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[00:00:00] Nicole Thomas: I just want to protect him. I just want to make sure he’s okay. I want to make him tough enough, but I want to make sure he has the skills to take care of himself and handle people. It was just a different vibe. That definitely plays into this concept of loving push. It’s like, well, if you’re protecting them all the time, you got them in this little bubble, how well am I really doing at preparing him for this world?

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[00:00:32] Gretchen Roe: Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Demme Learning show. This is Gretchen Roe, and I am so excited to welcome Nicole Thomas to my conversation today. Many of you may well recognize her beautiful smiling face. Nicole, of course, is the math lady, and she teaches online classes for upper-level math and now lower-level math as well. We’re not going to talk about math today. We’re going to talk about something that’s closer and more personal to both our hearts. I’m going to let Nicole introduce herself, and then we’ll get started in earnest. Nicole?

[00:01:13] Nicole: All right. Sounds great. I was laughing when you said Nicole Thomas. I was like, “I wonder if people actually know my last name.”

[00:01:20] Gretchen: I actually did call you that this weekend, and the people in the booth with me, we were at a conference together. Someone went, “Who?” I said, “The math lady.” “Oh, yes. I know who that is.

[00:01:33] Nicole: It makes me laugh sometimes. I remember thinking, “Is that good? Will that stick?” I guess it’s stuck because I don’t really know what my last name is. Hi, everyone. Again, I’m Nicole Thomas, Nicole the math lady. Today, I am mom. I am a mom now of two children. My oldest is turning 21 next week. That’s a whole other webinar. Today, we’re going to be talking about my relationship with my 15-year-old. His name is Justin. I know if you have heard anything about my story, you might have heard that at age three, Justin was diagnosed with autism. We’ll talk a little bit about that whole process.

Essentially, we’ve been on a journey in the last few months. Now that he’s 15, to really look at my role as the mom in preparing him for the world. I’ve learned some things. What I’m going to tell people is, I generally have it together as Nicole the math lady, I can stand at the board and talk math. This, I am a woman in process. I’m a woman in process, figuring out how to best equip her son to take on the world. The name that we talked about is the Loving Push.

Really about, I had to examine who I was being and taking care of him. Was I doing enough to push him? We’ll talk about that, because I found out that maybe there’s some things I could do. I’ve been implementing some of those things in the last few months, and it really has changed our household. It’s changed my life, and it’s changed his.

[00:03:13] Gretchen: Nicole, I know this really strikes a chord with many parents, because it doesn’t have to be an autism diagnosis. It can be anxiety. It can be ADD. It can be a variety of diagnoses. As moms in particular, we want to protect our children. We don’t want the big bad world to beat them up. It’s a fine line between knowing they’re not going to always be in our household and knowing when to begin that process. What made you think that you had to start something different?

[00:03:49] Nicole: Well, it’s even funny that you talked about, the diagnosis. I know there’s some people who have a diagnosis. Again, you don’t have to have a diagnosis to be in on this conversation. I’m going to talk about it from that perspective. Some people would say, “Well, do you even share the diagnosis? Do you not share it?” I just remember when he was three and doing things that looked like he was being disobedient. That’s what it looks like from the outside. “Why isn’t this kid listening to you?” I was like the town caller. I was like, “Oh, by the way, he has autism.” That was my thing. I used to look at why did I feel the need to always say that to people?

Why did I feel the need to explain his behavior? It came from that innate mothering instinct to protect. I felt that, well, if people knew what was going on, they wouldn’t look with such disdain if he was acting out or having a meltdown. I realized that during this period of him being born till now, just people’s awareness of, what autism and other learning disabilities are has grown so much. When we first started, I didn’t know what it was.

I had to Google it, which was a scary thing in and of itself. That urge to protect is there for all of our kids, right? I even looked at how do I treat my daughter Sydney, and how did I treat my son Justin? It’s interesting because my daughter, who’s very similar to me, even though she will not like to say that in public, she’s very similar to me.

[00:05:24] Gretchen: [unintelligible 00:05:24] 10 years, Nicole, then it’ll be fine.

[00:05:30] Nicole: I remember always thinking in my brain, I wanted to make her strong. I wanted to make her tough. I wanted to make her be able to conquer the world. That’s how I raised her. With Justin, when I think about it in my brain, it always was, I just want to protect him. I just want to, make sure he’s okay. I want to make him tough enough, but I want to make sure he has the skills to take care of himself and handle people. It was just a different vibe. That definitely plays into this concept of loving push. It’s like, well, if you’re protecting them all the time, if you got them in this little bubble, how well am I really doing at preparing him for this world?

[00:06:13] Gretchen: If you have an autism diagnosis and you’ve seen or you’ve seen one child with autism, you’ve seen one child with autism.

[00:06:24] Nicole: That is the truth, right?

[00:06:26] Gretchen: Vastly different for different kids.

[00:06:29] Nicole: Yes. It’s called the spectrum for a reason, right? In my work as Nicole the Math Lady, we have a lot of students, as I’m sure you guys do as well, with different diagnoses. I always look at, okay, well, when people come and they’re like, “Will this work for my kid?” The first thing I always say is, “I don’t know,” because I don’t like when people tell me that this was designed for your kid, and then it doesn’t work with my kid. My kid is unique as all children are. I always tell people, “You know what, you got to try it out. You got to see for yourself because you and your child are the only ones who are going to know because they’re so unique.”

[00:07:10] Gretchen: Exactly. I think it makes a tremendous difference when we can empower the parents to do the work, to figure out if it works for their kids. The parents that I get frustrated with are the ones that ask if it will work, but then they won’t work their end of the stick, so to speak, to make it work. Today we’re talking to the parents who are working the correct end of the stick.

[00:07:36] Nicole: That’s right. Yes. The Loving Push, let’s talk about that title. My son attends a social skills group, on a Friday. The moms, while the kids are in the social skills class, the moms, we used to get our little pop-up chairs and sit outside the room, and then just talk, because just being able to connect with other moms and hear their stories, you just find community. Then somebody had brought up this book called The Loving Push. I was like, “Oh, I have not heard about that.” It was written by Temple Grandin, who is an autism advocate, a woman with autism, and a psychologist. Her name was, I wrote it down, Deborah Moore. I want to give her credit, too.

Really, it was about us as the parents. Sometimes we need to give our kids a loving push, like that whole protective thing, that maybe we’re not setting them up for the best success by putting on those white gloves. It was a six or seven-week course where we just looked at all of these different areas to see, how are we helping them? Are we preparing them for the world? Where do we need to give them a little bit of a push? I remember thinking, “No, this is going to be okay. I’m pretty good. I push him out there.” Then I was like, “Hmm, I think there’s some more things I could really do to prepare him for this world that I hadn’t been doing before.” We can definitely chat about some of those things.

[00:09:08] Gretchen: Absolutely. Dr. Temple Grandin was a guest on the webinar series last August. That was probably one of the richest experiences I had all summer. She would get herself into an airport and be frustrated because there was a plane delay. She’d go through her phone list and call me. I got to talk to her personally on at least four occasions. The writing in her books is the person she is. I just love that. I think it’s so fascinating. Tell us, what was the first thing you learned in that book that maybe needed a tweak?

[00:09:46] Nicole: Hmm. It’s funny because, again–

[00:09:51] Gretchen: Maybe I should ask the question differently. What stood out to you the most about needing to be tweaked? Now, he was 14 when you read this book, right?

[00:10:03] Nicole: Yes, he was 14, maybe just turned 15. I remember thinking that– well, I’m going to give you an example of something that happened during the class, or during the six weeks of the class. We decided to sign up for a coding class. Again, one of my things is I’m going to expose him to things that I think could be great careers for him, things that he’s interested in. He’s interested in building games. He builds games on Roblox. He builds these incredible games.

I thought, let’s get him some coding experience. Of course, he was like, “No, I don’t want to, I don’t do–” “Justin, you’re coding already.” First and second week, I sat with him in the room. I wasn’t on camera, he was on camera, and I sat with him. The reason I sat with him is because I knew from an attention standpoint, ADHD is part of autism, he’s not going to be able to sit. It was an hour and a half class on a Monday, Wednesday, and then three hours on Saturday. I just knew attention and staying in attention in the class was going to be a challenge. I noticed by the third week, he would pay attention for two seconds and then drift.

Then I’d be like, “Justin, pay attention for a couple minutes and then drift.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to be like a long–” it was a three-month course. It’s going to be a long course. Then I noticed on the one of the Saturday mornings, I kept saying, “Justin, go back. Justin.” He just like wouldn’t. I was like, wait a second, this kid knows that when it’s time to do the work, if he hasn’t paid attention, he knows I’m going to help him. That’s what I was doing. I was like, I wanted him to succeed in the class. I wanted to– okay, remember they said this. I wanted to help him. I realized in that moment that he was relying on me to do it with him or for him.

[00:12:08] Gretchen: That scenario you paint there is true for so many parents, whether our children have a diagnosis or not.

[00:12:16] Nicole: I remember thinking in the class, it was talking about learned helplessness. I was like, oh. I said, “I know I can’t stay in this room. I know I have to leave right now, but we’re in the middle of this three-hour class. I think what’s going to happen is a meltdown.” I said, “Justin, you sat through class. The teacher is there. If you have questions, you need to ask them. I’m going to leave now.” Now, as you imagine, my heart is like, [onomatopea] I’m leaving the room and I’m like, I have to let him be in the class on his own. He has to know that Mom’s not here to pay attention for me.

I have to pay attention myself. What started to happen as I was leaving the room is like the meltdown started to come. Justin’s meltdowns are not like the anger kind. They’re like the sadness kind. It’s like weepy, and my kid’s like big, like he’s 6 foot, he’s a big boy. He’s like starting to cry and I’m like, “Nicole, keep walking, put one foot in front of the other.” I closed the door behind me and I went to my room and I just– I literally stood outside the door like, “Am I going to go back? Am I going to go back? I should go back.” I’m like, “No, this is a safe place. The teacher is there.

If he has a question, he needs to ask the teacher.” I said that before he left and I waited about five minutes. It’s like all I could handle. Then I ran back to the room and I put my ear to the door and there he was talking on Zoom to the teacher. It’s probably like about eight or nine kids in the class. He was having the teacher re-explain something to him. In that moment I was like, “That’s what they’re talking about. That’s what you’re talking about.” He would not have done that. He would have waited for me. I would have jumped in. I would have worked with him. Now I would have done it in a very teacherly way. I would have asked him questions and, put the syllabus.

[00:14:11] Gretchen: You can’t take the teacher out of you.

[00:14:15] Nicole: I would have been a good teacher about it. As far as being a parent who is allowing him to succeed or fail, I had to be willing to let him fail. Especially if you have somebody, a kid that is going to have a meltdown, you don’t, you do everything to stop a meltdown from happening. Of course. I realized I have to let the meltdown happen because without the meltdown happening, he is not going to say, “No, I’m responsible for this. I have to listen. I have to do the project.” That one day while I’m standing outside his door with like my ear– the smile came on my face like, “Oh, if you let him, if you get out of the way long enough, he’s going to rise. Guess what, Nicole, you got to get out of the way.”

[00:15:06] Gretchen: Oh my gosh.

[00:15:08] Nicole: It’s hard. It’s hard.

[00:15:11] Gretchen: That is a mom in almost any situation with a child that’s older than say seven or eight, particularly in a novel environment, we have that tendency to want to protect our children, particularly in the world of gentle parenting now, we want to be the safe space for our children. Does that help them mature?

[00:15:41] Nicole: Let me give you a part two of the story. Part two of the story happened a few weeks later. At this point, he started sitting in the class by himself. He realized, listen, I’m going to have to listen to this instructor. I’m going to have to deal with whatever attention things are going on in my brain. I’m not saying it was perfect. It definitely wasn’t. We definitely had to rewatch videos. It took us longer. I realized getting the project done was not the end goal. For him to get that I have to listen and participate, that was the goal because that’s what he needs in life. He does not need to do well on this project in coding. Do you know what I mean?

Fast forward about five weeks. This was just a couple of weeks ago and it was a Saturday morning. Sometimes they have homework for class and sometimes they don’t. All of a sudden I get a text, please come up. I was like, “Okay.” I come running up the steps and I opened the door and my son is in full-blown meltdown on the Zoom in front of the class. Of course, as a mom, your heart is breaking for your child and you’re like, “Okay, calm down, calm down. What is wrong?” What happened was is he had a homework assignment. He was challenged by it and he did not think that I should go and ask for some help. I should go ask my mom.

I should go ask the teacher. He got to class and that’s when he realized he didn’t have the assignment. In our house, we do assignments. I was that kind of kid. You never showed up to school without an assignment done. He is a bit the same way. He is now having a bit of a panic attack because he doesn’t have his assignment done. I said to him, essentially, he started to have the meltdown before it was his turn to present. You’re supposed to present. I said to him, I said, “Look, I can’t help you right now.” I don’t know what the assignment was. He wanted me to help him do it really fast. Can you just help me do it really fast? Right here.

I said, “Honey, I can’t help you. One, I don’t know what you did in class. Two, you didn’t do it. You’re going to have to let the teacher know, you have to tell them, I didn’t do it. I forgot. I didn’t ask for help. I was confused. You have to explain. You’re going to have to express yourself, which was one of our challenges.” Then that’s when the meltdown came when he did express himself. Then the full meltdown came.

I realized as hard as this was for me to sit there, this was something he needed to learn as well. He needed to learn, yes, there’s a consequence when you don’t do your homework. Again, the mother in me wanted to save him. If I’d have known what that was, I just maybe sat there with him and tried to help. It’s like, “No, I don’t need him to get the A in coding. I need him to get, “Oh, there’s consequences for when I don’t do things.”

[00:18:33] Gretchen: There’s other layers to those consequences. There’s consequences to not seeking help, not planning your time, not recognizing that your decision or lack of decision affects other people. All of those things are very real-world adult experiences.

[00:18:58] Nicole: Here’s the thing, I wish I could tell you in that moment, I went back to the room and he was fine. He wasn’t. We had to sit out the rest of the class. My day was done after I held it together for him. I went back to my room and like, [onomatopea] water works. That just was like, we hate seeing our children in pain, but I knew he has to start having these. I have to get out of the way for him to be able to have these experiences.

At least he can do it here where at least I can run and give the hug afterwards. I can’t prevent him from having those experiences. That was definitely a huge part. I felt like I pushed him when it came to academics and I pushed him, but I never wanted to push him in the area of having real interactions and feeling pain and feeling upset.

[00:19:48] Gretchen: I think one of those things is, all that you have described is the gray area of relationship that we as mothers want our children to navigate well, but they don’t really experience the navigation until something goes sideways.

[00:20:09] Nicole: Yes, absolutely. Again, that’s the hard part. Again, I can push them on the, “You can do math. Yes. you’re going to learn how to read. Yes.” It’s like, I always wanted to stop them from any pain. For example, I’ll see parents who will call me or I’ll see in our workshops who are like, I see them get so frustrated when they’re doing their math. We do fewer practice problems and I’ll be like, “I’m telling you, it sounds counterintuitive, but you actually have to do more. You got to push more because if you actually do more practice problems, you’ll get them over the hump that they actually get. I can do it.”

My job is not to make it easy. My job is to instill confidence and like instilling confidence. I’ve got to make you do it for yourself. It’s hard. It is not easy.

[00:21:05] Gretchen: It’s probably for you much easier in that relationship between students and instructor than it is between mother and child.

[00:21:15] Nicole: Absolutely. I can tutor anybody’s kid and like push them lovingly. Sure. When it’s your own, again, that feeling of like, you want, you want to push, but we want to, we want to stop them from feeling pain. It’s like, I realize pain is part of life. Sure. Absolutely. If I’m going to stop him from feeling pain, when he actually feels pain out there in the streets, he’s not going to know how to handle it.

[00:21:41] Gretchen: How many weeks ago was it that you did this? Because this is relatively a new experience for you.

[00:21:47] Nicole: That full meltdown experience was two Saturdays ago. That was the whole night, and we started that course I think it was like maybe seven or eight weeks. We met every week tackling a new thing. One of the things we tackled, I don’t know if I’m talking to folks out there, but we tackled computer use. There’s a lot of kids, period, but particularly a lot of kids on the spectrum where being social is difficult. They end up going into their room and turning on the technology and then finding this whole world in technology. I remember thinking like my daughter, I did not let her participate in any of the chats, for example, on these games.

I was like, “No, you’re not allowed to do that.” I’m embarrassed to tell you that I did let my son, and I’ll tell you why. I remember thinking it’s where he found “friends”. That’s what he would say. He had a harder time socializing that he would find friends online. Then through this class, I realized were those really friends? He really didn’t have friends. I allowed him there because it was safe. I could still read the chat. I could still see what people were saying. I could definitely, be like, that is not polite. We don’t say– I could do that. Really the push, the push was to get him off of the computer and get him into the world push him to be social.

[00:23:22] Gretchen: I think Gus described a scenario, whether your child has a diagnosis or not, so many of us as moms are struggling with right now. COVID, if that, what’s the word I want? Exacerbated, tendency to secret ourselves in spaces and now trying to step out of that. It’s hard for everybody. Were you able to talk about that later? I know it’s hard to get any teenage boy to talk about their feelings. Were you able to talk about that later?

[00:24:01] Nicole: You mean the meltdown, you mean?

[00:24:03] Gretchen: The whole experience of not reaching out for help in advance and then panicking and then feeling like you couldn’t reel it back in.

[00:24:13] Nicole: Yes. It’s funny because again, I remember thinking, I tried to talk about it in that moment. Yes, that wasn’t working. It was like, let the boy just have his meltdown. I think we waited a day or two to have the conversation about, okay, so what happened? You know you have something that you have to turn into class. What happened? Then he explained, he was like, “I didn’t know how to do it.” I was like, “Oh, okay. What are some things we could have done?” He was like, “Well, I could have asked you.” I’m like, “Yes, you could have asked me. If I didn’t know, what could we have done then?” He’s like, “Well, we could have watched the video.”

“We could have watched the video. You knew those things, but you didn’t, right? You made a choice.” He’s like, “Yes.” I’m like, “Well, what choice did you make?” His choice was to go play video games instead of actually like to handle it. I’m like, “Well, that’s a good thing to notice, right? It’s not that you were helpless. It wasn’t that there wasn’t anybody to help you.” I don’t want to do this learned helplessness. I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t do– no, you had a choice. You made a choice. You’d rather go play your video games than actually, go get help for the project.

You knew that you had to turn it. At least we were able to like unearth because what I wanted him to walk away with is you’re powerful. You get to choose. You get to choose. If you show up to class without an assignment, it’s not that I didn’t know how to do it. I can’t do the assignment. No, that doesn’t fly in our house. Diagnosis or not, that doesn’t fly. It’s, “Oh, it was hard for me. I’m going to turn this in. What do I need to do to get me from here to there?” Now, again, talking about the learned helplessness before I would have been right there, I would have been like, “Okay, on Monday, we’re going to sit down.

We’re going to do this assignment. We’re going to do it together. I don’t do that anymore.” I said, “Justin, you’re coding homework. How’s that going?” He has to like, oh, and then he has to walk upstairs and do it himself. Rather than me making sure everything is perfectly fine. I have flipped and trust me, like I was a really good student. It was difficult for me to possibly let him go to class without having everything all figured out and reviewed.

[00:26:25] Gretchen: How hard is that for you, because that’s such a paradigm shift for a mom, particularly with a child who has some struggles in learning.

[00:26:39] Nicole: Again, in my house growing up, we sat down every night. We were really strict around education. My family was from the Caribbean. When we came here, education was it, school was it. I thought I was doing good parenting by sitting down with him all the time, making sure his work was done, making sure–the truth is, I had taken all the power away from him and he was getting it all done, but there was no power for him. At the end of the day, sadly, one of the things I think about more so with him than with my daughter is I’m not going to be here one day. I’m not going to be here one day to take care of him. Who’s going to take care of them?

It’s like, “Well, you got to equip him to take care of himself.” Now I should be doing that with my daughter too, but again, she’s a little me. She’s like off and running. It makes me think, “What’s the point here? Is the point to have all the grades perfect and everything? He’s excelling on paper, but I’ve got my hands in it? Is it okay to like, let him fail a little bit and let him dig deep down and pull out who he is?” It might not be as perfect as it was when I was in school with all my little bows and everything tied nicely. It has to be true for him because that’s what I’m trying to train. I’m trying to train the ability for him to be on his own in this world.

[00:28:05] Gretchen: Absolutely. I have been reading a book by Jennifer Braheny Wallace, I think it’s called Good Enough. It’s about the achievement culture we have inadvertently fostered by wanting the best for our children. In many instances, driving forward with what we think is best without ever including them in that conversation. Boy, it’s hard. That’s really hard. I saw myself in things that I didn’t even realize. My youngest child’s 19. It’s not like I’m dealing with little kids now, but I was like, “Whoa.” I started having to make a few notes where I’m going to have to circle back to some kids and go, “Do you remember? Probably don’t.”

Go do. That’s the important part. Nicole, I can’t believe we only have six minutes left in this conversation. Man, you have gone deep, but encouraging in everything that you’ve had to say. I want to ask you this question that we talked about beforehand. What is the best way to address when a child says I’m stupid, particularly if a parent has never said they are stupid?

[00:29:22] Nicole: Yes. First of all, it just breaks your heart because they either made that decision on their own or did somebody say that to them? The fact, again, being somebody who just always wants to protect, it breaks your heart. I’m trying to think if my– I’ve never had that moment with Justin, but that’s not true. I’ve actually had a moment with him where I remember he was just like, “I can’t learn it. I can’t learn how to do this.” The first thing I just had to do is acknowledge his feelings. I get it. It is hard. Sometimes things just seem like make his feelings real like for him because they are real, for him. It is hard I can’t imagine what it’s like. The first thing I do is do is support. It’s just let them know it is okay.

[00:30:15] Gretchen: Validating how he feels. .

[00:30:17] Nicole: How you’re feeling. Sometimes it sucks, I get it and then I’m going to let him know. I know that’s how you feel but that’s not how I see you. I’m going to let him know all the ways that he is amazing. Autism is not an easy thing. It is not but I don’t know that I would change my life for anything I would not change him because we’ve got to see things I know the rest of the world does not get to see. We get to see how kind he is. How sweet he is. How funny he is. He says things because he’s so like black and white. He says things that are just funny.

I just remind him how unique and special he is, that like you’re perfect exactly as you are. Exactly as you are, meaning even with– People would never realize this but I stuttered as a kid. I speak for a living and I stuttered as a kid, so it’s like listen, things are in our path, they make us stronger, but they do not predict who we’re going to be. The thing I know about you or this child is, what I love is that you come back and you try and you come back and you try and at the end of the day, that’s what I care about. I don’t care about the information that needs to be shoved into your brain. I care that you come back and you try.

Can you show me that? I look at what is special and unique about that kid and let them know because not everybody is going– as I said, I did really well in school. Sitting down facing forward, that was my thing. That is not my son’s thing. What’s he great at. Again, that boy can code this pressure luck game. I don’t even know what he’s doing half the time. He’s showing me and I’m like wow, there’s different ways to win in this world. Help them find that way

[00:32:21] Gretchen: Sure, because that really is the mandate for us as parents is to figure out what the combination is to release the creativity and the motivation in every child

[00:32:36] Nicole: Isn’t that the exciting part? [unintelligible 00:32:39] my daughter who just walked in, I always told her, I was like, “You know what, for me, this world is about finding what you love to do every day.” I get to wake up and create every day. I’m really blessed to be able to do that. I want you to be able to do that. Go figure it out You got to feed yourself and all of that at some point. Be in pursuit of figuring out the talents that were given to you and how you can express those talents in this world.

[00:33:09] Gretchen: Had a friend who many years ago told me, the reason trapeze artists are successful is because they throw their heart over the bar first and then the rest of them has to follow.

[00:33:22] Nicole: Oh, I love that, scary, but–

[00:33:26] Gretchen: I know Nicole I want to thank you for this time. I feel like we just scratched the surface here I might have to drag you back in for another conversation because well, absolutely, after the press your luck game plays, we want to know what happened. All of us are now invested in this amazing experience that you’ve been able to curate for your son.

[00:33:48] Nicole: Yes. I will have video to share.

[00:33:51] Gretchen: We’ll do it. Thank you so much for joining me today everyone. Thank you for allowing us into your living room It’s always a pleasure to come and share time with you and we don’t take it lightly We appreciate that you allow us to come and share these conversations with you and we’ll look forward to doing it again soon Thanks, everybody. Take care.

[00:34:12] Narrator: 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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