Episode 202-Cultivating Empathy and Connection in Parenting: A Conversation with Kristen Donnelly

Do you ever find yourself struggling to truly connect with your children? Are you looking for ways to cultivate empathy in your parenting journey? Join us in our transformative conversation with Kristen Donnelly as we uncover the depths of empathy and understanding in parenting, and how to apply these principles to connect with your children on a deeper level.

We discuss the importance of listening actively and asking more questions to comprehend your child's context, rather than simply focusing on their emotions. Kristen shares her insights on teaching our kids to recognize and handle their feelings, and how to foster empathy in themselves and others. Remember, nobody gets parenting perfect, and every person, regardless of age, wants to be seen, heard, and understood.

Furthermore, we delve into practical ways to help our children develop empathy and understanding of different cultures and backgrounds. From introducing new foods and attending cultural festivals to finding age-appropriate media and discussing challenging topics, we provide valuable guidance for nurturing empathy in your little ones. Don't miss this enlightening conversation with Kristen Donnelly, and learn how to instill empathy in your parenting experience.

Transcript

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Empathy and Understanding in Parenting

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to the SJ Childs Show , where a little bit of knowledge can turn fear into understanding . Enjoy the show . Hey guys , welcome to season 8 . Just wanted to take a second to do a couple shoutouts to Karen Shapiro and Ben Sharif , always thinking of you guys .

Speaker 2 0:24

To Genie Love and Jennifer Stalley . Thank you so much for your support . Enjoy the show .

Speaker 1 0:32

Hi and welcome to the SJ Childs Show today . I'm really excited to jump into this conversation . Kristen Donnelly , i hope I pronounced that all correctly . Okay , sometimes , kirsten and Kristen , you got to be careful of those right . Just like Sarah with an H . People always think I need this extra letter , but I am all the extra I need without it , so it's so great to have you on . You know , i'm really resonated your profile and the thing when I reached out to you because I really am very passionate about helping parents and children and just this whole path that we're on , and so I think empathy is a really , really big part of life and of humanity , but not a lot of us , especially as parents , know how to teach it or understand what it consists of . So grateful to have you here today to gain some further knowledge and experience on this .

Speaker 3 1:30

Well , I'm happy to help .

Speaker 3 1:31

I love talking to parents And , as a someone who works a lot with college students , I really love the opportunity to help parents understand their kiddos as living humans instead of , you know , maybe just your kid , And that might sound a little bit counterintuitive perhaps , but it makes a lot of sense to me . I spent a lot of time in youth work and I've been working with teenagers for most of my life , So the first thing I will say is that empathy has actually very little to do with emotions , And so if you have heard the word empathy and thought I'm not really touchy-feely or I don't really like , I don't do that , but you've thought I feel what other people feel all the time and that gets overwhelming , I want you to know that both of those things are incorrect . So there are definitely people that feel other people's energies for a whole host of reasons , usually due to trauma in some way , shape or form , But sometimes we're just hardwired to kind of get vibes . However , you can't feel what anyone else is feeling for a lot of reasons .

Speaker 3 2:41

One is that most emotions are kind of designed to last 90 seconds in their pure form , and most of us feel six to seven emotions about a thing in rapid succession . A lot of us can't express what we're feeling in real ways at any given moment . Language is elastic . What I mean by sad could be different to what you mean by sad . And then , finally , we're all different people with different contexts . You're not a mind reader and you're not in someone else's life . So I want to free you from any responsibility that you have been given to feel what other people feel and to know what other people are feeling .

Speaker 3 3:19

Instead , what I'd like to invite you to is the concept of understanding other people's contexts , so you can understand people without agreeing with them . You can understand them without being anything like them . You can understand them and still completely think they are . You know cuckoo bananas . You can understand them and gain a deeper appreciation and work with them even better . Understanding instead of assumptions is basically the core of empathy . So my partner and I have defined empathy as the consistent , intentional decision to choose understanding over assumptions for yourself and other people . Now that would that would include your kid , and I need to poke a slight hole in the statement that a parent always knows their kid best .

Speaker 1 4:14

Oh no , It's not actually necessarily true . Yeah , I believe that .

Speaker 3 4:19

You know the version of your kid that your kid lets you know . Mm , hmm , you know your version of your kid that you have created in your head , and there's reality somewhere in there . But you need to be open to the idea that you don't know everything about your kid , nor can you ever , honestly , nor should you ever , yeah , because your kid is their own person . So how do you cultivate that ? You ask more questions and make less assumptions .

Speaker 1 4:50

Active listening .

Speaker 3 4:52

Yeah , that's a huge part of it .

Speaker 1 4:53

Part of what we need to teach in communication . Yeah , i love that . you said that , because I was just in a previous podcast and we continuing themes I swear it's . you know they come into my life . continuing things into the opposite people that never know each other . continuing themes I love it , and one of the things we're talking about is that expectation that your child is not like you . You aren't raising a mini me , a second you . I'm not going into this world . My child won't have the same experiences that I did in 1982 . There's just no way that can happen And it's so important that we give our kids that individuality .

Speaker 1 5:34

They have their own space . that makes them feel empowered , it makes them feel unique and that they have they're not trying to . Oh , i have to be a football player because dad wants me to be . I have to be the singer because mom was a singer and so she really wants me to be a singer . Those kinds of things are great skills if your kids have interest in them , to help them with . But you need to just let go of the ego the moment you see their little baby faces and realize this is an individual human being . This isn't my entity that I have control over , from 18 years on .

Speaker 3 6:11

Right , yeah , and like most parents you know , they say I really just want my kid to be happy , but where the trip falls is the definitions of happiness , and so I'd also invite people to be flexible on what happiness means . I used to tell parents and I actually just had this conversation with some colleagues a little while ago If your kid knows they're loved in the core of their being , the kid knows they're loved , we can fix everything else . Everything else is available therapeutically or medicationally . A child not feeling loved at all ever is a real rough pill to overcome . You can overcome just about anything else with enough want and resources and everything else . But if you're a parent listening to this show , my guess is that you've got a lot of resources on some level . You either have financial or emotional ones to be able to provide a way for your kid to ultimately know that they're loved And what their happiness is going to be is different than yours .

Speaker 3 7:16

I study generations for a living . We do a lot of work on Gen Z and Gen Alpha right now , which are the two . Gen Z is like mid-teenagers to early 20s , alpha is everybody below that And the world is completely different than you can even begin to fathom . And there's a small thing , as I remind millennials none of us have ever been through an active shooter drill in our lives as a child , and every single one of our children will go through one at least once a year their whole lives . If they're American , and that's a real like , we've essentially told kids they're not safe at school And they're not safe anywhere . And so how do you communicate to them that they're safe with you ? And part of that is not just physical safety . Part of it is when they say to you if your child was born a boy and they want to wear a dress , then you get excited that they're going to wear a dress . They're emotionally safe with you . You are a Christian and they're into exploring crystals Cool , you know . Help them learn what crystals are ethically sourced and which ones aren't , and like give them space . Give them space And remember that what causes you joy might not be what causes them joy , and everybody has to make their own mistakes as well .

Speaker 3 8:32

But they're going to have a different cultural understanding of money . They understand education differently . They understand they understand as well , especially teenagers and in the United States , that the way the US works isn't necessarily the best , and a lot of other generations were raised with a lot of American exceptionalism . Like we are the tits and everybody else sucks , and these kids don't , by and large , feel that they there's a lot more . Well , why can't we have universal health care ? Well , why can't we have gun control ? Why ? Why is everyone here so obsessed with abortion ? Like , come on , like there's a lot of , or there's also kids that are deeply concerned for the soul of America , because they listen to a lot of adults telling them to be deeply concerned for the soul of America . So we're seeing a lot more .

Speaker 3 9:22

God bless their little hormonal bodies . They have to handle a lot more . They've been forced to be adults but never taught how to be adults , and so give them some space and be like it's . This is so hard . I envy none of you for doing this . But here's what I promise Your kid knows they're loved .

Speaker 3 9:42

You're doing a great job . I love it . At the end of the day , that's it . Your job is to love them . You're going to screw up loving them . You're going to screw up providing for them . A lot of love is about patterns . Trust is about patterns . So you blew the call last week . So you blew the call a lot in 1997 . Okay , we deal in humanity with patterns . That's how we build trust . So if your kid can trust that they're loved , you've built that pattern , which then means when you do something boneheaded or you hurt them deeply , out of how you define love , you've equipped them to potentially ask more questions about you . So my mom says she loves me And I know she loves me , but this thing that she just told me to do isn't loving me . So , especially for teenagers , hopefully you've done something where they can then go what the hell , why do you want me to do this ? This doesn't feel right to me And you guys can work with that . But you know , as my parents always said , parenting is a verb .

Speaker 1 11:01

It's always an inaction , isn't it Always an action ?

Speaker 3 11:04

I am turning 40 this year and I spent an hour on the phone with my mother this morning , So she will be my mother until I draw my last breath . And it's yeah , it's a contact sport .

Speaker 1 11:17

Isn't that the truth ? And you know our relationships that we build with our children . Let's just start there And the best we can do is , you know , by showing them that we care about their interests , showing them we care about their emotions and doing more of the kind of letting how did it go ? Telling them what their emotions are when they're little ? when you see them , oh , you're happy doing this in play . It looks like you feel happy right now . It looks like you seem so mad . Wow , that looks so frustrating . Wow , you really feel frustrated about that . And I love the way that we were talking back and forth about how to because they are having all of these emotions And , like you said , they're in the succession that they are so quickly happening . Giving them an identification for those emotions , giving them the backup tools for those emotions So important . How do we start to do that with our kids ?

Speaker 3 12:21

Well , i think one of the first things to do is the work in and of yourself that emotions are value neutral . So fear is not bad , anger is not bad , joy is not good , necessarily . Feelings are value neutral . What you do with them is what's different . So , like I was actually just talking to a friend who has a young child who's about to start doing lockdown drills And he was saying , like I'm really scared , mommy , whenever we do this , and so she said what do I say back ?

Speaker 3 12:50

And you know she'd been . She ran me through everything else she tried . And I said well , what if you just acknowledge that fear isn't bad ? Like what if you say you know , fear is a good thing because it's a reminder of how much you love people . It's a reminder of how much this matters .

Speaker 3 13:06

So what do we do with our fear ? When we're scared , we pray to the angels or we count our fingers or like , what do you do ? So when they're really little , like when they're able to start cognitively understanding these things , two , three , four , you do what you said you identify them And they start to get a little older , five , six , seven , and you start to teach them what to do with them . Eight , nine , 10 on , it goes that way . I mean , there's so many like my niece is three and I'm watching so much of like she just has so much in her tiny little body that her tiny little body can't handle . And you know , i teach executives and things like that how to handle employees and I'll say , okay , but how many of your employees are still four ? Fundamentally , like you want to make fun of kids , but like , fundamentally there's parts of us , like , if you talk to most humans . Who we were at 14 is some part of who we are still now , and that's the same . The way you were taught to handle emotions in your household is the way you're going to handle them as an adult without therapeutic intervention . Yeah , so all of that is kind of what it looks like , but I really like telling them , giving them options with what to do , especially for girls in puberty , as they start to handle hormones And they start to not . You know , a lot of us a lot of us girls were like pretty ashamed at our outbursts or we didn't know what to do , or we're so used to being mocked for them , drama queen , right .

Speaker 3 14:39

We're drama queens . we're dramatic , we're all those

Parenting and Emotions

Speaker 3 14:42

things . If you are raising a daughter , i would encourage you to get rid of the word dramatic from your vocal 100% . Yes , because they're not . They just feel a lot of things , and your sons feel them too , by the way , but they're just taught to never share them with you . So they've been taught for years . Hopefully , because we don't ? Yeah , they've been taught for years that boys don't have emotions . No , boys are incredibly emotional . The only emotion they're often allowed to show is anger . Yeah .

Speaker 3 15:07

Men are incredibly emotional . Turn on any news channel at night and watch men . They are incredibly emotional , but they've been taught that the only one that they can show is fear , and fear is anger and outrage . So all that to say , a huge part of parenting , i think , is giving tools . This is the reality . This is how you handle it . This is what I think you're feeling .

Speaker 3 15:31

Is that true ? I mean , obviously , you can't ask a three-year-old , but you can ask a 12-year-old . Yeah , is that true ? How can I help you ? What do you want me to do about it ? And I'll say one of your questions you asked me at the beginning was how do we help our kids build empathy ? And this is a way to build it for themselves , to understand that their emotions aren't bad , that what they're feeling has , even if it doesn't have an answer , it has an explanation . They're not weird or broken or different from their friends . They are like here is how we handle it , and then there's other ways to help them build it with other people . But I think this conversation about emotions is . I want to point out that this is one of the ways to help them with curiosity about themselves .

Speaker 1 16:17

Yeah , I love that . Well , and I do . I have an 11-year-old and we are going through the throes of poverty and have already started an administration . Bless her heart . I don't think she'll be listening to this podcast , But it's so .

Speaker 3 16:34

It's not a shameful thing 50% of the population does it , whether we want to or not .

Speaker 1 16:38

Absolutely Not a shameful thing at all , just out of her own privacy and embarrassment that it may cause . I apologize there , but no , but it's so important right now . That number one I see that she doesn't know how to go through all of these emotions . These are all things coming up confusing her , making her react and want to stomp her , slam doors and all kind of the things that I don't react like that , but she feels like she has to control her emotions in that way , and so we're definitely trying to offer options and let her know that all of those things are OK And I'm really grateful that right now , going through these moments even though it's only just began and we're only just learning of the triggers that are the week before and such as things And I'm really starting to see some patterns emerge , as we were talking about patterns in that .

Speaker 1 17:42

Ok , as soon as I notice this , i'm going to offer her a little bit of extra time , i'm going to offer her a little bit of maybe a pamper And I'm going to put some things out so that I can help her to understand that all of these things are OK . She's , like you said , embarrassed , ashamed that she's having these feelings upset when she has the outbursts and has to come back and to apologize , and we're just saying you're human . These are lessons we're learning together on this road , like we've never been in this situation until right , this moment , together , and we're going to figure it out hand in hand . Or you don't want me to touch you ? Fine , i'll stand across the bridge .

Speaker 3 18:23

Exactly , you're on that side . Yeah , i love that . I think so much of parenting is just reminding yourself that no one gets it perfect . Yeah , yeah . And I have seen and loved and worked with thousands of teenagers in eight different countries Wow , and what I can tell you at the core of my being is that every kid is a kid . I don't care if that teenager now they've got some nonsense that they have to deal with in different places , but fundamentally , every kid wants to be seen , heard and understood . Every adult wants to be seen , heard and understood Absolutely . So you never look at a kid in the middle of anything and go . I know just how you feel because you never say that to another person full stop , because that's just going to make people on a throat punch . you So you don't say I know how you feel . You say that is obviously a lot And I'm so sorry . How can I help ?

Speaker 1 19:25

Definitely . How can I help ? I might have to remember that I don't know if I say that , but that's like I don't know . Maybe I'm going to have to check my conversations and make sure I'm not saying I know how you feel .

Speaker 3 19:36

It's super , we were always taught to say it . We've always been taught to say it , and it's something I'm training as a social worker as well , and I remember I was taught to say that in some therapeutic interventions as a way to build rapport .

Speaker 3 19:53

The older I got and I spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland , which is an incredible incubator in understanding but not agreeing an incredible little incubator . So here is absolutely no way . I know how anyone feels And there were times I'd be talking to a friend from there , or even honestly I married , my husband is from there And we would be talking , And his childhood included Army checkpoints . My childhood included trips to the Jersey Shore And we are also from different socioeconomic backgrounds at that time . We have different education . John went to university but left when he was . I mean he finished everything by 20 . Because it's a three year university program . So I was in university until 21 , and then I have three postgraduate degrees . So we've got all this different stuff And so .

Speaker 3 20:49

But it was easy for us to look at each other when we were far away from our parents and say I know just how you feel And the more we did it in our marriage , the more I was just like you know f-ing idea how I feel . Our relationships with our dads are totally different . The expectations of our family are totally different . You've no , when you lived overseas you were in your 20s and there were four other kids at home . I'm in my 30s and it's just my brother And it feels completely . All this kind of other stuff .

Speaker 3 21:17

Yeah , The longer I went on rants with him , the more I started asking other people and digging into the social science research as well . Like the more I just realized it's the dumbest thing any of us could say . Love it , Yeah , It's ridiculous . Yeah , And every single person , no matter where I am and I do a presentation , I'm like if somebody looks at you and says , I know how you feel , how many of you internally want to throw it , punch them And like every hand goes up , I'm like , exactly , But like you know , it's offered in kindness . Yeah , But it's still bullshit , Right , Like it's still absolute crap . So what do we say instead ? I'm so sorry , That looks rough . I'm so sorry , That sounds terrible . Can I help ? Yeah , Do you need a hug ? Do you need a snack ? Do you need a nap ? Mm-hmm , Everything goes back to kindergarten . Do you need a hug , a snack , a nap , a time out ? How can ?

Speaker 1 22:11

I help you right now .

Speaker 3 22:12

Yeah , absolutely . And what can I do ? And that's walking alongside anybody , from people like big enough , as huge traumas , as like assault and cancer and war , to tiny traumas Like you know , i couldn't go to prom because of COVID Or you know things that other people look at and be like , just get over it . Those are still traumas And they still need people to hold them with love and compassion . I'm so sorry That sounds so rough . I know when something like that happened to me it was real hard . How can I help ?

Speaker 1 22:47

Yeah , definitely , and I like it that you said that , because it's okay to share your own experiences If you've been down a similar path . That someone and say or maybe this is you know something I learned when I was went through this . But I love how you validate what they're feeling , not by knowing yourself and being the all knowing . I love that , because no more , right , no more . I mean , i'm not sure if I'm going to be the all knowing of people's feelings . Lots of lessons learned today , but , moving forward , i just love the fact that . Yeah , it was rough , or maybe you know . Here's what I did when this happened to me And I hope it works for you . If you need any other advice or help , you know , let me know Or go to Kristen please , Here's her number

Building Empathy Through Connection

Speaker 1 23:37

.

Speaker 3 23:37

I mean the natural tendency for humans is to center ourselves and other people's pain And we're terrible at sitting with the pain of others and we want that pain to go away . So if we just insert ourselves into it and make it all about us , it's more comfortable Interesting . So it's an intentional discipline to sit with somebody and say I'm so sorry , that sounds so rough . How can I help ? Because , especially in the moment of trauma , like if you're fresh and they're sharing this with you fresh , your kid has just come home from school , when they've been bullied , it's fresh .

Speaker 3 24:10

Almost nobody wants advice or solutions . Very few folks want . All they want to know is that they're not crazy for being hurt . They want to be , they want to be validated in their pain And it doesn't matter if you think their pain is nonsense . It doesn't matter if you think they should get over it . I don't care what you feel about their pain . Your job as a fellow human and your job as an intentional parent is to say I'm so sorry , that sounds so hard . What do you need right now ?

Speaker 3 24:38

I'm so sorry , i'm so sorry , i'm so sorry , i'm so sorry , i'm so sorry , i'm so sorry .

Speaker 3 24:45

And if they say , i don't know , offer a snack , a nap , a hug , offer some kindergarten principles Perfect . One of the things I always tell my employees is do you need to go wash your face ? Oh , i tell my husband do you want to go take a shower , like , do anything that connects you back to your body A hug , a nap , a snack , a shower , a walk ? Do you need to go feel sunshine on your face ? Do you need to be left on your own ? Do you want to be distracted ? But don't offer those options unless they say I don't know what I want . Teenagers often want something for about 10 minutes and then they want something else for another 30 and then they want something else for 10 minutes . Ride the wave .

Speaker 3 25:26

Ride the wave And remember you are a cucumber with complicated emotions . You need sunshine and water . So , when everything feels too overwhelming , you need sunshine and water .

Speaker 1 25:38

Yeah , i think that is so important . I was reading a journal the other day and it was talking about the importance of reconnecting and with nature and how . You know just that , even 15 minutes off your phones , off of all electronics , and reconnecting taking a walk , sitting in the sun , going out and petting your dog outside and putting your hand in the grass that reconnection to reset all of the electrical , you know things that are going on attached to the electronics , attached to the lights , attached to the everything I love to offer that time too , when my kids are feeling overwhelmed , let's just like let's go through rocks in the canal , like , if you're upset , let's go through rocks and some water . Okay , and it's always , you know , ends up with laughter and like skipping around and having such a better time looking for bugs , whatever it consists of , It always brings us back to who we are instead of this , sometimes you gotta do visceral stuff .

Speaker 3 26:39

The number of times I have like burned ex-boyfriends photos with my friends Like you gotta do visceral stuff .

Speaker 1 26:44

Yeah , so true , absolutely .

Speaker 3 26:47

I'm mindful of the question about how to build empathy in your kids for others And I want to give my three quick tips because I think that hopefully this can give you some tactile things to do . Love it , Love it .

Teaching Kids About Other Cultures

Speaker 3 27:01

So if you live in a city that has food that is not your culture , teach them to eat it . I am not somebody who believes that picky eaters are born . I believe they are often made outside of tack like textural things that people need for neurodivergence . Swappedmancom That's a different ball game .

Speaker 1 27:22

Amen I have not .

Speaker 3 27:24

A neurodivergence is real and we need more research and more support for it . But there's a lot of kids that are picky for other reasons . Even if they are and they think it's weird , make them take two bites , but go to the restaurant . Don't do takeout . Go to the restaurant . Look around and teach them to ask questions about the decor . Whenever you go to a lot of Asian restaurants there's paintings of their culture . Ask them about it . So that's simple . Teach them to eat food that you didn't grow up with . The next one is if you live in a city with cultural festivals , put them on your calendar . Teach them that Greek people are not in something just in books , that Muslims are not this . We just had Nauras , which is the Persian New Year . If you live in a place with a lot of people from Iran , you might have had a public Persian New Year celebration . Food's delicious . Go to those .

Speaker 3 28:22

Another is to find age-appropriate media from other countries . So obviously the one that everybody's watching right now is Bluie . So Bluie is from Australia . What does Australia mean ? Can you find it on the map ? Do we want to look up something about Australia ? Do you know that they have kangaroos in Australia ? What's a kangaroo , these are kind of things .

Speaker 3 28:46

Then , as they get older , especially if you've got teenagers , i want to let you know that nothing is too hard for them to handle . They live in a hellscape you don't understand . So a lot of your kids may already be aware of some stuff that you think , oh , they shouldn't be aware of . That They are . They have phones . Oh yeah , they know . So there's a great documentary If your kid has started menstruating . It's called Period End of Sentence And it's about menstrual inequality in India . And then it's really easy to make that jump to menstrual inequality in America And say do you know that a lot of girls have to skip school because they don't get tampons and pads ?

Speaker 3 29:27

And then say , what are we going to do about it ? Do you want to do a fundraiser ? You know , when women go to domestic violence shelters , they often have to flee without that stuff . What do you say ? we call around and we go and get 20 bucks worth of stuff and donate it . There's tiny ways to just make them think of people who aren't them . Start with food . Then start with experiences they've had . If your kid is super interested in a sport , find what that sport looks like in other countries . If your kid plays baseball , why don't you look up the other countries that were in the world baseball classic and find out what baseball looks like there ? Do they really love baseball ? Then let's talk about cricket . Do they really love American football ? Do you know that Canadian football has whole separate rules ? What if we go and learn those ? Find something they like , remind them that the whole world likes it too , and then go start there and go from there , and that counts for you too .

Speaker 3 30:22

If you don't know anyone who is physically disabled , there's a great documentary called Crip Camp . It's on Netflix . It'll teach you all about the history of the ADA . Take a category of folks , a country you don't know a lot about , a food group you're unfamiliar with . Do some Googling . Find a thing our documentary , two hours , a 10 minute YouTube clip , i don't care . Start somewhere . Your kids' classes are going to be more multicultural than yours ever will be . No matter where you live in this country , they're going to hear languages that you didn't even know exist . Embrace that with them . Get excited and do some Googling with them .

Speaker 1 31:02

That is so true And those are wonderful exercises to really help to concrete those relationships , to let them know yeah , not only do I love you and I'm showing you , but I'm also interested in you And I want to show you my interest in . let us do this together and kind of have a . I think that's really fantastic family advice for folks .

Speaker 3 31:27

Yeah , music's an easy one . Your kids in a choir . They're singing in Latin . There might be singing in Hebrew , they might be singing in Chinese . Music's an easy one . Find something , yes , definitely . So find something somewhere and use it as the connection point , and then don't be surprised if they say , yes , i have a friend online from Latvia .

Speaker 1 31:46

Yeah , no , is that the truth ?

Speaker 3 31:49

And then I'll say my parting comment is don't refer to online friends as fake friends . They don't have online friends and real friends . Yeah . They have online friends and offline friends . Yeah .

Speaker 3 32:03

Change that really quickly . It's a small difference , but a lot of us grew up online . I've made entire friends on AOL Instant Messenger that I've never met in real life Real life . Yeah , hear me , i've made friends on AOL Instant Messenger I've never met offline , but they are just as real to me as people I met in school Absolutely . So shift that really quick in your vocabulary . Your kids have online friends and offline . They don't have fake life in real life .

Speaker 1 32:31

I like that Great advice .

Invitation for Future Collaboration

Speaker 1 32:34

Kristen , it's been such a pleasure to have you on today And I'd love to invite you back to do another one .

Speaker 3 32:41

I'm happy to chat Yeah .

Speaker 1 32:42

So that was really fantastic . Before we go , let us know where we can find you and everybody who wants to reach out to you social media websites , all that good stuff .

Speaker 3 32:51

So my company is called Abbey Research . It's ABBE research And we are at ABBE research on everywhere you are . We are too . And then our website is argooddoctorscom Fantastic .

Speaker 1 33:07

And I'll make sure there was all in the show notes so that nobody skipped a beat and trying to find you or anything and get rid of you . It's been such a pleasure to have you on today And I hope we can stay in touch so that I can reach out when I'm in dire need from teenage ism Right .

Speaker 3 33:24

For sure I'm here for whatever you need .

Speaker 1 33:27

Excellent . Well , you have a great day and we'll talk to you soon . You too .