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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:05.362
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe, and it is my very great pleasure to welcome you to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. Today, we’re going to talk about empowering students to understand the difference between conversation and gossip. And I know I was well into my adult years before this was something that I truly understood. I had a mother, a beloved mom, who was an inveterate gossip. She was amazing. But if you wanted everybody in the community to know, you just told her. And so today, I have invited a very special friend and sister to have a conversation with us about these subjects and how we can guide our middle schoolers as they emerge from the cocoon of childhood and step toward adulthood. And now I would love my guest to introduce herself, Lizabeth.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:00:55.338
Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me. I have been really excited to be here and to talk about this universal, ageless issue of gossiping. It seems that it is just too delicious and too tempting to say something about somebody else. And there is a difference between observing and gossiping. And that’s the subject for today. And then also how to talk about it with our kids. So my background is 30 years in education in various ways, including 10 years in middle school. I taught 10 years in middle school and elementary school age. I have my Master’s of Education. And about, I’d say 10 years ago, two middle school guidance counselors came to me and they said, “Do you have anything to help us with gossiping?” And that is what produced this book that I just published in January. And it really has been a subject that parents ask me over and over. It keeps coming up. And so I’m just really excited to talk about this. And it’s going to be a lot of information to get into an hour.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:05.653
It is. We are drinking a little bit from a fire hose here today, but I also want you all to know that Liz is a prolific writer. I have two of her books here, as you can see, well flagged and tagged, “Middle School Years Without Tears and Empowering Kids.” I have to tell you all, this title says empowering kids, but I want you all to know it’s empowering parents to be in relationship with their kids. And that to me is an amazing experience. I have enjoyed getting to know Lizabeth through these books. And today, we’re going to get to know her in a little bit more depth. So you’ve given us the thumbnail of how you got to be the author, but give us a little bit of detail on who you are.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:02:52.652
Well, I am, I guess, an internal optimist. I always see opportunity in every situation, including gossiping, because I had a child. She’s now an adult, but I went through this. I taught middle school, very gossiping-rich environment. And this is the benefit of gossiping. Because it happens, it makes us do the self-analysis of what? Why? Because I saw kids zoom through middle school, loved every minute of it. And then I had the other ones who dreaded it. And then there was the ones in the middle that were like, oh, good days, bad days. And what made a difference. And that is what I think drove my philosophy of life, my books that I have written, and just this yearning to help parents help their kids. So most of my books are geared for parents. I do have a few that I highly recommend parents read, which is this book, and it has all of the empowering books in it. So anyway, I just wanted to read this might help as well about the definition of what an emparenting– empowerment definition is. It is the ability to know one’s innate gifts and follow the natural soul-guided path of one’s life to meet those whom we can co-create to utilize the gifts in the beautiful tapestry matrix of life for the benefit of all.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:04:26.862
So we take that definition and we say, “Okay. How does that apply to gossiping?” Well, let’s back up and start at the beginning. Who are we? Who are we? And from different perspectives, there’s different ways of saying this. We can say we’re a child of God. Okay, what does that mean? Essentially, we are all divine droplets of God on life journeys. And my little definition is we are spirits and bodies in borrowed bodysuits because we give these back – we don’t take these with us [laughter] – all trying to have these life experiences, trying to have the best experiences right now. So we are all– including the gossipers, including the [laughter] ones that don’t gossip, we are all on this Earth droplets of God having these life experiences. So when you start from that perspective, then you can then understand why anybody misbehaves or anybody does anything negative because they’re either tapped into divine source God or whatever label you would like to put on it. They’re either connected or they’re not in any varying degree in between. So when you think about your own life, when you have gossip, that is a result of not being completely connected to divine source or God.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:05:49.381
And then, when you have noticed somebody doing something odd or weird and, “Ooh, wouldn’t it have been juicy to talk and tell somebody,” you caught yourself. And you said, “No, that’s not appropriate.” At that point, you were more connected to God. And so when we have the gossiping experience, it’s all about connection or a lack of connection. And when we start from that and– when I read the questions that the parents already submitted, they wanted to say, “How do I communicate this? And what if my daughter or my child is already in a gossiping situation with her peers? What do I say?” And I really thought, “I would just say this: Is this the highest love that we can give? Is this the best that we have to offer?” And that will stop the gossiping [laughter] because it will make people think, “Is this the highest of myself that I can give out to the world?” It’s catching yourself, and then saying this because when we get into that– and it’s a training. It’s not just an instant. It’s a training that we can catch ourselves. And then, we go, “No, no, that doesn’t need to be said,” because there is a difference between observing what’s happening and gossiping.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:07:09.429
Gossiping has an energy that is less than connected to God. So what we need to do is teach ourselves and ourselves and our children [laughter] that we came in to this body with our own individual divine wisdoms. And we need to teach our kids to tap into it, to know it’s there and to tap into it. And if you want a confident middle schooler or a confident child – I don’t care what age – you say, “Are you tapping into your divine wisdom right now?” And they will start bringing it out, bringing it out. We have to, first of all, know it’s there, and then develop this relationship with it. One of the ways that’s easiest to know we’re tapping into it is through our feelings. Neale Walsh said, “Feelings are the language of the soul.” So we really want to start developing that, not only in ourselves but in our children, and saying, “Are you tapping into your divine wisdom?” And they are as unique as our thumbprints because everybody has their own life path to live on this Earth during our time here.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:22.721
In this environment, we’re so much more connected. I’m putting that word in quotes because the disconnection is ever greater because we live in a sound bite and we live in an Instagram photo and we live in a Snapchat moment. And because of that, I think we need to teach our children how to protect their hearts. You and I talked about this when we had lunch together. And I wonder if you could talk about that in a little bit more depth. You had talked about being able to elaborate with the child to define their own feelings because we find so many middle-schoolers who don’t know what those feelings are. And maybe we’re talking to the parents saying they don’t either. So how do we help a child begin to accurately label their own feelings so that they can guard against participation in something that might be negative?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:09:30.097
Well, first of all, this is something that is preferable to be done before gossiping happens. And they have the family culture of, “We live in the land of possibility. Whenever it happens, we’re going to handle it. We live in the land of solution.” So this is a really, really good conversation to be having before gossiping happens so when it happens, your child is ready. Because it will happen. Gossiping will not be wiped off the face of the Earth anytime soon. So there is surface feelings, and then there is soul-level feelings. And that is something to cultivate and something to talk about. Because certainly there are people who do bad things. And on the newsreels, they’re smiling after doing something horrendous because they’re at the very surface. They don’t even know they have a soul to connect with. And that is the difference. It’s just really this training of, “Oh, how are you feeling right now?” Where do you feel that feeling? Because we feel feelings– sometimes it’s a head thing, and your head is sort of throbbing and vibrating, migraines. It could be the voice. It could also be just an ache somewhere else. So where is that? We get a lot of feelings in our gut. We go, “Oh, I just have a gut feeling about this. Oh, my gut hurts.” So where is it located?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:10:51.711
And, again, training and getting really in tune with these feelings. When they are vibrating at a high level, a really good connection with God, you’re lightning, you’re on fire, you’re like, “Life is so much fun.” You will just know, you’re radiating, you’re having fun. Whereas the lower-level energies of feelings, they just aren’t there. It’s just like, “Oh, I feel good today. And it’s okay. And yesterday, it was just this rainy, rainy, horrible rainy day, and I wasn’t vibrating as much as I am today with sun.” So there’s this lightness, there’s this electricity inside when those feelings are really good. And in my classroom when I was teaching, and then I also had this on my refrigerator, there’s one of these things where it has all the different faces of how are you feeling. And then you’re supposed to put the magnet like, “Oh, I’m feeling this way. I’m feeling this way.” That’s a good [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:54.973
I had one of those up here. And I’m looking over here because I had a bulletin board here, but I moved it over here. I still have that leftover from my youngest son’s elementary school years. So yeah.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:12:06.178
It’s fabulous. Yeah, it’s really a fabulous way to talk about it and just have it ever present. Like, “How are you feeling?” Checking in and just getting trained for that. Because when gossiping happens, it affects the whole family. It’s not just, “Oh, somebody gossiped about my sister.” It affects the whole family. And all of a sudden you feel you’re turtling. You are going into your shell and you’re going to hide from the world while this other person is skunking. And it’s immediate, you know that person doesn’t feel good. That person feels yucky inside because that’s what’s coming out. When you squeeze an orange, Wayne Dyer said, when you squeeze an orange, what comes out? The only thing that can come out is orange juice. So when we get squeezed by life, what comes out? And so immediately, as soon as gossiping, if you’re on the receiving end of gossiping, you can be trained and go, “Oh, that person doesn’t feel good.” Now, I say all this, and I really want this to be known is that safety is number one. Because gossiping can be very threatening and dangerous, and you need to pull in your resources like the police, the nurse, the guidance counselors, the principals, the administration.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:13:24.514
But I’m talking about situations that can be malleable, can be worked with. But to then get to the point where your child is ready to go into the land of possibility and solution field and you create this long, long list of options to do about it. And I mean, do a 100 options and just throw everything at it. And even if it’s not the stuff you want your child to do, no judgment. You and your child, you’re just writing up a list, you’re putting down everything funny. And then the things you don’t– whatever comes to mind you put down. And then the parenting magic comes in when you go, “Okay, we’re all in this together. We’re all divine droplets of God. So if we do anything to somebody who already isn’t feeling good, we’re going to make them feel even worse. Do we really think it’s going to fix this gossiping situation?” When we experience road rage, if we honk or do things back, it’s not going to fix it. They’re just going to have more road rage.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:31.337
Right. And I think one of the things that we have maybe lost sight of while we were all huddled in our houses for a year of COVID is realizing that we need to be articulate in teaching our children to define their feelings. And this was one of the things that you and I talked about over lunch a couple of months ago is that so many kids today have that, “Oh, I don’t like the way I’m feeling,” but they don’t know how to even define it. So if we as parents can come alongside them and define the difference between, “I’m anxious,” and, “I’m sad because it’s raining,” and those kinds of things. I think it helps as parents to be able to understand where our children are coming from. We need to keep those dialogues open. And I know one of– your Middle School Without Tears book talks about creating that conversational environment where your child feels safe to come talk to you about that. That’s not an overnight, “Here’s my magic wand. Now you’ll come talk to me.” That’s a relationship. So can you talk a little bit about how we, particularly as moms, can foster that openness with our children to feel like we’re safe to be able to come and talk to about feelings?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:15:56.784
Yes, even if you haven’t been doing this, it’s okay. You just start now and be adamant and very upfront and honest about you will listen to anything. Anything and keep repeating that. I don’t care if you have killed somebody. I don’t care if you’re pregnant. I don’t care what, come to me and I will just listen and we’ll get through it because we live in the land of possibility. We live in the Solutionville. We will get through it together. This is our family culture and this is how we handle things. And you just create this wonderful cloud of acceptance, no matter what it is. Because to kids, their problems feel like mountains. And we don’t always realize just how much it is a mountain to them. They get in trouble at school or whatever. It’s this huge mountain. And if they know they have a safe place at home, that they go, “Okay, I messed up today. I need to talk to you about it.” Wow.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:16:56.998
And what a privilege to be a parent who a child comes to and says, “I need to talk to you.” I mean, it’s just great. I’m always amazed by some of these news reels where the parents said, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” And it’s a little hard for me because I’m like, “Come on, you need to have that open conversation.” And then sex and you know everything. There is nothing off limits and I will accept you and I will just listen and we will get through this together. The thing about earthly living that I don’t know if people actually fully realize is the duality. We have here, there, up, down, wet, dry, hot, cold. We have all these dualities. And part of that is problem solution. They exist simultaneously. And as soon as there is a problem, the solution is already there. And all you have to do is connect to it and work towards it and believe that it’s there. If you don’t believe that it’s there, then you live in the land of limitation. If you believe there’s always a solution to everything, then you live in the land of possibility. And then you will find it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:11.397
And this is one of the reasons why I fell in love with you. I love the fact that the cup is always half full. And I think that makes such a difference. I have a mom who’s asked a great question. I’m assuming it’s a mom. But we have dads who are joining us as well. It says, “What advice do you have if you might have already set a bad example with your own conversations that could tip the scales toward gossiping? How do we reiterate conversation versus gossip without seeming like a hypocrite?”

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:18:43.695
Wow, what a great question. Like hitting a nail on the head. This is all about.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:49.974
I think we’re all guilty of this at some point. We all are because we’re human, but.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:18:55.134
And I saw some of the pre-questions before we got on here. They talked about that. Well, what if they’re surrounded by people? What if my mother-in-law gossips? You use it as an example. Say, I messed up. I am now going to change. I realize that my energy, my connection to God was less at these moments, and I’m going to work on this. And you set the example of I’m going to work on this. I’m now aware that this is a pattern that I’ve been doing or someone else. You can actually turn it into a somewhat of a game if you have somebody who gossips all the time. You can sort of go, “Oh, so-and-so is at it again.” And that awareness then stimulates within us, that is not how I want to behave. They’re disconnected from God. And they’re just vibrating at a different level. And what can we do to help them? Because if they’re not– if they’re doing that, it’s coming from a place of just not feeling really good about themselves. That’s a lack of confidence. And confidence says I can observe people.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:19:59.908
And so the the difference between gossiping and just relating an observation is the energy of it. It’s the feeling of it. If you think in your mind, okay, I’m going to say, “Oh, so-and-so’s parents are getting divorced,” that could feel it inside. We talked about our bodies being a temple of God. Well, in there is all this vibration. And we’re made of atoms and who created the atoms but God. So this is like our sensor. You can feel it if that is– if your intention is to let somebody else know, because maybe that child needs help now that, okay it doesn’t have to be negative. Or it could be, “Oh, did so-and-so’s parents are getting divorced?” So there is totally different energies with that. And again, we come in tune to that and we train ourselves to be in touch with this.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:59.919
Right. It’s funny, I find that things come when I prepare for a guest, I’m always looking for information. And I posted on Facebook this weekend. When you and I did something dumb when we were in high school, it might be a cringeworthy moment, but it lasted for a moment or maybe a day or two. And then people moved on to something else. But now people pull out their phones and it becomes an Instagram reel and it becomes a meme. And it’s so hard to get away from it. And I don’t want us to take cotton batting and wrap our kids up and say, “I don’t want you out in the world,” because that’s not even realistic. But I think we need to create through conversation that resiliency that is sometimes hard to generate when you haven’t had the opportunity to have that conversation. So if a child came home and said, “So-and-so’s parents are getting divorced,” you would say– and I think I know you well enough now that you would probably give opportunities for that child to be of support to that other student.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:22:07.938
I would say something like, “Is the child okay? How can we be of support? How do you feel about this?” It was funny because my daughter, whenever things would happen when she was in middle school and high school and basically all all the years, I would say you always have options with this. You always have options with this. Let’s go and talk about this and what are your options and go through the list-making process that I talk about. But it got really funny because then she would turn around to me when she saw me thinking limitedly, she would be like, You know, mom, you always have options.” And I just was like, “Yes, she realized it.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:56.761
Yes, and hard at the same time. Because it’s like, “Darn it, I taught you too well.”

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:23:03.769
I loved it because, yeah, she had internalized it. And that took some years to say she saw me in the land of limitations. She wanted me to get kicked out of there and go back to where I’m always talking about is options, options, options. We don’t realize just how many options we have. And that’s part of my choose groove move decision method for kids is the choosing. It’s just realizing how many options we have. if you’re standing in a group with people gossiping, you have two legs. that is an option. You can also say a lot of the parents here – [before the four questions?] – one to say, what can I do and tell my daughter what to do? And it is, is this the highest that we have? And there’s many ways of saying that without going into judgment of that, just say–

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:56.982
Right. And there’s the subtle differences. You don’t want to set your kid up as the judgy kid.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:24:03.220
Right, yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:04.178
You want to set them up as teaching other people to think in possibilities.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:24:09.616
Because diversion is good. You can switch to another subject. But if those people are still gossiping and gossipers, they’re going to go right back to that same. But you’re trying to elevate the energy. You’re trying to change the vibration of this dynamic of the group of friends. And leaving the group is not always advantageous. So it’s– this doesn’t feel good to me anymore. Let’s talk about another subject. That’s one way to say it without judging that–

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:42.246
Without putting the person who started the conversation on the spot.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:24:45.319
I’d rather talk about something else that’s more loving. Let’s talk about going for a walk or– I’m always talking about how nature is our underutilized tool. So I’m like, let’s go for a walk. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:59.512
Well, we had some amazing questions. And you’ve done something that my guests don’t usually do. You’ve really analyzed these questions and gone through in some depth. So I wanted you to have the opportunity to talk about some of the questions parents have asked that they can maybe hear themselves in your words.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:25:21.277
Well, this one was intriguing to me. How to remove ourselves from a conversation that has turned to gossip in a classy and assertive manner?

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:30.433
I loved that question. That was awesome.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:25:34.300
Classy does say, I’m going to rise above this. I don’t want to be stuck in this. That’s what Classy says. And Assertive says, I’m going to stand up for myself. And I loved it that it wasn’t aggressive because a gossiper is not somebody who’s feeling at the moment very good about themselves. So we don’t want to make them feel any worse because they’re just going to keep on doing the negative behaviors. We want to elevate everybody. We want light, love and peace, joy. We want the higher level energy, feelings, thoughts and beliefs to be coming out. So with that is, again, a training, but it’s just having something when it’s not happening come up as a family unit, say, these are going to be our five statements that we’re going to always use. And it could be something like, in my family, we just love positivity. And this is not feeling quite positive. And so let’s just talk about something else. And maybe we can come up with something to help that person. If that person’s overweight that we were just talking about, maybe we can help that person in a certain way. Let’s come up with some ideas about how to do that.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:26:50.759
So just coming up with some key phrases ahead of time that are ready to go, because it is hard to think about something to say in the moment. And especially if there’s like 10 people, it’s hard to speak up. But if you practice it ahead of time, even doing it into the mirror. I’ve had many conversations with my bathroom mirrors. They’ve heard me say so many things. That’s one way of handling that. Also, post-it notes on the mirror. Love post-it notes on the mirror. You can stick them in your kids shoes before they go to school. You can stick them in their agendas. You can stick them in their lunch about these key phrases. And and just like a note, we live in the land of possibilities. We are a family that’s empowered. We lift up others every day, all the time. And getting the message through, it’s sort of like in my program that I do with parents, one of the sessions is all about your landscape. Let’s take a look at your whole entire life and where is negativity and how can we infuse positivity into that. And one of the main things is Post-It notes. Put them everywhere, on the fridge. And what I love to do with my daughter is I would take her agenda and flip a couple weeks and put, “I love you.” Just on a random day that she would find later and things like that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:20.728
I used to do that with Post-It notes with my kids all the time. In fact, I had so many Post-It notes believe it or not, after 21 years of homeschooling, I’m down to my last little tiny stack of Post-It notes. But I would write little things on Post-It notes and I would stick them in random places in their books. And it became a bit of a game. Because I remember vividly one of my sons being totally cheesed off because every kid in the family had found a Post-It note that day but him. I was like, “Well, this backfired.” So I told him he just needed to look further. And I hurried and went and put– I put up the toilet seat, I put a Post-It note on it, I put the toilet seat back down, and eventually I heard him say from the bathroom, “Oh!” But you’ve got to think about those things proactively. Because if you don’t, the reactive is so much harder. And you said something, I want to revisit this. We talked about this a little bit at the lunch that we had. And you said it again today. But I really want moms to hear this. You have to rehearse these conversations. You can’t just say, “Hey, here are the five things I’d like you to say when you experience this.” Particularly if it’s a child who’s an introvert. Practice those conversations.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:29:51.188
For sure.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:51.909
And we talked about creating that environment where they– as a parent, where they felt safe to be able to do that.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:30:00.049
Right. And I don’t know necessarily that we had the skills growing up that this is sort of new, this– because social media is instant, and we need to have our kids instantly ready. I mean, it’s just like– and people can hide behind their computers, and hide behind their phones, and say the nastiest things. We need to have our kids instantly ready. And so this is sort of like a new thing where we have to have these things prepared ahead of time. And things happen fast now, and the world’s spinning faster. And it’s a good thing. And my definition of empowerment, I talk about the matrix of life. It’s fascinating. Now by our computers we’re having this conversation with people from everywhere. But people can network from Australia, to Africa, to Alaska. And co-create together. And so it has its good points, but it also has the instant spreading of gossip. And if we have that automatic response of, “This isn’t about me.” I have a lot of writing in this book about, “This is not about the child, this is not about them.” And if a child is ready to go, “It’s not about me.” If someone says, “Oh, you’re fat.” Then, I’m okay. I can take a look and say, “Okay, am I?” Okay. You can maybe take that and say, “Okay, maybe I should– whatever.”

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:31:26.255
But it’s not about me. It’s really about how that person is feeling. And so you turn in. You look at the action, but you look behind the action. And it’s really that bad. It’s really not about me. Now, on the other hand is some kids just seem to be a magnet for gossiping. Or a magnet for bullying, or a magnet for negativity. And they just got this vibration going on that they’re just a magnet for it. And so we need to work with that kid and to say, “Look, you’re a magnet for all these things. We can change your energy to be a magnet for the good stuff of life.” number one on that list is gratitude. What do I like about myself? Let’s start with my nose. Let’s start with my cute ears. Let’s just start with something, and you can change the energy. Because if there is a bully and a gossiper, which is basically the same thing, they’re looking for a victim. They’re looking for somebody they can overpower. And so you can be a match to that. And so that’s another whole aspect of it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:31.367
I have another great question here for you. It says, “I have very concrete thinkers for children. How do I teach them these skills and still have them use discernment for different scenarios, for instance different cultural backgrounds or inflections, etc.?” That’s a great question.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:32:50.800
It is a great question. I would use a flow chart. I would use a Venn diagram or something to get it down on paper. Or say, “Step one, this is what happens. Step two, this is what I’m going to do. Step three,” because that is very interesting. We all learn different ways. There’s all kinds of different learning styles. We all absorb the earth and everything that happens here in different ways, so I love that. I love that. If it’s predominantly males, you can give them balls, like tennis balls, to bounce. And then you just talk about as you’re bouncing a ball. That can also be a one way to get the information in, because they need to be doing. Girls love to sit and talk, so they’ll be fine. They love colors. But guys sort of need to be playing, basketball. Maybe you can play basketball or just shoot the hoops and then give a good conversation while you’re doing that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:49.779
Great. Now, you had some more questions in that list that you thought were really terrific, so I want to make sure that we get through that list today.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:33:58.980
Okay. This one says, “I’m very interested how to encourage intelligent conversations with teenagers.” And I love that word intelligent, because it does denote that I want my child to be not down here just talking about clothes all the time. I want the stimulation of careers and what else could I be doing with my life, and how can we expand into the next version of ourselves? So I love that intellect part of it. And it’s just all about the energy. What next level of energy can we rise to? What’s the next best feeling vibration can we get to? And then the information that we’re talking about is going to connect to that. It’s just like when we were kids, things that we used to talk about, we sort of outgrew. And so we’re just going to the next and next level. So intelligent talking is different for everybody. It’s just the next level of, “Oh, what can I think about today? What can I create today?”

Gretchen Roe: 00:35:06.192
So Liz, I want to flip the script and ask a question. I’m the parent of a child. I’m going to put forth a scenario, because this came up in conversation this past weekend. And I’m the parent of a child who’s been the victim of gossip. How do I handle myself to support that child and not make it worse?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:35:29.714
Yes. Okay. And like I said, when gossiping happens, it affects the whole family. It could be aunts, uncles, and grandparents too, and so we really need to have this established beforehand. But parents they must be able to step back and look at it and not add to the drama. They need safety, they need stability. They don’t need someone going, “I can’t believe that happened.” And, “That person–” They don’t need more energy like that added to their already stress level. So they need somebody there to say stepping back. And that’s when the parent needs to understand what is really going on because whoever hurt my child is not feeling good. And in order to solve it, you’ve got to help that child. Again, safety first. You may do it through the counselor. You may do it through the nurse, or you may do it directly. It depends. There’s all different kinds of ways to help someone who’s feeling less than great.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:31.972
I also think in this conversation this past weekend, what I said to the mom is, don’t match your child’s energy of upset. Bring a more calm environment. If you match that upset, then you’ve just ratcheted up the upset a little bit. And this mom said, “But I’m not matching the energy.” And I thought,”Is she?”. And I don’t want to get into, “Oh, yes, you are.” But sometimes it’s great as parents. We love our children and we want to defend our children. But sometimes we need to take a step back and go, what lessons could be learned here?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:37:16.497
That’s why I had a whole chapter on what are the benefits of being on the receiving end of gossiping? Because we do get motivation, perseverance. We do get some things from this situation, and especially if we can rise above it. And when we heal a situation like this, we heal it for the world. It’s adding onto world peace. So backing up to when we are emotionally charged, there are a few things that just came to mind. One is get yourself something to destroy, like a cardboard box. Take a whole newspaper and roll it up. It’s a newspaper bat and take it outside and beat it against the side of your house. Something that can’t get damaged, and just yell, scream, whatever. And I encourage this for the child very much. And then you pick up all the little shredded pieces and then you can either burn those and say, “All right, and I now release this energy”, or you can just throw it out in the trash and say, “Now the angels are going to take it away, and it is permanently and completely released from me.” You got to get that venting out. Another thing is boxing, a boxing bag, and an anger pillow, an anger pillow.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:38:26.807
So you go somewhere and you get the cheapest pillow possible and you write anger pillow. And it’s available for anybody at any time. I had one in my classroom. And 99% of the time, when I say go use the anger pillow, they knew they could go outside. And I had this cleared with administration. They could go outside and bang that pillow and just, scream and yell. They knew it was allowed. 99% of the time, they were smiling by the time they got to my door to go do that. I only had one child actually shred it. It came back. But he was smiling, so I didn’t care.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:07.014
Well, I will confess that in my kids younger years, I might have had a wiffle ball bat that stayed under my bed that was only for the pillows on my bed when I needed to work. We have a punching bag on my deck, but that’s because I took up taekwondo eight years ago. So that’s an entirely different reason. But I do think we can’t just say, “Well, you can’t feel like that.”

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:39:31.767
Absolutely not.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:32.886
Because now you’re teaching your kids that their feelings aren’t valid. And we don’t want to do that. So we need to be able to teach our kids to talk their way through those feelings.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:39:43.894
And anger is not bad. It’s just one emotion. It’s what you do with it. I mean, certainly the anger that Martin Luther King or Abraham Lincoln or, Gandhi, the anger they felt they used towards something good.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:59.090
For change, absolutely.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:40:00.692
We were gifted with all emotions all of them. And none of them are bad. It’s just, what do we do with them? And how do we utilize them and delve through them, dive through them, get to the other end of it. And going up, emotions are like a ladder. There’s the lower level and then there’s the higher level. And how do we get people through those two? And once you get to hope, you’re like, you can make it. But there’s a lot of people that are very depressed. The feelings have been depressed. And opening that box, whoo. We like people when they’re depressed because they’re a lot nicer. When they go like this, it’s like this release of somewhat of empowerment that we need people to keep going through anger and revenge into frustration. And then they get to hope. And then we don’t want them to stay in anger.

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:55.433
Well, Liz, we had another question that I just loved. And it said, “As far as I know, I don’t think my daughter talks a lot about other people, but I think she listens too readily.” And I thought, wow, first of all, that’s an insight that I might not have made as a parent. So how do we teach our kids that they don’t have to listen and receive all the things that float around them and that they hear?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:41:23.510
Yeah, I would love to have a conversation with that child and say, “Now, how do you feel when you’re with these people?” because I just think it sounds like there needs to be a shift into some different friends because if you’re hanging around gossiping people, it just feels heavy and yucky and just bleurgh. So I would be like, “Yeah, how comfortable are you with this when you can be with kids that are just fun?” And they’re not really noticing what other people are doing. They’re so into what they’re doing and having fun that they don’t even notice what other people are doing. If you’re on your life path and you’re doing it, you’re not even noticing what other people are doing. You’re just doing your thing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:06.229
Sure. Absolutely.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:42:07.669
I would really have a conversation.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:09.571
And I think it’s worthwhile to create that environment that you talked about. We need to start from a young age, but if you’re like the mom who asked us the question, you can say, “Hey, you know what? I have not modeled this for you effectively here to four. And I’m going to strive to be a better model for you. And I would like us to go forward differently.” I think that’s a very powerful conversation for a parent to have with a child.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:42:36.424
And to be okay with what you have been doing up till now. Really, when we have kids, we’re in a parallel life situation. As they’re aging, you’re aging. You’re going through your phases. They’re going through their phases. And you’re paralleled to each other. And so it’s okay to say, “Hey, I’m learning too. I’m learning as you are learning. And we’re just going along these train tracks together.” And it’s okay. We’re not going to be perfect parents. We are going to mess up. It’s just part of the journey. And the learning that comes from not being the perfect parent is just wonderful. You can say, “I messed up. This is what I’m learning about myself. Oh my gosh, I just turned 39 and I’m almost 40. And I feel like I’ve just gone to this next phase of my life. And let me share it with you. Let me share it with you.” And same thing with your kids. It’s a parallel experience.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:43:31.156
So it’s okay if all of a sudden you feel like, “Oh, I better get some more communication going here,” and say, “Oh, we’re going to do it.” And it doesn’t have to always be verbal. There’s there’s hand signals. There’s peace. There’s always, “A minute. I need a break. Stop.” There’s also a communication journal, which I used to love to do with my kids or my students because it was quiet. And so you just have a journal and you can write in there anytime. But another other aspect of that is doing it together where everything you can’t say anything. You can’t even giggle. If you want to laugh, you write ha ha and you just take turns with the pen and going back-and-forth. This is called the silent game. And so–

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:18.326
Is this one book and you and I are both writing in it or does everybody have their own book?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:44:22.525
It’d be one for the family,

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:24.247
One for the family. Okay. Okay.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:44:26.145
And then but everything– so it slows things down, but it also takes the intensity away from verbalizing like, “Oh, I stole something today.” You say if I can just write it down or you doodle it. And so that’s another communication. I mean, not everything has to be verbal.

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:47.590
That’s a great idea. I might be married to someone who would think that that was much easier than saying it out into the universe. [laughter] We tease each other because I’m like, well, you picked me and I talk a lot, so.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:45:04.213
And this kept coming up, relating it back to God. And I think that God is in gossip. It’s all there because if we are connected and understand who we are, who we really are on this journey. And then that connection is what keeps us, first of all, from being on the receiving end of gossiping. If we know we are love, we are pure love inside of us. There’s just like no room for really things to happen to us. So if they do, then we go, okay, I need to check in with my love quotient. Where am I? Where’s my battery of love? Is it low again? Let’s get it back up high. So it’s all about this connection with God. And then but that explains every action anybody else does is either they’re highly connected or they’re sort of connected or they’re not connected. And so we can do what we can safely first to build people up to say, “Hey, do you know who you are? You’re like this amazing droplet of God. Do you know that? Do you know your divine source? You’re here in the body. You’re going to get rid of your body, but you came into your body and you’re just supposed to have the best time ever on Earth. Earth was supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be fun here. And it doesn’t look like you’re having too much fun. Now, can I help you with that?”

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:33.982
What an empowering question to ask. Does it look like you’re having too much fun? Can I help you with that? Wow, that’s pretty amazing. I was having a conversation with my youngest yesterday and something was said at work. He’s a young adult. And I had asked him how he felt about that because in my heart had that thing been said about me, I might have taken that kind of hard. And he stood there for a second and then he laughed and he said, “I didn’t think much about it.” And I said, “Really?” And he said, “No, it says a lot more about him than it does about me.” And I thought if I could have only had that attitude at 18, because I did not have that attitude at 18.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:47:22.097
Right. And speaking of the younger kids that are coming in and the babies that are coming in, they’re coming in a little bit different, wired. They’re different. And this is just, I think, the perfect divinity plan that as we age, we see that the younger kids are different. They’re coming in like sort of ready, a little bit more prepared for life here. And so that’s just fun. And again, it’s our job just to say, “Hey, do you remember who you are? You know, you came in here and you probably forgot. So we’re just going to– my job is to remind you, you’re just this wonderful being from God and you’re here to have fun. And thank you for being my child. I’ve said this so many times to my daughter. Just, “Thank you for being my kid.” And this is so much fun. I just really enjoying this. And again, that gratitude thing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:16.389
Again, so yeah, absolutely. Makes a difference. So what else do you have for us?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:48:22.272
Okay. Well, there are a lot of questions just about middle school in general. And so I’m going to do a little plug here. There are questions about how to manage and what’s so exciting about middle school. But this is my first book on Middle School Years Without Tears. This is getting ready at any time. I don’t care if middle school is over. You can still get ready for it. And I talk about getting ready for middle school. And then this one is creating and managing. This is Middle School Years Without Tears, but this is creating and managing. This is all about being in middle school. And here I think I have two things that just every parent needs to read is one, what is a typical teacher’s day like? So we have sympathy and understanding because I was a middle school teacher. I was also a middle school parent. So I played both sides. And then what is a typical student stay? So you have this understanding about it. And what I can’t put in a book is the noise, the smell, but I do try to describe it as much as I can. So I do recommend, yeah, body odor is a whole big subject, but I do try to get you into a middle school as much as possible. And if you’re really, really curious, go in and volunteer. There were several of those.

Gretchen Roe: 00:49:41.410
If you’re a parent sitting at home, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have those kind of issues with your children. And I think one of the things that you said when we were planning for this is you don’t wait until they hit sixth grade to begin laying the foundation for the communication, for the feedback, for the sign language of, hey, peace out. It’s cool. And those kinds of things. You start that early enough so that when they step into all the anxieties of middle school, they already have a toolbox. I think isn’t that– do I remember you were saying a toolkit that they need to have or a collection of things that they can use to deploy at the right time?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:50:28.890
Right. And as a parent, it’s okay. Whenever you’re getting started on this, it’s fine. I don’t want anyone feeling guilty like, “Oh, I should have been doing this all along,” but it’s preferable, but it’s okay. You just start where you are. And just take a look at what is inside your parent toolbox. What skills do you have? What do you want to add? Where do you want to improve things? And that’s where my program comes in. I work with parents who say, “I want more stuff in my toolbox.” And so I do work with parents to get that filled up more and more positive and just to have really good experiences. Most of us started to become parents because we wanted to. We wanted to have that experience. We wanted to be fun. It was going to be really fun and enjoyable. And when we get to certain ages, it seems like. So I am a big promoter in middle school because I was in there for 10 years and I saw parents sort of step back and I’m like, no, you don’t need a step back yet. You do it differently. You don’t do it like you did in elementary school. But anyway, it’s supposed to be fun.

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:37.178
A little bit more about that. You parent differently in middle school than you did in elementary school, but you don’t stop parenting. So give parents some ideas of what that means.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:51:48.516
Okay. So where you might have had parent conferences with your child present in elementary school, you might want to do that just on the side. You might want to do emails on the side. You can have free free to tell your child, “I’m going to be emailing your teacher every quarter. I’m going to email your teacher.” You’re upfront with that. And so you’re keeping in communication. You’re still in touch. You’re still involved. You can volunteer. Oh, this is the really good stuff. There’s always fun events in middle school. They purposely do all these fun events like buy the ice cream maker or buy the popcorn maker or rent the dunking booth for the end of the year. There’s many ways to be involved. You can help with whatever fun events are happening. So those are some ways. But as far as helicoptering, being involved overly, we loved having volunteer parents, but they were the parents who the kids really didn’t care if their parents were there or not. You have to sort of monitor the embarrassment code. Some kids loved getting balloons and flowers during the year, and some kids were utterly embarrassed that their parents did this. You can go in and have lunch with approval with your kid because that could be highly embarrassing or not. It’s just not as overt. It’s sort of covert. But you need to be honest in saying, “You’re in middle school now, but I’m going to still be checking in, and this is when.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:37.360
And I think this is something that parents who are sitting around the table with their children and homeschooling their children– they can still take those same kind of thought processes into a co-op and into a high school co-op. I know my kids began their co-op experiences in seventh or eighth grade, and the older they got, the easier it was to participate in the co-op because they had a greater tool belt. They had more skills. Sometimes the hardest part is being able to let them trip, let them make a mistake and then say, “So how did you feel about that? Tell me what you were thinking about that. If you had it to do over again, what would you do with that?” I remember asking one of my kids that very question, and she said, “I wouldn’t do a thing differently. I did the right thing,” and I thought, “Oh boy. Okay.” Totally missed that message, but. Sometimes we have to be– as parents, we need to hold things loosely so we can encourage our kids as we go along. So tell us what your website is so parents can go and find you. Of course, this will be posted in the show notes, but those of you who are listening to this as the podcast may be saying, “Gee, I want more information from this lady.” Where do they go to get that?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:55:13.763
Okay. It’s Middle School Years Without Tears, so www.middleschoolyearswithouttears. And there might be a few tears, but we’re trying to limit the tears.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:24.384
That’s dot com, right?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:55:26.047
Dot com, yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:26.169
Okay. All right. That’s terrific. And tell me a little bit more about how you offer the opportunity for parents to have some individual coaching.

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:55:35.342
Well, I do talk to parents on an hourly basis. I talk to everybody. First half hour is free. But I do have a 3-month, 12-week program. And I just find it so much better if we can just sort of go step by step and really get into the nitty-gritty of what’s happening in their lives, because things come up that it would just be great to have someone to talk to because we talk once a week and then there’s email conversation that we can have. And it’s just nice for follow-up. It’s nice because some things happen in the course of three months. And it really sets up parents for success for the rest of their parenting career, their parent legacy. I talk a lot about that. What do you want out of your parent legacy? And do you want the top-down traditional parenting style? Or do you want a co-creative parenting style, which obviously I promote? And it just sets it up for the rest of their parenting legacy, which includes the next generation because it might be how the next generation will parent might be similar to what they do.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:48.806
Well, and you know what? If you are the top-down parenting style, I’m here to tell you that you can change that too, because I might have started that way an only child and the daughter of good German stock. So you will do it because I said so, yeah. But my parenting style has changed as I’ve aged. And I think parents will often find– I know that you were probably more relaxed with your teenager than you were with your middle schooler, but you’d had more practice too. And that makes a difference, doesn’t it?

Lizabeth Jenkins-Dale: 00:57:23.035
It really does. And it was a joyful experience versus you’re under my roof till 18 and you’ll do it as I say. And then we expect them to be adults. And they go, “Oh, how do I make decisions?”

Gretchen Roe: 00:57:33.896
Right. Absolutely. I think it makes a tremendous amount of difference. I hope you found virtue in our conversation today. Lizabeth is absolutely an amazing resource. I will tell you, I have devoured her books. I have enjoyed them thoroughly. I think you will too. You’ll find references to the books in the show notes today. And let me encourage you all that I want to say thank you for trusting us to step into your living rooms today and have a conversation with you about a topic that can be really tough. You can access the show notes and find a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. And be sure to rate or review or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. Lizabeth, thank you so much for joining me today. It was an amazing experience. And I am looking forward to parents finding your books and their way to your website, which once more is middleschoolyearswithouttears.com. So thank you so much. Have a wonderful afternoon, everyone. Take care. Bye-bye.

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