Stance of Curiosity
Child Psychologists Joelle vanLent and Gillian Boudreau tackle topics related to schooling in our modern times including navigating impossible expectations and the power of curiosity in education, empowering educators to redefine success, overcoming fear and shame and their effects on school communities with open dialogue, and balancing high demands with compassion and understanding.
Stance of Curiosity
Navigating Impossible Expectations: The Power of Curiosity in Education
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In which Joelle and Gillian think they are doing a dress rehearsal for the first episode but surprise themselves and the world by identifying a bit of a mission statement of their work and of this podcast thereby stumbling upon a real episode. The mission statement: To protect the “natural resources” of the bandwidth, emotional energy and creative thinking of children and adults in schools by addressing all that threatens slowing down and connecting to one another. They define the main threat to that as being a sense of urgency and being caught in an impossible web of “supposed tos” in modern schooling, and in particular the risk of personalizing the inability to do everything one is “supposed to” rather than locating that as a flaw in the system. They discuss the impact of fear on the brain, and the way that curiosity serves as an antidote to the closing down of possibility that fear tends to bring in. They also define some practical ways to use the stance of curiosity, in particular looking for questions in hard situations to connect, empathize and make sense of our own and others’ responses.
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Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/
Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/
Speaker Names
Gillian BoudreauHost
00:04
great, here we go all right all right, here we are doing probably a dress rehearsal for our first recording of stans of curiosity.
00:14
I'm come true a dream come true I am jillian boudreaux and I'm joelle vianlin and we are clinical psychologists who have mostly spent our careers in schools in the recent past and we're really excited to mostly get a chance to talk to each other and also get a chance to talk with all of you about what we're seeing in there and what the principles of psychology can tell us about what might be helpful.
Joelle vanLentHost
00:43
And the beauty of this podcast is that we used to be in the same corner of the country for a decade or so and collaborated as much as we possibly could, and now we're in opposite corners.
Gillian BoudreauHost
00:56
That's right.
Joelle vanLentHost
00:57
And and, seeing themes that are similar still.
Gillian BoudreauHost
01:03
Yeah, it turns out in that world. Yeah, it doesn't matter where you go, at least in our nation. I haven't yet had a chance to be in a lot of schools outside of the U? S, but yeah, I'm in Portland Oregon now. Um, one might or might not think that that would be a different set of variables school-wise than in Vermont where Joelle is and where I was, but it turns out that a lot of these are pretty universal and honestly also mirror what I saw and what I still do see when I consult in New York city. So we're all kind of in it together.
Joelle vanLentHost
01:33
Yeah, and I think that's the hope is to give some connection and strategies and ideas, but also like a very strong theme or thread of like. What people are experiencing is not necessarily unique to them. We have a shared experience of what it means to create a thriving school community for a group, for for a group of people that are beautifully diverse and beautifully varied in so many ways, and it's just an incredible place to work. And I feel like when I get disheartened or discouraged about things in the world, I know that all my professional energy goes toward the children and the families of a community, and so that has to mean that I'm putting that energy towards something productive, and so it's an incredible place to spend your professional time, and yet it just seems like it gets more complicated and harder every year in the past many years, like maybe at least for five years, I have felt like it can't get more complicated.
02:50
And then it does yes, it does this.
Gillian BoudreauHost
02:53
Yes, it does. There is a. Do you remember the band sublime? A little bit, a little bit, there's a. There's a sublime lyric that I remember from high school that used to resonate with me when, like it felt like the academics, academics, were getting harder. But now I think about it in schools and it just goes. It's getting harder and harder and harder each and every year and it is, and that's really intense, and it also feels like, you know, I think it is getting harder and harder each and every year. And also we are living in more and more let's call them historic and unprecedented times.
03:26
And sometimes, when I do this work, you know, I try to think to myself all right, well, is what I'm doing now going to be useful, right, if our society looks a lot different in like 10 years? Or, you know, is is what I'm doing now, you know, going to be helpful if folks are perhaps, you know, dealing with some turbulence at a certain point? And I think for me, I I get a lot of inspiration and a lot of sort of hope for the future from what I see going on in schools, right, and how there are amazing adults really still finding incredible ways right To create environments that will really help foster the development of kids. And I've realized that where I sort of see my role as things do get really intense is like I think of it, it sort of is protecting natural resources. And those natural resources are the children right who need to have their full bandwidth so that they can continue to have the ideas right that are going to be flexible and innovative and you know that are going to kind of help us get through, especially in the next like 20, 30 years.
04:39
So I also have been feeling really excited about the work we do in that way. It's sort of like, oh yeah, all I really know how to do is help adults relate to kids. But if I really focus on that then I can maybe help build sort of you know, in 20 years, what if we have a whole group of kids who have been really well supported by their adults, who you know may not have a lot of let's call it like drag on their psyche or their bandwidth to deal with from their school experience and you know who can really go forth and do whatever's going to be needed in 20 years?
Joelle vanLentHost
05:17
Yeah, absolutely.
05:19
I think about how a lot of what you and I try to do is almost protect the capacity of the adults and kids that are in the school together every day is try to protect an influence that would make them feel like they have to go faster, or that they have to do more, or that they can't pause to connect, or that they can't pause to connect, listen to each other, play, be in community with each other, and so it's almost like if you could just create some kind of a barrier from the ideas that are probably really good and helpful about like the curriculum and like what we should accomplish in the like all those things are really important but if you could create a barrier of like thoughtfulness for how we actually that translates into influencing how the flow of the day goes, and the pace and how much time we allot for various things and make sure that it's thoughtful if we're going to change any of that.
06:24
Like it's almost like when you just let them be together without influence. That wasn't really thought out. They just know, they know what kinds of conversations they need to have, they know what they need to do to work out problems and figure things out. And, like every time I talk about this, I think about one of the more powerful moments I had in a kindergarten classroom where I was observing a child and that child was just playing in an area and then there were two other children playing in that area and one child was sitting on the floor sobbing and another child was just sitting next to him with his hands in his lap and the teacher came over and said to the child who was sobbing what's wrong? And the child just kept sobbing and the child sitting next to that child said to the teacher he just needs to be sad right now.
07:24
Oh, I just got the teacher stopped and looked at me and I was like yeah, yeah. And so the teacher was like, okay, so she flitted on to the next person and they just, and the but the child sitting next to the child was just sitting, letting his friend be sad and not feeling like that needed to be explained or fixed or rushed, or or, and it just I I come back to that moment often at like the lesson from that child about it. Could we just be for a minute out about it? Could we just be for a minute? Because they, if we, if we, create a barrier around those children where they know instinctively that they just need to sit together and be sad and then, when the sad is out, they got up and started playing again yes like they know.
08:20
They do actually know, and and the same is for a lot of the adults that work in the school they know what the kids need, they know how to build relationships, they know how to regulate, they know how to create a pretty beautiful learning experience. If we give them the tools and resources they need, give them the time that they need to be well themselves and just let them, you know, let them go with those instincts. So I feel like my role is increasingly just about protection, letting it be what it should be, could be.
Gillian BoudreauHost
08:59
Yes, I think protection is a really great way to think about it, and you know when I okay. So then what are the threats to that right? What are we protecting against my career as a full-time school psychologist? But it was sort of a it was a beautiful and weird school psychologist job. There was actually zero evaluation and there was also zero like therapy, so both of the things I'd been trained to do there was zero up and instead it was sort of creating and managing a behavioral program for some of the kids in the schools who were maybe the most at risk of maybe being referred out right or, you know, having enough difficulty in that setting that another setting might need to be found. So it was sort of to foster the ongoing inclusion of those kids. So each kid would be assigned a behavior interventionist and then I would sort of mostly work with the interventionists and the teachers and the people around those students, though I would also do direct intervention. If there was like a big thing that happened right, I would come and help with de-escalation and that kind of stuff.
10:22
And I'm that was really where I started thinking super hard about fear and urgency in the schools, because what I felt happened in my own body was that if, and my initial instinct was to focus on everything I was quote unquote supposed to get done and make happen at the time, how could I know that that is impossible?
10:50
That in every role, I think in a public school, through no fault of anyone's own, everyone is handed an impossible set of tasks.
10:56
And if you focus on trying to do everything that you're quote unquote supposed to do at least in my case you will pretty quickly have, you know, a bit of an anxiety episode and you will not.
11:12
You'll be so stressed out about trying to do the impossible, mostly things that other adults have told you to do, that you will not be available for the actual here and now experience of knowing what kids need, knowing what adults need, deeply listening to people showing up in a space regulated rather than just like radiating terror and rage that I had to, like come in and deescalate the situation when I'm obviously supposed to be writing 86,000 IEP goals, right, like you actually miss the work which is that of co-regulation, right, calm, connection, getting everybody to where they can come to some sort of regulated baseline expediently so that the tasks of the day can resume, right. You can't do any of that, if you're caught up in urgency and if you're caught up in supposed tos. And I think on a systemic level, one of the reasons it's getting harder and harder each and every year is because education is increasingly devalued in our society and there are an increasing number of forces of you know, just sort of you know curriculum ideas or resource grabs or things like that.
12:29
So a lot of agents, sort of coming from the outside who have never taught, who think they know what should happen in schools and who are each year asking teachers to almost do more busy work with less resource, and the urgency that that creates and the understandable, you know irritability and anger of basically being asked to do, to some degree, a bunch of BS and being asked not to, you know, slow down and connect with kids. But just the real work can create an energy in an educator that is understandably not that conducive to, um, to being present with kids. And so I think that's some of what this podcast and our work is about too is figuring out where to say no to the demands right, where. Where are the? Where are the demands on us as professionals in public schools not correct?
Joelle vanLentHost
13:32
how do we figure out when a demand is not correct and when we in fact need to kind of courageously prioritize connection instead, um, and so that's, I think, a big piece of it too yeah, and as you're saying that, what I'm what I'm thinking about is you're handed, as is almost every person that works in a school that I know of, you're handed an impossible job, sort of unwritten job description, right, or maybe written, or maybe written.
14:02
This is what you're supposed to do, and it's not possible, and so what I see is I see everyone do a version of that right, like you take, you're given an impossible job and so you decide how am I going to, what part of this am I going to do, or what part of this am I not going to do, and and and. Then people come up with some pretty beautiful versions of trying to do. And then people come up with some pretty beautiful versions of trying to do a job that was designed in a way that it would have been impossible for anyone. The difference is some people recognize this wouldn't be possible for anyone. The flaw is in the expectation.
14:53
Anyone, the flaw is in the expectation. So I'm going to do my best to fulfill and prioritize and set limits within that to do my version of that job. And they feel clear that the problem was in the ask and they keep patiently and steadily giving that feedback. It wasn't possible. So this was the part I did, and here's my thinking about that prioritization. Then there's other people who also do a beautiful version of the job that was asked, but they story it as I couldn't do it.
15:27
It was doable, but I wasn't able to do it. I couldn't get it all done. I let some things go. I only accomplished part of what I was supposed to do, and so the story becomes that the flaw was in the individual professional's competence or capacity. Not the design, so, but on the outside, when I observe these people in action, I see I don't see on the outside a huge difference in terms of how effective they are. What I see is behind the scenes, some people being quite resilient to that and other people not. Because of how there is it is the flaw in the asker was the flaw in me and my ability.
16:17
Then there's a third version, which is one where people get angry at the people who asked them to do an impossible job, and it sort of seems like you get to that desperate place where either I am flawed or you are flawed, and so I'm deciding to feel insecure or feel angry. And that's, I think, where the fear shows up. Right, it's like am I not good enough, or am I working for people that are dangerous, that want to hurt, harm me? And then the fear shows up, and then we lose our capacity to be curious, we lose our capacity to set boundaries, we lose our capacity to feel confident that we could say no in a clear but calm, collaborative manner. That would potentially have a ripple effect of helping others and we and we get reactive and and then I feel like everything starts to unravel when, when we go to that place, but it's so understandable, like I think it's the rare person who would see that the flaw is in the design, not themselves or their authority.
Gillian BoudreauHost
17:30
And that's why I think that's why you and I sort of go around school to school saying again and again right, the flaws in the design, not the individual, you know, because it is really hard to see that when you're in it. I didn't. I didn't see that when I was in it and I had already done a PhD in clinical psychology, you know, and still I was like anyone else would be able to do this. I'm sure this is because I'm new. Uh, I'm sure this is because I did a PhD in clinical psych with only a certificate in school psych. I'm sure this is because there are pieces that I missed and I am, I have pulled the wool over everyone's eyes and I don't belong here. You know, like all of that, all of that the first year and it's so you can't get anything done if you're stuck in, that you are in a really active fear state at that point, right, right. So you know, as Joelle knows and has patiently heard out for the last many, many years, I am very obsessed with fear because I think it is a human universal and I also think that it molecularly blocks a lot of the things like curiosity that we need to access in schools for things to go well. So just quick sign and dance about fear. So when I say fear, I don't necessarily mean anxiety or worry. I think of fear as the first molecular hit to the homeostasis of the brain. So I think of it more like a startle response, um, and I think of it as being thrown off of what I call like the balance beam of basic safety. So our brain is basically a survival machine and it will do some thinking and learning if it's not busy, but it's mostly scanning for threat and it will code a lot of things as a life or death threat. Even that may not be, and um, not being good enough, being judged by others or by ourselves, right, um, not measuring up is actually a really deep fear for the brain. The way I explain this to myself is because you know, we are the descendants of the early humans who cared the most about pleasing their community and were the least likely to get left outside and die of exposure, right Like that's who survived to create us. So we still have a really strong response in our amygdala that if we're not measuring up, right, if we're the weak link, right, whatever the, whatever the language is that we're telling ourselves that we're not good enough. Somewhere in our brain there's a fear that we're going to be ostracized by our community and be left out to die. That's why people get into that really intense anger kind of shame, blame either I'm the worst or someone else has to be the worst. Because there's a part of our brain that is afraid that if we don't start measuring up soon we're going to die. But we can't start measuring up soon because the setup is impossible. So what?
20:24
The thing that can bring the brain out of a fear state is usually connection and co-regulation right. So this is why it takes a village of regulated adults right to make a school go. Well is that we're all going to fall off the balance beam of basic safety on certain days and we need to have a way to kind of bring each other back adult to adult before we even have a chance right Of co-regulating with the kids. So fear is all about survival and if there is a threat perceived by the brain, all of the juice will sort of go down into the survival parts of the brain. You know, sometimes this is called downstairs brain, sometimes this is called survival state. If we can get back into a calm, connected state, then once again, our brain will consider unlocking the prefrontal cortex, which is a very luxurious part of our brain that handles things like curiosity, empathy, perspective, taking critical thinking right. All the things that we're looking for from ourselves and from kids in schools can only function once we are out of a fear, Right?
Joelle vanLentHost
21:48
So if the, if the, if the deep fear that's triggered from those moments of I might not measure up or I might be screwing up is that you will be alienated from the group.
22:05
that you will lose your connection with the group, which is life? Essential to life? Yes, and some. And in the, in the context of that moment where you are startled, someone reaches out and says something to communicate unconditional acceptance, even in the moment of mistake or not measuring up or not being able to do something. It's probably going to regulate. So effective connection, will regulate so deeply and effectively because you're saying that's the basis of psychological safety that will not affect your connection and belonging to the group.
Gillian BoudreauHost
22:49
That's right.
Joelle vanLentHost
22:49
In fact, everyone in this group can and will screw up and will be unconditionally held within to learn from that or recover from that or whatever. So when we talk about connection being so essential, it's because of that, it's because it goes right to the, I think, for many people, the deepest fear that they're not probably aware of which is that what I'm really afraid of is not that I'm not good enough, but it's that I will be othered or out.
Gillian BoudreauHost
23:21
Yes, I'll be out.
Joelle vanLentHost
23:22
And so if your chronic lived experience is to be othered, it takes a heck of a lot more connection and outreach in that moment to reassure you of that. Like psychological safety would be even more important and even harder to achieve if you feel chronically othered.
Gillian BoudreauHost
23:46
That's exactly right. Like sometimes, I like to think about how wide a person's balance beam of basic safety is.
Joelle vanLentHost
23:53
Yeah.
Gillian BoudreauHost
23:54
And a lot of that is due to societal or contextual factors, right, so a neurodivergent child is going to have a more narrow balance beam of basic safety, you know. In part maybe because sure, there's some evidence that, especially in autistic kids, there might be a stronger cortisol response under stress. But mostly because neurodivergent kids, you know, because of there's a theory called the double empathy problem, right, like there can be translation differences between kind of neuro normative folks and neurodivergent folks. Often we think of that as autism and ADHD, but it's a broader umbrella than that. So that's a good example of folks who often are going through the world feeling othered and in fact subtly or not so subtly, often kind of being othered by people because it's hard to work across neurotype neurotype and that means that under stress right, it's, it's those folks are going to have not as far to go to get into an alarm state in the brain.
24:55
And this, you know, if we think about sort of the box that public school in America kind of expects kids to be, you know, it does tend to be kind of like neuro normative, middle classclass or above, probably white, maybe Christian, um, you know cis presenting all of those things, and so, um, however many of those, however many ways you fall outside of that kind of tacit expectation of public school, um then more narrow your balance. Beam of basic safety is going to be right, because you are all already clinging, uh, less stably to um not being and feeling ostracized even on a good day.
Joelle vanLentHost
25:41
Right and and as it's, when you say that you describe a really powerful dynamic that has a lot of layers to it, but what I keep coming back to is like the then. Then what do we actually do? Is very simple actually. What we do is just in the moment that we're startled, we ask ourselves a question that would trigger the frontal lobe to engage. So we don't go right back to reptile brain.
26:12
Yes, I wonder what this person needs right now. So, like if someone is coming at you in an unexpected way and they're elevated, or you're trying to do something and it's not going the way that you thought it would and you feel startled, you just ask yourself I wonder what it feels like to be that person who's talking to me right now. I wonder what they need, need. This isn't going the way I thought it would. I wonder what the situation, what shift might be helpful. So you just ask yourself a curious question, because you're sort of like going back to reptile brain and the curious question, which may or may not work, to be honest, but it's an attempt.
26:54
It's an attempt to bring yourself forward in your brain rather than backward, which is going to be better because, as you said, that's the luxurious part of the brain that can help us contextualize something in a, in bigger picture and and um not take something personally, that's not about us and and access um prior experiences that might be relevant right now to be guideposts and helpful. So there's all kinds of resources available to us if we can move toward curiosity as opposed to move toward fear.
27:31
It doesn't always work, but it's a strategy to try and and then the other thing is that you don't you don't address the person's behavior until you have understood what drove the behavior. So what do you need? How can I help? Tell me more. I need to understand in order to help instead of stop that. You're talking too loud you know, follow the direction, please.
28:03
Like. Addressing behavior moves you into a more rigid place and likely, you know, moves the other person into a place where they don't feel the connection that they need to regulate. So the curious questions help you stay most effective and they help the other person regulate and move toward a sense of being connected and therefore engaged. So it's just not, it's really not that complicated what we need to do in the moment, but I think you have to be, you have to practice it so much that you could access it when you're nervous or startled. You know it's sort of like something that needs to be rehearsed so that it's like muscle memory and it's your instinct, your go-to, because you're going to not be in a place where you could be. Like what was that thing that Joelle and Jillian told me to do when I felt like this no, it's gotta be like your first response yeah.
Gillian BoudreauHost
29:08
Yeah, it's so true it does. It does take so much practice and, you know, sometimes it can maybe be a good thing to practice, even when things are not that stressful, right, Like we do with many new skills, right. But you know, even when folks are in a calm place, right, Maybe just like looking around a room, or even if you're at home, like with your family, you know, maybe even practicing being like I wonder, like I wonder what this person might need right now you know, and, and that that can also be a good way to kind of unlock that.
29:41
It also is true that, like we do know, like folks really can do this, I think it's more a matter of orienting them to prioritizing doing it, doing it. So sometimes I like my curious question in a tight spot in particular, usually sounds like who's afraid of what? And that helps me ask myself what I'm afraid of in the moment. Right? So if I, if I have experienced that startle, if I'd had, if I've had a hit to my feeling of basic safety, again, fear doesn't always feel like fear, you know, sometimes in my my body, fear feels like irritation and indignance.
30:27
Sometimes in my body, fear can feel like, um, just sort of like, oh, this is stupid, I just I just want to check out, right. It can feel like sort of like ennui in a way. I just want to check out, right, it can feel like sort of like ennui in a way. I remember there's a note in one of my first grade report cards that my like very sweet and wise teacher wrote Jillian is back in a space where she keeps saying that all the math is stupid, and what we've learned is that she does say that when she's not sure what to do.
Joelle vanLentHost
30:56
Oh, good teacher.
Gillian BoudreauHost
31:02
That's great. I don't like that right to open my head.
Joelle vanLentHost
31:04
I'm like so instead of the note saying Jillian is disrespectful is defiant and mean yes yeah, yeah yeah she has a habit which is that, when she doesn't know what to do, she uses these words which mean, which mean nothing about my confidence, as a habit which is that, when she doesn't know what to do, she uses these words which mean, which mean nothing about my confidence as a first grade teacher.
Gillian BoudreauHost
31:26
Yeah, that's true, he was really lovely. He was stepping up, stepping over my behavior there, wasn't he? Yeah, so, anyway, right If I, if I am like who's afraid of what? There's a Dan. Dan Siegel is a great neuroscientist. We'll talk about him, I'm sure plenty on this podcast, but he, he has this idea among many that you want to name it, to tame it. Right.
31:46
So if you, if you name an emotion already that begins to get things moving toward the front of the brain because it gets it out of the survival centers and into the language centers. So, if I'm in a tight spot, right, if I'm upset, if I can tell the person child or adult in front of me is upset, my curious question is who's afraid of what? And I can feel that change the molecular structures in my body. Right To be like, okay, all of a sudden, now I'm turning toward my own suffering. So maybe I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm afraid this person is judging me again, all right. And then I can also be like what might? This person is judging me again, all right. And then I can also be like what might this person in front of me be afraid of? And you know, while we don't want to like assume we know the experience of others, like we don't want to mind read, we also know that schools are flipping, stressful, and there's there's an exercise I'll do sometimes in my trainings You've seen it a thousand times you patient person, where you know I will just have a bunch of educators just shout out all right, what's a principal probably afraid of? Go? What's a classroom teacher probably afraid of, go right, what's a parent probably afraid of?
32:48
And people are just like you know. They know they can think of 16 things that, regardless of who this individual human is, that anybody in this things, that, regardless of who this individual human is, that anybody in this role in in this challenge system, is probably going to be afraid of. And that's the tool to use, right? So if a kid is being unreasonable or if it feels like a colleague is being unreasonable, you can already think of 45 things that person might be afraid of.
33:13
And reminding yourself to tap into that knowledge will bring you more into the front of your brain, because it's hard for curiosity and fear to exist at the same time. Right, we can actually call up curiosity to crowd out fear a bit, and then also, you're just using the information that you've spent years as a person in the world and as a person in schools gathering about, yeah, what probably is bothering this person in front of me. It's probably not that mysterious, and without telling this person about themselves, without like sharing what I think they might be afraid of, you know, I can start taking some steps to cue safety to them. I can probably slow down my own nervous system and my own speech. I can probably say something like okay, this is hard right now. Let's figure it out Right, we're on the same team, like those things work in almost every difficult situation with every human in the world.
Joelle vanLentHost
34:10
Yeah, absolutely. I like that. Who's afraid of what? I think? I usually ask myself I wonder what they're feeling and then what's behind that, which is, I think, very similar.
Gillian BoudreauHost
34:24
Very similar.
Joelle vanLentHost
34:25
But I like that. Who's afraid of what? Like I'm just asking myself what are they feeling and what's behind that Meaning, what's driving that feeling right now?
Gillian BoudreauHost
34:33
Well, I mean, as we know, I can get a little myopic on fear, right. So you know, in my lens and the way I move, as we know, I can get a little myopic on fear, right. So you know, in my lens and the way I move through the world I can distill most things down to fear. But it also is possible that's a little bit reductive. So I think it might also be great to have some other ways right To check in with yourself and be like, oh, what's what's going on with this person? You know what are they feeling and what might be behind that, because you know my sort of specific lens might say it's fear, but it who knows, it might be some other challenging experience.
Joelle vanLentHost
35:07
And I also feel like, as I move through my career, where you know, we spend all day, every day, sitting with people and working with how they're feeling, which is such a beautiful career, and so I just, over and over again, realized that that kindergartner sitting on the floor was the wisest person that I've met in a long time, because if you know that the person is sad, you don't really need to know why.
35:37
I mean eventually, it wouldn't be really helpful to know why. And I am curious, I remain curious about why people are angry or sad or furious or indignant, whatever it is Like. I do want to know why, but in the moment where you're just I'm wondering what they're feeling and what they need right now, we, we, we can. I guess I just want to keep reassuring people that we know how to help in that moment, even if we don't know why. A lot of times people don't know why they're feeling what they're feeling, but we don't. That's not necessary to move forward and and help, because connection is still going to be the answer, regardless of what's driving that emotion, what you know, connection would be what they would need, in addition to whatever more detailed you know kind of thing it is, and so it's. It's curiosity and then connection.
Gillian BoudreauHost
36:36
Yeah, that's a really great point. Yes, kind of slowing down to the pace of the human emotion connecting with that, cuing safety and kind of we'll figure out the details later.
Joelle vanLentHost
36:50
Yeah, right Like.
Gillian BoudreauHost
36:52
I think of this sometimes too, like oftentimes I will be called in because a child will have been having an enormously hard time, like maybe a throwing chairs hard time, and very understandably, somebody has wanted, fairly expediently, to ask that child why they were doing that.
Joelle vanLentHost
37:16
Yeah.
Gillian BoudreauHost
37:17
Right, and when we're still in the flood of emotion no one really knows why they're doing things Right, cause we're not really in our like procedural brain. But kids, kids especially and sometimes if we ask an upset kid too soon why they did something they don't know, so they'll just start panicking and kind of giving what might sound like sort of wild and concerning answers, like sometimes I'll be, I'll be called in because they'll be like well, they were throwing chairs and we asked them why they did it and they they said it's just because they are a villain and they just want everyone to suffer. You know, it's like that. That is concerning. That also is just what someone would say if they have no idea why they did something and they're still, they're still actively panicking, right.
38:04
So it's actually sometimes really important not to try to give someone the respect, to not even try to find out why they're upset when they are clearly still so upset, knowing that we can you know, I really like your term to sort of strike when the iron is cold right, we will get through this situation. No matter how awful this escalation might feel, it will have an end point to it, because everything in the world does. We will all be calm at some point in the future and we can talk about this and try to analyze it and figure it out and hopefully use collaborative problems solving strategies when the iron is cold Right, but we don't want to try to strike when the iron is hot and get answers then, because we're likely we're really likely to make things worse.
Joelle vanLentHost
38:52
Honestly, yeah, I really do agree with that. I think it is our job as adults, or or the person in the helper role if you're interacting with another adult, to have impulse control, to not ask why because, people, people generally, are socialized to answer a question when one is asked of them, especially children or people who are not the person with power and a dyad.
39:20
You feel like if you're asked a question, you're supposed to give an answer, so you will. You're not thinking clearly because you are dysregulated and you were asked and you're asked a question, so you answer it um, as best you can, often with not um, not the actual explanation or what was behind the emotion, and then later most people will double down on what they said. In the moment, especially kids, most people aren't going to say you know what?
39:54
I was just a little hot before and I think I made that up because I felt compelled to answer your question because, society tells me that that's what I'm supposed to do, and now I would like to back up and give you a more thoughtful, different version of that.
40:10
You don't hear a lot of people do give a different explanation, then we call them manipulative or we say that they're you know. So it's just don't ask the question, have the impulse control. And and I think it's I'm reminded of an example of a high school student I was working with who was getting help from a special educator to catch up on some missed work and the classroom teacher had an email saying student completed work. Please remind her to give it to you when you see her Teacher. Saw a teacher reminded student you have some work to turn in. Student didn't hear the question and assumed this adult who I've been having a hard time with is going to give me a hard time and swore at the teacher leave me the F alone and walked out of the room.
41:01
Teacher is very confused, and so when I sat with that student and the special educator the special educator was brilliant, because what the special educator said is so you swore at so-and-so Yep. At what point did you realize that what you said didn't make any sense?
Gillian BoudreauHost
41:25
Oh, what a great question I know.
Joelle vanLentHost
41:27
And the student said in the stairwell. So the special educator was like well then, what did you do? And the student's like, oh, I kept going. And the special educator said, of course.
Gillian BoudreauHost
41:40
I love an, of course.
Joelle vanLentHost
41:42
Of course, anyone who realizes in a stairwell that what you did just didn't make sense. With an audience, you would keep going away from that situation. Yes, so now you're here, and what should we do next? And I was just like how brilliant. And I was just like how brilliant. It's just an example of like if you give people room and space, they often know what to do.
42:08
Like that special educator knew exactly what to what questions to ask and how to lead us back to a, a like place where we're moving forward again, and I was just like, wow, that was pretty great yeah.
Gillian BoudreauHost
42:24
That is so brilliant because it, it allows an out and and it. I think sometimes. Sometimes we can accidentally back kids into a corner because we begin to wonder if there's any rhyme or reason to their actions and we as adults can sort of start to panic about that. And then we can start to panic, the kids who can be like, oh gosh, do I not make sense? Right, it's, it's so horrible to feel like you may not make sense, right, but kids do make sense, and I think the more we can sort of telegraph to kids this is a tough situation. I'm sure this does make sense and I'm sure this does have a solution.
43:05
We're going to figure it out together, right, and so I think we're going to figure it out together and when, when we come at kids with why, I think that can sound like why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? That doesn't make any earthly sense. And then, and then there's a possibility you're a human who doesn't make sense. You're about to be left out in the woods to die of exposure and you're going to start to freak out, whereas it sounds like this special educator was like you're a reasonable person, yeah, we, you know, I'm sure that you have already clocked that. Maybe that didn't make you know. And then the kid was like you're right, I did clock, clock that. And then for the social educator to be like great given. Given the sequence of events, I think everything that went on makes perfect sense right.
Joelle vanLentHost
43:50
What should we do now? Right like yes bypasses the need to be defensive right it's like the student could have said it did make sense. She was giving me a hard time, okay, so they're not know. We're still kind of dysregulated and we're. The student hasn't been able to step back and look at the situation contextually to see what was probably actually going on there.
44:14
So then, that's where we meet them. So you're asking a curious question and then you see like she had already processed what the question actually was and then realized that her answer didn't connect with what was actually happening. So we can just skip beyond the whole. You swore at your teacher why did you do that? She was just trying to help, which is all just stating the obvious salt in the wound. And we go right to at what point did you realize that what you did didn't quite make sense? So you don't need to get defensive now.
Gillian BoudreauHost
44:45
Yeah, you don't need to get defensive now. It's like how can, I think we also? It's so easy to feel shame in in the high pressure and very public realm of schools, cause everything's in, you know, on a stage, and so it's so easy for kids to feel shame, it's so easy for adults to feel shame, right? So I think some of what the stance of curiosity does is it just helps us all frame things up so we all a little bit have an out, so we all a little bit have a way to save face, and so we no longer have to double down. Right, we we can. If we feel less interrogated, we're going to feel less shame and we're all going to be a lot more workable. But it's so easy to feel shame in public schools because it's everything is so important, everything is so fast, everything is so impossible and everything is so public yeah, and competitive and competitive and for the adults too, yeah yeah, oh, I think sometimes more yeah than the kids.
Joelle vanLentHost
45:49
Yeah, yeah awesome cool. Yeah, I'm excited me too.
Gillian BoudreauHost
45:57
What a good convo, me too, great thanks for connecting. Thank you, yeah, from a stance of curiosity even that's right, absolutely okay till next time till next time. Okay, I'm gonna stop the recording recording.
