What Keeps a High School Principal up at Night? Principal Peter Glahn on the Modern Teen

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Welcome to Finding Noble, a podcast where we climb into the world of young people's mental health and where we provide support for the adults who support them. I'm your host, Carly Red.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Finding Noble. I'm your host, Carly Reddy, and I'm here today with my Wonderful co host, Dr. Kevin Skinner. Hi, Dr. Skinner.

Hey, how are you, Carly?

I'm so good. And we're really excited because today we have a high school principal from American fork, Utah, from A.F. high School, home of the Cavemen, Principal Peter Glahn. Welcome, Mr. Glan.

Thanks, Carly. Thanks for having me on, Kevin. I appreciate both of you. This is kind of an exciting opportunity.

Yeah, we're really excited to have you on. We recently did a podcast with a dean from the Marriott School of Business over at byu and he was talking about college campus mental health. And we thought this would be a really nice follow up to speak to a high school principal on what you're seeing in high schools. You probably spend more time with a lot of our kids than parents do with their kids, and you see a lot more than what we see at home. So this will be a really fun conversation.

It is fun to see them in their natural habitat. I love my job. This is. This is the best. American Fork High School is a special place, and I'm really lucky to be the principal here.

Well, we are really interested in you telling us more about your story about how you ended up as a high school principal, how you got there and how long you've been doing it, and more about why you're passionate about the work that you're doing.

Absolutely. First of all, I was just talking about this today. I really enjoyed high school, but if I look back on it, I probably only really loved my senior year. I wasn't totally involved my sophomore year and junior year, and I. I hung out with some of the rougher kids. And by the. The middle of my junior year, I just started discovering things about myself and how I wanted to be. And I really had a big change in my life in high school. At the very end of my junior year, I had this weird thought that I would run for student body president. And I wasn't a kid that had been in student councils for a long time. Probably got in trouble more than your average kid. You know, I wasn't an incredibly stellar student. I had never even gotten close to a 4.0. I wasn't on the honor roll. But I did love people and I liked my school. And so I ran for student Body president. And I won. And that year, my senior year, I completely changed my outlook on life. I probably learned more in my student council class than any class that I ever had before that. That doing that didn't make me want to become a principal. I actually wanted to go into advertising and marketing, and I was in school for that at byu and I really enjoyed it. But I had married a teacher and had been around her school at Orem High. She was a life skills teacher. She taught kids with disabilities. She was also a coach. So I spent a lot of time around her. I would help her out with coaching. I would meet the kids. And I just really loved the high school kids. I loved the atmosphere. I loved connecting with them. I thought they were basically adults with no experience. So it was really fun to talk with them because they were interested in what you had to say. And they were also interesting and they're just fun to be around. I did a lot of daydreaming about what I was going to do in life, and it usually was like, oh, professional basketball. You know, it's NBA player or football. I have this daydream thing. And one day time I was daydreaming about being a high school principal, and I thought, oh, this is what I do, and this is how I'd impact kids and this would be fun. And I told my wife about this, and she's like, you would be so happy doing that job. And so even though I was enjoying my classes in advertising and communications, I decided to change majors. And I haven't looked back. I became a social studies teacher at Mountain View High School. My alma mater actually went back to the school that I went to. And then I was an assistant principal there. I became the assistant principal of the year in. In Utah in 2015. And after that, they had me be a middle school principal. I was not very excited to go into middle school, but I loved it. Timberline Middle School. For five years, I was the principal there. That's the community in Alpine and Highland. They feed into Lone Peak High School. And that was a great five years of experience. And the opportunity came up that American Fork High School, that this position was opening and from, you know, we're all pretty good friends. The administrators in Alpine School district. And one common thread that everyone had was everyone who passed through American Fork High School was like, that was my favorite school. I loved it. I love the faculty there, I love the kids there. I love the community there. And everyone has this short list of schools they would like to work at. And American Fork High School was always a part of that. So I thought, you know what, I love what I'm doing in Timberline, but this opportunity might not come up later. So I threw my hat in to be American for high school's principal and lo and behold, in 2020 I got the job. And that was actually in, in the winter of 2020. And I don't know if you remember what happened in the spring. So my first year was the, the COVID year. It was incredibly challenging, but it was so galvanizing for me. We had a whole year with kids coming to school with masks, having half the half days changing, doing all these different things to make school work. And it was one of the biggest challenges of my life. But I'm very proud of that year. I felt like we really just established trust and love. I fell in love with community and I think they've made me feel very welcome. This is a job I want to do. The high school principal job doesn't last very long for a lot of people. You rarely hear of someone staying at a high school for more than six or seven years. But I am hoping to do this for, for a long time. I really love it.

Now I'm curious why only six or seven years they transition to a different job and if so why?

That's a good question. Sometimes I think there's push and pull factors. You know, it's a lot of time to be a high school principal. You have have to put in the time. And those are long days, 12 hour shifts. We work em a lot but we don't do three a week. We'll do several cuz we're going to all of the activities. And I think if you don't absolutely love those, it is a lot of time away from your family. I think that's a big part of it. And also it's a lot of pressure. Sometimes you become an unpopular figure. It's almost like a coach in a way where people can be tired of you and say we're not getting the results and so they can be pushed out. And sometimes there's district jobs that are appealing that some people want to do. They want to have an impact in a different spot. So I think that's it probably. But also I know of principals who have left and worked in the district and they're like my favorite job ever was being high school principal. And so that's why I'm kind of like yeah, it's tiring, it's a lot, it's exhausting. But I don't think I'LL ever have a cooler job than this.

We were joking the other day because we see you often. Our son Emmett plays basketball. And so we see you a lot at the basketball games and you're there kind of keeping that front row in check. And then we went to our daughter's orchestra concert just a couple nights ago and there you were again. And I was like, this can't be real. This can't be the same guy just showing up. I just thought you liked basketball. So that's why you went to the basketball ones. And then you, there you were at the Warsaw event and I thought, how does he do this? What is that?

Well, it does. It helps that I truly do love those things, though. I am a giant sports fan. I love it when people make billions of dollars. They're like, well, what am I going to do with my life? They'll buy a sports team. Because it's like, I don't need to do that. I already have 30 of them here. But those are big deal to kids because that's where they're putting most of their energy into. You know, I, I, part of me wants to say we shouldn't be worried about this thing more than academics. Well, these sports and orchestra and performing arts, this is where they're learning lifelong valuable lessons. This is where they're learning how to communicate, how to solve problems, how to collaborate, how to be creative. And it's also where they're learning the values of hard work. Yeah, you can learn values of hard work and academic lessons. But I watch my own kids, and my kids, their character is being built in cross country, in basketball, and their social life is in choir. So I want to support those fully. As much as I'm here during the academic time, I want to be there for that extracurricular time. It's where they shine. It's where the magic happens. And if you don't feel something, if you didn't feel something in that orchestra concert when they played that what side Story song, right? And so I feel those things. That's where our humanity is, you know, and so to me, I love it.

Well, and I feel like that's what keeps the kids motivated. At least my kids, when they wake up in the morning, they are looking forward to obviously the sociality that's at school, their friends, even teachers. And then what's happening after school, what's happening during lunch. But especially with their extracurriculars that are offered through the school. I mean, not only does it keep them motivated, but it seems like it also creates Kind of this internal infrastructure of community within the school to create team spirit and kids showing up for each other and taking care of each other as well. How have you seen that? We kind of have this physical infrastructure in place. We have a school where we teach academics, and then within that, we have all of these other events happening, whether they be the fine arts or sports or whatever. But how does the physical infrastructure kind of change the psychological infrastructure where they kind of sense a common purpose or an interdependence with one another? How have you seen that?

Yeah, I think that infrastructure is probably more important than it ever has been. The infrastructure of the extracurriculars, and we're relying on it as parents more than ever for our kids to have a social experience, for good or bad. I'll say a difference between kind of when I was growing up and when and. And how kids are growing up now. When I was growing up, there was a little more free play. There was this ability to meet and talk with people a little more easily without me having to be on a basketball team. Like, I was really good friends with guys that were on the football team, and I wasn't on the football team. I was really good friends with people who were in plays, but I wasn't in those plays. We didn't live in such an a la carte society. If class stopped, we'd sit. Or if we were done with our work. Instead of me going right to my phone and looking up the things that I want to look up or, you know, finish up on my show, I'd strike up a conversation and we'd find a commonality about music that we liked. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen now, but it doesn't happen as easily. I think we are living in a world where things happen less organically, Social things happen less organically. And so we really are relying on these structures that we have organized. I mean, did your parents ever set up play dates, like the 4?

I hate the word play date in general. It stresses me out. Why can't you just go find a friend?

And sometimes with my own children, I have three teenagers. One's 19. They don't hang out unless there's actually something to do, because you can plan ahead of time through texting or so many conveniences that actually make things not convenient. Because, well, I'll be like, well, aren't you hanging out with Maddie? And she'll be like, well, we don't have anything to do. And I'm like, well, that needs to be determined. While you guys are together, right? Just go hang out, be bored. Be bored with each other. That is something that just doesn't happen as much anymore. Say that I was bored with the TV sometimes where it's like, okay, the best thing that's on TV is Golden Girls. And so I'm going to watch Golden Girls.

Now.

Absurd to them. They're like, why would you watch something that you don't want to watch? You can have their choices any times. And that's almost like translated to, why would I hang out with someone if there's actually nothing to do?

And they lose kind of that serendipitous experience of being in the car and the radio's on and one of your favorite songs, or used to be your favorite song comes on the radio and then you feel like the universe is loving you.

Yeah.

Oh, I need this song today. The universe knew that I needed this song. God must love me because I got to listen to song instead. They don't get to experience any of that. Or you're sitting next to someone and you strike up a conversation. How often are you seeing that happen in a high school when everybody has a device?

I think that's such a great example because they can choose the songs that they want to listen to. We have implemented like a break in school this year. And some kids are like, why are we doing this? It's a waste of time. Why can't we just get out of school earlier or be have our lunch longer? Well, it depends on what a waste of time is. Like, I am watching students. I'm not kidding you. I've been noticing we have this 15 minute break, right? The kids aren't doing. It's a recess where they're not doing anything. And I have been really, really encouraged. If I were to look and there's a hundred kids in the halls, I will see five of them with their phones out, just all by themselves. They're actually talking with each other. But that's been a nice thing for their social health. I like the phrase social health.

Quick a question on that. Because, you know, you, you became the principal at the time Covid, which is probably one of the more challenging times to enter into the school system. What did you see the impact, say maybe on mental health related with that transition from going through Covid, now they have the social skills. What are some of the challenges you've observed as a principal at this point now? Your years, you know, with us, we're back in full, full force at school. What have you observed? Maybe the social skills the mental health challenges. What have you observed in the changes?

I observed a delay, a developmental delay. And mostly that would be social more than anything. Where behaviors that I had seen as a junior high principal were what much more common as a high school principal the next few years where I'm like, what this is, you know, I think kids are naturally pretty resilient. They can handle things. I've read a little bit about this in that the one book Anxious Generation. There's a lot of things where I'm like, oh yeah, I. I definitely see that. Where there's, there's a little more fragility and kids ability to handle difficult things. One thing I did see is we had shortened the day so we had had shorter periods and it went one through four. And then instead of letting these kids take off their masks and eat lunch, we sent them home. And in my mind I would have liked to think, oh, these kids are probably going home and they're hanging out with each other. And they didn't. And I remember being gathered in a room with a bunch of educators like trying to solve this problem. What do we do with the social, emotional health? What do we do with their social health and all these things? And they're talking about classes where you teach these things. And I said, you know, what we have to do is put them in a big room, serve them food and give them free time. It was essentially lunch. To me, that was the biggest, best change. And in a way it does make sense to go, let's just get these four periods over and let them live their lives well. When they get back from lunch, they are so much better. Have you ever had a teenager and they come home and you're just like, holy cow, from school. And you're like, what is wrong with this person? And then they come back from their friends and they're just in such a better mood. I discovered more than anything, kids need free time and they need to be together. And we already had that built in as a structure and it was called lunch. And so that's some. I mean, we've been to conferences as we're adults and isn't that when the real ideas, I mean, you can sit and listen and be like, huh? But the real learning happens when you're actually talking about that information with people that you trust and love. And we were taking that away for an entire year from kids. And you could tell there was absolute delay in just missing the most awkward time of your life. That I think probably the group who are seniors now, when did Covid happen for them. That strange year was around.

Yeah. So my oldest, it was eighth grade and ninth grade.

But there are, there are definitely a few things where I'm like, you should have gone through that awkward part of your life and junior high. And I think what a lot of times as administrators, we see a problem where, well, how should I fix this as school administrators? And I think that even happens at a young age in elementary school. Well, these kids were fighting it at recess, so let's change these rules so that they won't fight. Well, some of the fighting I did or arguing that yelling in elementary school over football rules helped my negotiation skills today or conflict resolution by creating all of these so safe places as they're growing like my kids. And by the way, I love, I think their school leaders were awesome. But it got to the point where they had to sit lunch with their class. And then, and then there was just a lot more regulation of what was happening in recess. And I think I would have liked them to experience what do I do for lunch at this early age to become a lot more flexible, adaptable. And then by the time they're sophomores in high school and they find themselves in a situation where they don't know who to eat lunch with, they would be like, well, I've done this before. I, I can navigate this on my own.

Interesting.

But I, I think what we've done is solved these problems so that a kid can't feel lonely or a kid won't have the confrontation in their early, early lives that they don't have the resistance that they need to become strong later on.

I like that resistance that they need to become strong. That's really good. I feel like as parents too, it's really hard to watch your kids have to go through the things that create that form of resistance that strengthens them. I just feel like it's innate within us to want to remove everything that would cause a struggle in any form and temptation.

For sure.

Yeah. And so I'm sure that as educators too, it feels like that's how we're going to solve it. Dr. Skinner, you're squirming. What do you want to say?

Yeah, so. So I have the opportunity just to get background to. With parent guidance. We work with administrators throughout the entire country for four or five years. We then do called parent guidance evenings where we ask mental health questions related. And so I do that around the once a month for four or five years. And one of the most common questions. And this is why I want to ask you this question. I've been. I've been dying to ask you this question. So. But here's a question. My child was bullied at school, and I'm really struggling knowing how to respond. Do I. Do I get involved or do I let them deal with this their own? That's one of the more common questions I get from parents, is like, my child is experiencing this bullying at school. They're being bullied at school.

What?

Principal, I've got your ear. I'd love to hear your response.

Oh, man, that is such a hard one. Because when a child is bullied at school, it might not be reported because they're afraid that if they report it, it'll become worse. Some of the hardest situations that I've dealt with are from parents who come in, want me to do something drastic to the bully because no one helped them when they were younger. And I want to look at that parent and say, how are you doing now? You're a pretty resilient person. And a lot of parents come in with their own traumas, and they'll even say that out loud. They say, this is what happened to me, and I don't want this to happen to my child. So I understand that it's really painful. Really, really painful. So it depends on the theme. Well, so.

So just last week, why don't you just kill yourself?

And.

And I said, under no circumstance should that not be talked about. That should be going to the coach, that should be going to administrator. That should be going somewhere. Because that type of interaction is, in my mind, completely inappropriate. And, and while it may be verbal bullying.

Yeah.

It's telling somebody that their life is not worth it. And so obviously we have to look at the. What the bullying, the definition is, but in general, the mental health of what that does to a child. I don't fit. I don't belong. Nobody wants me. And, and, and I think that we have to look at again what. What type of bullying it is. But in situations where it's egregious, I think everybody needs to get involved and say, that's not acceptable behavior in our environment.

Yeah. And in no way am I ever. Well, this is making their kid tougher. I would never do that. I always address it. Have you found out your child was a bully? I'd be interested in this. What your answer would be if you found out your son or daughter had consistently called someone fat in their class. Okay. And that person had come, how would you handle it?

I wouldn't want to see the other human beings. And I Would want to let them know that never at any point is it appropriate to call somebody names. It's not appropriate to criticize, to put down demeanor, belittle in any way. Because that's not how we treat other human beings. That's how I would deal with it personally as a parent, because I want my child to understand that we treat people with dignity and respect. Now my question is, is what made you decide to say that? What made you decide to say such a thing?

That's great. I love that. Carly, what would you do?

I'd probably go cry in my room for a minute and. And blame myself for everything I've ever done wrong as a parent. And why did I choose this job to be a mom. And then after that I would come back out and definitely would want to understand more. I think Dr. Skinner working with you enough has taught me to get curious. And so asking questions instead of jumping to conclusions has been one of my greatest go tos with teenagers to ask more questions. Because it's really easy to go to worst possible scenario or worst possible horrible negative thing about your child. Like, oh no, my child must be doing this, or there's all this stuff happening that I had no idea about. But I think asking more questions. Mob mentality is huge. Right. So I've noticed that with kids at every age that if the mob is doing it or someone within the circle is doing, it's really easy to jump on board. And whether your kid decided to do it or not do it, they're much more apt to participate in negative behavior. When there are surrounded by other individuals who will also participate in that negative behavior or harmful behavior. I think it's more rare to find someone who's doing it alone. When I've talked to my teenagers about something that they participated in that I was disappointed in, you know, what impelled you or compelled you to do this or that and almost always is I didn't want to not belong. Right. They always want to belong to the group. And like you talked about, these are very salient, progressive points of development along the path of childhood and adolescent growth. Right. I think every single adult could talk about a time where they either caused harm or were harmed.

Yeah.

In junior high or high school. And so I think it is really appropriate to talk about. But I think the other question that Maybe you're asking Dr. Skinner is what is the method of say that I found out my kid was a bully or my kid came home and told me a kid said this or did this?

No, no, no.

Do we Go to administration? Do we go to the coach? Our. Our method of operation at our house is usually let's just deal with it with our kid and teach them about it, and hopefully that'll help tell them what. That. What's in their control. But if it is as deleterious as you talked about, Dr. Skinner, or someone saying something that could potentially have horrible aftermath, like if someone said, go kill.

Yourself, I would say you need to know. It's definitely important. You need to contact the school of where this happened. But you also need to realize whoever you're contacting, the principal or the assistant principal of the administrator, they're working with two parties, the bully and the bullied. Right. And we care very much about both of them. I want them both to learn from the experience, and I want them both to feel like that they still belong in my school. And that's the really difficult part. I love the conversation, Dr. Skinner, that you. You would have with your child. And I want to have those same conversations with the kid who did the bullying. And I think if parents go to the school knowing that the goal is to make the bullying stop and the goal is not to ruin the life of the bully, then they will be satisfied with going to the school. If they go to the school wanting a pound of flesh and they want this kid to pay for what they did to their child, they might walk away from the school and say, I don't feel supported.

Real quick. One of the things. And I've. And this is another conversation because again, I've been having this conversation for four or five years with principals and with superintendent. And my initial suggestion is I would take the bully and I'd say, look, you're an influencer. You have the ability to have tremendous influence on people. And I want you to choose a different pathway, right? Instead of taking people in place where it's going to hurt them, I want you to be an influencer for the positive because you have that capacity. So I want to inspire them to do exactly the opposite. Look, people follow you, but you're either going to follow you down into the ditch or they're going to follow you to inspire people to be better people. You have that capacity. So I'm inviting you to rise up and be who you can be.

I love that sometimes people, when they think of a bully like they're the. This wonderfully, popularly loved person, and generally they're not. Hurt people. Hurt people, right? And a lot of times it's those kids that need to be built up so much so that they're not tearing other people's down. I love your approach there. Build them up. Build them up. Let them know what their possibilities are, their influence, because they're clearly influencing someone, just not in the way that you want them to be influencing them.

Okay, well, I would love to hear from you about anything specifically that keeps you up at night as a high school principal, if there are some key challenges you are seeing with the teenagers and their mental health or any other issues at large that worry you, I.

Want to say I sleep pretty well. I will say these kids are actually amazing. If you're worried about the future because of our young people, I invite you to come over, I'll show you around, I'll show you some amazing things. These students are more accepting than we've ever been. They're actually pretty well informed as far as young people go. They care. I think they want to do good. I think these kids are amazing. So there are times where I worry the biggest difference between how kids were back when I was younger and how they are now, you probably see it manifest at a high school dance. I worry that, I think there's a fear of intimacy. And I'm not talking about sexual intimacy. I'm just talking about just one on one closeness between just two human beings. When I was in high school, I'd slow dance with probably 10 or 12 girls at a dance. And I loved it because you could just talk with the person and you're close with that person and you kind of got to know them. Kids hate slow dancing now. And you're going to be like, this is the thing you're worried about Kids? Not.

No, this is perfect, actually. We have a company called Noble and the whole tagline is supporting human connection. So this is actually just exactly what we were hoping you were gonna say.

Well, it's. It's funny because I'll be like, hey, how come you guys don't like slow dancing? Well, it's awkward. I'm like, tell me why it's awkward. Because you just have to sit there and you just have to talk with them. And I think about those times where you're ruining the cord of your phone because you were talking to a girl for two hours and your sister would get on, you'd be like, stop, hate, get off. I am talking on the phone. You're just having this great conversation. You're getting to know this person as a human being. And I worry that they're skipping that step. It's fun. The same kids, the same generation that says, well, slow Dancing is awkward because I'm talking to someone will readily send nudes through their phone. That obviously is way more awkward. But it's the whole idea of jumping a step that they are not getting to know each other on an intimate level. They're not having that human connection. They're the objectifying of the other gender. I worry about that a little bit because they'll literally take someone to a dance and then they'll just separate and it'll be the boys dancing with each other over here and the girls dancing over here. And no care of, hey, I just brought this person to the dance. No, that's not everybody. But I see it on a grander scale, and it just seems to be more and more obvious and apparent to me. I worry that kids aren't connecting on a. A deeper level than we had before.

Dr. Skinner, do you have anything you want to add on that?

You know, I think that may be what you just hit on is why we struggle so much with mental health, is because we aren't having these conversations.

I mean, you look at the cat.

Chemical connections that are created when I have a meaningful conversation with somebody, and we're missing those. So we're missing the skill of what? How do I read your facial expression? How do I interpret your body language? And those basic skills that are. We're missing so heaven. I slow dance. Are you kidding me? I don't know what to do with this. So the energy behind it is we don't know how to read each other. Are you safe? Can I share? Can I open up? Can I talk? We don't have those. And I think that skill is being lost because we are turning to our devices to communicate messages. I mean, I don't know how to interpret what's being said electronically, and I don't think they know how to interpret what's being said physically through body language.

Yeah, I think body language is important, but also tone, tone of voice. Some of the best conversations I've had in my life were staring out a windshield from a car where you're kind of listening. You don't have the pressure of looking at someone when you're saying something about your self as well or learning about them. So these long car conversations or these long phone conversations or in person, in person conversations, kids FaceTime more than we do. And so I. I understand where they're coming from. Obviously, pornography is more ubiquitous than it was. This idea of intimacy has completely been ruined a little bit. Well, a lot young people are affected by that. It's definitely a Huge issue. But imagine what that would do to your young perception of how you woo a young lady instead of being a human. They're an object. And so if you were to say what keeps me up at night? It's like, well, I have three teenage girls and I want them to have deep connections with people and you know, that I had. And I want my son to find someone who will look up from their phone and see how amazing he is. You know, they exist. I'm, I'm telling you, there's some just phenomenal human beings here. I promise. I have to resist every day where I'm like, you're a great person. I want you to meet my son. There's such fabulous human beings here at school. And again, human beings with not a lot of experience. And so it's just kind of fun to see when I meet them 10 down, 10 years down the road, I still have lots of students that I've taught and when I talk to them, it's like I'm talking to the same people I was talking to then. It's just that they have more experience now. And that's what the cool thing about being a, in a high school is. It's like I'm, I'm dealing with adults and I treat them like that. They're just adults. You know, they haven't done, they haven't been through it yet.

I have a question. So what is it like to be a parent of teenagers and then to be amongst teenagers all the time? And does that same perspective and mindset also translate to your own kids at home? Because everything you're saying, I'm like, man, I gotta start thinking my, about my kids more this way. Because in my head I'm still treating them as the toddler, 5 year old, 8 year old version of themselves that I'm completely in charge of. This is the conversation I have all the time with my, like, don't get so mad at me. I'm the one that used to be in charge of everything for you. So when I asked if you brush your teeth or if you ate anything green in the last month, I want to know because I used to be me doing all of this, right? You know, I'm, I love this perspective of start seeing them more as adults. But I feel like out of the context of the home, is that easier than within the walls of your own home or just has that shifted? Well, is it possible for parents to start seeing our high school kids as more capable humans just with lacking experience? They just need more experience? Is that possible?

I've thought of this because I've been in charge of conferences of adults where the sessions are starting and the adults are still in the halls having a conversation. Right. So how do you handle that? How do you do? You're like, wait, class has started. Get moving. Like, would you say to the adults, get your butts in class? I don't think you would, because it would be effective. It might be for that very moment. They'd walk up and be like, forget that guy. And so I think about that all the time when I'm in the halls now. Sometimes I'm like, hey, class started. And. And. But honestly, I really try to treat. Like, if these were adults in a conference and their session was starting and I was trying to get them there, I'd probably be like, hey, guys, the session start, you know, I would treat it a lot differently. And then it's funny, I feel like I'm an effective adult as far as influencing kids to do the right thing here at school. And then I'll throw those things away when I get home, where I'm like, hey, why aren't these dishes done? And I start complaining, that doesn't work. That doesn't motivate a kid. But if I was like, hey, I know you've been busting your butt. Your grades are amazing. You're doing a great job. Here's what I'm doing. And this is why, if you could help with the dishes, that would help us a ton. And, yeah, sure, I can do that. At least you're recognizing the great things that I'm doing. That's the kind of strategies I'm using at school. And it's working. Why am I not coming home and being like, now, that being said, I know we're making fun of these millennial parents who are. I know your truth. And, you know, I'm not saying it like that, because if I see something unexpected in my hall, I'll be like, hey, that's not okay. And I think they respect me for that. They feel safer when they know that I'm going to hold them to a standard. And the same as, you know, if my kids talk back to me. No, no, no, you're not gonna talk to me like that, and you're not gonna talk to your mom like that. But I don't have to go beyond that. I don't have to ground them. We just have a, hey, this. That doesn't help our relationship. And that's just kind of how I do things. And it. It could be frustrating it could be frustrating for people who I work with because discipline through relationship is slower and it's more of a long term strategy. Whereas people sometimes they want you to make sure that kids comply. And it's not like we don't have consequences here for sure. But you're going to be way more effective if you help a child understand how their actions have affected their relationship and thus their lives or how people view them or how that affects them than you will by just staring into compliance.

That's really beautiful. I think the words that come up are, Dr. Skinner, you always say relationship before rules, relationship before rules, relationship before rules. But it does take a lot longer and it does seem a lot easier to just say the way it's supposed to be and then expect compliance. This is how it's supposed to be. Now follow suit. But I have found with my kids that when I say, look, I'm really tired, what's the end of a long day? This is what's happening with the family tomorrow. It kind of widens them from their own teenage narcissistic not to any follow their own. That's just the way their brain is, right. They their own inner world and expands it to see, oh, our entire family is. It's an organism that's moving and functioning right.

How.

And you're a part of that. How does your behavior exist within there? Is it helping or hurting our family? And also if you were to come over here and help in this certain area, laundry, dishes, whatever, keeping your room clean, bringing up your laundry when necessary, those kinds of things, this is how it helps the organism. And then on a broader scale, sounds like out of school too. Like this is where you fit in. And I just love that so much because the worth of every individual is put in place. Nobody's worth is taken away when you say this is. But it's like you play a part in this. We always say that in our family, everything you do has a ripple effect for good or for bad. So when you decide to come home late, this is what happens to my day tomorrow. When you decide to talk to your girlfriend on the phone.

Till we encourage the talking on the phone.

Right. I was gonna say after this conversation, I understand that that's better than the handheld intimacy at all. But when I find you doing that and I have to come out and tell you to go to bed and take away the phone or whatever, and I have to wake up at five the next day, I'm not going to be super happy towards you or anybody most of the day. Because I'm going to be so tired. So I really love that mentality. I think showing that they matter, that they have weight, like the world that they live in, they carry weight with them. And what they do has a consequence. For good or for bad, that feels good. That means that you're worth something.

Yeah. Yeah. And. And you have to have 20 positive to everything that you ask them to do. And by positive, it doesn't have to be, oh, you're good at this. You're good. It just has to be a recognition, like, oh, hey, that is a positive. That's why I stand at the door in the morning. I have so many nothing conversations. So when I have to talk about something, it matters.

Whoa. So good. Dr. Skinner, do you have anything you want to add doing?

I think there's been such a disconnect between school and school administrators and parents. And so for taking the time to share your principal. I think it's very good for the parents just to get to know somebody in a real way. And so thank you for your time.

Oh, it's been a pleasure. I. Anytime I can come back. I love talking with you guys. I appreciate you having me on. This has been real fun.

You've been listening to Finding Noble. I'm Carly Redd. Follow Finding Noble on all available podcast directories and find out more on our website, findingnoble.com that's finding noblen o b l e dot com and if you or anyone close to you are looking for further resources on young adult and adolescent mental health, Dr. Skinner and a host of other leading professionals working in the mental health health world share courses and even answer your questions all on parentguidance.org that is parentguidance.org brought to you by the Cook center for Human Connection.