The 5-Minute Parenting Hack to Raise Resilient & Confident Kids | Nadim Saad on SEL & Wellbeing

Parenting doesn't come with a manual, or does it? Today we're going to dive into the innovative world of social and emotional learning with Nadim Saad, a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and the mind behind the Happy Confident Company, who's on a mission to change how we approach family wellbeing. Now, Nadim is a parenting expert, author of several books, including the bestseller Kids Don't Come with a Manual, and the founder of the Happy Confident Company. Now, from creating transformative SEL tools like the SEL cards to leading workshops that have touched over 100,000 families, Nadim's work combines psychology, neuroscience, and real-world practicality. Nadim, welcome to the International Classroom Podcast. How are you today?

Thank you, Alex. I'm very good. The start to 2025 has been amazing. And we're really feeling a lot of transformation for schools and families this year. So I'm delighted to be here and be talking about this.

Well, we are absolutely delighted to have you on here. Whereabouts in the world do we find you today?

I'm in London, but I travel quite a lot going to education conferences, you know, Asia, US, everywhere where they, they want to hear about how we can change the system to make it better, to, to, to get children to really be more resilient, more connected, and have better grades at the end, but be— and be happier and more successful.

Amazing. So let's just dive into a little bit of your background then, because obviously you've had anything but a straightforward career with this serial entrepreneur. We've got that. And then diving into this concept of parenting coach, we've got then the social emotional learning side of things. What inspired this journey for you? And along the way, what experiences would you say have kind of shaped the mission that you find yourself on today?

As in many cases, it's all a lot of personal, you know, it's personal impact and having kids really, you know, change obviously the game for me completely. So always been an entrepreneur, but then I thought I was a great parent, but my wife, who's a Montessori teacher, did not agree. So the thing is, I considered there was no science to all of this, and therefore just told her, would tell her, oh, you know, don't give me a parenting book, just give me an exact summary and show me it works, and then maybe I'll, you know, because for the moment I think I'm doing great, so much better than my parents 'And I turned out okay,' you know, that's the typical answer of parents. And then thankfully she started looking for— actually, because she was more permissive, I was more authoritarian, and we couldn't really agree on what was the right thing. But I was seeing that she wasn't always doing what she was telling her parents in her school to do, because obviously when the emotions come, take over, you know, even as Great teachers can operate differently when they're at home. I'm sure you've seen that. And so it's amazing, actually. And so thankfully, she did find things that worked, and she managed to lead by example. And so I became very interested, and I literally decided to dedicate my life to this because I realized there's a science to parenting that we don't know about, and there's an art of parenting. So I'm very much into this developing the science and the art. So the art is the skill bit, is the listening, is the understanding, is the how to adapt that science to every child. It's like education, you know, you want to personalize it. So that's the art bit. But the science is actually science of humans. The science is child psychology. It's understanding how to fulfill children's needs. And for some reason, whether it's at home or at school, we're not doing this currently. We've got a whole system that's completely broken because it's not based on psychology and the science of child development. I mean, of course, schools and the curriculum is partly based on child development and obviously ensuring that in terms of age-appropriate information, yes, it is. But in terms of what the child needs to learn about themselves and about how to be a human, how to be the best version of themselves, There's nothing. The curriculum is completely— like, there's nothing in there. I mean, okay, there are some great schools who do great things, and there are great teachers actually who do great things too, because they are— it's naturally they understand what's needed for the children. But in terms of the curriculum, the national curriculum, there's nothing in there And while it should be mandatory to make sure that we address children's needs and where they are. And so, yeah, yeah, that's—

you've got— you've kind of wrapped up the mission there pretty much nice and succinctly, isn't it? In terms of wanting to develop, let's say, parenting skills. But we're at that point where students, children now, they spend so much time in school, spend so much time with educators, teachers like myself. What's the mission for teachers?

So it's really about giving— so teachers don't want to be counselors, obviously. They don't have time. They're totally overwhelmed and they're not being taught in their— whether in their training or, you know, in schools, they don't have— they're basically— it's just not about the teacher. It's about the system doesn't have the tools to address children's needs. And these tools are pretty simple. It's actually about making sure that everyone understands, that the children understand themselves and the teachers too, by the way. So basically, this program ultimately is for the children as well as the teachers in understanding themselves and their needs, in understanding that we all have difficult thoughts, negative thoughts, and that actually we need to deal with them. So the most— the biggest transformation in our program is 8-year-olds who realize, oh, I'm not the only one who has negative thoughts. Oh, everyone else has them. Oh, okay, I'm normal. Oh, I'm a human, you know, and bringing this vulnerability to— because as parents, so it's very linked to families and, you know, and schools are very linked here. And in families, what we do naturally is like, oh no, no, you don't have to think that way, just think positively, you know, just— and so basically we're constantly denying our children their feelings or their thoughts because we just want to reassure them. We want them to be more resilient. But we tend to do the opposite of what we should be doing. Like, if you want resilience, you actually first have to acknowledge the child where they are and understand them and understand, you know, they could be a hypersensitive child. So you've got to address that. And then from meeting them where they are, then you develop the tools and you get them to develop this resilience. So it's how do we bring into the system, whether in families or in schools, these tools, and they have to be positive daily habits. They have to be based on a daily thing because it's not just suddenly, oh, let's address a problem when it's a problem. It's actually, no, let's teach you the skills on a daily basis. And it only takes 5, 10 minutes a day to teach kids in families and schools about their feelings, about understanding how to regulate their feelings, by understanding different feelings. It's not all because the research, Brené Brown's research, Research shows that on average we use 3 feelings as adults, and it's, you can guess, happy, sad, angry.

Those are the 3 I was going to say.

Yeah, and it's not very helpful because actually you need to have— neuroscience shows that if you define more granularity of feeling and you actually name it, and Dan Siegel's Name It to Tame It, then you reduce the intensity of the feeling in the brain. And so it's so important for them to be able to be granular and to understand all the different feelings and to be able to name them. That's the beginning of the regulation. And then, so it's first that, so that's why the base of our program is really the understanding of all these feelings and how to name them and how to understand them and how to understand how they impact the behavior and the tools to recover from these feelings. So that's kind of the SEL part of the program. But then we're very much into, well, particularly for teachers and/or for families, they're just like, oh, it's a bit overwhelming because the kids suddenly are sharing a lot more. What do I do with all this? Well, then you have to bring the tools in. And the tools are actually, we call them the powers because children more than ever need a sense of agency. You know, people are really wondering why we've got such a mental health crisis and there's so many theories out there. But the simplest way to see it, I say, is look, just imagine that suddenly you've got, your brain is not fully developed as we know it, but developed until the age of 24 because the prefrontal cortex is who, that's who's basically the decision maker, the one that helps self-regulate, help us self-regulate, is not, is still in development until the age of 24. So actually we really become adults when we're 24. That's why suddenly when we're 24, we suddenly like love our parents and we realize, oh, they've done so much for us. And until then, We're just pushing the Mac. I don't know if you've noticed. I've noticed. And so, these tools of regulation, but then of understanding the power, the sense of agency, is so necessary now because we've got 100 times more options. Harvard did the research on thoughts, and basically, we've got twice as many thoughts as we had 10 years ago. For our kids, it's probably 10 times because they didn't do the research on kids, but it's at least 10 times the number of thoughts that we had. And as adults, we're already quite overwhelmed with everything we have to do at the moment. Things seem to accelerate. There's just so many choices. Well, for kids, it's just totally overwhelming. So you can imagine basically it's a thing. So that in itself explains why there's so much more anxiety. And there's so much, so just obviously when they become teens and they even have to decide how they're gonna deal with their digital profile. So they're already struggling enough to take care of their own self and their identity. Now on top of that, they've got to deal with their digital identity and know what they're gonna do. I have my 7-year-old daughter, 17, sorry, "Who's asking me? Is this picture okay? It's like, it's kind of, where do I pose?" I'm like, "Can you just come back to your center and just realize that this is really not that important?" And it's difficult for them to realize that, you know, that whole digital, you know, persona is, and they have to create now, has to be aligned with their own self. But so that's a very small way of saying, You know, you can imagine the overwhelm of these kids who have to create these different personas and have so many more thoughts and so many more options than they ever had. And their brain is not developed. Therefore, we've got to help them from an early age develop these tools.

It's to give these kids the sense of agency. And the best way to reduce anxiety is to feel— not to feel powerless and to really— sorry. Have that sense of agency over our lives, which we don't always get in families because as parents, we tend to just be, I mean, not we, I'm not gonna generalize, but a lot of parents will be wanting control obviously, and so give orders, et cetera, while we have to go a lot more into questions and choices and give this, well, again, these kids that sense of agency.

So. [Speaker] Yeah, I mean, How do we go about doing that though when in school? Because you mentioned earlier about the system being broken and we've got issues and a lot of the conversations I have and I talk about like the burden of content within curriculum, the burden of siloed subjects. Now we've got AI coming into it, we've got AI being embedded into social media platforms. What do you think specifically needs to change so that we can embed more of what we're talking about here about social-emotional? What would you be changing in the educational curriculums?

So there's a— we're creating a top-down approach and a bottom-up, and I prefer focusing on the bottom-up because the top-down is literally changing the curriculum completely. And thankfully, I have now, you know, been analyzing this for many years, and I know what can be done. And actually, there is a— there are a few schools that are doing amazing things on that. But I think it's— this is where I'd rather— because we're speaking to people just, you know, this is a bigger enterprise. Let's focus on the bottom-up, which is actually, I mentioned the 5-10 minutes a day that can be transformational. So it's, there are, we've spoken to so many schools, and so the challenge was initially it was hourly, you know, sessions that really brought all of this knowledge into schools. But then we realized there's such a pushback, there isn't, they don't have an hour a week. And therefore we actually managed to try and make this challenge an opportunity because we realized that using the science of positive daily habits, of science of habits, which is actually if you chunk this up in 5, 10 minutes a day, which any school can find, then actually it's a lot more achievable. And what we realized is actually also not only more achievable, but it's a lot more effective. So it's literally creating curriculum within the curriculum. So it's a curriculum, a mental wellness curriculum that only requires 5, 10 minutes a day. And that's what we've created. And the way to deliver it, to make sure that it's not a burden on, on teachers in the country. They don't need to be trained, but they actually, they get upskilled. So it's a really great value add for the teachers. And it's basically in 5, 10 minutes a day of videos and activities. So we've got more than 150 videos and more than 1,000 activities that teach, so basically these 100 feelings. So it's 12 feelings per year group. So for example, in reception, you'll learn the basics, basically the happy, the sad, you know, the calm, angry. But as you go up, you know, you end up with patronized, pressured, powerless, hopeless. I mean, the big ones, the ones that we end up feeling as we grow up. And then you've got, so that's the feelings curriculum. And then you've got the powers curriculum, the 10 powers. And the 10 powers goes from the power of introspection. So we actually use big words for kids as young as 5, 6, but really, The life skills program, the character program starts early, but we really expanded it at 8 because this is where metacognition, you know, really increases for children and they can start realizing that they're not their thoughts. You know, that concept of, you know what, I may have negative thoughts and everyone has them. That's what hermits basically, if you put them 20 years in the cave and they come out and they tell you, so what's your biggest discovery? They say that I'm not my thoughts. So isn't it better to actually teach this to kids when they're 7, 8? And they realize, oh, I've got all these thoughts, but actually I don't have to take them for granted. You know, even these thoughts that say I'm not good enough or I'll never be good at this, I don't like math, I need this, all of that. Well, that's not helpful. So the kids learn to filter their thoughts with, is this thought helpful? Is this thought kind? And is this true? And as they start practicing this, they realize that probably a majority of the thoughts are not kind, helpful, or true. And so they can do something about it and actually they can start choosing. So we call this our inner bully because we've got basically like constantly there telling us that, you know, we're not good at judging. So when we reduce that inner bully and we start, you know, really learning how to better deal with our thoughts, we become so much more compassionate with ourselves and more compassionate with others as well. Our relationship with ourselves changes, but our relationship with others changes too. So the beauty of that in 5, 10 minutes a day is in that expansion of our knowledge of ourselves, but to better connect with ourselves, and we end up better connecting with others. So what we're really, in 5, 10 minutes a day, we're creating communities in schools basically that are where children are a lot more able to help to regulate themselves, but also help others. So we've got this, for example, charters, it's called the Feel It Promise. Because the SEL program is called Feel It. And as part of the program, the first thing they do as a class is agree that all feelings are okay, that you can have all feelings, but that there are ways to express them that are better than others. And that how, as a team, so the acronym TEAM, together everyone achieves more. As a team, how we're going to deal with difficult feelings in the class. And so what's great is they agree on how they're going to help each other out. And then the next day when you have a lonely child or an angry child, instead of like being rejected, you've got their peers, you know, coming towards them and helping them out. And so it creates that environment, that community element where they feel they can be vulnerable, they can share when they have difficult feelings. And what's amazing in that it helps— so the kids, you know, often you've identified the SEND children, the difficult children, you know, the teachers know those. And then you've got the okay ones that people don't really worry so much about. And then you've got the aces of the class. But what's amazing is when the okay ones start realizing, you know what, I'm okay, but I'm, you know, maybe I've got something to share and open up. And then suddenly it helps the ace, you know, the ones that, the one who have, you know, the top ones realize, you know what, I also am not always great and I want to share too. And it helps the more The more difficult ones are the send ones to actually realize, you know what, actually everyone has challenges too. I'm okay. I'm better than I thought. And so the whole everyone through this vulnerability, everyone is really winning because they realize, you know what, I can open up and when I have a challenge, I can share it. And this is why I created the program in the first instance, because actually my daughter, my 8-year-old daughter, was the most positive. Child you can imagine, went through a tough time, and she ended up admitting after a long coaching session that she hated herself. But I realized that I got this information out of her because I'm a parenting coach and I know all the tools. But in majority of families, she would have been punished because she was defiant, she was hitting her sisters, and she would have been punished. She had suppressed that feeling that she hated herself, and it would have become a bigger problem down the line. So that's why I created this opportunity for every child to, to understand better what they're going through.

So I'm curious then, obviously, because time— you mentioned there a few times, like 5-10 minutes— and we mentioned about habits. All the schools you've gone and you've seen, and, and all the sort of leaders and educators that you've spoken with about this, how are you recommending it being implemented? Like, what are the ways in which you're suggesting, the ways in which they're doing it so that it is habitual, that it does form a system for them? And, and and so benefits the students? Because I'm sure there's multiple facets of different ways we can do it. But, you know, what are some of the best ways that you've seen this been implemented?

Yeah, it's very much so in the morning registration form time or registering time that the kids actually realize, you know, today we're going to— let's start our day talking about real talk. I mean, you know, really talk about ourselves. And so Even without our program, that can be a problem. And that's why I wanna make sure that people hear that start of the day with just a quick share is really valuable. The thing is what we've seen obviously is that kids don't really know how to share. They don't have the vocabulary to share. And so we have to give them that vocabulary, the vocabulary of feeling, the vocabulary of understanding. So I mentioned the power of introspection is the first one, the understanding themselves. The power of optimism is the second one, the understanding thoughts and how actually by becoming standing up to your inner bully, basically, you can actually become a lot more optimistic and be more successful. The power of interoception, which is the ability to feel sensation of the body. So in teaching them these powers, basically in this little short span of time, 5, 10 minutes in the morning, they start reflecting on their day and having a perspective, being more mindful. Essentially, it's a form of mindfulness, but not from the meditation side of mindfulness, but from the real being mindful and understanding of ourselves and our environment. And that's enough in these 5-10 minutes a day. When you give them that information, they end up having— it ends up going through the day being a lot more mindful and being more aware. And so that's why it pervades in just a couple of months of doing these 5-10 minutes a day and teaching them about feeling, teaching them about themselves. So through this curriculum, they end up really incorporating that in their daily life. So we had teachers tell us, you know, "Oh, I can see, I go through the corridors and I'm hearing them sharing about feelings and having this new vocabulary and really going deeper." And because they have a better understanding of themselves and a way to share it, to communicate it. And same with the teachers, because the teachers then have this vocabulary as well. And the teachers connect a lot more with the kids because the kids start asking them, so, oh, do you also have these difficult feelings? Oh, when did that happen to you? And they start sharing personal information that makes them so much more connected to children. So it creates that environment where everyone feels part of a bigger thing, part of a whole in just 5, 10 minutes.

And what are the practical tools that you obviously are using? Because you mentioned that you know, teachers don't need a massive amount of training for this. We can upskill them. But what is it? What are the practical tools that you're giving them? Like, I know we have the cards, for example, we'll come on to, but is there anything else that within the programs that's there to make their life easier?

Yeah. So one in the self-regulation, because we give them strategies on how to self-regulate difficult feelings. Therefore, the teachers can always allude to that. Oh, what can you do when you feel embarrassed? What could you do when you feel, you know, basically because they're sharing a lot more, but the tools come as part of the program. You could do, you know, what can you do when you're feeling pressured, for example? Oh, you can use your assertive voice. So how do you learn to be more assertive when you're feeling pressured? I mean, it's such simple things, but actually such powerful things. And it's part of the Character School program. Then you have bigger tools like we call it PBS, pause, breathe, and smile. When you're about to flip it. So we've got— I love that, you know, when I started the program, I knew that there was going to be a very important element of the program is that it's not just for the school, but also it impacts the families because the children bring this to the family. And so, for example, as part of the program, we have a weekly activity in the family where they're going to talk, for example, about the feeling of weak or the power of the weak. Basically, they're going to talk about how they can address when the child feels powerless, what can they do about it. I knew it was going to have a big impact. Immediately, in the first instance where basically I went in the school to try the program before I got it developed at a bigger scale, and I got this mother who called me after the fifth session and she says, "You know what my kid did yesterday?" An 8-year-old, Matthew. She said, "I was getting angry at him because he wasn't doing what I was asking him to do." asking of him. He says, oh, Mom, you're about to flip your lid. You need a bit of PBS. And she'd be like, what's PBS? He'd be like, pause, breathe, and smile. And so she just couldn't help but laugh, obviously, and realize, wow, my child actually did not go into fight, flight, or freeze because he realized that he didn't have to flip his lid. Because that's what we do. Obviously, we kind of, we end up putting our children in fight, flight, or freeze without even realizing as soon as we get angry. Instead, her child went, yo, let's go into that. Why don't we use a tool? PBS, you know? It's amazing because then you see both in teachers in schools and in families where children and teachers and parents start helping each other out because they have the tools to recover from difficult situations and make sure that they don't go into fight, flight, or freeze, which is where you release cortisol, you're not in your prefrontal cortex anymore, your prefrontal cortex literally shuts down so you can't actually do anything rational. So as soon as we raise our voices or we're too intense with the children,, they might go into freeze and actually they can't learn. We need to get them out of this and their reactions might actually be really negative. And that's where you get so many reactions from children because they're not actually operating from the rational brain. So it's relatively simple things, but as soon as people are aware of them and they start implementing them, it completely transforms the environment.

I think the first time I met you, we were at an implementation here, it was probably the other year, I think we were at, again, it would have been a conference, and it was the card.

The Middle East Leadership Conference, yes.

The Middle East. Which, shout out, is coming up in a month. It was the cards, and it was just looking through and flicking through those cards, for me, that was like a massive difference. Like, this is something I was like, I'd not seen anything like this before, just the styling of them and the content of them. And it was just unique. It was almost innovation to the point where everyone's talking about technology and doing this. It kind of echoed everything you've said about it's just so simple. But I'm really curious about what inspired their creation, because they're so different to a lot of other SEO things that we currently see. It's like, where did the idea come from?

Thanks for mentioning this. You're right about the intervention tools are a very important aspect, so it gives teachers' reassurance because they have tools. And so yeah, the cards, that example, I always have them by my side because I use them every day. So I am feeling— and oh sorry, that should be what I want to feel, either. So that's not the right card. But basically it's based on these colors, which are basically the— I'm not going to explain all this now, but basically the pleasant feelings here, unpleasant feelings. And so basically the energy of the feeling and the pleasantness. And so you've got— you get the kids to really understand to find the different feelings using cards. And the reason why I created them was actually realizing that I was asked by my therapist for many years, what are you feeling? And I would just go, I think I'm feeling— and I was like, no, stop thinking about, tell me what you're feeling. I was like, well, I haven't developed that. And so here I'm like kind of really struggled to, I had to practice a lot and I still practice to realize where I'm feeling things. That's why we develop interoception in children so that early on they realize what they're feeling. But so the Cards actually use a different part of the brain. When you're selecting cards about what you're feeling, you actually use a different part of your brain and you access a lot more feelings. So you end up often with too many feelings. You end up, you know, unfeeling, or you end up with 10 cards. So someone who basically will tell you, "I'm pretty sad at the moment," like, "Oh, well, let's explore." So I'm sad, and then they'd select also powerless, bored, disappointed, all of this. And then you ask them to reduce to 3 because that's the idea is to to realize that we might be feeling all of this and it's true, but what are really the things that I'm feeling the most? And sad is often the first thing that comes out because actually it wasn't sadness. Sadness was part of it, but— and so you can imagine feeling— you end up disappointed, bored, and powerless, for example. And I'm giving you a live example actually that happened recently. And then you go into what you want to feel. And then they end up obviously choosing they're joyful, excited, delighted, you know, I mean, excited, motivated, all of these things, inspired. And then you reduce to 3. And the majority of people will end up with safe, loved, and valued or understood. Because ultimately, that's the primary— our primary need is really safety, love, and feeling understood, feeling part of something. And so So when you look at with the kids, this is a great intervention tool. It only takes like less than 5 minutes initially and then they start, it becomes second nature. But when you look at the strategies to go from sad to happy, which is the typical thing that we're looking at, very different from the strategies that you're gonna implement to go from disappointed, bored, and powerless to safe, loved, and understood. And so we give these tools to the kids and actually the teachers can explore these possibilities and strategies strategies with kids. And then the next time the kids feel like that, they already know what they're supposed to do. And the teachers too, by the way, because the teachers also— I mean, most adults don't think that this way. So we end up in very little time having these set of simple strategies of how to recover from difficult feelings, from, you know, and realizing we're a lot more— both more complex than we would think, but also that complexity doesn't need to overwhelm us. Because we've got all the understanding and all the tools to deal with that.

What's been the feedback on these though, from let's say schools, from teachers, students, and even parents?

So I mean, obviously I'm not the most objective and therefore I'm going to name our surveys rather than, you know, what the surveys show rather than that. So in general, the qualitative feedback just on that is very much As teachers, we're saving 10, 15 minutes a day easy just on interventions, just on, you know, that's not talking just about the, it's just the whole classroom is better behaved. Everyone behaves better because they realize that they don't have to act up. Acting up is actually usually a consequence of not having a need that's fulfilled. And therefore when children can share and have the tools to communicate better, everything improves. But so what's really beautiful is to, from the surveys we've conducted, is that after just 2 months, because we do these 2 months into the implementation of the program, is that on average, 92% of children feel safer. That element that we think is obviously part of our days now, because we're not, you know, unless you have real big difficulties, et cetera, but actually children feel safer when they are emotionally in tune and they realize they can share and they're part of something or the community, then they feel a lot safer. So 90% feel safer, 84% feel kinder, more than 86% feel better able to regulate their feelings, and also, and 80, I think it's 83, better able to help others regulate their feelings. Because that's what's great is obviously, as I mentioned with the Feel It Promise, you're learning to also help others. 78% feel more confident. And that's, that's, I mean, it takes a bit more than 2 months to, but basically that only increases as we grow. So these incredible, you know, improvements in 5-10 minutes a day and in just feeling part of wider community is, it's just amazing. And so in families where, so we launched the parents portal only recently, And the parents portal is part of what schools basically have access to. So basically the parents end up with the information, what's being taught at school, with a weekly activity where they basically will learn about a feeling with their kids and actually how to deal with that feeling, whether it's how to bring more of that feeling if it's a joyful feeling, or how to deal with that feeling when it appears if it's a more difficult feeling. So they get the tools that they can implement at home, and they also get an understanding of the 10 powers and how these powers can be developed at home. So how they can, because the sense of agency comes from, imagine the teacher or the parent going, oh, you've got a problem with your math. Okay, so what power can you use? So they could use their power of optimism to realize, oh, I can be good at this. I don't have to believe that I'm not good at math. They can use their power of interoception to actually feel the feeling in the body and realize, oh wow, I'm not comfortable with that math problem, but I don't have to believe that. I can let go of this and shift this. Their power of mindset to realize that they can be good at anything because you've gotten rid of the toxicity and your intelligence is not fixed. Or your power of failure to realize that, hey, it's okay to fail at that math problem. I can just give it a try. It's better. I'll learn something from it. Or the power of resilience to just recover, to realize that you can recover from any challenge. Or even with the math problem, their power of creativity Because actually you can look at math in different ways because creativity is not just about arts, but it's actually about everything you bring in looking at things from different perspectives. So I just named like the 5 powers that you can use. So just imagine as a kid, you know you've got these powers at hand, but if they're not coming up with it, as a parent or as a schoolteacher, you know that you can tell them, you know, you can direct them to using these powers. And so they feel just a lot more capable of addressing any challenge.

I want to flip it on its head then, and because there's lots of positive evidence that you've given there, but on the other side of it, do you think that the emphasis on all of these tools could lead to overstructured parenting where we're going to miss out on natural or organic interactions, these emotional interactions? How do you go about balancing structure with the organic? Great question.

I think the thing is currently most parents or teachers don't actually have a structure for these kind of things. So you're right. So actually it feels like because suddenly we're giving a structure, oh my God, what about, but what happens with these conversations? But actually this structure is actually a gateway to enormous amount of information. So just a, oh, that's, you know, what are the different ways you felt today? And actually just the sharing of this one feeling just opens up an incredible like exchange that has nothing to do with the structure, that's way beyond the structure. So that structure is what enables the deeper conversation. So we've had so many parents who said, oh my God, I've never had these type of conversations with my kids. Because we never thought about, for example, you look at this part of the power of resilience, you've got this resilience graph where you realize that when you start something, often you get better at it quickly. You could depend on the thing, but we were talking language or an instrument, it comes quite quickly and then you're just super excited. But then at some point, you need to put a lot more time for it to be better. So you've got this dip and often the majority of people will let go basically, will say, oh, I'm not doing this anymore because it feels like a lot of effort. But what they don't know is actually in this dip where most people, you know, just let go of it, there's an upcoming, you know, it's gonna come up and actually you're gonna feel much better about it very soon because your neuroplasticity kicks in and you're actually going to start feeling that it's a lot easier because you've rewired your brain to create these new neural pathways. So, you have to hang on there because that's where you create the most resilience and you actually become good at something. So, by just that graph, for example, that explains so much where people just stop doing something while they could have just continued and become much better at it. That kind of conversation, for example, as a family is like, "Oh, so I should—" It gives them the tools to have these much deeper conversation about how they can apply this in their daily life or how they can apply neuroplasticity in their daily life or how they can use, you know, recover from feelings. So it's only the start because it's only 5-10 minutes. Therefore, it's not a lot of structure. It's just more of things you can allude to within a much bigger conversation. So it has never been a problem. On the contrary, it's really the gateway to much more.

Yeah, I like the way you've described that. I think from a parent and from an educator, it's about then you can recognise certain behaviours, certain traits, certain— the ways that students look sometimes or the way they interact. And then instead of going, I wonder what I could do, I wonder how I go about, it's then having the tools like you say and going, oh, actually, if I ask this question or if I phrase it in this way or if I give them this type of activity, then I know that I can have this impact. So It's weird when you say it's a structure, but it's not. It's actually, we've mentioned earlier, it's the upskilling or uptooling or allowing you to be better at what you want to be doing and recognizing these things. And it's often associated more with males, isn't it? The inability to read emotions is often more associated with males than it is with females.

So the thing is, actually, males are actually more proven to be more sensitive when they're children than girls. But that we get this out of them. We just— so this generalization is applicable because we— all the research shows that we treat boys and girls differently, and we will ask questions of boys and girls completely differently, and that really impacts and influences the way they think about things. So with girls, we will tend to ask about how are you feeling about this and about things related to beauty beauty and how, what do you like, this or not, and that. And with boys, we'll be a lot more on, you know, talking about the achievements, the goals, the sports. And so we're influencing kids while there is naturally obviously a difference, there's no doubt about this. But at the same time, it's, yeah, we're not— so what we're doing is putting everyone on playing on the same level, at the same playing field. And even so, the special education children, the neurodivergent children, all of these, it's really, it's very reassuring for them to actually be taught the same stuff, to not be the one singled out all the time, to realize that everyone needs to learn this and they just need to be a bit more consistent because of their neurodivergence or because of their challenges. You know, it's more the consistency for them. That's needed. But the rest is we all have the same needs as humans. So it puts everyone on the same playing field and that they feel all part of this community. And more so, there's a lot more inclusion that comes out of it than if you just go, oh, this is a program for these children because they've got challenges. Like, no, ideally we shouldn't be doing this in schools.

But as you were talking there, it got me thinking about I mean, obviously, I have daughters, same as yourself. And then when I'm in school, I'm just thinking about obviously the interactions I have between boys and girls, but even specifically, I'm going to use the word reprimand and how we go about reprimanding boys versus how we go reprimanding girls. And it came from what we were saying about how we treat them. And I'm thinking about the way that if a boy did something stupid in my class, how I would speak to him versus if a girl did something stupid in my class, how I would speak to them. And you're right, there's not a level playing field there. It's not an equal thing in terms of how I feel I can speak to boys is very different than how I feel I can speak to girls. And the tone and, you know, the, the raising of a voice, because I get a very different response from both of them. And that's, yeah, it's a big challenge, isn't it? It is.

May I catch you on even the word, you know, something stupid? Because the, the biggest transformation for me in my parenting and my whole education, and that's actually, you know, I'm, I'm creating a whole like a lot more content around this is that we're all doing the best we can. Even when it's something that seems stupid, actually, you know, happens is the reality is in, in that moment, basically, that stems from so many things from the past of that, you know, person or whatever. And actually, there's— it's always when you come from this place of let's assume the best. So basically that person, that child was doing the best they can and it was probably very stupid in the grand scheme of things, but they were with their past in that situation, et cetera. They were just coming at it from trying to address their needs. And they just don't have the tools yet to address this need. And therefore the explanation and the delivery becomes very different because we have this compassion for them of, you know what, I can see you're doing the best you can, but I hope you realize that you can do so much better. And as an educator or as a parent, you know, basically, I'm here to help you become that best version of yourself to fulfill your potential. And here's the things that I would suggest you could do, or actually rather, we always send the question back to them, what can you do differently next time? So you can actually address boys and girls a lot more similarly as well when you come from this perspective, because it's again, you're doing the best you can. What can you do differently next time to be a better version of yourself? And then we give them the tools because when they're not fully, you know, basically because they're learning.

It's that BVOS, isn't it? It. Just have that. Imagine if every teacher had that somewhere, BVOS written around. It's like best version of self because we have to catch ourselves. We have to remind ourselves because it's easy to forget that. It's easy to be emotional and caught up when little Jimmy over there is doing something stupid with a scalpel in my science lesson or one of the girls is using her device as a mirror because she wants to put lip gloss on. Those are things that happen in classrooms in the modern day. It sounds— trust me, I've seen it happen.

Yeah, I know. Of course it does. And it's frustrating and it's just like, But the thing is, it happens less, less, a lot less when they feel they're part of a community and they've got this realization that it's not just about them and it is about everyone's wellbeing. And it really helps because they become part of bigger thing. They realize they're part of bigger thing. That's why one of the big things that also we haven't yet developed a lot in our program, but we are in the midst of doing this, is that connection to awe. Because awe is, and again, people spell it, pronounce it differently, but awe, awe. It's that biggest feeling. It's this human, humanity is really very well encompassed in this feeling because it's both the wonder of something new and the curiosity around it, and also that feeling of being small within a much bigger thing. And if you think about kids, younger kids, they're in awe of everything. Everything is— they're curious about everything. They're like, wow, you know, everything is new and everything's amazing. But we tend to lose this as we grow up. And I realized that if we could keep kids more connected at all to that curiosity, to realizing that just every step we take in this as a human is actually a miracle, chemical is like it requires that perfect kind of, you know, balance of chemicals in the environment for us to be able to even breathe, to have, I mean, to being more connected to the incredible nature and all that, that we often lose as well and bringing more. So the program is about creating the sense of community, but also ultimately to keep children really curious about everything about them, around them, and to realize that there's so much more that they don't know. And so basically, this love of learning, of always learning something new about themselves, others, and about obviously the environment is what I brought this because it's, I think, in this best version of ourselves, this sense of awe really helps because we become more curious about everyone and everyone and more accepting of ourselves and others.

Yeah, no, definitely. Like awe and wonder, as we say with that, it's for me as a scientist, it's one of the easiest things to try and generate, but it kind of nicely segues in because we're talking about connections and we're talking about or an impact, as it were. I'm curious, obviously, for people who follow you and people that know your journey, you are connected and in contact with global experts, with thought leaders, with these amazing organizations. What has been the most impactful collaboration and connection for you? And what did it help teach you?

Wow, big question. So recently I've been, I went twice to Necker Island and met Richard Branson and I've been very inspired by him as an entrepreneur and actually in that and everything he's set up and with Virgin Unite, which is the philanthropic, you know, side of their business, of their business, well, not a business per se, but And what Richard said is like kind of what drove him all along was not accept the unacceptable, stop accepting the unacceptable. And I realized, wow, this is what drove me as well. That's why I was so inspired by Sir Richard is because it's been about, it's in several old industries I went into was not accepting unacceptable. And I realized that in the education, parenting initially, and then education history is like not accepting this unacceptable, the fact that actually there's so much more we can teach parents. There's so much more that, as in the curriculum, we can bring into curriculum that actually is unacceptable that children don't learn how to be a human, basically, as a basis in school and in families. And so one of the collaborations that I'm looking at is to bring with the Branson family is to bring all of these things to a wider public. And to really make this available to a lot more people, including potentially a new curriculum. Because so there is a— so I've just recently invested in— so disclaimer— invested in a school in Barcelona that's called LearnLife out of Barcelona. And I think they're the first ones who nailed the ideal curriculum. And the reason they did it is actually because they went all around the world analyzed all the different curriculums, looked at all their research, and ended up with a few methodologies, ended up with bringing all this together into creating something that's really unique and addresses children's needs. And it's much more child-centric, much more passion-driven. And I've interviewed these kids at LearnLife in Barcelona, and I had tears in my eyes because I just— they had such passion for learning. Knowing why they were doing this. And I had tears in my eyes because for them, but also because my kids didn't actually or not accessing this. So I want to make sure that they can access this. And what's great in what they've done is they can actually train teachers to become learning guides. So because they don't call teachers teachers, but learning guides, because it's about creating the environment for the kids to actually learn better and have that passion for learning rather than just being a top-down approach to learning. And it's been really incredibly impactful for me. And so I'm looking at ways of, you know, bringing this to every school possible. So that's—

it sounds phenomenal. Like, and that, I suppose, the easy way to summarize that is that's come about through networking. And obviously over the years, people talk a lot about LinkedIn and this ability to network. From that point of view, what role do you think networking can play on the impact of social-emotional learning and wellbeing initiatives globally?

Oh yeah, I mean, networking is ultimately where we realize we're social beasts as humans, and actually this is so important. And so in a way, actually, I mean, I don't want to come back to our program, but it's very much, it's creating more networking opportunities, more conversation opportunities at a deep level. So networking is essential. But what I'm finding is not the butterfly networking is important, but actually finding the right themes. So the best networking is when there's some kind of theme where you actually dive deeper into something and actually you meet people who really think alike. Because what I found in a lot of conferences, I must admit, that I've been to in the last couple of years, because I've been to so many across the world, I'm talking education conferences particularly, is that we go there and everyone agrees there's a problem in the current curriculum and we have to really do things differently. But the reality is we go back to our settings and we just do more of the same because it's a Titanic. It's like moving this huge ship is almost, you know, it's beyond one person's capability and beyond the school's capability. It's beyond— and so So we need that networking to really start enacting change. And so for me, the conferences have to become beyond the conference. It's not just a conversation realizing, oh yeah, AI is coming, this is what it's going to do, and this is why the curriculum is broken, and then why particularly secondary children are just at a loss of why they're even learning this. Well, we need more of getting together and networking at a deeper level to really find styling to find the solutions and to, you know, bring this beyond governments who are unfortunately often just there for a few years and they know they're going. So what their thinking process as a new, you know, Minister of Education is like, oh, what can I do in, not even in 4 years because I might be changed in 1 year, which often happens. I mean, we have 10 Ministers of Education in 10 years in the UK. Well, actually it's now 11. And it was, what can I do and that can have impact? And what I love is now we're proving that the best thing you can do is invest in SEL and well-being because that has the biggest return on investment. So that's what we're focused on proving now. And so if we can create these education groups and these kind of networking groups that are really about taking action, hopefully we'll go beyond the conferences and just saying that we need to change and actually really enact change.

Amazing. Within that, obviously some things that came about, one is alignment and one is authenticity. Obviously we know, as you've already mentioned, SEL, wellbeing has a huge impact. And with any, let's say, niche education, there's always going to be people that want to benefit or at least take advantage of the fact that that's a growing thing and nature. Take from it. From your side, how would you recommend, how do you go about ensuring that there's an alignment with all your stakeholders, the parents, the teachers, the students, whilst also maintaining an authenticity? Because obviously, anyone who's got this far on the podcast and listened to you speak would have been blown away just by your passion and your depth of knowledge about what you're talking about. How do you maintain the authenticity amongst, I'm going to say, the snake or Rosman.

Well, thank you for first for your— these words, and I appreciate it. Well, that's why we, we're now setting up the Happy Confident Foundation, um, so that we want to make sure that this is accessible to everyone. So the schools who don't have the means, um, you know, particularly in obviously more difficult continents, we want to make this available to everyone, um, for free. So that's how we, we do it, is that For the people who can afford it, obviously, I mean, we're talking it's £10 per pupil per year, you know, so, and actually in some cases it's the parents who pay it, and because what is £10? And they have access to a whole host, you know, parents portal as well as the school being, having all these incredible resources. So we make it one, very affordable, and two, actually free for the ones who can't afford it. So that's the answer to making sure that it's completely aligned and that we're only taking a minimum from the people who it doesn't even, you know, it's a small drop in the ocean, but the impact is so much bigger than this small investment. So that's how we make sure, and we're constantly upgrading the approach. So we're really about best practices. So we bring these best schools that we call them the lighthouse schools, and then they actually bring their, what they're doing beyond our program to the rest of the schools. So we're, so that's when we're talking about networking and growing this, enacting change by bringing best practices, I think is the best way to improve education.

And thinking about, obviously you've got that initiative, which is amazing, by the way. How are you seeing, or what do you think the trends and challenges are going to be over these next sort of 5 years when it comes to social and emotional wellbeing, especially with, let's say we've already got this amount of technology, but even with the development in technology, where do you see all this going in the next 5 years?

So I think, I mean, I'm not sure there's challenges, as in, sorry, in social machine learning. The challenge is how much these technologies basically, for example, AI enables to personalize a lot of that, which is so it's very positive in some way because, you know, we've got with our huge database of information. And so actually, if you ask AI What are the top 5 things that people should improve in education? One of the top 5 is SEL. So that's the positive. The challenge is you can see in the US, for example, it hasn't had impact. I mean, although CASEL shows, their research shows that $1 invested in SEL is $11 returned. Wow. Because you save so much on the, you know, when children really start having challenges, well, you're preventing a lot of challenges from happening. And they've also seen 30% improvement in grades and outcomes, basically. So it's, you know, there's no doubt it works. However, despite these really nice numbers, and these are from meta-analysis, so they're analyzing out of hundreds of other research, so it's not just one research that showed this, but one of the challenges is that if it becomes a tick box exercise, oh yeah, we've done RSL, and so when it's not about, not really, we're here to create that environment. We believe that children need to feel safe and that emotional safety that we're creating by the teaching SEL is what we're bringing to, you know, to our school. If you don't have that commitment, then it becomes, yeah, it's just not as useful. It's a tick box and you don't want tick box exercises anymore because that's not what it's about. It's about creating this humanity. So I think that's really the only challenge I see. I think because thankfully most people, well, since COVID are starting to see that it's a necessity and a must-have and not a nice-to-have anymore. It's just how do we do it? And that's why I'm delighted to be here on the podcast because giving ideas to whether it's our program or not, but realizing that 5, 10 minutes a day can be enough and that you can create some innovative things in any setting learning is liberating because— and that it's not overwhelming for the teachers is the other thing that needs to be addressed because the teachers just have too much on their plates. I believe that AI is going to help on that. We're seeing the more innovative teachers really use AI to decrease their workload. You're an expert in this. I don't need to talk to your audience about this, but it's really, I think, it's going to help reduce the admin part and really give more time for that humanity because ultimately what are we, you know, in the age of AI, what can we do in schools if it's not learn how to better serve as a community, better be as a community, and better learn how to interact as humans because that's what's really the most important part in developing these soft skills that AI cannot teach us. Although I have these very soft, you know, interactions with AI where I'm just like, wow, I've never been given as much empathy empathy by anyone in my conversations than AI.

So, it's kind of counterintuitive. It's scary crazy. And again, the conversations I had recently was the benefit of it, or what are we trying to do? It's like, we're trying to be better humans, not better test takers. And that was a great quote, really stands out for me. And I get this all the time, even at school, where it comes to anything technology-based, anything AI-based, people look at you and go, oh, yeah, yeah. It's like, well, actually, I'm trying, and this is, I'll tell you how I've used it recently, is I would look at AI and it's helping me design my curriculums because I get to have these fantastic conversations with people and I go, right, okay, well, I need to have learning outcomes and I need to have activities, but where it's going to help me is that, right, I need to have 6 C's. Most schools operate with some of the 6 C's like the IB learner profile. So communication, collaboration, but we have two different ones. We're using Michael Fullan's. We want citizen Citizenship and character. Okay, I'm going to do some research with an AI. I'm going to take the information and I can put it in. But the other column it's really helped me with is SEL. Because we know as educators, we're time poor and yet the expectation is, right, you need to be an expert in pedagogy. You need to be an expert in emotional intelligence. You need to be an expert in, you know, all these different things. And it's like, I'm not. And I'll be, I go, I'm not. But where AI can help me is I can do my research and find out information about SEL and I can put it into a bot or I can put it into a project and it can help me design a curriculum and give me, and I like this, this is the best thing, options. It can give me options for activities of how I can incorporate SEL, social or emotional components into it. And as someone told me the other day, and what we don't realize as educators is we do so much social already. Already, like just collaboration, speaking to the students, getting the students to speak to each other. And even one of the teachers I spoke to in Finland was like, well, for the first couple of weeks, we don't even use the devices. Students need to learn to self-regulate and they kind of get to the point where they earn it back. And so from an AI side, like I'm not going to go, hey, you know, tell me all your feelings. We've seen the danger of that, but it can help me analyse data, it can help offer me suggestions or options of things to do. And it can help me as someone who's a non-expert in certain things like SEL to try and embed activities into my task, into my curriculum that help me then develop students' emotional wellbeing, their morals and ethics, you know, their social interactions. That for me is a huge, huge impact in the types of lesson that I've been delivering. Amazing.

I so agree. Exactly. It can give so many options. I mean, I'm surprised by some conversation I'm having because the options and the ideas it gives us are like bang on, you know. Of course, you need the filter and you need the expertise because sometimes it's not, but in the majority of cases, it's really impressive and surprising. And so, and that's where, I mean, particularly for secondary, it's particularly useful. And so we stop at 13 because there's the engagement of the the videos, the activities, etc., are super engaging for that age group. But in secondary, there are— where you don't need as much visuals and you can actually, as you said, have options and suggest options to the kids and actually, you know, ask them to, you know, the reflections on something. And particularly, as you said, it could be in pairs or in smaller group sizes as well. There's incredible things that can happen of them and connections that can happen from it.

Oh, most definitely. So I am, I'm loving that at the moment in terms of being able to really modify curriculums and embed those things and develop citizenship with kids. Like we were asked, we were talking about isotopes today. So year 9 chemistry, so the 13, 14-year-olds, and they had a citizenship task and it was, we were doing about isotopes. So for chemistry ones out there, but we have uranium-235, So for those people, again, uranium-235 can be used for nuclear power stations, you know. So the question as a citizen was, what have been the positive and the negative impacts? Wow. Again, and that's me as an expert, but I'm using—

I'm using Oppenheimer. Yeah.

But most of the kids have heard of him and they've seen it and you can go and say, oh wow. So now I'm being in these connections, real-world connections. And then we go even further. The citizenship question would be, well, who should be in charge of regulating this down the road? In Abu Dhabi, we know that nuclear power plants have, you know, there's plans and they've started to open and build these things, you know. And then we get to the conversations of, imagine if you had a nuclear reactor in your home in 50 years. It's like, well, think about it. It's crazy. But then I said to the kids, it's like, well, look at the computer you've got. They've all got iPads. Ads. 50 years ago, the concept of having something like that, it's like, well, that was just for governments. Only governments had that power, you know, type of thing. And whereas now, and so those types of things that for me normally I'd be like, I want to develop these skills, but I don't quite have the whereabouts or the time or the knowledge. But now within 5, 10 minutes of being able to do this, I can create these lessons, I can create these activities that allow those conversations, allow those thought processes, and all of a sudden chemistry to these kids is more relatable. It's like, oh wow, I didn't realize. And I just picked that one. Some of them went and looked at carbon, simple carbon-14. Some of them went and looked at iodine, you know, in terms of medical uses. So society— and it's just, I think the more teachers we can get in line with it and just see those types of benefits and the types of activities we can do, you know, then the holistic development of kids, the emotional well-being, there's the social components and interactions. It's not like tech, tech, tech, screen, screen, screen. It's like, no, no, how can I make you a better human? I think that for me is the overarching field of it. Totally.

But in the classroom and beyond it, which is exactly that. And, you know, because that's where I mean, since, yeah, we seem to have forgotten that, you know, what we teach, what we learn in the classroom is to learn beyond it, to actually be a better human. And so all these Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're still on the same page. Amazing.

So, what would you— I'm curious to say with this one then, but like, obviously, I'm talking about when I develop these humans, but there's generational teachers out there, teachers older than me, who are going to be like, you know what, all this emotional mumbo-jumbo, you're just making kids soft, you're making kids soft, you know, it should be action. How do we go about balancing that? Because to some extent, then we've got to be very mindful of the balance that we have in terms of emotional intelligence with maybe other life skills, emotional intelligence with the ability to act upon it, not just talk about it. What do you say to those generational teachers who are concerned about making students too soft?

Yeah, I mean, it is a big— I was interviewed on Sky News actually, and they were saying, well, the older generation say that the children are not resilient anymore. We used to cope with so much more. And there is some part of truth in there, but we were also in a very different setting, as I said, in terms of thoughts, options, et cetera, that also children pick up a lot more on general anxiety and there's more anxiety in general. Therefore, it's kind of this self-fulfilling prophecy. So first of all, it's important to have this new information to realize, stop, you know, we can't compare the world of before to the current world, you know? So in this current world, actually to teach resilience, and it's so important. And there was an article in the BBC which is excellent actually on that and how important it is to teach resilience and that maybe children are becoming a lot less resilient. Well, emotional resilience is a big component of resilience, and emotional resilience is realizing that suppressing feelings is not— as we used to do in the past, which was a lot like enabled us to go through much more, but a lot of people now are having having challenges as they grow older and are going to the shrink at 70, 80 because they're not happy with their lives. So there's something about, oh yeah, we used to be okay, actually is not true anymore. So realizing that the ones who thought they were okay end up with their own set of challenges. Therefore suppression is not the option. Therefore what do we do? Well, the best thing we can do is not just acknowledge the feelings because that's the scary bit is like, oh yeah, yeah, we have all these feelings. Actually, what do we do with feelings. So actually the best thing we can do is teach children to become feeling shifters and realize, oh, I've got all these tools and all these, you know, strategies to help me when I have a difficult feeling. So instead of suppressing because I'm afraid of not being able to deal with that, and that's how you end up with so many children in depression, etc., because they're just— they re-trigger the feeling. Now we've learned, and that's actually always based on science, that's the best way to address these things, is The refractor period, the amount of time a feeling is really in our body and takes over our body, etc., is 90 seconds. That's what science has shown. And the problem is when we go into depression, things like that, is because we retrigger the feeling regularly. And so therefore we end up with this feeling, the cortisol in our body, the anxiety hormone, a lot longer. But if we teach the children just that in the 90 seconds they can address the feeling, feel it, because not suppress it, like get the information you need from it, and then recover from it, from it and it only lasts for 90 seconds, I think that's what emotional resilience is. And therefore, don't be afraid of it. I would say to basically the more traditional people, don't be afraid of this. Just realize now there's a science to it and actually we can teach these kids and they become so much more resilient, emotionally resilient, and then they can apply a lot more. When they have more sense of agency, they become resilient on all fronts. They recover, they learn that mistakes are okay, they learn that they're, you know, their intelligence is not fixed and they can learn. So you don't end up with having children who tell you, "Oh no, I'm not good at math, I'm not good at art, I'm not good at that," but actually that they realize that they can be good at anything. They really strive to become the best version and to really learn more, more curious. So it's through science actually, and realizing that now we have enough science to show that in neuroscience, for example, with the name entertainment that I mentioned, that it's important to do these things and there are tools and therefore, you know, don't be afraid of it. It's only 5-10 minutes a day. So it's making it— it's just focus on solutions and the solutions are there, I think is the most reassuring part.

Definitely, definitely, definitely. We're starting to wrap this up. And one of the things we move towards in this, we've got this season, is a quickfire round. So I've got 4 quickfire questions for you, more about yourself and interest and so forth from that. So I'm going to start us off. A parenting myth you wish would disappear?

I mean, parenting myths is just to make sure I understand the parenting myths. It's basically like that, that we, the one I mentioned about the thoughts that it's better to tell our kids, oh, you don't have to think that way, just think positively. It's a parenting myth that you, you know, you have to, the myth basically is the mistake of thinking that by telling telling them, don't think that way, they're going to stop thinking like this. And instead, basically realize we all had these when we were younger. Why do we tell our kids, oh, you don't think like I used to think, or that I'm still thinking? Instead, go, you know what? This still happens to me, and it's just such a bummer. Instead, I tell myself, you know what? No, I'm not stupid when I think like that. I actually just realize that I can practice things differently. So yeah, that's—

I can completely relate to that one. If you could collaborate with any historical figure on a wellbeing initiative, who would it be and why?

Historical? Okay, so it has to go— I did not prepare for this. Historical figures, I would, um, could we skip this one and come back to it? It'll come to me. Sorry. Yeah, no worries. Um, silly, I should prepare for this.

We'll come back.

We can edit that.

Wow, I've got two more. Yeah, yeah, we'll see if we get— so this one is a book or resource every parent or educator should read.

My God, I love these questions. I should— can we record this in 2 minutes?

We can come back. Yeah, yeah.

So a book or resource that every parent should read. You know, actually my favorite parenting book was, apart from mine, is Parenting from the Inside Out, Dan Siegel. Parenting from the Inside Out, because I think it brings so much great neuroscience to it and not just fluffy stuff, you know, so it's kind of a really good— so yeah, I think every parent should read Parenting and Educators as well. Great stuff. Dan Siegel, great neuroscientist. Yeah.

And then lastly, what's a failure or challenge that taught you an invaluable lesson?

The, the, the failure that actually my kids, um, I thought were— I was a great dad, and actually that they would tell me once I opened up and I said, you know, I want to change, I realized I could do things better. Like, they would tell me, oh, you know, actually when I'd fail, they would make me accountable for that and would make me realize, no, I can be better, I can get better. Until now, I, you know, so I stopped talking about parenting for a few years because I was wondering if I was authentic enough and actually find my parenting had succeeded. And actually, now I have the most beautiful relationship with my kids. And so they made me kind of accountable to these mistakes. So actually, it's not one mistake, I would say, but it's the series of actually failing and realizing that we need to fail a lot to learn. But when your environment knows that and the kids realize, you know, as humans, we need to fail a lot to learn as well, it gives them more compassion to themselves as well. And then we learn together. So it's that repetitive failure of trying to be a better, best version of myself.

Having experienced this myself, there is nothing more humbling and I think gut-wrenching from my side. This is how I felt when my youngest daughter, and this was today, by the way, and she said it before, but today, like we laugh and joke and I'm like, ah, you know, I'm amazing, blah, blah, blah. And she just walked up to me and said, no, you're an okay parent. I was like, what? She says, you're okay. You're okay. And it's enough. And I'm just like, you know, when you just like, you know, it's like just, but then what you've said then, and we, this, you kind of could, you could pass it off and go, it's a laugh and a joke. You could be like, oh, you're only, you're only nigh. But actually like everything you have said today, it's like, well, maybe there's some truth. Maybe there's some validation in what she's saying. And nobody wants to think they're a terrible parent. No one wants to think they're just okay. I'm okay. But actually the hard step in this is going, right, actually, maybe I need to address this. And that in itself is scary and it's challenging. But from everything you've said today and from your own experience, it is a very much worthwhile activity to do.

Yeah. And being okay, you know what, is actually huge because because okay is good enough. And we tend to— we all have that syndrome of not being good enough without realizing. It's either subconscious or we've already put it in, realized it, and we're like, so, so, okay, being an okay parent is good enough actually, you know, and we're doing— and we're failing sometimes. But then from that okay parent, we can have the most amazing relationship with kids. And that's the most important bit.

There's still hope for me.

For everyone, for all of us. It's amazing.

All right. So drawing this one to a close from the conversation, this amazing conversation, by the way, that we have had today, that I am inspired by. There's so much from it I've taken away, and I've had the pleasure of being able to listen to you speak and speak to you personally at numerous different conferences. I've been very fortunate about that. But for the listeners and for the viewers out there, if they could take away one message from this conversation today, what would you like it to be?

Thank you for the nice words again. I think it's really that 5, 10 minutes a day of connection and learning ideally together something is what creates the most incredible relationship, the most incredible conversations. And so, So just have that, be mindful that, find these 5 tenets a day. It could be actually sharing gratitude in the evening and/or the different ways you felt today and then opening up about something. Having these conversations and feeding that connection at a deep level and vulnerability is what creates the most beautiful human bonds. And so be conscious about these 5 tenets a day and just do them, whether you're as a teacher or as a parent. You know, it's so invaluable. You get that. That's what then very quickly transforms the whole environment. And you— and that's where, you know, the real joy comes from. Wonderful.

A great message, a great takeaway, and something definitely that I will be implementing with my two lovely ones out there. For those people who have really enjoyed this and want to know more to find more about your work, where is going to be the best place for them to find you, to find the Happy Confident Company? Thanks, Noel.

The website is happyconfident.com, easy. And we've got a school section and we've got a family section, so it's easy to navigate for schools. Go to the school section because there's so much information out there. And yeah, or Google me and find me.

There'll be a photo of you on Necker Island, probably. Nadeem, it has been an absolute pleasure. I really, really appreciate you coming on and just sharing that wisdom and passion with us today. And just wanted to take the time to say thank you and to wish you all the best for 2025.

Thank you so much, Alex. I really appreciate your work. I find your, also your energy. So, I mean, not only your listening skills, but you've got incredible energy that really is um, makes a difference. And I mean, I'm looking forward to listening to a lot more of your podcasts.

I really appreciate that. Thank you. You take care and enjoy that lovely English winter weather. Thank you.

It's actually sunny out there.