[00:00:00] Gretchen Roe: I started with going and looking and recalling all of the episodes. Then I literally took a notebook and went and sat down and thought what things really stood out to me. I came up with 15, and then I narrowed it to 9. Here we are.

[music]

Hi, everybody. Good afternoon. Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. I’m so excited to have my wonderful friend and colleague, Amber Didden, join me for this last episode of 2025. This has been a wild year, and we have covered so much ground. We have some things we just want to share with you. By way of beginning, I’m going to let Amber introduce herself, and then we’ll get busy.

[00:00:54] Amber Didden: Hi, Gretchen. Happy holidays.

[00:00:56] Gretchen: Yes, indeed. I can’t believe it’s December. I’m deeply in denial.

[laughter]

[00:01:02] Amber: Agreed. I am wanting to be by my tree 24-7 and just absorbing all the holiday glory, but it’s good to be here with you today.

[00:01:12] Gretchen: I listened last night to a friend who said her birthday is in December. She said, “People always say to me, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry your birthday’s in December.'” She said, “No, I have a whole month of holiday celebrating that revolves around my birthday. People are happy, they sing, things are beautifully decorated. How could I not fail to enjoy that?” I love her attitude. I think it’s awesome.

[00:01:37] Amber: Well, if you ask my soon-to-be 13-year-old son, whose birthday is on Christmas Eve, he has a different perspective on it right now, but hopefully, one day, he’ll grow to appreciate sharing the season. Anyway, yes, thanks for having me. I’m the digital marketing manager at Demme Learning. I help coordinate all of our online content. Our blogs, our newsletters, our social media. If you’re not following us, please do. We’d love to have you join us over there on Facebook and Instagram. Yes, it’s been a great year. I’ve loved watching all your episodes and hearing from your guests. You’ve done a great job at coordinating everybody. Yes, I’m really happy– [crosstalk]

[00:02:19] Gretchen: It has really been a lot of fun. Being the extrovert’s extrovert, it’s a perfect fit for me because I love learning about people and talking to people, and it just really has been quite an adventure. Getting to put together this episode was particularly fun because I had the opportunity to revisit so many high points of the year.

[00:02:43] Amber: How did you pick? It must’ve been hard to narrow it down.

[00:02:46] Gretchen: Yes, it was hard. It really was hard. I started with going and looking and recalling all of the episodes, and then I literally took a notebook and went and sat down and thought what things really stood out to me. I came up with 15, and then I narrowed it to 9. Here we are.

[00:03:11] Amber: A Herculean task, for sure, to pick the top, the cream of the crop.

[00:03:16] Gretchen: It was. It was indeed. These are not in order of what has affected me the most. At the very end, I’ll tell you the statement that affected me the most. I decided that the logical thing was to put them in order from the way our year progressed. The first one that really stood out to me was Vanessa Vakharia. She calls herself the “Lady Gaga of Math.” She’s very, very well known in Canada. Not as well known here in the United States, but she has a YouTube channel that she does, something akin to Jay Leno’s walking around and talking to people. What she does is she asks them about what their anxieties are surrounding math. Then she proceeds to take those apart.

I found her actually through a newsletter that had been forwarded to me by someone here on staff. Then I had to go find her. I literally stalked her until I got a hold of her. It took us six months to get together for the conversation. Boy, was it worth it.

[00:04:35] Amber: It was worth it because some of what she said was so insightful, and honestly, spoke to me very directly because as someone who has grown up and lives with math anxiety to this day, she really challenged me on the way that I think about math as an adult and gave me some great pointers on how to help my kids. That was a really insightful episode.

[00:04:58] Gretchen: She actually wrote a book. I have it here. It’s called Math Therapy. It’s probably one of the best books I read this year. Boy, have I read a lot of books, but what I loved about her book was she takes and peels apart every fallacy you would have about mathematics, and then offers you ways to create a breakthrough with those feelings. Man, it was terrific. It was really, really well done.

[00:05:29] Amber: One thing she said that obviously applies to math, but I think can apply to so many things in life, is using evidence to break down the myth behind the anxiety. “Tell me about what you’re feeling right now. Okay, where did you get that idea? Where did that come from?” Then using evidence to back up that maybe that idea isn’t actually the truth. Maybe there’s another truth out there. That was really impactful to me.

[00:06:01] Gretchen: It was surprising to me because she does it with humor and she does it with grace. I was so shocked when I talked to her before we even did our webinar together because there were so many things that flew out of my mouth. After I said them, she was like, “Really? Is that really that way?” As someone who chose her college degree based on what I perceived to be the least amount of math necessary to get a degree, it was very insightful. I still think about the lessons that she taught me to this day. It was really something. We did that in February.

Then you came up with this terrific idea of doing what we called Career Connections this year. Man, those were some of the most amazing conversations that I had this year with so many different people in different fields. It was such a success. We’re going to carry that into 2026. I’m excited about that. One of my first conversations was with a young man I’ve known since he was five years old. He majored in physics and is now an engineer. I just loved the way that Jack talked about learning, and the way he talked about particularly when you have ADHD, you can either work against it or with it, but being able to work with it makes you so much more productive.

I learned so many things from him. I just was so amazed. I also felt like a little bit of a proud mama moment because he just did such a terrific job at that.

[00:07:50] Amber: I can see that. I’ll tell you what, Gretchen, the reason the Career Connections idea came to be is because, like I said, I have a almost 13-year-old, and I have a 14-year-old. I don’t think it’s ever too early to start helping your kids discover the things they enjoy so that hopefully they’ll find their way to a career path that is prosperous for them in adulthood. Obviously, that’s something every parent thinks about. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for my kids, but especially as they get into the middle school and high school ages, you start to feel the pressure cooker a little bit, like, “Okay, which way are we going? Which direction are we headed?”

My oldest, Wyatt, has expressed interest in engineering. Anytime I hear that, it piques my interest a little bit. The one thing that Jack said in this interview was about figuring out when it’s okay to give your kids the freedom to manage their own schedules. Gosh, that’s a tricky one. I just want to ask you, do you have any advice for me or for parents who are on the precipice of, “Hey, my kid is getting a little bit older, starting to have some independence, and able to manage some responsibility?” How do you know when to say, “Yes, you can go ahead and start figuring that out and build that skill set so that when you get to college or get to the next steps, you’re prepared.”?

[00:09:26] Gretchen: That’s a very insightful question. I’ve got to play that game six times now. My youngest is 20. He’ll be 21 in six months. It was weird not to have a teenager in the house when he turned 20 this summer. One of the things I think is really important is to give them the opportunity to try and recognize that failure is not the end that it’s perceived to be. We have built a culture around the idea that we can’t let our kids fail. I think we need to change that because Jack talks a little bit about the things he did that didn’t work and how he had to change his thought processes.

I did other Career Connections interviews where young adults said similar things, that in high school, everything is sort of guided for you. The teacher plans the schedule. The teacher plans when the testing rubrics are. They give you everything. You get to college, and if you haven’t learned to manage your time, that’s a very scary experience. Giving our kids the autonomy to be able to go out and do things on their own, to be able to find an internship, to be able to plan a project and complete it. I don’t mean just a school project.

One of my kids here a couple of years ago planned a garden project. I don’t garden. I’m a terrible gardener. He planned the project, and he executed the project. We had a great garden this summer because he planted it. I didn’t. I think it’s important as parents for us to figure out the opportunities where they can be responsible from A to Z for something.

[00:11:35] Amber: Yes. I like what you’re saying about failure, too. My kids are in public school, and they have deadlines that come up. I have recently taken my hand out of it and said, “Hey, you know when the deadlines are. Your teacher might email me, they might not, to let me know that a deadline’s approaching. If you miss the deadline, there’s going to be some consequences for that, and we can talk about them.” I think we’ll talk about this a little bit more when we talk about one of the other sessions, but knowing when to take your hand out of it is certainly the scariest part. When to let go and let your kids start to learn how to manage their own schedules. That’s tricky.

[00:12:17] Gretchen: It is tricky. Whatever you do for Wyatt is going to be different for your younger son. Just because kids are different, they’re all so different. Giving them that autonomy, once you see that autonomy click, then you can provide them more autonomy. The really good news is neurologically, it helps them develop their prefrontal cortex. That’s huge.

[00:12:45] Amber: That’s really interesting. I didn’t know that.

[00:12:47] Gretchen: Yes. There’s actually evidentiary research that says that kids who learn the skill of autonomy, who learn to take risk, who learn to try and fail and try again, their prefrontal cortex develops more efficiently at a younger age than kids who are taken care of all the way through their teenage years.

[00:13:15] Amber: Oh, cool. That’s really good to know.

[00:13:17] Gretchen: Yes. Kind of exciting.

[00:13:18] Amber: Yes.

[00:13:20] Gretchen: Which leads me to the next thing, talking about autonomy. Man, Lenore Skenazy rocked my world. I don’t have her book laying on my desk. It’s actually out in the kitchen because I’m rereading it for the second time. It’s called Free-Range Kids. She was just phenomenal. Back 20-some years ago, she was called the worst mother in America because she let her nine-year-old get from Macy’s in downtown New York City home on the subway. He was so excited that he had done it, but people really vilified her for giving him that autonomy.

What she has been able to do from that one article that she wrote is she’s been able to create a movement that’s called Free-Range Kids. She and the author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt, whom I hope will be a guest in 2026, talk about why it is so important for our kids to be allowed to do things on their own. It just is really breathtaking to recognize how much independence we have taken away from kids because we have the concern that something might happen to them. She really, just like Vanessa, she disabuses you of those notions because she’s got the receipts as far as how safe our kids really are in this day and age.

[00:15:02] Amber: She made this point. She said, “Letting go feels scary, and then it feels great.” I know I have lots of friends who have kids younger than ours. I’m always telling them, “Just wait until the morning you wake up on a Saturday and your kids have made themselves a bowl of cereal before you’ve even gotten out of bed.” It feels scary to say, “You can get it out of the fridge, you can put it together,” but then once they’ve mastered that skill, and you have your Saturday morning sleep-ins back, it feels so great. As your kids age, there are all kinds of milestones that happen like that, but that’s such a great reminder when you’re starting to feel scary about taking your hand out of it.

On the other end of this, when my child learns how to master the skill of autonomy, our lives are going to be so much easier, and it’s going to be so good for them.

[00:15:52] Gretchen: It is. I’ve had my youngest, at 18, went for three weeks to Europe with family friends, but a lot of his touring around was on his own at 18. Friends of mine said, “Are you crazy? How are you letting him do that?” Because I had faith in him that he could do that thing. Then he came back, and he made a trip out to Las Vegas to see a concert at the Sphere.

This fall, he went and spent five weeks hiking on the Continental Divide Trail with his older brother. People kept saying to me, “Aren’t you afraid? Weren’t you very anxious?” The truth was, no, I wasn’t because I walked through that fear when they were a lot younger. By the time they reached this stage, it was like, “Man, I just want you to have the best time of your life.”

[00:16:43] Amber: Yes, that’s right. Do the scary things when the stakes are a little lower. Then by the time the stakes get higher, when your kids are older, you know them well enough to be all right.

[00:16:54] Gretchen: Yes. What I really like about the Let Grow organization, and I think it’s really worth parents digging into, is they have created some tools and some opportunities for you to create those scenarios for your kids. If you haven’t thought of, “How would I do this?” They’ll really hold your hand and get you through it.

[00:17:13] Amber: I love that.

[00:17:14] Gretchen: Lenore and Jonathan have really done a great job with that.

[00:17:17] Amber: That’s sweet. I’ll say one last thing before we move on from this topic. A while ago, our family stumbled upon a Japanese reality show where little kids, they must be five or six years old, are given tasks to do by their parents. They have to do them completely alone. It’s a hidden camera show. The cameras follow the kids as they go to the grocery store, buy the three items on the list, give the money, get the change, walk all the way home. The camera just follows. Maybe they take a detour, or maybe they forget the change, or maybe they spill something. It’s delightful to watch.

Maybe I’ll try to track it down, and we can add it to the show notes. It’s so fun and inspiring for your own kids. Like, “Oh, I could do some of these things, and it would be okay.”

[00:18:07] Gretchen: Yes. I used to take my kids to the grocery store, and I would divide up the grocery list. I would give them cash, and I would say, “That’s your aisle. Go find those things.” The motivation was if they could get exactly what I wanted on my list, and they had money left over, they got to keep it. There was an incentive there to learn how to calculate canned good prices and price per ounces and things like that. I have an almost 40-year-old daughter who bought the coffee shop she worked in. She started working there at 15, and at 19, she got a $53,000 SBA loan and bought that coffee shop.

[00:18:54] Amber: Wow.

[00:18:55] Gretchen: I think it’s because we just anticipated that there would be some of that independence as we’re sitting here talking. Jack’s mom is a very good friend of mine. We lived in the same neighborhood for a number of years. One day, my house phone rang, and Frances, very panic-stricken, said, “Do you know your boys are on the roof?” I started laughing, and I said, “Yes, Frances, I put up the ladder to send them up there.” She said, “What?” She said, “Are you crazy?” I said, “No, they were doing a science experiment, and it wasn’t working on the ground. They had built an anemometer, a wind speed measurement device. It wasn’t working in my front yard, so we sent them up on the roof.”

To this day, Jack and Duncan are both 26 years old, and Frances talks about this to this day, going, “I still can’t believe you let them do that.”

[00:19:55] Amber: I will say that is a fun side effect, watching the faces of onlookers when your kids do something a little more mature than might be the norm.

[00:20:07] Gretchen: It is. It does make it very fun. Andrew Pudewa talks a lot about that. He’s done more than one webinar with me. The hard part for me with his particular webinar was choosing the clip I wanted to highlight because he had so many really valuable things. The subject of our conversation in June was on Cultivating Attentiveness and Contemplation. The things that he talked about were not the things I expected him to talk about. I thought he would talk about the discipline of sitting down and sticking to a task. That wasn’t what he talked about at all. The clip I chose was where he talks about first morning light. That makes such a profound difference in my life. I just had to share it.

[00:21:03] Amber: Can you talk about it, Gretchen? It’s a practice that I’ve been trying to implement to limited success, but I’m curious how it’s been for you.

[00:21:12] Gretchen: For me, I like to get up early. I never regained that ability to sleep in after I had kids. I am an early riser, but I love to get out and go for a walk first thing in the morning. I’ll go walk two to four miles first thing in the morning. The days that I do that, I’m more focused. I stay on task better. I get more accomplished. The days that maybe I’m shot out of a gun and I’ve got 100 things to do, and so I think, “Oh, I don’t have time to go for a walk today,” I’m more scattered. I find that I’m easily distracted. I find that I don’t stay focused in the same way.

I knew that about myself, but Andrew being able to talk about how it makes a difference for him and how this wonderful blogger who had talked about that for herself made such a difference. I think it’s a practice that if we could learn to cultivate it– I know Ethan Demme. It doesn’t matter what the weather is. He’s going outside with his kids first thing in the morning every day. I think it makes a difference. I think it makes a difference with our spirit.

[00:22:33] Amber: I was reminded this week, actually, I had his words echoing in my brain when he talked about how our cortisol is supposed to spike in the morning and carry us through and reduce in the evening before we go to bed. I had always thought of cortisol as a dirty word. It’s a stress hormone. We want to lower our cortisol. We don’t want that in our system. The way he talked about it, the daylight helps us produce cortisol and produce vitamin D. We want it to start in the morning and carry us through, and then drop off in the evening. That was a reframe for me because I had always thought, like, “I don’t want the cortisol. I don’t need it.” I didn’t know that. That was a new piece of information.

[00:23:20] Gretchen: After I selected that clip, I happened to have a doctor’s appointment with my functional medicine doctor. She said something that I’m even going to add to what Andrew said. That is, if you can get that cortisol level raised by first morning light, and then it can naturally decline, if you tend to be a person who tends toward cravings like, “Gee, I’d love some chocolate,” or, “I want some potato chips,” or something like that, it’ll lessen your cravings. I looked at her, and I’m like, “How does that work?”

She said, “We think of cortisol as being something that’s wholly bad, but it also has things to do with the satisfaction levels in our brain. If we can help that cortisol to rise naturally in the morning from morning light, then it tends to even everything else out throughout the day.”

[00:24:20] Amber: That’s very good to know.

[00:24:22] Gretchen: I think of that now when I reach for a bag of potato chips, but–

[laughter]

[00:24:26] Amber: I take my walk this morning. We can talk about this offline, but my question is, Gretchen, how do you stay bundled up in the wintertime when you go for your walks?

[00:24:37] Gretchen: Oh, my word.

[00:24:38] Amber: I look at the temperature sometimes in the morning and–

[00:24:38] Gretchen: Well, this morning, it was 25 degrees when I went out. The dogs get blankets, except the pug, because he’s got three layers of fur, so he doesn’t need a blanket. Literally, I will choose lighter-weight materials because when I start my walk, I’ll be cold for the first 5 to 10 minutes. If I wear something heavy, I wore a coat today that was too heavy. By the time I got back to the car, I had it unzipped. I had my scarf off. I’d taken off my gloves because I was walking, so–

[00:25:14] Amber: Yes, you warm up quick.

[00:25:17] Gretchen: Exactly. It’s pretty wild.

[00:25:20] Amber: Well, you’ve inspired me. Next time, I’ll think, “If Gretchen can do it, I can do it.”

[laughter]

[00:25:26] Gretchen: I will admit, yesterday, when I went out for my walk, the weather said the rain had stopped. It was 37 degrees. I bundled everybody into the car and I drived about half a mile to get to a place where it’s safe for me to walk. We got out of the car, and it started pouring rain. I stood there for a minute, going, “I could just go home. No, let’s go.” We just got wet, but we went ahead and went for a walk.

[00:25:54] Amber: Yes. There you go.

[00:25:59] Gretchen: We moved on in July, and I had the privilege of talking with Dr. Patti Stoudt, who’s up where you live in Pennsylvania. She’s a homeschool evaluator, but she has a very special connection to kids who learn differently. Frankly, Joseph did such a perfect job of pulling out a clip to begin that episode. That was where she was talking about a diagnosis is like the hand holds on a rock wall. It gives you guidance, but it’s not the destination. I just loved that. Then she went on to talk about why homeschooling a child who has different needs is so valuable. Boy, it was one of those conversations that I just didn’t want to end because she had so many terrific insights.

[00:26:56] Amber: Well, this clip was the one that I had the most questions about, or more specifically, one question about. I’m hoping you can help clarify for me. She talked about the idea of private speech. Can you help me understand that a little bit better?

[00:27:11] Gretchen: Sure. Her example of private speech, the one she gives in the clip, is there’s things that we know that we have learned through rehearsal. Her example of private speech was to say to me, I before E–

[00:27:29] Amber: Except after C.

[00:27:31] Gretchen: Yes. The reason you know that is because that was rehearsed for you in some way. The example that she was making is we have gotten away in a lot of instances from the rehearsal of private speech. We don’t read Mother Goose anymore. We thought we had moved on beyond Mother Goose. Who needs Mother Goose, right? That ability to include rhyme and alliteration, and repetition that Mother Goose provides us is a huge gateway to kids being able to learn to read. It’s so valuable for kids to be able to understand that.

In a lot of ways, her talking about private speech, I started looking for examples of private speech. One of them is when you say the Pledge of Allegiance. Kids don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance in school anymore, but I bet if you find someone your age, you’re much younger than I am, but if you find someone your age and you start the Pledge of Allegiance, they can follow right on through with it. The same way with singing The Star-Spangled Banner, which I’ll spare you. I won’t sing.

[00:29:01] Amber: We’re going to duet. I’ll take the alto.

[00:29:03] Gretchen: [laughs] That’s another example of the private rehearsal that kids don’t get in a school classroom setting. They don’t want to speak up. They don’t want to have those conversations. A homeschool environment is a tutorial environment. I don’t care how many kids you have. Whether I had one at the table or five at the table, it was still that one-on-one relationship. That makes a huge amount of difference for kids.

[00:29:36] Amber: You’ll have to forgive me if I’m recalling a separate episode, but I believe it was this clip where she was talking about reading aloud and the idea that your child is absorbing more information about grammar, about language, outside of just the reading comprehension piece of this. I thought that was interesting, too. A lot of times, we read aloud or we do an activity with our kids, thinking that it has one outcome or one goal or serves one purpose, when really there’s so much going on in that activity. It really made me rethink the way I think about reading aloud to my kids or any other activities that we do together.

[00:30:19] Gretchen: We have also, as a society, as we’ve become more digitally connected, we’ve gotten away from reading to our children. Dr. Karen Holinga, who developed the Spelling You See program, she quotes this statistic that says that a child needs 1,200 hours of being read to before they’re really ready to produce reading on their own. That freaks a lot of parents out. The truth is, the more we read to our children, particularly if we’re reading good literature to them, they hear cadence, they hear syntax, they hear vocabulary that they might not otherwise hear. If they’re listening, “What does that word mean, Mom?” You get the opportunity to have those kinds of conversations.

I just have been working on a project talking about one of the ways to instill good writing is to go copy well-written pieces of work, like to copy the Gettysburg Address. There’s only 10 sentences in the Gettysburg Address. To see how he put those sentences together to make them impactful enough that more than 100 years later, we’re still reading his words and being impressed by them.

[00:31:46] Amber: Patti ended the clip we shared with a very powerful case for homeschooling, especially kids with special needs. She talked about how you can meet an IEP in the best possible way when you’re homeschooling your kid. Can you talk more about that? What does that look like?

[00:32:13] Gretchen: Well, an IEP is an individualized education plan. It means we need to take some sort of accommodation and set it up so that you, as the student, can be successful. Frankly, homeschooling is an alternative definition of an individualized education plan. For instance, one of my children was very much an auditory learner. His best learning occurred when he could have materials read to him. We were able to structure his learning so that even his textbooks were read to him. That helped him be successful.

I’m not sure where he’d be today if he had stayed in a public classroom. Because typically, by the time the school is willing to intervene, you have a child whose self-esteem has already been negatively affected. Being able to keep a child thinking positively about themselves and seeing their own potential is a huge difference.

[00:33:24] Amber: Well, to quote Patti, “It doesn’t get any more individualized than schooling at home.” That is true, for sure.

[00:33:32] Gretchen: That is very, very true. She was so much fun. That was just such a great– She was actually referred to me by one of our parents. One of our parents had a conversation with one of our placement specialists, Lisa Chimento. Lisa said, “You have to go look this lady up.” Man, I did, and I ran her down. I was so glad that I did because it was such a terrific conversation.

[00:34:00] Amber: Well, speaking of Lisa Chimento.

[00:34:03] Gretchen: Oh, this is true. Lisa is just– Her wisdom, the depth of her wisdom, and the compassion that she shares with our families is just unparalleled. She actually had asked me if we could have a conversation why it’s so critical to address gaps in mathematical education. Sometimes you’re too close to the trees to see the forest. We had not really had an in-depth discussion about how important it was to make sure that we addressed mathematical gaps to help a student be mathematically successful. Those of us here at Demme Learning who deal with families, we have this conversation all the time.

I had a meeting this morning at 8:00 AM with a grandmother who has a fourth-grade grandson who is struggling with division. She asked to meet with me because she wanted to figure out how can I make it easier for him. It’s not division that’s the problem. There’s something behind division that he doesn’t have a solid grasp on, and that’s why he’s having a challenge. Now it’s up to us to do a little detective work and figure out what that is. Lisa’s episode was so powerful when we talked about this at the end of July because parents were getting ready to go back to school. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, expecting a different result. We wanted to set parents up for success.

[00:35:44] Amber: Even just the clip we selected was so jam-packed full of good stuff. I have all my notes here, and I’m trying to think, “Okay, which one do I want to highlight?” Let’s start here. The quote she shared that really resonated with me was, “Your brain can’t do high-order thinking while it’s doing lower-level math.” If you’re preoccupied or your student is preoccupied with the math facts and with counting, they’re not going to be able to do the higher-level steps. Like you said, it’s probably not division that’s the problem. It’s the pieces that came before that, the building blocks that weren’t mastered. Now it’s showing up.

I think she said something, and you can help correct this or say it better than I can remember. She said something about those gaps will start to show up. You’ll start to see them show up. That’s a good opportunity to pause and think, “Okay, what did we miss back here that needs a little more construction?”

[00:36:44] Gretchen: Right. That quote actually was given to Lisa by a mom who was talking about that. It was a mom who had a revelation, recognizing the reason her child was struggling was because when you’re completely caught up in trying to remember what six times seven is in a division problem, your wheels are going to blow off your wagon. That single quote informed more of my conversations with families at conferences this summer than any other quote, because to me, it’s so profound. Lisa and I have seen the effects of that. She talks with families every single day. It just is so huge. We don’t realize it.

Sometimes when we homeschool, we wear two hats. We’re wearing the mom hat, and we’re wearing the instructor hat. Our kids go to extraordinary lengths to let us think they have a handle on whatever it is. Sometimes a mom will even say, “Oh, it’s my fault. Why didn’t I notice this?” You didn’t notice it because your kids are really good at keeping stuff from you. Kids are good at that. It’s up to us to be able to come alongside and help parents figure that out. The good news is it doesn’t take forever. It just takes a little bit of time. The change in confidence in kids that we see is breathtaking.

[00:38:21] Amber: I have two other thoughts I want to touch on from that episode. The first one is just a little one. She used the phrase, “Brain battery.” I love that. Again, if your student is using their brain battery to do some of these operations that could be mastered, they’re not going to have the brain battery capacity to do the other stuff. I liked thinking about it that way. You’ve got this limited amount of brain energy, and you want your kids to be using it on the task at hand, not something that they need to master a little bit earlier.

[00:38:55] Gretchen: Well, I had the privilege of she and Amanda Capps being my guests last week. I think it was last week that she brought up this terrific analogy. If you’re a mom and you’re trying to accomplish some task and your child keeps interrupting you, do you recognize how much harder that task is to accomplish? In the same way, that brain battery, when you’ve got to go back and figure out some computational fact that you don’t have, it’s that interruption, and that constancy of interruption is exhausting. No wonder your kids don’t want to do math.

[00:39:39] Amber: Last thought, although I have more notes, but I’m going to pick this one. She talked about the fact that some tools are only a bridge to mastery and specifically talking about things like skip counting songs or ways to memorize facts. That might just be a bridge to get to the mastery. Can you talk about why, maybe if your kid is singing the song and has the song memorized, how might that not actually be mastery?

[00:40:07] Gretchen: Two ways. One, music is perceived in the subdominant hemisphere of your brain. When we connect music to fact recall, it becomes difficult to disconnect. Steve was brilliant in setting skip count songs up so that kids could understand that multiplication is repeated addition, but if you have to sing the song to get to the fact, you don’t actually know the fact.

That’s why it’s really important to be able to maybe start with the skip counting, but recognize that that’s the first part of two parts. The second part is to then be able to unpack that 7 times 9 is 63 and 6 times 7 is 42. To say that, you don’t have to pause when I say, “So what’s your name?” You say Amber, right? [chuckles]

[00:41:09] Amber: Well, depends on before or after coffee, but right now I remember it.

[00:41:16] Gretchen: That’s the kind of recall we want for our kids. Does it mean that all of them will have 100% recall all the time? No, because that’s not the way the mind works. If we can improve their recall 25% to 30%, that’s 25% to 30% less time that they’re going to have to step out to figure something out, and that is huge. It’s funny you talk about that. My 31-year-old daughter never memorized her 6s and 7s. She always sang the song.

[00:41:49] Amber: I did not know this.

[00:41:53] Gretchen: About seven or eight months ago, she decided to– oh, it’s probably been a year now, that she needed to go back through epsilon. She had been in a head-on car accident and she had lost some capacities to recall things. One of them was she couldn’t convert fractions in her head anymore. She went back through epsilon. Then she had a side quest that she was going to absolutely learn her 6s and 7s facts so that she didn’t have to sing the song. At 31, she was still determined to get to the point where– and she’s so funny, she says, “I can’t believe it took me to 31.” She said, “Now, when I have children, I will have to do it with them.” [laughs]

[00:42:42] Amber: That’s great. Yes.

[00:42:45] Gretchen: It’s so funny. That was pretty cool.

[00:42:45] Amber: They should remove that song from her Spotify playlist.

[00:42:51] Gretchen: Well, it’s really funny. When my granddaughter was here over Thanksgiving, I said something about that song because they were doing something, the 6s skip count song. She looked at me, and she said, “I don’t remember the song.” Once you get to that point, maybe the song drops out. I can’t prove that. That’s just anecdotal, but maybe that’s the way it works.

[00:43:18] Amber: Well, Gretchen, this next topic I’m really excited about, do you want to introduce it?

[00:43:24] Gretchen: Oh, Dr. Mary Saczawa. I’ve known Mary since she was an infant. Her parents have been friends for more than 40 years. To watch her grow up and become a college professor of psychology has been an exciting journey for me because it was like watching one of my own kids grow up. Mary’s conversation this summer was just amazing. I chose a clip talking about being able to do the things you don’t want to do. Boy, I have used that several times here. Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve used it very successfully.

There was so many things in our conversation that was so meaty. At the end of the episode, I’ll tell you, it was something that Mary said that has stuck with me and lived rent-free in my brain since she said it. It has to do with AI because you and I are encountering AI more and more and more often in every direction. It was just a terrific episode, a lot of insight into how to manage yourself in the process of learning to manage expectations that you might have for yourself.

[00:44:54] Amber: Well, let me ask you a question, Gretchen. Have you ever caught yourself in a scroll hole?

[00:45:02] Gretchen: [laughs] Yes.

[00:45:05] Amber: You know what I’m talking about. I am a product of my generation. I have to admit, I get caught scrolling on Instagram reel–

[00:45:13] Gretchen: I have never heard it called that, but-

[00:45:15] Amber: I know. I’m sorry.

[00:45:16] Gretchen: I might have to hold onto that phrase.

[00:45:17] Amber: You’ve got new vocabulary. [laughter] I have gotten myself caught in so many scrolling sessions just swiping, swiping, next video, next video, next video. One day, I was doing that for who knows how long, forgive me, but I’m scrolling, and a video pops up, and it says, “Stop.” How many of the last 10 videos can you remember? I had a panic attack because I could not remember a single one of the last 10 videos that I had swiped through. The video went on to explain the neurobiology of what’s happening inside your brain.

It described exactly what Mary described, which is that the dopamine is coming from the anticipation of the next video. That’s what’s giving you the satisfaction. That’s what’s making it so addicting is anticipating the next thing. That’s the dopamine hit. When you’re sitting there scrolling, you’re thinking it’s the video that you’re seeing that’s causing the dopamine spike, that’s causing you to stay addicted to it, but it’s actually the anticipation. When she said that– and also her hack for using that anticipation to get stuff done, I was like, “That’s genius.” Do you remember what she said?

[00:46:42] Gretchen: Oh, gosh, now, do I remember what she said? She talked about being able to put together the things you have to do and the things you want to do, and to randomize them. You pull one out, and you just do it. She talked about using a tissue box. I actually have a little box here on my desk that I use.

[00:47:06] Amber: That’s perfect.

[00:47:10] Gretchen: On Monday morning, I sit down, and I write down everything I can possibly think of that I have or want to do related to work for a week. Then I take a pair of scissors, and I cut that up, and I drop it in the box. The interesting thing is, sometimes I can make a list, and I don’t have to do that because I’m excited to do things on that list. When I’m not excited, I got to cut those things up and drop them in the box. Being able to dedicate that time, she uses a pomodoro technique, a set a timer, and do this. I have gotten myself through more stuff in the last 12 weeks that I haven’t wanted to do. For the next 25 minutes, I’m just going to do this whether I want to or not. It’s brilliant.

[00:48:05] Amber: That idea of the anticipation of what am I going to pull out of this box is just enough of a dopamine spike to get you excited about the task. I thought that was genius. So smart.

[00:48:18] Gretchen: Yes. Well, I have had to teach myself to combat the scroll hole, as you call it. Before I allow myself to scroll, I set a timer on my phone. When that timer goes off I might be in the middle of a video, and that means I’m done. Then I have to take the phone and put it away.

[00:48:41] Amber: Well, one last thought from Mary’s clip, and I know we’re getting short on time, but she said, “Stress hormones turn off the part of your brain that tells you to do things.” When you’re stressed, and those hormones are raging, you feel like doing nothing because they’re counteractive. Also, a really helpful thing to think about. Why do I feel so lethargic or feel low motivation? Am I feeling stressed, and where is that coming from? Can I help lower the stress hormones in the soup of my brain? You’ll find that you start to feel that motivation come back when you lower the stress.

[00:49:21] Gretchen: You know what’s really interesting? If you feel that way in the middle of the day, Andrew actually talks about getting up and going outside for 15 minutes, and that can be a brain reset. I have found that to be particularly helpful as well. Then, I had the opportunity I met Jess Allred’s down at FPEA in May. I was just fascinated by the fact that she had created an entire co-op experience that is outside. These kids meet multiple days a week and they’re outside.

You asked me, well, how do you do that when it’s cold? Myrtle Beach gets cold in the winter, and those kids are still outside during the day for their co-op. That was the hook for me to have a conversation with Jess. It was so much more than I ever believed. She talked about emotional intelligence in kids and how we’re so focused on the necessity to accomplish the academics, and we forget the need to focus on the social and emotional wellness of our children.

She said, if we flip that script and we focus on the social and emotional learning, then the academics are really easy. In fact, it was such a great conversation that I asked her if she would come back and talk about that very singular thing in 2026. She’s going to join me to talk about social and emotional learning in the first quarter of ’26, and I’m very excited about that.

[00:51:09] Amber: That is exciting. She talked about being role models in that social, emotional side of things. I thought that was a great takeaway, too, in all the things that we’re modeling to our kids, to our students. Don’t forget about the social, emotional side and what you’re teaching them directly and indirectly just through your behavior.

[00:51:30] Gretchen: Sure. One of the things I loved is, she said they always knew when they got it right when the kids would start coaching each other. “Hey, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say. Can you say that again differently?” I thought, “How cool is that? I just want to go sit in their sphere.” At some point, I’m going to find one of her co-ops because she now has 33 of them. I think it’s 33. Somewhere, I’m going to find one that’s close enough that I can just go sit and observe for a day-

[00:52:02] Amber: I can’t wait to hear what you learn.

[00:52:02] Gretchen: -because they really have found a formula for success that I think is very powerful. That’s really cool. The last quarter of this year was just full of really terrific conversations. It was hard to choose the last one, but I loved what Dan Cimento said about mastering flexibility in thinking so much. I just couldn’t not share that video clip because I thought it was so terrific. Learning to be able to not take oneself so seriously. To be able to be humble enough to recognize, in any learning situation, there’s a lot you don’t know. Being willing to ask questions about what you don’t know was just fantastic.

[00:52:58] Amber: Two takeaways from his video. He mentioned that one of the best skills you can know or learn is where you are on the learning curve on any given topic. Am I even at the point that I know what I don’t know? Have I dipped my toe in this enough? He said, to get bad at it first, which I like that too. I’m not bad at ice skating because I don’t really ice skate.

If I get out there on the ice, I’ll figure out really quickly how bad I am at it. Having the courage to jump into something enough that you can evaluate how much you still have to learn and then know where you are. Maybe you are pretty good at something. Can you take an honest look at where you are on that curve and know how far you still have to go? That is a really important skill.

[00:53:48] Gretchen: It was breathtaking to me to recognize that where he started as a homeschool graduate, where he started his college education, where he’s taking it now. It was a terrific example in our Career Connection series of being open to possibility and being able to flex in the environment as it changed. That was just really terrific. I really appreciated that.

[00:54:12] Amber: The second skill he mentioned, or the second one that I wanted to highlight, was the ability to have a collection of questions. I like to collect conversation starters. Sometimes I’ll ask really goofy questions because I like to collect really fun, thought-provoking conversation starters. Having good questions to ask in an interview or in a collaborative experience, I thought that was a great skill to hone as well.

[00:54:40] Gretchen: You really do that very well.

[00:54:44] Amber: Oh, thanks.

[00:54:44] Gretchen: I watch you. When you facilitate meetings, you do a great job of helping everybody feel like they are present and seen in the meeting. That’s a great skill. It really is pretty awesome to have. I promised you I’d give you my favorite quote of the year, and it actually does come from Dr. Saczawa. It is in our show notes because it’s lived rent-free in my brain since she said it.

She said, “If you’re relying on AI, it’s twofold. One is, if you’re relying on AI to shortcut your own education, you’re missing the point. You’re here, and we’re teaching you to write for your own education. We’re teaching you to do math to learn. We’re teaching you to think critically because that’s the point of education. If you’re using AI to get around doing those assignments, then you’re missing the skill development.”

She said, “The other half of that equation or that idea is that if you can’t do it any better than AI can do it, why would anyone hire you?” Wow. I think that conversation, in some way, shape, or form, is a conversation that needs to be had at every dinner table with every teenager in the US today, and maybe young adult, too.

[00:56:16] Amber: Yes, maybe adult-adult.

[00:56:20] Gretchen: [laughs] Absolutely.

[00:56:20] Amber: That’s a great thing to say.

[00:56:24] Gretchen: It was rare air to get her to say that, and I wanted to make sure that we included that. I’ve had conversation after conversation with people about AI and how they’re using AI. My eldest son is a wireframe designer, and he was here for Thanksgiving. He works for a high-end design firm. I, laughingly– we were sitting on the sofa in front of the fire together, and I said, “I really want to get rid of that sofa. I think I want to put two chairs there.”

He said, “Do you have a picture of the chairs?” I looked at him like, “Yes, okay.” I showed him a picture of the chairs on my phone. In about five minutes, he was able to take a picture of the space, take the sofa out, and put the chairs in, thanks to Gemini. I was like, “Wow, that is really cool.” Being able to do some of those things is really amazing, but I don’t think it’s a tool to let us forego the process of thinking, and learning, and growing.

[00:57:35] Amber: We had a teachable moment, my 14-year-old and I, the other week. I work from home. My kids had a holiday break, but I was still working. They had homework, so they were spending the afternoon working on their homework before they went back to school. My oldest was studying for a geology test. He came in. He said, “Mom, I really need some help studying.” I said, “I’d be happy to help you as soon as I’m done. In the meantime, let’s go to Gemini and work on a study guide for you.”

He said, “Mom, AI, we’re really going to use AI to help me study.” I said, “Yes, we’re going to use AI to help you learn what you need to learn here. It’s not going to substitute for you. It’s not going to give you the answer. It’s going to give you some tools to help you master the topic that you’re working on. AI is not the enemy. We can use AI to our advantage. We can even use it to get smarter in our own brains. When you rely on it to do the learning for you, that’s when we have a problem.”

[00:58:37] Gretchen: That’s right. That’s right. That gives me the opportunity to talk about my son Duncan, who hiked the Continental Divide Trail this summer. He did a podcast-only episode with me talking about how he used AI to prepare for his Continental Divide Trail hike. He used AI to catastrophize for him. When he told me this, I was like, “You what? Explain to me. I don’t understand.”

He had been on the trail two years ago and had had some situations that he had not had the opportunity to think through clearly. He taught ChatGPT the things that he had experienced. Then what he did is he set up a scenario where he would say, give me a scenario that I may encounter that would be dangerous because of weather. Then I’ll tell you how I handle it. Then ChatGPT would evaluate how well he handled it. It was fascinating.

[00:59:44] Amber: That’s a great use of AI.

[00:59:47] Gretchen: Yes, it really was. I asked him when he came back from the trail two weeks ago, I said, “So was it accurate?” He said, “Yes, more often than not, the scenarios.” He said, “I encountered three or four of them.”

[01:00:01] Amber: Wow.

[01:00:03] Gretchen: He said the scenarios were pretty accurate. He said, “And I felt like, oh, I’ve trained for this. I know what to expect.” He said it was not as disconcerting as it would have been if it had taken him by surprise.

[01:00:16] Amber: That’s pretty cool.

[01:00:18] Gretchen: Exactly. Amber, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me. I hope that those of you who have joined us live have seen the joy that we’ve had in bringing these episodes to you this year. It really has been an amazing experience. We’ve highlighted nine, but there are over 45 of them. It is definitely worth your time to go in and spend a little time over the holidays. Let us join you in your kitchen with a webinar or two while you’re preparing your Christmas cookies, because I think we’ll be able to do some terrific things for families.

[01:00:59] Amber: Gretchen, for next year, you’ve already got so many great things planned. If people want to get them on their calendars, where should they go?

[01:01:08] Gretchen: Good question. We’re going to go to demmelearning.com/events. We have the first six weeks of events already up there. I am really excited to have the first conversation of the year with my good friend, Alice Reinhardt. The first week of

January, on January 6th, we’re going to talk about what if college isn’t the path your high schooler wants?

That’s a setup conversation. It’s going to be a terrific conversation because later in January, I’m going to get to talk to Hannah Maruyama, who is a homeschool graduate herself and founded a program called The Degree Free Way. Boy, does she have some fabulous insights. I’m really excited to be able to host those conversations in the new year. It’s going to be awesome.

[01:02:00] Amber: I can’t wait, Gretchen. You always do a great job.

[01:02:03] Gretchen: Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. I do a great job because I have a team like you and Joseph behind me helping me make it happen. I sure couldn’t do the technological end of it by myself because technology and I don’t always get along. I appreciate Joseph so much. He makes it magical every week-

[01:02:24] Amber: Yes, rockstar.

[01:02:24] Gretchen: -and that is pretty awesome. Yes. Thanks, Amber.

[01:02:27] Amber: Thanks for having me, Gretchen.

[01:02:29] Gretchen: It’s awesome. Everyone, we wish you a joyful holiday season, and we look forward to your joining us the first week of January. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

[01:02:39] Voice-Over: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.

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