apply this in the classroom, those who used challenging situations that they come into contact in the classroom with every day.
Brad Chapin:So you have all these opportunities to practice as a group with challenge in your environment, in real time. So you you there's just, the teachers that did that got better outcomes the lessons. Yeah.
Jordan:Let's go back a little bit. You said, you know, the teaching let's stick in the reading. We've hit basketball a couple of times. Let's go with reading just a little bit Sure. Of, you know, teaching someone to read.
Jordan:Like, even when you're at that very beginning stages of a kid who's starting to some may be able to recognize letters, some may know the sounds they make, some may have none of that. What, I guess I don't know. My my kind of two questions is just like, how does an educator start to identify where the different kids are? And two, what are some of those kinda first steps, the letter recognition, so to speak, steps of self regulation
Brad Chapin:So we start with that for
Jordan:a a teacher be working Yeah.
Brad Chapin:We start with that skill one. We got like I said, we go in the same order whether you're five or 15 or 55. So we're gonna start with that body response. So, you know, for a five year old, it might be drawing a a chalk outline during you know, outside on the sidewalk or a butcher paper, you know, draw your body outline. And then mark on your mark on there, where do you feel it when you start to get upset?
Brad Chapin:You know, when somebody's doing something that you don't like or somebody took a toy from you. You know, there's all there's plenty of examples of things that we don't like or things we get upset about. And then what we found is that four year olds can tell us this stuff. Some three year olds can start to mark on these where they feel it. And and that's really encouraging.
Brad Chapin:Can you imagine if everybody at that age started to kinda learn this upfront about
Jordan:Oh my gosh. How they feel
Brad Chapin:and be able to recognize it early and tell someone.
Liz:Mhmm. Yeah.
Jordan:I don't like the green beans, dad. I would like to eat something else. Thank you. That would be so much better than Why
Liz:are you screaming?
Jordan:Yeah. Wait. Woah. What's the problem? What's the No.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. We do a really good job with, like, physical illness. You know, they tell us when our tummy hurts. But this is a skill that we're if you're not intentional around it, you know, you don't notice that muscle tension, but your shoulders are up to your ears. You know, nobody talks nobody really tells you about what to do with that.
Brad Chapin:Or, you know, some of the trainings I've done for school nurses say seventy five percent of the kids that come to their office aren't there for a physical problem. It's this stress, this upset stomach, these headaches, this anxiety building up without any and we use the word anxiety, but a lot of it is this fight or flight system doing its thing. And if they don't have understanding about what that is, it can feel real bad. Like and it has secondary effects of something's wrong with me. Like, I don't but can you imagine if you had that knowledge about this is normal?
Brad Chapin:This is my body doing its thing with all the stress in my life? Yeah. There's ways to handle it, and we're all doing it as a group because school's hard, because relationships are hard. I don't always get what I want. So how what do I do with that?
Brad Chapin:And you're you're showing them what happens and what to do with that in a normal way.
Jordan:Right.
Brad Chapin:Right. It's it's a complete game changer. So
Jordan:Yeah. So you're kinda you're starting with that that physical side of some an activity or something that you can kinda do is like, hey, here's an outline of a body or something. You could probably even go online and print out
Brad Chapin:Yeah.
Jordan:Some outline or something or have them draw it. Yeah. When you start to get angry, what do you start to feel?
Liz:So In
Brad Chapin:your body. So
Jordan:Just on the yeah.
Brad Chapin:So staying with
Jordan:your body. Was gonna
Brad Chapin:say Yeah. First. Mhmm.
Jordan:Yeah. Liz, what what what I'm gonna put you on the spot here.
Liz:That's fine.
Jordan:What is your you got your body outline. What are you marking as your, like, initial indicators of deregulation?
Liz:When I'm getting a little I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this word because I don't want it to sound bad. But it usually you've heard me say this. And when I'm tweaking out. Okay. When I'm tweaking out.
Liz:I don't know if that's is that a like a should I say that, Brad? Am I allowed to say that? That's actually where we start. That's where we we start with
Brad Chapin:a lot of vagueness, but I would I would really wanna drill into that with you of what Uh-huh. Where is it and what does that word mean to you specifically?
Liz:Yeah. Is that yeah. Just when my anxiety is getting a little out of control or when I'm tweaking out. I would say I feel it a lot in my face. Like my jaw will get a little tight or, you know, like I'll you can tell your cheeks are getting kind of hot or Yeah.
Liz:So yeah, I usually feel it in this region Yeah. Interesting. In my face. That's typical. That's or head,
Brad Chapin:I should That's what we want you to do is get very specific. Right? Because if you don't if you're so vague, it doesn't give you much information about what to do. And it also doesn't help other people help you co regulate. So that then becomes part of your plan.
Brad Chapin:So when we're going through skill training, we're also building your personal plan. This is what dysregulation looks and feels like for Brad. And so if I'm your teacher and I have this plan that we're building all along the way, because the next step is what equals safe and calm for you, or for Brad, or for Liz. So then I have kind of a recipe to help you regulate. And you also have this recipe about what your skill training looks like.
Brad Chapin:And so then it just becomes a thing of, well, last week or yesterday, that didn't seem to work well, what we had on the plan for helping you get calm. Let's revisit that skill. Let's let's get our heads together and try a couple of other things here because that one didn't work well.
Liz:Ever evolving.
Jordan:Yeah. Well, and I I wanted to pick on you for a minute just because I know, like, one of mine is my hands start to kinda shake a little bit.
Liz:Oh, my hands shake too. And
Jordan:what's really interesting, least for me, this is the way that I start to acknowledge is my hands get shaking. But there's a moment before everything takes over that I can acknowledge, hey, my hands are shaking. Everything else is about to Yeah. To come. But but it's different.
Jordan:I wanted to point that out that yours is different, mine's different, whatever. If Brad ever gets deregulated, still waiting for that. Yes. Seriously. That's so intriguing.
Jordan:You know, his things are and so when it comes to the kids, you have 30 kids in that classroom or adults or whoever. Mhmm. But in our case, you know, the students, they all have different physical indications. So that's what I think makes this better. But you may also find someone else in the classroom who has a similar kind of physical expression.
Jordan:Yeah. And you can go, oh, that is a normal thing for me to to feel a certain way or, you know, whatever.
Brad Chapin:But then also when I recognize that, that's a sign that that if without that recognition, I can't even queue for help. I can't even ask for help because I don't know what's going on. So it does so many things, that first step, that awareness. You know, first step in self regulation is self awareness. How can I regulate something if I don't even know it's happening?
Brad Chapin:So yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I often remind people that a lot of this, you know, maybe I could tell you right now, I'm totally dysregulated. A lot of us have learned to hide it really well. Right?
Brad Chapin:So just because someone looks regulated on the outside, does that tell us that they're completely no. We know people can be complete wrecks on the inside and look pretty together. The other thing I'll say for adults, and this is really interesting, that some of us have learned that our fight can be really, really nasty over the years, that we can cut people up in a second, we can do some real damage. And so one of our first responses can be to withdraw, to just shut down or pull away. And so but knowing that I mean, you see this in meetings, people you know, when some talking about something somebody doesn't like or whatever, people will shut down or push away from the table.
Brad Chapin:You see all all kinds of things. These are the kind of warning signs or we call them warning signs, but that self awareness, in the initial response. So that's step one is recognition that that fight or flight. How is that manifesting in me? What's it look like?
Brad Chapin:Getting it down on paper. And then step two is that skill of how do I dial it back. Once I recognize this is happening, it's not gonna help me out, how can we create safety? And so that can be anywhere from all that stuff. I mean, have three, four, five pages of these things that can help humans feel safe.
Brad Chapin:But we've talked before about predictability is one of the biggest ones. So if you have a plan, if you know the schedule, counting, you know, any of these things that are predictable, pattern rhythmic, repetitive, going for a walk or music, distraction. So there's these elements that we can implement when we start to feel that way.
Jordan:And that's so things like that are things that you can both kinda build into students on an individual level. Yeah. But you the educator could kinda take breaks to help kinda regulate a whole class. We're allowed.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. Maybe we do it together. Yeah. Yeah. Or first thing in You the
Jordan:know, whatever.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. When things are dysregulated or they come back from a really dysregulated time like lunch or something like that.
Jordan:Almost like a not okay. Just an interesting use of dysregulated there because you're kind of referring to just like recess or lunch where it's just
Liz:Chaos.
Jordan:You're in a way good chaos. Like, you're playing, you're running around, you're you're being crazy. But then to come into a more regulated space of, hey, we need we have some classwork, some time or whatever.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. I don't want lizards trying to do math. Right? So try to engage them.
Jordan:Yeah.
Brad Chapin:You know, really setting the setting the field up for success there in some ways, but teaching them how to do it too. This is why we're doing that. So it's not that I'm gonna make your environment perfect for you to operate in because that's not real life either. I'm not gonna make sure Right. You know, we see a lot of people trying to work on, we're not gonna have any triggers for you.
Brad Chapin:We're just gonna try to remove all these things that are upsetting to you. That's not the way to go either because that's so not real life. But we see a lot of people trying to manipulate the environment so that kids can be successful. And, you know, you've got to use your brain about that a little bit. Mean, if there's a real triggering event because of someone's trauma that is unlikely to happen in real life, you know, and you can do something about them avoiding that.
Brad Chapin:But what we don't want to do is create a whole bunch of people just trying to avoid their triggers throughout life. Because we see that happening a lot right now. See that as a big contributor to why my referrals at the mental health center are up 40%, you know? Because that's the skill that people have learned is to become avoidant of these challenges. Mhmm.
Jordan:Do you actually classify that as a skill? You used the word there, but I'm
Brad Chapin:just curious. I mean, there's healthy and unhealthy skills, and that's what I tell people. People are gonna regulate. It's you cannot get away from self regulation. It's healthy or unhealthy.
Brad Chapin:Helpful or unhelpful, effective or ineffective. People will regulate, whether it's substance abuse to manage my emotions, avoidance to manage my emotions. So whether we teach the healthy or just let people's default develop what's probably less healthy, that's the choice I think that we
Liz:have. Yeah. Yeah. You
Jordan:get over there Liz?
Liz:No. It's just yeah. I just think it's so important that we're teaching these children how to how to really get self regulated in a really healthy way. I was just thinking about me at the dining room table as a kid trying to do my math homework. And sweet mom, you know my mom.
Liz:Sweetest thing. As wonderful as she is, she's like, you need to sit down and you need to do your homework. You're not moving until and I'm getting all worked up because I can't figure out this math problem. And I'm just thinking how beneficial it would have been even my mom is perfect. She's an angel.
Liz:But just how beneficial it would have been just for her to help me, you know, learn those skills early on to be able to even as simple as I'm just I'm having trouble with my multiplication. Yeah. Yeah. Or division or Yeah. Yeah.
Liz:It's just crazy. They're gonna self regulate one way or another. So we gotta teach the healthy way.
Brad Chapin:I love that you said that. That's a perfect example. So the work is hard enough, the challenge, but then you add to it. Like, I'm slipping down into lizard brain that can't do math, period. So how am I now compounding the original challenge with all this other stuff that could be
Liz:Mhmm.
Brad Chapin:Helped or alleviated a little bit to some degree to put you in the best space for success. And that's why I told you with the lack of the skills is so correlated with failure that and then that trip down the path to hopelessness isn't is is not that far away.
Liz:Mhmm.
Brad Chapin:Yeah.
Liz:Wow. Yeah.
Jordan:I'm glad I'm thankful, Liz, that you kinda took it that way because I think I think it's easy for us to think just in general terms that we need self regulation. But to bring it down to, like, you know, a real situation that a student may be in the middle of. And maybe it's not at the dining room table, but it's at
Brad Chapin:Yeah.
Jordan:The the desk. Sure. Okay. You know, or it's at the lab table or in the cafeteria that these kids end up walking down this path of kinda hopelessness of not having that skill and then going to the lizard. And then they just start convincing themselves that there's so many things that they're not good at, they shouldn't try or anything like that.
Jordan:And to pull out from that and to build that skill, it's challenging. I mean, it's difficult and they have to do the work. But, you know, we as the adults, we can do our best to to try and help. So
Brad Chapin:yeah. Yeah. To make it fun too and engaging and yeah. I that's a perfect example is because that happens all the time. I mean, people are are challenged every day and then our instinct is to just push, push, push harder.
Brad Chapin:And you think, like, oh my gosh. That's really not going that doesn't fit at all with what we know is going to be helpful. Mhmm. So and to not blame others. I I really love how you put that.
Brad Chapin:My mom is you know, she's the best, all this stuff. But She really is. And we end up doing what our parents or our grandparents or Facebook says. But, you know, and they're to just acknowledge that they're doing the best they can with what they know. And they really are.
Brad Chapin:Yeah. And to also acknowledge that they didn't have this information either. Most of them are doing the best that they can with what they had. And so I think that's important. This isn't about blaming anyone or or putting guilt on what we used to do.
Brad Chapin:It's about taking what we know now and applying it in in the most effective way. Yeah.
Jordan:Alright. Did we hit goal number two?
Liz:I think we hit goal number two.
Jordan:I think we did, Brad. Is there anything we've missed in goal number two?
Brad Chapin:Sounds good. I mean, we covered two skills out of seven. That's pretty good. So
Jordan:Two out of seven? There's a lot of skills. We'll just have to have you back for another one and we'll, you know, work it through. Because I'm not sure that we made goal number three.
Liz:I don't think we did. So I don't know. Kind of excited.
Jordan:I wish I had some back pocket trigger.
Brad Chapin:I'm pretty excited.
Jordan:Like, nothing real big, but like, you know, just some sports team something or another. But I got, you know, just to to get out of
Brad Chapin:I'm excited
Jordan:for you. Where did you you animated?
Brad Chapin:I'm excited about your viewers. I'm excited. I really liked I really liked, you know, the way that Liz brought this out and the way that you talked about it too. And I I am excited. There's a lot of hope in this.
Brad Chapin:And so that I don't know if I'm dysregulated, but I'm upregulated for sure.
Jordan:You're upright. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Liz:We didn't
Jordan:I guess I guess we'll take it if that's what we can get. But, Brad, I thank you so much for joining us on this episode and just giving skills both personally and things that we can be doing for the kiddos in our lives. Mhmm. Liz, thanks for joining us here as well and bringing some Happy to be here. Additional insights
Liz:I'm and always not regulated. So, honestly, this was very helpful for me as well.
Jordan:Of self regulation here. Thank you. But Yeah. To all of our our viewers, thank you for joining us on this episode as well. I hope that you can take some of these things that we talked about today and start incorporating them into your your life and also your personal life and your professional, your education life with your students.
Jordan:I think it's really easy for all of us to just see how self regulation, being able to identify our emotions, and see when we're starting to become dysregulated can help in so many different areas and aspects of our lives. So I hope you learned something here. And if you did, as I always ask, I ask that you like, subscribe, and share the podcast so that others can learn more. As I always say, we do this podcast to help educators, and we can only do that if more people are able to hear it, and that happens through shares and all those other different things. So we thank you for joining us.
Jordan:One more time, thank you, Brad Thank you. For being with us.
Brad Chapin:Thank you. It was great.
Jordan:Really appreciate it. And Liz, we'll see everybody.
Brad Chapin:Worth the Worth the wait.
Jordan:Yeah. Yeah. He's like, we're not gonna let you live in town. The wait. 100%.
Jordan:Best review. I expect you to write that on, like, a review thing. Worth the wait on this episode. But thanks everyone for joining. We will see you on the next episode.
Liz:Bye, all.