Eps 91: Janet Allison, From Boys Alive! is on Supporting us in Raising Our Boys

What does Joyful Courage mean to you?

Joyful courage means being willing to step out of complacency, out of the box, and follow that inner voice that you have saying “Yes!” even when you are in doubt or fear say “Yes!” anyways and I strive to do this in everything I do is bring joy to it. Go to the grocery store and find some joy. I have a friend who buys flowers every Tuesday during her grocery shopping and her goal is to give those flowers away by the time she gets back to her house….Stepping out of our boxes and our little narrow lanes and our busy-ness or overwhelm in our own life but just stepping out a little bit to see there’s this world out there and what can I do to bring joy into the world – and we need it.

Resources

The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian

Boysalive.com l Facebook l Boysalive Facebook group l Twitter l LinkedIn

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Joyful courage parenting podcast episode 91

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the joyful courage parenting podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey. I am your host, Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline trainer, parent, coach, mom, wife, I'm thrilled that you are listening in. And if this is your first show, welcome to the community. If you find yourself laughing, taking notes and or excited about what you hear on the show today, do me a favor and pay it forward. Share this episode with your friends, your family, your neighbors, the other parents in the in the pickup line, your sharing is the reason that I'm able to show up for you each week, and I am so so glad that I get to do that. Today's guest is Janet Allison. She is an author, educator, family coach and the founder of boys alive. She helps parents and teachers understand their boys the way they learn, play, relate to their friends and communicate with you along the way, she has helped dads understand themselves better, and couples to improve their relationship by understanding each other at a fundamental level. I am so, so excited to share our conversation with you. Let's meet Janet. You. Music.

Hi Janet, welcome to the joyful courage parenting podcast.

Unknown Speaker 1:51
Thank you, Casey. I'm so happy to be here. Please

Casey O'Roarty 1:54
share a little bit about your journey of doing what you do. Well,

Speaker 1 1:59
I have to say that I raised daughters, I did not raise sons, so I always feel like that's my true confession before we begin and they are grown and out in the world. But I was a teacher in the mid 90s. I was a Waldorf teacher, and my first first grade was 10 boys and two girls, and I was not prepared. I had my elementary ed degree, and I knew all about lesson plans and classroom management, but no one told me about how differently boys would be in the classroom than girls how they you know, I would come in with these amazing lessons, and they would just do these strange things, and they were so creative and innovative, but quite disruptive. And I fortunately, our school was on a farm property, and just innately, I think it was survival of the fittest. I knew we needed to get outside and move before I could ever expect them to come into the classroom and be able to to focus and pay attention to lessons. So that was kind of the beginning, and that was also the year that someone gave me the book called The wonder of boys by Michael Gurion. And so I got really interested in brain science, and it later did training and communication skills. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, this really applies to how we speak with our boys, how boys communicate boys and men. And so that, that was my journey. That was like 1995 and it's just evolved from there into being my passion and my full time work and just wanting to share and enlighten and help us all have a different perspective around our sons and for teachers around the boys that are in their classrooms,

Casey O'Roarty 4:02
yeah, well, I'm a former teacher myself, and I taught in a small, rural school, and my last year of teaching, I actually ran the ended up running the preschool program, and I was I had a baby who came with me to school, which was amazing that I had that opportunity, but I that preschool class, oh my gosh, left me feeling like, I hope that I never have a boy, which, of course, you know, I got pregnant, like, a year later. And what do I have? I have a boy who completely melts me and, you know, but they are so differently wired. And I think that it's important too to talk about like there was a continuum, right? Like even in my preschool class, I remember I had little Wiley who was willing to sit and would look up at me with great big blue eyes, and we. Was engaged and really calm temperament wise, all the way to my sweet little Lex, who never made eye contact and was constantly in motion, on the floor, on the table, like just all over the place. So I mean, even as we talk about differences in gender, I think it's important to note too, that there's even within the different genders, and I think that works similarly with girls too. I mean, I think there's the calm, complacent girl, and then there's the, you know, wiggly Wiley kind of, right, right, high energy

Speaker 1 5:36
it is. It's such a continuum and, and what I talk about a lot is are these hardwired things that we come hardwired with. And boys typically, you know, they come hardwired to move and to process their learning through movement. And girls typically are able able to, you know, sit and digest and process in a more quieter body way and and so there, there's these hardwired things that we can look at, brain differences, hormone differences, and then, of course, you have to plug in the temperament, the personality, the family dynamics, the culture, the you know, the are they in the city? Are they in in a rural setting? And so all those things overlay that. But I really believe that when we kind of understand some of these tendencies, and they're not exactly the same for every boy and every girl, we have a greater foundation upon which to understand and be able to connect and communicate in a deeper way. And it goes for, you know, girls and boys and men and women as well.

Casey O'Roarty 6:49
Yeah, well, and I had Tasha Shor on last fall, and we talked about, kind of the emotional world of boys. And this has been something that's come up a lot, just in some personal work that I've been doing with an amazing group of people just around how we as a society don't do as much as we could be doing to develop the whole boy,

Unknown Speaker 7:15
exactly, yeah, yes, and that

Casey O'Roarty 7:17
we're really and what Is that? Why? What do you think that's about?

Speaker 1 7:22
Well, I think, I mean as as an educator, I talk a lot about, you know, the context of school and what we have set out as the modern way of educating children, which is take all the boys and girls of age, certain to certain, and put them in the classroom, right? And we know that, you know every child is developing on their own, own continuum, their own developmental trajectory. But what we also know is that boys, by and large, are a little less mature than girls, even at birth, boys are about two weeks less mature than girls, and so what do we do? We put those seven year old boys and seven year old girls together, or five year old boys and five year old girls, and the boys feel like they come up short, because we've created this context of school being the expectations are, you know, sit still and listen and be attentive and follow directions and, you know, don't touch your neighbor, and all these way expectations that don't suit our boys. That's not how they learn, that's not how they relate. And so early, early on, we are setting up boys for failure. And I just saw a statistic last night on PBS of the most age three to five have the most children expelled of any age group. So most kids expelled from preschool, and boys of color even more. Oh, man. So, yeah, so, I mean, we're setting up these kids to think that, oh, school's not for me, right?

Casey O'Roarty 9:10
Yeah, numbers like that don't indicate there's a problem with the boys. Numbers like that indicate there's a problem with the system. Exactly,

Speaker 1 9:19
exactly. And you know, part of it is female educators. And of course, we're going to look out through our female lens, and what we know about, you know, how we process things and how we learn, and if we don't take that time to understand how boys are in their, you know, in their boyness, then we're judging them, and we're grading them on this, this level of expectations of behavior that is very tilted towards the towards the female. And I mean, I see it every day coming. I just talked with the mom the. Last week, who her sons did first grade this year, and so he's seven, and he comes home and he says, Mom, all the girls in my class are perfect. I'm the bad one. Yeah. And he's seven, yeah. And it breaks hard. It just breaks my heart that they you know, we're planting the seed for their failure early,

Casey O'Roarty 10:26
right? Because the message is, you don't fit, you don't belong.

Speaker 1 10:31
You're broken. Basically, you're Yeah, you go to the principal's office. Yeah, all these messages and whether they can articulate it as well as that seven boy, seven year old boy did, or whether it just, it develops inside of them, and we know it's going to come out in sideways behavior, right? It's going to be, oh, I'll be the class clown, and then I'll, you know, then things are okay, or I'll withdraw, or I'll be angry, or, you know, all of those, all those things that we don't want for our children,

Casey O'Roarty 11:05
right? And I think that something this is something actually, that we've been talking about this month in my membership program, which is those sideways behaviors are always their attempt to come back to a place of feeling connected and feeling significant, but because they're five or seven or three or 14, they have really limited life experience to filter the messaging they're getting through, to understand, you know, to pick more cooperative ways of getting back to connected and significant. So yeah, you're speaking right to the choir here, definitely. So

Unknown Speaker 11:44
no, what

Casey O'Roarty 11:44
is the optimal learning environment for boys? Would you say?

Speaker 1 11:49
Well, first of all, really taking into account. So boys are about a year, if you think of this different developmental trajectory, boys, young boys, it's more apparent in young boys, they're about a year to a year and a half behind their chronological age in some areas of development, so in their emotional or their social skills, or, you know, just, I mean, it's not across the board, but thinking about, you know, having a six year old in school, but he's really kind of four and a half or five. Yeah. So as we also then push down academics into kindergartens, the new first grade and on we go, we're setting him up for failure. So number one is to have him be the older in his class. So entering first grade, making sure he's and, you know, we have all every state has their different arbitrary cutoff dates and but, but plan, you know, his schooling so that he can be an older child in his grade. And what I what I really love Now, are these forest kindergartens. I don't know if you have area, oh yeah, he does the preschool, he does the kindergarten, and then he has a year of forest kindergarten, of just being out and in his body and getting, you know, getting so solid in, in his, just his, his skills and that, I mean, then he set up for success.

Casey O'Roarty 13:33
And when you say, when you say skills, what are you talking about there? Well,

Speaker 1 13:38
you know, just self regulation. I don't like self control so much as self regulation and being in his body, being able to stand on one leg and and sit still and all those things come in. We're just giving him a chance to be more mature in his being able to interact with his peers in an acceptable way, and follow directions, all those things that we want to see, we need to give him more time, yeah, to develop that.

Casey O'Roarty 14:09
I was really grateful when it wasn't a hard choice for us. My son's birthday is in October, so it was, you know, he is one of the older in his grade, and that has served him at the beginning. It was interesting because he's also he seems like two year it seems as though he's two years older than all the kids that are his age. Like physically, he's just tall, and he's a younger brother keeping up with his sister so really articulate, and so early on in preschool, it seemed a little,

you know, we were unsure about what to do, because he presented as so. Mature physically and academically, but then emotionally, would have really big outbursts and fall apart, really typical developmental kinds of things. But that was always our little litmus test of, oh yeah, he's right where he Oh yeah to be we're good here, yeah.

Speaker 1 15:22
And as a family coach, I have a lot of families coming to me and saying, Well, you know, he's been reading since he's three. He's so smart. He's really ahead of, you know, head of his peers academically. And I just, oh, man, you know, I just have to say, hey, dial it back, and he'll still read and all of those things. But it's like you said, you know, his emotional and social development doesn't necessarily match his intellectual development. That's not a reason for pushing him into school, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 15:56
and I appreciate what you say about, you know, the expectations going into kindergarten of sit still, stand in a line, like there's, I think, a certain, I mean, I know some amazing kindergarten teachers who really get that they are teaching the and holding space for practicing those skills within the kindergarten classroom. And then I feel like there's some teachers that in adults, in general, parents, myself included, at times, you know, where it's like, okay, we've done this lesson, yeah, okay. Like, come on, times

Unknown Speaker 16:29
do I have to tell you hands off the other children

Casey O'Roarty 16:35
and self regulate, like, I mean, and then you think, you know, you step back and look at in the adult world, at how many people have not mastered self regulation, right, right? I have not mastered or

Speaker 1 16:49
think about how, you know, how many times did we have to tell our toddler to, you know, all and we forget. And I think you know, it's always a good reminder to to put ourselves in their shoes. And, yeah, yeah. So, so

Casey O'Roarty 17:06
keeping that in mind. And now I'm sure that there's listeners that are like, okay, great. This is great. I have no forest kindergarten, and my son has already started school, and he's not on the older end, and we're having a hard time. How do you coach or or support families who have boys that are that are coming home with feedback around, you know, not being good enough, still enough, quiet enough,

Speaker 1 17:32
yeah, or I got sent to the principal, or I got another pink slip, or, you know, for teens, I got detention and all of those things and and there are many things that you can do at home to help support him, and one of them is to really be aware of his need to move his body and that. And that is, it's absolutely critical that he has some time before school to move his body. And that may be, you know, walking to school or going out and shooting hoops or something. I live in Portland, Oregon, and it rains all the time here in the winter. So I encourage parents, you know, have a mini trampoline in your house. Have a chin up bar, have some way that he can get some physical energy out before he's expected to go into a classroom and sit still so that so that's a huge one, is that we give them that opportunity, and then it's really important To to help him age appropriately, understand what his approach to learning is. So it, you know, if he is a wiggly boy, okay, or girl, you know, okay, well, let's, you know, talk to the teacher and see if it's okay if you have a squeeze ball, or if it's okay if you stand up in the back of the room. I had a teacher tell me she was a Waldorf teacher, and she had this girl in first grade, a girl who paced. She could not sit, and she would just pace across the room, totally hearing everything that was going on, and paying attention, but she needed to move her body. And this girl is now, and so through the eighth, eighth grades that the teacher had this girl and was with her classmates, everybody knew she needs to move her body. This is how she learns and how she, you know, just gets by in the world. And that girl is now 28 and she is an aerialist for Cirque du Soleil. Oh,

Casey O'Roarty 19:39
wow. That just gave me the chills. Me

Speaker 1 19:43
too. I still, like, How many times have I told that story? I still get chills, because it's like, we can we honor where our kids are and not make I mean, what if that girl would have been told, you know, sit still or go to the principal or what's wrong? With you. Where would she be in her life now, right? And she'd probably be depressed and have an eating disorder, you know, some sort of abuse because she wasn't seen for who she really is. So that's and, and I love the Chinese proverb that is says it is easiest to ride a horse in the direction it's it is already going. And I feel like that, if we just pay attention, our boys will tell us what they need. This girl was telling us what she needed. She needed to move her body. And so we have to, we have parents have to become advocates for their boys in schools. Teachers don't always know this. I do a lot of professional development with teachers, and I always ask them, have you had any training about how different boys are in the classroom than girls? And I might have maybe two or three hands go up out of 50 teachers. And with so many, so much of our elementary, preschool age kids being taught by females, we have to, we have to get this information to them, and they're so happy to know that, oh, I can have, you know, wiggly Johnny be at a stand up desk in the back, and that helps him pay attention and stay alert and contain his his body. And I know that I have to get my kids up and moving around every 10 to 15 minutes, even if it's just for, you know, a 32nd jumping jacks break. But our brains need that, and our bodies need that.

Casey O'Roarty 21:46
Yeah, when I think about my son's, he's, you know, we had, you do traditional public school. That's what's available. That's what we can do over here. And when I think about he's had a really positive experience all the way through. And as I, as I kind of go through each of the teachers he has had, every single one of them has raised boys, there you go, yeah. And I feel like that has been such a contribution to his experience in the classroom, because they get him,

Speaker 1 22:28
that's huge. Casey, that is huge. And that is not always the case,

Casey O'Roarty 22:32
right? No, and I know that because my daughter has had different teachers and teachers that didn't raise boys, and I volunteered in the classroom and seen, you know what can happen, which is, she gets a ton of praise, right? Like, I've had teachers break down in tears telling me how glad they are that my daughter's in their class, and all I can think of is, well, yeah, she's super easy. Like, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 22:57
yeah. I mean, I'm

Casey O'Roarty 22:58
glad, I'm glad that she's not one that keeps you on your toes. However, you know she's no more deserving of you and your best way of being as the rest of the kids in the classroom, especially the boys, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:13
yeah. So, um,

Casey O'Roarty 23:16
so I'm hearing you. So, okay, so we're talking about teachers and and if I'm a listener who has a son that is, you know, struggling, you know, I always, I always encourage parents well, and I do professional development with teachers as well. And, you know, I encourage teachers to be reaching out to parents from the very beginning, just because you want to develop relationship, but the same from the parents and as a teacher I was, I loved those parents that showed up the very first day of school just to come and meet me and shake my hand and say hey and give me any information they needed to give me about their child. Absolutely. Yeah. How do you what are some things that you encourage parents to do as far as building a relationship with their son's teacher?

Speaker 1 24:05
Well, exactly what you said, you know, getting getting that connection first and foremost, is so huge. And then, you know, I kind of go to the place of, okay, how can I support him from home? How can I do less for him? How can I help him be responsible for himself? I I chuckle, because I did a training for teachers at at a school, and I drove up in the morning, and everybody was coming in and and all of the parents were walking in the parking lot, carrying backpacks and lunch boxes and instruments, and the boys are just, you know, be bopping around. And I said this to the teachers, because we we are over, we're overdoing it for our kids, and we've got to let them have more responsibility. Me and boys. Boys thrive on that at any age. They thrive on being of service. And so I said this to the teachers, and I said, so, you know, I'm doing a parent talk tomorrow night. Do you want me to to challenge the parents to not carry their kids stuff anymore? And they were like, Oh, yes please, because they know that that's going to have a ripple effect. And so I did, you know, very kindly challenge the parents to stop carrying the stuff and stop bringing homework and forgotten lunches to school. And so they, you know, we all chuckled. And then I came back about a month later, and I asked the teachers, how's it going? And they were like, Oh, it's so great. The kids are carrying their stuff. They're putting it away in their lockers and and parents aren't schlepping things anymore. So I mean, it's, it's things that we do kind of out of habit, without stopping to think about it. And I think that's a little off of what your question was. But I think it's really important to get that out there that boys, especially, man, they will defer to mom and dad. If mom's the organizer, and don't forget your lunch and make sure it's in your backpack, boys will defer. They will be like, Hey, she's got this. I don't need to deal with it, living proof of that. Are you?

Casey O'Roarty 26:25
I mean, well, it's, it's a controlling piece, right? And letting go and trusting. And, you know, at our house, something that we will often do, because things get forgotten. The my response is, well, what's going to help you remember what you need. So we have a lot of checklists. We have a lot of plastic frames with, you know, checklists that my son has made around this. You know, these are the things I need to do before I can walk out the door. That's great, yeah, because

Speaker 1 26:58
I want him the responsibility, right? It gives him the responsibility,

Casey O'Roarty 27:02
but it also gives him kind of like a stepping stone. Because, I mean, I don't know if it's just my kid or all kids, but the I forgot, I forgot, oh, I forgot. I mean, it seems like it's, it's like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 27:24
Piece of this, and this, this then enters into the classroom is, if he forgets, he has to talk to the teacher, yeah, and he has to make that negotiation and the agreements, and it can likely be uncomfortable, and so that is going to be compelling for him, then to figure out the system that's going to help him not forget in the future. Oh, totally doesn't feel good to have to go to the teacher and confess that they've forgotten yet again. So, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 27:55
yeah, yeah. So anything that I you know, any kind of any ways that we can support him in the remembering, or, you know, little little crutches for him to help. Like, okay, if folly, folly remembers, is that he has to look at his checklist, and then that triggers him like, oh, right, I need to. I haven't put my lunch in my backpack yet. You know, whatever we can do to help him now. What about Janet? What about the, you know, boys that are already so discouraged, like their experience has already been, you know, I don't fit in the classroom. Um, my teacher doesn't like me, and maybe they're in, like, middle school at this point. How do we what do we do? How do we encourage our sons at that point around,

gosh, you know, like just being advocates for themselves, taking advantage of the opportunity that they have in The classroom, despite the fact that maybe it doesn't fit them. What do we do with that? Well, so

Speaker 1 29:06
one of the things about boys, and this is, I mean, I'm glad you brought up middle school and high school, and one of the things that that boys really desire and kind of maybe have a hard time figuring out for themselves. So we need to be pretty explicit about it. Is they. They want their learning to be relevant. And when we think about how they learned before we decided on this model of, you know, come into a school building and sit down in a classroom, they were learning by doing things. If they were, you know, lived on a farm. They were learning about horses and plants and everything. It was all hands on. So boys really want their learning to be meaningful and to be able to see how they can apply it in their life. And so I think that that's a good strategy for parents. Is to be able to help him. Well, I'm running a homework challenge right now, and one of the one of the processes is, what is, what are your goals? What do you want to be able to do personally, when you like? What would you do on your best day? And what would you what do you want to do after, you know, when you're an adult, what would be your best day. And so getting kind of clear about that, and then being able to draw that back in and connect it into his learning is really important. Or, you know, why do I have to do this homework? Well, you know, this really ties into your interest in, I don't know Pokemon cards or whatever. I don't know what it is, but so so really helping to help him see a relevance in his learning. And another piece of it is, if he is discouraged with school, you really do have to think outside the box and bring in other opportunities for him again, like hands on things, do something. I truly feel like, I think that we all dream about our children going to college, and I'll tell you what, I am such a proponent of vocational education, and it's really gotten, you know, we don't have it in school anymore. When I was in school, it was like, you know, the auto mechanic shop and and boys especially, were learning these practical craftsmen skills that could, you know, he could be an electrician, he can be a plumber, he can be a carpenter. We need skilled, skilled craftsmen. And if your son is not so academically inclined, then what is he interested in? And can we guide him towards a skilled, a skilled craftsman type of thing here in Portland, you know, they're building buildings like crazy, everywhere. And I so honor those men that are out there in all kinds of weather, and they're measuring and they're digging and they're they're doing the work that supports our world, and yet in school, I don't think we value that enough. We don't point that out to our boys that this is, you know, this is, this is as, as highly esteemed as college some boys are and girls are not college material. So let's, let's not force it, but let's get them. Let's get them in a direction that is, is worthwhile that they find meaning in and part of that for Boyce, too, is really bringing in some mentors and finding the men that do what he's interested in, and he can learn at the feet of of his elders.

Casey O'Roarty 32:56
Yeah, I love that well, and I think that's so important for so many of our kids, right? Like, I want both of my kids to have, you know, a circle of adults beyond me and my husband that they can trust, because there's going to be things that come up that maybe they're not going to want to confide in me, although, oh my gosh, the controller in me is like but I want there to be someone, you know, I want them to have other people that they can go to, that they feel good about, you know, listening to advisement and wisdom from Yeah.

Speaker 1 33:31
And the thing about that Casey, I so agree with you, is that it needs to start when they're young, and we sometimes need to be very thoughtful about that, and we need to ask, especially for our boys. You know, men are not so relationally driven as women are. And so we might have to ask that neighbor who is a fly fisherman. Hey, will you, know, my son's really interested. Can you teach him how to tie flies? Or, you know, the man wouldn't necessarily think to reach out and say, Hey, would your son like to tie flies with me? Right? So we have to get pretty intentional about that. And I really encourage parents. You know, my kids are grown, my girls are in their 30s, and I love kids, and I miss having kids in my life on a really regular basis. And I know some of you can't imagine what that point does happen. So look around for people that are a little older than you are, that their kids are grown and gone, and they may have some extra time and and, you know, have them over for dinner and just make bring them into the fold of your family and and foster relationships in that way, because it you know, someday they aren't going to like you, Dear Mom and Dad. Bad and they you want some other people in their corner? Yeah, absolutely. Or they'll find it themselves. And that's the whole gang mentality, and, you know, a pure influence and and all of that. But it really does start early. You can't just say to a 15 year old, you know, oh, now you know, Jim over here is going to be your best friend, and it doesn't work that way. You have to start early.

Casey O'Roarty 35:25
Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. Thank you for that, Janet. I'm so glad that you are out in the world, doing the work that you do and advocating for our boys.

Speaker 1 35:39
Thank you. It's, it's absolutely so necessary and, and even, you know, even if you feel like your boys doing good and things are humming along, take a look at the boys sitting next to him in school. And, you know, there's a lot of kids that are lot of boys being raised by single moms and and they, they, yet they are longing to know what it is to be a man. And so I always encourage the dads you know when you walk into school, make sure you connect with those other boys that are just hungry for your for your maleness and that question of, what is it to be a man? How do you what is that? How do we act? How do we behave?

Casey O'Roarty 36:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that so I always end with the same question. Now I get to ask you, Janet, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Speaker 1 36:36
Oh, joyful courage means having being willing to step out of complacency, out of the box, and follow that inner voice that you have, saying yes, even like even if you're in doubt or in fear, say yes anyway, and then, and I strive to do this, and everything I do is just bring joy to it, and go to the grocery store and find some joy. I have a friend who buys flowers every Tuesday at during her grocery shopping, and her goal is to give those flowers away by the time she gets out of, you know, gets back to her house, so she she gave and then it's so cool, because she always writes on Facebook, and we're, you know, we're calling her the flower activist and student. What'd you do this week? And last week, there was a boy in the store that was just having such a hard time, and she engaged with him. And then, you know how it is in the grocery store going around, seeing seeing them again and again. And she finally circled back and and gave him a flower, and he was so touched by it. And, you know, that just changed their day. So I think it's stepping out of our boxes and our, you know, little narrow lanes that we set for ourselves in our busyness or just overwhelm in our own lives, but just stepping out a little bit to see, oh yeah, there's, there's this world out there. And what can I do to bring joy into the world? And, man, we need it. Yeah, yes, we

Unknown Speaker 38:19
do. Yes,

Unknown Speaker 38:21
we do just the flower. We need it.

Casey O'Roarty 38:23
Yeah, for sure. Well, where can listeners find you and follow your work. Tell us about where you're at.

Speaker 1 38:30
I am at Boys alive.com and I'm also have a great private Facebook group. So you can go to Facebook and search for boys alive and ask to join, and we'd love to have you there, and we've got lots of great conversations going on. And I tell you what, when moms are or dads post something, post a question, and they're, you know, kind of tender and vulnerable around it, and they're afraid, you know, like, what's the response going to be? And the group just steps up to embrace them. And hey, this happened to me, and here's what I did and and so it's, it's a great community of support. And we, we just have a lot of fun there. So join us in our Facebook group. Find me at Boys alive.com, I am, you know here, and just want to support you in raising your boys to be great men. Thank you so much. You're welcome, my pleasure.

Casey O'Roarty 39:40
Thank you so much for listening in to the very end, I so appreciated the conversation that I got to have with Janet, especially being the mother of a son, you know, any information that I can get to understand him better and raise him to be a fuller human. Being is good to me, right? I hope that you took away a ton of nuggets I really appreciated talking about the classroom and the different expectations that we have of boys and girls, or I guess, that we have the same expectation and that it's inappropriate because boys and girls are different. Boys and girls are different, so please, please, please, if you feel like you want to learn more from Janet, reach out to her. If you're interested in learning more from me, you can always reach out to me. My email is [email protected] I love getting your feedback, your thoughts, your questions. You can also find me at joyful courage on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, if you are not yet in our parent community, head on over to the live and love with joyful courage facebook group page a really supportive, safe, awesome, amazing. What other words can I think of incredible, epic, supportive group of parents who are really there, showing up for each other, supporting me in my work, and also celebrating all of the wins and the struggles that come with this parenting journey. Also wanting to make sure that you know that Facebook Lives are happening every Tuesday morning, 10am Pacific Time, on the joyful courage Facebook page. So set a little alert on your phone so that you can join me there every Tuesday at 10, I speak for about 15 minutes about different topics. I've been going through some of the positive discipline tool cards to highlight and dig deeper into those. And I'm up for, you know, I'm up for any kinds of suggestions that you have around what you'd like to see on those Facebook Lives. Mother's Day is coming. Mother's Day is coming. And soon, like within the next week, I am going to update my website. I have a whole line of new mantra bracelets that will be available to you through the website, and those are bracelets that are just come with little loving reminders around what you want to bring more of to your parenting practice. I'm also going to be sharing and unveiling some apparel, some joyful courage apparel, like cute stuff, right? Cute stuff for moms through the website as well. It'll all be ready before Mother's Day. So be checking in on that if you are not yet subscribed to the podcast through iTunes, Google Play. This is such an easy way to consume the podcast, the episodes come automatically to your device when you're subscribed through a podcast app. There is a in the show notes, if you scroll down, there's a link to a video where I show you how to subscribe on an iPhone. It's not that different on an Android. You simply need to get a podcast app and then search for the joyful courage parenting podcast. All right, my friends, have a beautiful, beautiful day. Get lots of loves and hugs and special time in with your little people, and know that I am out here supporting you, cheering you On, and I will see you again next week.

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