The Life of a Rule Follower with Guest Dale Rubury

“How can my child be a rule follower if they always say no to the family rules?” Leslie often catches parents off guard by suggesting that their child may actually be a rule follower. In this episode, Leslie has a conversation with her daughter Dale about what it’s like to grow up as a rule follower. In this episode Leslie and Dale explore the many traits that are often associated with the rule-following child such as perfectionism and intense focus on fairness. Assessing whether you or your child is a rule-follower may not be so obvious but may be critically important to understanding their behavior and ways of thinking. This conversation pulls back the curtain on what really goes on in the mind of the rule-following child.

Time Stamps

• 2:40 The importance of knowing your child and knowing what it means to be a rule follower
• 3:37 What “rule-followers” get out of following the rules
• 10:07 Being careful not to reinforce the child’s need to do everything perfectly
• 10:36 Helping your children practice being uncomfortable
• 17:56 The need for flexible thinking
• 26:12 Keep an eye out for when a child has an obsession with fairness
• 29:12 Advice for parents who have children who are rigid rule followers

Show Note Links:

• Free virtual Q&A with Leslie August 21st, 8 PM EST
• “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol Dweck

Leslie-ism: Flexible thinking takes practice.

For a full transcript of this episode and more information about the host visit https://lesliecohenrubury.com/podcasts/ . You can also follow Leslie’s work on Facebook,  Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Join the conversation with your own questions and parenting experiences.

Credits: Is My Child a Monster? is produced by Alletta Cooper, AJ Moultrié, Camila Salazar, and Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Theme music is by L-Ray Music. Graphics and Website Design by Brien O’Reilly. Transcriptions by Eric Rubury. A special thanks to everyone who contributes their wisdom and support to make this possible.

Transcript

[Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]

0:02  Dale:  You would be parking in a spot that maybe said, “No parking.” But you were just trying to pick somebody up for five minutes. So, something pretty small and that wasn't going to cause any harm. But for me, it didn't matter—that sign says, “No parking.” We should not be here.

0:21  Leslie Cohen-Rubury:  That's my daughter Dale, talking about how stressful it was growing up with me, the mom who didn't follow all the rules; when in her mind, every rule needed to be followed. There can be a huge disconnect between the parent and the child when one is a rule follower and the other isn't.

I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury, and this is Is My Child A Monster?, a parenting therapy podcast where you get to listen in as real parents and caregivers share their trials and tribulations. And no, your child is not a monster. 

You may be thinking, “My child's not a rule follower. They don't listen to anything I say.” But what you might not see is they have a very strong internal sense of right and wrong. What you might see instead is a child who looks like they are very controlling, maybe a perfectionist or even very defiant. Parents need to shift their perspective to see what's at the root of those behaviors, which is a rigid set of rules the child is following that may not be clear to you. 

Getting inside your child's head to understand them is so critical, no matter who your child is. So, I'm delighted to have my rule-following daughter, Dale Rubury, here to share with us what it was like in her mind growing up, and how she continues to grow as a flexible thinker in adulthood. Dale is currently enrolled in a graduate program to become a physical therapy assistant, and I'm so thrilled to welcome her back to the show.

As a reminder, though I am a licensed clinical social worker, this show is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapeutic intervention. So let's begin. 

2:19  Leslie:  Hi, Dale.

2:20  Dale:  Hey, Mom. How's it going?

2:22  Leslie:  Good, thank you, sweetie. I'm so glad you're here, because in today's discussion with you, I would love to bring up something that I have noticed recently, and in the past working with the families, which is this quality in children to be rule followers. And before I ask you about that, the thing that I've noticed—the thing that's important to me—is making sure parents on this podcast understand who their child is. And so paying special attention to this one quality, this one quality of being a rule follower, I think is really important. Now, you tell me why I invited you here.

3:08  Dale:  Because I am an excellent rule follower, and I say that knowing that I've been like that since I was a kid. Also, taking some some pride in it, but also knowing that it has affected my life in a lot of ways, not all the ways that are positive. But yeah, I know that ever since I was a kid, I love rules. Or more so, I think I love to follow rules. It gives me comfort and order. So, I like having a clear guideline of how to go about doing something, knowing how to act or behave or do something well, and rules give me that. And a lot of the rules are unspoken rules in my head. They're not always the rules of—although a lot of them are still rules of our society—but a lot of them are unspoken rules in my head, which I know can present a problem to those around me who may not have those rules in their head..

4:11  Leslie:  Okay, so let's stop there, because I think…how did I figure out that you had these rules in your heads? And how do parents because that's exactly what's coming up on the podcast, is parents say, “Oh no, she doesn't follow the rules. Because if she followed the rules, she would be cleaning up her room and she would be helping with the dishes, and she'd be doing the chores and doing what I'm asking her to do.” And you were that kid—you didn't… you didn't do the dishes, you didn't do the follow that, you know, do the things that I asked all three of you kids to do. You didn't do it, but yet you are a rule follower. So help me understand that complete dichotomy.

4:55  Dale:  So I think it follows along with that kind of opposing behaviors that you've also seen with the kids in your podcast; where outside of the family, at school or with friends, they're the best behaved kid. And that was exactly who I was. I was the perfect student. I was the kid who got put with the difficult students to help them. But yeah, at home, I was that person who…that kid who didn't want to follow a lot of the family rules or the house rules, and I think that came down to a lot of the rules in my head being based around fairness. 

So it's not necessarily that I follow rules blindly. If I feel like a rule, whether it's a law, whether it's a societal rule or family rule, if I don't feel like it's fair, then I will push back against it. And for one reason or another, I think I felt that a lot of the family rules were unfair and so…or I didn't like them, or there was some other thing going on in my head, whether it was anxiety or something else, that made me not want to follow that rule. 

6:16  Leslie:  I want to back up a second. I want to point out that you were actually born this way, that this is not because you were a problem child and this is your pathology, or there's something wrong, or you're broken. But that I needed to understand, and I needed to see that this is the way your brain worked. As a matter of fact, one way this showed up is how literal you hear things. So I remember—I'm not a literal person, I'm not the rule follower, but—I would say I'll be back in five minutes, and when I was back in four minutes or six minutes, that threw you off. 

6:56  Dale:  Yeah, I mean, time was—and is still—a big rule that I follow. And, like you were saying, with this literal sense, is I take time as an almost literal rule to follow. So that's exhausting. I mean, it works for me, because I show up on time a lot, and some people like that, but other times, most people I find don't follow time the way I do. I was going to a friend's graduation party, and she knew me well enough to text me a few hours before, and was like, “Dale, do not show up on time, because we will not be ready. So please do not show up on time.” It's funny because it's something people learn about me quick is, even something that, most people don't think of time as a rule. But my literalness is, “Okay, you told me to get there at 7 pm, so I'm going to get there at 7 pm or probably a few minutes before, so I don't break the rule and show up late.”

8:01  Leslie:  Well, that was evident from the time you were very, very young, and it led to—here's the next thing. So, there's the rule-following, the being literal, and then the next thing is being detail-oriented. So you needed to ask me 20 questions. It was a 20-question game constantly with you. If I said, “Okay, we're going to your aunt's house,” and then it was, “When? How?” Every question needed to be answered. Because maybe some of that anxiety of not wanting the unknown. But you needed to be able to make a rule and expectation that help you prepare and get you in order.

8:44  Dale:  Yeah. And I think even things like chores for me, certain chores I would push back on and not want to do. And I think you could even relate that to rule-following or just wanting to know the details so that I knew how to do a very good job, or probably more like a perfect job in my head. For example, like cleaning the bathroom, the guidelines to that felt very clear in my head, how to do it. It was a job that nobody else liked to do, but I was like, “I know how to do it. I know what to use to do it. I know what it should look like afterwards.” Whereas something like loading the dishwasher was a little more free form because there wasn't exact rules on how everything went. And so doing something like the dishes was more stressful to me because there wasn't as clear of rules to follow, I think. And so I pushed back against that chore.

9:39  Leslie:  You sure did. And that is what is so confusing to parents, because I have said many times that your child sounds like a rule follower. And they go, “They don't follow rules. They say ‘no’ all the time. They're always refusing.” And I do think it's really important to understand that it's what's going on in your head. 

And I think we need to check in with you regarding the bathroom. I don't know if you remember, you wouldn't remember this, but Dad said to me, when you were five years old or seven years old, cleaning the bathroom perfectly. He said, “This is great, she can clean the whole house.” And I went—I saw it, that neon light warning sign saying we reinforce and say, “Great job. Great job. You can keep doing it,” we'd actually be reinforcing this compulsive need to get it done perfectly. And the satisfaction, like you said, that it feels internally when you have everything in control. So one of the things I had to do is help you practice being uncomfortable. Remember, there's my line: learning to be comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. So dealing with the messiness of things—that wasn't easy.

10:49  Dale:  Yeah, and dealing with scenarios where it was easier to make a mistake because I didn't want to make a mistake, and so putting me in those situations where mistakes were likely. And I can imagine that that's a tricky balance, using your child's nuances or different behaviors, like rule following to, not your benefit, but to their benefit as well. So letting me do a chore I was good at like the bathroom, without taking it too far, like you're saying. And reinforcing a…not a behavior necessarily, but I guess a way of thinking that perfectionism that could actually kind of be harmful in the long run.

11:37  Leslie:  And now that we're fortunate to have little grandchildren—and you have a niece and nephew—there's something about what you're just talking about that made me think of seeing it in my grandchildren—your niece and nephew. And one time my grandson was…we were trying to go to the beach. And he was only four years old, but he went to a preschool, maybe even three years old. And in the preschool, they wore sandals as inside slippers. And his mom and dad were trying to put the shoes on him, and he kept refusing, absolutely refusing to put the shoes on so we could leave and go to the beach. So I said, no worries, let's grab the shoes. Let's get in the car, he doesn't need his shoes on. 

But then when we got to the parking lot to the beach, it was hot. He needed his sandals on. And I said to him, was there a rule that you're following about your shoes? I had no idea. And he said, “Yes, I wear these shoes in school, and I can only wear these shoes inside. These are my inside shoes,” he said. And once we discovered that, now we see the rule in his head and the need for flexibility. And so it was this perfect moment of: “Great, that is a rule for school. And now we're at the beach, and we have beach rules which say I need to wear sandals at the beach to keep my feet, protect my feet.” And so all of a sudden, I gave him a new rule, but that's because he was three. 

I wouldn't say the same thing to a five year old or nine year old. I'd say, “Oh, we need to practice our flexible thinking. I have special shoes in school, and I have shoes that…I can break that rule when I'm at the beach. So there's, I'm going to treat the child differently. For the three year old, I gave him permission to follow a new rule, and he was fine. Put the shoes right on, went right on the beach.

13:38  Dale:  Yeah, I think that highlights something that you often talk about on the podcast, which is, instead of first approaching a behavior like, “How do I fix it,” or something like that, it just go towards understanding—being the curious alien and just asking those questions. Because then once you ask that question of, “I have no idea what's going on in this child's head. If I were to apply my own thinking, it would make absolutely no sense why they don't want to put on sandals.” But like you explained, you just ask one, sometimes two questions at most, to get what's going on behind it, and then you're not fighting the behavior. You're just following their line of logic. 

Because to me, I'm like, “Yeah, that makes sense. If that was a rule, follow the rule.” So it's like, you uncovered the simple piece of logic as to why he was being—quote, unquote—defiant. And then you were able to, very easily, either give him a different piece of logic or permission as to why he wouldn't be breaking the rule if he was to wear those sandals. 

So I think it just goes back to that key concept of just always going towards being curious about what the child is telling you; just knowing that there's probably a huge piece of the puzzle that you're missing without asking those questions.

[Music: Flowerpot by Olexy]

15:17  Leslie:  Can you talk a little bit about the anxiety that you felt as a result of when you live in society and rules are being broken? First of all, let's get something clear: I am not a rule follower. I break rules. And I don't know if you remember what it was like for you to grow up with me? And what that fit like, because some parents are rule followers, and the child's a rule follower. And sometimes that brings a lot of tension, sometimes it brings a lot of understanding. What about you and I? 

15:48  Dale:  I mean, it is still a fit that I think we're working on. [Laughter] I don't think it's necessarily disappeared, because I still like following rules, and you still like breaking them. But yeah, I mean, as a kid, I saw you break a lot of rules, whether it was we were on a hike somewhere, and then there was a sign that said, “No trespassing.” To me, that's a very clear rule of, Do not walk any further, turn around. And you often would be like, “No, no, we're just walking on a path. We're not doing anything wrong. It's okay to walk on this land.” And as a worst case scenario person, of course, I'm thinking, “Okay, we might get shot, or we might get the police called on us,” and spiraling out, where the anxiety comes in about all these things that could happen if I do break the rules. So it's not just about, “Oh, I just don't want to break a rule,” in a vacuum; it's “I don't want to break a rule because of consequences that my brain likes to spiral out about.”

16:47  Leslie:  And let's be clear, I also thought about consequences and I made a discerning decision. So I'm not recommending people go and break rules that keep us safe. I'm talking about things that looked to you like, “Oh my God. How can we break a rule?” And I was discerning as an adult, “This is safe.”

17:07  Dale: Yes. To be fair, you never put us in harm's way at all. But in my mind, in my little mind, terrifying, or even like you'll park in a spot you're not supposed to, like, with the car. But never doing anything disrespectful. You would never park in a handicap parking spot and being like, “Oh no, this is okay. “You would be parking like, in a spot that maybe said “No parking,” but you were just trying to pick somebody up for five minutes, or you just had to run into a house and drop something off. So something pretty small, and that wasn't going to cause any harm. But for me, it didn't matter how small it was. It was: that sign says, “No parking.” We should not be here, kind of thing.

17:55  Leslie:  So that shows us the need for flexible thinking, because there's times when a red light is broken, right? There are times and I have no problem saying, “Oh, you know what? This red light is broken, or the arm for the train station is down and won't go up, and I have discerned that it's broken and not safety.” And there are times where we need to have the ability to think differently. And I can imagine that's exhausting for you. 

18:25  Dale:  It definitely takes probably a little bit more brain power than it does for you who just goes through those quick steps of, “Is this safe? Is this okay? Is it actually broken?” Where the extreme of that would be sitting at a broken red light for 30 minutes. Now, I think because you did do a good job of teaching me, and not just teaching me, but role modeling, showing me that being flexible and breaking those rules sometimes didn't put us in danger. It showed me that is safe you can break rules safely. You can break rules in a way that isn't harming yourself or others. 

And so now, like as an adult, if I was stuck at a red light, I would probably stay there for a bit longer than you would, and I'd also probably get some external validation by, like, looking around at other drivers and being like, “Should we go? Are we okay?” But I would eventually go. So although that fit made it difficult, I think for me, a lot of times, I think it was a positive thing to have you as a rule-breaking role model to show me how it can be done safely, conscientiously; because I never thought you were a bad person doing it. I thought it was scary, but I never thought you were a bad person. 

And I think for me, rule following is a lot about morals and right or wrong and being a good person and being a moral person. So, it did help that you did it all morally because I think it slowly stuck in my brain that, “Okay, these things don't make her a bad person.”

20:10  Leslie:  So that gets us into that right and wrong. It's really important, and it was confusing to you as a child. But I think as you're describing yourself, you've learned through experience. You've learned through modeling and you've learned through hard work on yourself how to understand to be more flexible, to give yourself permission to make mistakes. That was one we did. 

But I have one story. Do you remember you were in school—I would say you were in sixth or seventh grade, maybe fifth, sixth or seventh grade, somewhere around there—and your class went on a field trip downtown into the little city. And you're walking around the town, and some of your classmates got mischievous, and they slid down the pole, or they did things that were really getting a little bit mischievous. And I remember you coming home and you were angry or upset. And I said, “Are you upset because they were breaking the rules?” “No, because I can't break the rules.”

21:16  Dale:  Yes, that was…definitely, I remember that…

21:22  Leslie:  And you looked at them and said, “They were having more fun than me.” So we want you to have fun. We want you to be who you are. We want you to celebrate who you are. But if it's not effective, or sitting at a light for 30 minutes, or if it's not helping you enjoy life. How do we balance this part of who you are, just the way you were born, and  learning to develop some new skills, like flexible thinking, like finding other options, things like that. 

21:56  Dale:  I think it goes into when you've talked about when a trait or a characteristic of yourself works for you and when it doesn't work for you. So in this case, when it works for me is, honestly, sometimes with safety. Every job I've ever worked at, I've been called the safety officer. I've just been given that title, and I think in some ways it's good, because when I work construction, it helped my coworkers. And I didn't make it a rule for them, but I just encouraged them that it was a good idea to do basic stuff like wearing safety glasses when you used a table saw, or wearing a mask when you were sanding for hours on end. And over time, they actually picked up on those habits, even by just seeing me do it religiously. 

And so I think that was a good thing, because it probably, hopefully, helped protect their eyes or their lungs from all the dusting, the sand. So I think that's a time when it works. But a lot of times it doesn't work for me. It inhibits me when it comes to creativity, stuff, when it comes to art, because leading back to stuff like perfectionism. And even in my head, and it doesn't come out as this specific, conscious thought, but that there are rules in art, or it has to look a certain way, or it has to follow this way. And a lot of art, if not all art, shouldn't be followed like that. 

And so making a mistake, where a lot of people would say, “Oh, there's no mistakes,” like Bob Ross, there's no mistakes, just happy accidents—that's a hard thing for me to get past in doing art, that there are no mistakes. I can just create art freely. And so that's where I say it doesn't work for me. And good exposure for me is literally just doing some kind of art that's very free form, like doing watercolors and painting something abstract to me. That's exposure therapy, because it's anxiety-producing. Even just thinking about it, I'm like, “What am I going to make? What's it going to look like?” instead of just going with it.

24:13  Leslie:  So, there is some co-morbidity. There are things that go along with being a rule follower, maybe the moralistic lens of dichotomous right-and-wrong. Rigid thinking—we didn't talk about that—but it can become rigid, detail-oriented. Perfectionism. OCD. Oh, one more story. What did you do at Halloween? Every year was a big production. You got all your candy…

24:43  Dale:  Oh yeah, and then I would ration it and save it. Even as a kid, I would ration my candy—very disciplined. So that even by next year I would still have some, because I never wanted to be without it.

24:59  Leslie:  Those were the internal rules. I'm telling you, it's a very complex system when you look into the mind of a child whose brain is just born this way. This is the way they are. They're rule followers. And there are, as you said, there are things that work really beautifully and well, so you're not broken. You've been living with yourself, learning about yourself, and it's a work in progress. 

And I'm glad to hear that my being different, even though that fit definitely created some conflict for us at times, and we had to work it out. We had to understand how we both spoke and how we heard each other. And respecting each other—certainly I didn't expect that from you as a child, but I put that on myself to respect you and the way you showed up in the world without any kind of blame or right and wrong. 

Is there anything else you want to add to parents about raising a child who is so rule-oriented, detail-oriented, has a brain that is just showing up in this way?

26:09  Dale:  I'd say just one other thing is to keep an eye out for when there seems like almost an obsession with fairness. I think an obsession with fairness can be a huge indicator of rule-following. I think that's probably one of the biggest ones that I took very literally. And often your kind of house rules were created for equity instead of equality. 

But because I understood fairness to be just simply equality, that was really hard for me, and I would interpret that as unfairness and really push back. And so I think just for parents to be on the lookout for kids who need things to be fair. I think that, as you said, it will link to the rigid thinking, and it will make it hard for the kid to get past that. But just knowing that it goes back to how their brain works, and trying to work with them within that understanding.

27:18  Leslie:  Yes: work with them, accept them for who they are. And yes, in order for your life to have a quality that you want, you're going to need to develop those areas that are not naturally your strengths. So, flexible thinking, dialectic thinking—really being able to expand your thinking and your options and the way you sometimes function when it's not working for you. 

But that doesn't have to happen all before you're 18. As a matter of fact, that equality, that fairness issue, I said to myself very early on, “You know what? That's not going to be my problem to solve. She's going to figure this out, and she has a lifetime to figure this out.” So when we don't have pressure in terms of giving children time, that's really, really important. I think that's really important.

28:08  Dale:  So one other rule I know I followed very literally and rigidly was the rule of not to lie, always tell the truth. And we could go into examples of how that works for me, how it doesn't. Because obviously I think that one does work for me a lot, but also taking any behavior, even a quote, unquote good behavior, to an extreme, can be problematic; more so because it leads into and reinforces that rigid thinking. And so I've had not only you, but multiple other therapists tell me that I literally need to learn how to lie. And not because lying is a good thing, not because they were trying to advocate for that, but because they were trying to advocate for flexible thinking. So other than because I don't think that's necessarily the best advice is, “Oh, just start lying,” what advice would you give to parents, or strategies or skills to practice for their kid who is that rigid rule follower? 

29:12  Leslie:  One, stop trying to change them. Two, understand who they are. But on a practical level, practice, practice, practice, practice, flexible thinking. So let's say you sit down to have a game with them, and they need to make the rule a certain way. Go ahead, let them have their rule and just say, “Hey, before we start the game with your rules, let's make up four other rules. Let's make up…” you know, and even if you don't play by your other rules and you let the child get his or her way with his rules or her rules, that's fine, but you've practiced the flexible thinking. 

So I would say, find opportunities. For example, be creative with, maybe, when they go out and they always wear a certain raincoat. “Well, do you want to bring an umbrella today and not wear a raincoat? Do you want to see how an umbrella works?” so that they experience not everything has to be done one way. I could take a walk with my umbrella and not wear a raincoat. It's pretty cool. Or I could wear a raincoat and not use my umbrella. So the idea of exposing your child to flexible thinking and options. 

And I might remind you that we played a game called, finding another interpretation. If something happened, I'd say, “Okay, everybody in the car, everybody in the house. Let's think of three or four other interpretations for that same scenario,” whether you came home from school and said someone was mean. So that five people around the table would have five different interpretations. And even if you're only thinking there's one way to think about this, we actually learn that, “Well, yes, you may think about this, but there are five other interpretations.” And we would play that as a game, or we would just practice it, and using that language of, let's practice flexible thinking, all of those things. 

So here's something I'm going to say. I put a lot of responsibility on parents to lead the way with their children. So it is not uncommon that parents who have children who have rigid thinking, black-and-white thinking, rule-following, detail-oriented, guess what? It may be coming from the parent themselves. They can often be that way, and I will say that the fit between two rule followers can be brutal, and I picked that word because it can be really hard. 

And so I am asking you parents to do the same work, to practice your flexible thinking, to try alternative solutions. When your child says, “Can we do it this way?”, even though that urge in you is to say, “No, we're doing it my way,” practice, “Hey, we can try it a different way. I'm going to practice being flexible. I'm going to try doing something different.” I highly recommend that, and it's good work. It's amazing for your child to see you doing that. And that really speaks to everybody's mental health. So I'm going to maybe end on that note. What do you think, Dale?

32:25  Dale:  I think we covered a lot about rule following. I mean, I have 50 other stories I could tell about it. And they continue as an adult, but it's definitely…I haven't stopped being a rule follower, but I've definitely been able to incorporate that flexible thinking that you taught me into my adult life. So there's more times where the rule following works for me than it not working for me.

32:51  Leslie:  Beautiful. Thank you for showing up and sharing. It really is helpful. 

32:58  Dale:  Thanks for having me, mom.

[Music: Acoustic Motivation by Coma-Media]

Leslie Cohen-Rubury:  We all want to feel safe and secure, and for some people, having a predictable, orderly life is the means to that end. After hearing Dale speak, can you now look at yourself and your children with fresh eyes to assess where, on the continuum, you or they fall from rigid thinking to flexible thinking? Rigid thinking can be tough on a relationship, whether it's a relationship with yourself or a relationship with someone else. 

So, if you've got a rigid thinker in the family, that's okay. There are strengths to that, like being detail-oriented and fighting for justice, and at the same time, you can practice flexible thinking. There's a great book called, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, by Carol Dweck, that explores these topics and gives examples of how to think more flexibly. Check out the show notes for a link to this book, as well as a video about flexible thinking.

[Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]

Next week, tune in for my first session with Claudia and Pedro, who are worried about whether their 16-year-old son's current behaviors are an indication that he won't be successful in life. It's a worry I hear from parents of children of all ages. 

You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget about my upcoming free virtual question and answer session on Wednesday, August 21 at 8 pm Eastern Time. Space is limited, and we're almost full. So visit ismychildamonster.com to register. The Is My Child A Monster? team is Alletta Cooper, AJ Moultrié, Camila Salazar, and me. Special thanks to Eric Rubury and Dale Rubury. Our theme music is by L-Ray Music. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Thanks so much for listening. And this week, keep in mind: flexible thinking takes practice. 

Transcribed by Eric Rubury