Episode 250: Raising Successful Confident Kids

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the Winey Palooza podcast, and I am so excited because I have the wonderful Julia Cook here with us today. Julia, thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Oh, how fun! I'm excited. I love this podcast.

Thank you so much. I wanna— I want— oh, that's so sweet. I want to tell you a little bit about Julia. She is a nationally recognized and award-winning children's book author and parenting expert. The goal behind Cook's work is to actively involve young people in fun, memorable stories and teach them to become lifelong problem solvers. Inspiration for her books comes from working with children and carefully listening to counselors, parents, and teachers in order to stay on top of needs in the classroom and at home. Her new release, Herman Jiggle, Just Be You, is the fourth installment of the Socially Skilled Kids and helps kids embrace their differences and accept themselves for who they are. Well, I can't wait to learn all about you. You are a fascinating, amazing lady. So—

Thank you.

I'm gonna start with what led you to become a children's book author and parenting expert, because I know you were a teacher and I know you've shifted, so I wanna learn about this.

Um, I was a middle school teacher and got a grad degree in counseling to become a better middle school teacher, and we moved to a town where they needed a school counselor, and I had that degree, so I took that position. And a couple years into my, um, teaching there, my counseling there, the kids were having issues with tattling, and they were tattling so much the teachers wanted to pull their hair out. And they said, do a lesson on tattling. We have this much to teach our kids and we have this much time to do it in. I had a grad teacher, uh, that told me if you wanna get into a child's head, if you read to them, that's a great way to do it. And if the book has good stuff in it, then the good stuff will go into their brains and be there forever and ever.

Mm-hmm.

And she introduced us to books like, you know, Enemy Pie and The Rainbow Fish and Mean Jean and the Recess Queen and And so I love that concept. So I looked for a book on tattling and I thought, I'll do a library of all the books and what they do. And there was nothing on tattling. So out of desperation, I wrote a story about a kid who tattled so much, she, you know, and the book worked. It just had 4 simple rules of how not to tattle. The tattle problem pretty much stopped. And this teacher busted in my office one day and said, you need to do something with this. So I grabbed a book off the shelf and called the publisher inside. And, um, I, they, I said, I just wrote this book. I'm a school counselor. They said, send it in. We're looking for one. So I overnighted it on Monday and they called me on Wednesday and said, we wanna publish your book. Do you have more? How much do I have to pay you? Oh, we'll pay you. And I said, and they said, do you have any others? I said, well, when I was little, I used to interrupt a lot. So much that my babysitter said, "Julia, your mouth is a volcano." So I have that one. 17 years later, there are now 140 Julia Cookbooks. There's 9 languages and there's over 3 million sold worldwide. So kind of a weird deal.

Oh my gosh. Well, that is wonderful. And there is such a need for this and you're filling a need that we all have for these topics in books. So why don't we jump into your book since we're talking about them? Do you have your latest book to show us?

The Herman Jiggle Just Be You?

I actually—

I am sorry, this week I am painting.

Oh, I forgot.

I have some props, but I don't have the actual title to hold up there. But, you know, our kids, they want us to wave our magic wands and solve their problems for them. And if we solve their problems for them, they might live with us when they're 30. And the goal, yeah, get them out of the house and productive. And, and we can't— we have to teach them how to solve the problem. So the books take the problem-solving skills and put it in their heads in a fun way. So with Hermann Jiggle and Just Be You, this little boy, they tease him about his hair because it sticks up. And then he, his, his friend says, why haven't you lost any teeth yet? Don't you have any? You don't have any holes like everybody else. And then he says, you're really slow, you should run faster. So he goes home and he asks his mom if he can borrow the glue to glue down his hair. And then he's trying to get his teeth out and with a string. And then because he needs money so that the tooth fairy can come so he can buy some Nitro Flyer shoes like everybody else. And his mom says, let me get this straight. You wanna glue down your hair, pull out your teeth, and buy new shoes just so you can be like everybody else? Yes. Herman Jiggle, you are wonderfully made and valuable. Don't try to change your insides to match other people's outsides. And you know, she says, your hair's unique. That's what makes you Herman. And you're the only kid in your class who hasn't lost a tooth, so you can eat corn on the cob without getting anything stuck in your holes. And you know, and she tells him that, Uh, the basically is you don't have to change because everybody's different. Now he goes back to school and everybody has Herman hair. They all put, we like our hair like yours and we wish we could climb like you. And you know, and so it's one of those validating. She, and he says, but Mom, sometimes I feel like I don't fit in. And she says, well, if you're yourself, you'll always fit in.

Oh my God.

If you're yourself, you can be happy. And if you're happy, you always find a way to fit in. So—

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, so many kids that are trying to change to be like what, you know, whatever's cool or whatever, and they, they kind of— I mean, I, I, there's some kids that are fists, okay? They're solid. So if they take a hit, it bounces right off of them. Unfortunately, especially like with social media and so much image going on, some kids are spheres. And when they take a hit, they crunch and they deflate. And so our goal is, you know, if you, you just have to be this person to create this solid sphere where I'm okay, you know?

So, so let's jump into that because you talk about helping kids be confident in who they are. So how can, tell us how we can do that. How can we help our kids be more confident?

We've always been taught to praise kids. Oh, I'm so proud of you. Way to do this. I can't believe, you know, that's wonderful. And then when kids are online, like playing video games, that's an intrinsic reward. They're telling themselves how amazing they are. So here's your intrinsic reward and here's your extrinsic reward. It's much more effective to look at your child and say, wow, I sure am proud of you. I can only imagine how amazing you must be feeling. Right now. I can only imagine how proud of yourself you are. Wow, I can only imagine how tough that was. I bet you're feeling so tall right now. I bet you're standing so tall on the inside. And so you're like, yeah, I am, you know, you remind them of how you want them to feel with the only I can, I can only imagine. You try to, you know, so that you, you picture in your brain, I'm inside their heart and how proud they should be. Because So much of our society is external that if you tap into that intrinsic reward, that's, that's, that's fair game, and it's very effective.

Well, you're speaking to my heart because my son, he's 16, and he tells me that I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, a 16-year-old son. I've done that twice. That's fine.

That's hard. He's so— he says that I praise him so much that it doesn't really mean— doesn't mean much because it's so often. So this is super helpful for me, you know.

Wow, I bet that made you feel great. I can only imagine how that made you feel inside. Well, I mean, I can only imagine how amazing you must be feeling on the inside. So even if he doesn't think he's feeling amazing since you said that, that's a, that's a backdoor approach to Yeah, I am.

I love that more than you know, and I needed to hear that. It's going to help me with him. And I'll tell you what other help we all need, because I'm sorry, they've all taken a hit since the pandemic with their people skills, all of them. And I'm still working on the people skills with my kids. So give us advice on how to improve our kids' people skills.

Well, people— our kids are going to emulate what they see. So you can't expect your child to have, you know, a high-priced people skill set if, if you are not using those yourself.

Um, that's, that's not the problem with me.

Okay. Uh, and it did, it did give us a hit, but it's also become a crutch. Oh, well, I can't do that because of COVID you know. Instead say, well, we're behind the learning curve. I mean, your goal— parenting is the hardest job on the planet because kids don't come with instructions, and what works for one doesn't work for another. And when your mama comes out of your mouth, it doesn't work on your kids because they're a different animal. Um, but it is, you know, our goal is, is that I kind of, I kind of think about it like you're— when you're raising kids, you're making cookies, okay? And when they're little, you're putting in the salt and the nuts and and there's a lot of nuts and chips and everything, and you're mixing up the batter. You have control of everything that goes in the cookie and you have control of the cookie's environment. Then you send 'em off to middle school, that's elementary. Then you send 'em off to middle and high school and they're in the oven. You can't control the cookie, but you can control the environment. You can make sure they don't get too hot or burn or whatever. You control the temperature. Then when they go to college, they're on the cooling rack. And the goal is we create a situation where our children turn out to be such perfect cookies that people take a bite and they just want another bite and another bite and they just love that cookie. They don't take a bite and say, oh, that's, I don't like that, that's nasty. Because you really have no control over the environment or the kid after they leave your house. But when they're in the oven, it's really tough to go back in and add the salt. See what I mean? Because that's— that ship has sailed. So these early years are so very important. And, um, I always, I always told my kids, you know, I try to be an A parent, I expect you to be an A kid.

I love that line.

And I'm teaching you to live in a world where everybody's not going to be as kind and nice and sweet and love you as much as I do. So, um, you can always say, oh, I think you can do better. Let's do a redo on that people skill there, you know. And you can sit down and ask your kids, what are great people skills? What do you— when you see somebody, what are the things that you— wow, that person really, you know. And then you fill in the blanks, but you always ask them what they know too, you know. Our kids, they'll text you their whole life story, but go and say, hi, how are you? Can't do that because they're, you know, they don't feel comfortable talking to people. Did you go and apply for that job? Why email the guy? Well, did you go down and talk to him? No, I just send him a text. You know, very comfortable with text, but our kids have forgotten kind of how to talk. And never, you never say, hey, what did you do at school today? Because they'll say nothing. Say, what was the best thing that happened to you today? What was the worst thing that happened to you today? What was your sprinkle? And that's kind of stupid, but that sprinkle is that aha moment that's so fun. And then you say your best and worst.

I love those questions.

I always say best thing, worst thing, and sprinkle, and that gives them a chance to talk, to practice talking. Yeah.

Well, it's interesting because my son needed to call his internship to set up, you know, starting it, and he didn't know what to say. So it was a good opportunity for me to teach him some people skills that we don't think that they need. I'm like, oh, you just make a phone call, but they need to— sometimes they need to rehearse what they're going to say.

You know, it used to be that our parents said this, that, you know, we do everything for you, we do everything for you. Well, now we still are doing everything for our kids, but they also have a wealth of knowledge that about the world and about events and about life and about people, the digital knowledge. And the digital knowledge is only single-faceted because you can say whatever you want online and there's no consequences. Like if you were bullying somebody and the minute you saw that hurt in their eyes, that was gratifying to a bully and I'll stop. But I don't see that online, so I can just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. And it's, it's, it's very tricky. It's—

yeah, yeah. No, they're definitely living a more complicated childhood than we did.

I remember my, my grandpa saying, this new generation are going to ruin the world. And now I'm like 60 going, this new generation, I'm afraid for the world. And I'm thinking, maybe that's just the way it is. I don't know. But oh my gosh, kids have, um, they're faced with adult problems Because of technology, often they're faced with adult problems in adult situations with only a child problem-solving skill set, and that causes some issues there.

Well, let's talk about problem-solving skills, because I think that that is the key to— one of the biggest keys to life is helping our kids learn effective problem-solving skills. So help us as parents teach, teach our kids better problem-solving skills?

Um, the thing you want with your kid, no matter what, is you want to create a relationship with them forever. And that doesn't mean you have to like them all the time, and it doesn't mean that they have to like you all the time, because they won't. Uh, but as long as you can trust a person and talk to them, and they can trust you and talk to you, that the relationship will work. But once trust is violated or communication is violated, the relationship fractures. So any relationship needs trust, communication. So in order to help our kids, I mean, that's such a wide topic, you know, big problems. But what starts out is, you know, how do we build this kid that's strong, that's, that's capable? Well, this kid knows that unconditionally you love them. This kid knows that You will always be truthful with them. And they might ask you a question like 6 years old, hey, will there be a shooter at my school today, Mommy or Daddy?

And oh, good.

So you wanna tell your kid, oh no, that would never happen. But if you do that and it did happen, you fracture trust.

Yeah.

So when your kid lays a question on you like that and you don't have the answer, you don't have to answer. You look at your kid and you say, I'm sorry, I just don't have any words for that answer right now. But I'll figure it out. And then you and I will sit down and we'll talk about this. And then you go and research out the answer. And the answer you would give them is, well, nobody really knows the answer to that problem, but we're doing everything we can to make sure that'll never happen here. And together we're pretty strong. So we always think we have to have an answer. You don't, as a parent, you can look at your child and say, I don't have any words for that answer, but I'll figure it out and we'll talk later. And then you go and find an expert who can help you. Also, when kids do things that— I think our problem-solving skills are really fractured because it seems like if there's cause and then there's effect, and we're really— we get the causes, but we're kind of shaky on having the effect happen. You know, kids need to realize that if they do good things in the world, good things happen to them. But if they make bad choices or poor choices, they have a consequence of some type. If you run a red light, you could get a ticket, you could get injured. Okay, um, so you might have to have a consequence, not about— not just punishment, you know, this is more a consequence on teaching your kid how the world works, uh, where, you know, this is a good one from Love and Logic Parenting, uh, the kid was asked to mow the lawn by Monday And it was Thursday, and the dad said, I need you to mow the lawn by Monday. And then it was Saturday, says, make sure that lawn's mowed by Monday. And Monday came and the kid didn't mow the lawn. So the dad took his longboard and he took it to the pawn shop and hawked it and took the money, paid the neighbor boy to mow the lawn. Then when the kid needed his longboard, he handed him the ticket and said, You have to get it ad hoc because I had to use that money to pay the guy to mow the lawn because you didn't do it. We set kids up for expectations. We need to make sure that the consequences align with those. If you need a consequence, you can always ask your kid, what do you think a good consequence for this is? Because you definitely need a consequence for this behavior because I need to teach you that the world doesn't work like that. And you'll be surprised, sometimes they're harder on us than— Now, don't ever make your consequence hurt you. Because one time I took the TV away from my kid for about a month and I almost died. It was terrible.

That is way too long.

Maybe you say, yeah, it was terrible. And I was like, this is punishing me, not them. And I say, oh my gosh, my bathroom needs to be cleaned. Here, knock yourself out. Now it's not gonna hurt that child to clean the bathroom. That might not be their typical task or job, but all of a sudden they're realizing, oh, I'm doing this because I made a poor choice. We want our kids to be the flippers, not the pinball.

Mm-hmm.

And there's a, there's a really good video. It's called Mama Polar Bear Saves Cub. I mean, it's like 4 minutes long and it's at the zoo and nobody teaches our kids how to struggle better than the mama polar bear. Because if polar bear falls in the water and most moms, if your baby's gonna drown or dads, you know, when you wanna rescue your kid and put 'em on the bank, but the mama polar bear doesn't do that. She jumps in and surrounds the cub and gives him a struggle pond. She doesn't touch him. She just surrounds her body. So he's between her and the deep dark pond and she talks to him. And tells him, you know, how to get out. And the minute that he gets out on himself, she goes down the side of the bank. So when he turns around, he doesn't think she helped him. He realizes he did it by himself. Oh, that's, that's Mother Nature at its best, you know. So, um, in order to allow our kids to struggle, uh, at home, that's probably the hardest part of being a parent. I, I had my son we do, you know, made sure he had everything. And he never tried too hard in school because it was so easy, and he was pretty good athlete, and, and we just provided for him. And when he was studying for medical boards, he got in a problem with not sleeping enough, and he lost his ability to sleep. And he never struggled because he was struggling to do well on this boards test And he didn't have struggle skills because I never taught them to him because I was just there always giving him all he— I write books on boogers and he was studying for medical boards and there's no way he could— I could help him. And it was very, very scary for him and for us. So, and that was sleep deprivation caused anxiety and depression because he didn't know how to struggle. So, ah. You know, you need to teach your kids to fail in a safe environment so that, and get out of that safe environment by that, that symbolic bear video is just huge for parents because, you know, it's kind of, if this happens, then that's gonna happen. And then if that never happens, the kids just kind of float through life and they, they become the pinball, not the flipper.

I love that line. I'm sitting here thinking about the fact that I love that I'm not at school with my kids. I tell them this. They're dealing with so many teachers and students and all these different personalities and figuring things out on their own, and they'll tell me about their struggles and we'll talk about it. But I'm like, I'm not there. Like, I can't help you. We can talk about it, but you're, you're at school on your own. You have to figure it out.

You know, and, and always our kids will get in situations where they shouldn't. Like, your high schooler will— you know, we had a thing with our kids. There's, you know, if you get to a party and there's something there that is not what you want to be affiliated with, then you text me 266. I'll call your phone and I'll make up a bogus excuse. Aunt Martha had a heart attack or something. I have to leave to go to the hospital. 'You need to come home now, or I need to come and get you.' And then he hung up his phone and say, 'Oh man, my mom,' blah blah blah. So he gets out of the party without messing up his peer relationships. And my, my end of the deal was I was never ever allowed to ask who was there and what they were doing. And that was set up way before. And I respected the fact that my kid got out of a situation that was sticky that he shouldn't or she shouldn't be in. And I have 3 kids, each of them used it twice. They probably should have used it 10 times, but at least they used it twice, you know.

So I'm making a note. I made a note of this, by the way.

These are things that you talk about your kid, you know, the problem solving has a lot to do with before it happens. And, you know, you can coin phrases with kids because every person that a kid deals with has to have 3 things. They have to be seen, they have to be heard, and they have to feel validated. And when a person doesn't get one of those 3 things, then they're after you for something. So, you know, a coin phrase everyone can put in their back pocket: I can only imagine how frustrated you must be feeling, or I can only I can imagine how happy you must be feeling, or, you know, so that's kind of a lot of problem-solving skills you set up before the issues. And you talk to your kid, you say, what are the, some of the problems, things, the struggles that you face? And, you know, situations you don't know how to deal with something. If you get in a situation and you don't know how to deal with it, I mean, in, in the world we live in, 1 in 4 children will be sexually approached online, um, right under your roof. And, um, so there's some red flags that you can set up before, before this happens. I mean, this happens, you know, they have sometimes the preps, the perps have like the same profile as your child and they say everything your child needs to hear and they're in their social streams and they have the same friends. And then they convince your children to, hey, send me a kissy face and I'll send you one. Let's pretend we're drinking beer, but we'll just take a picture of it and then we won't really do it. We'll just pretend. And, and you send me one and I'll send you one. Then they'll say, hey, send me a crotch shot. And your child will say, no way. Well, then I'm going to take this picture of you drinking beer and I'm going to send it to all of these people and I'm going to out you and I'm going to tell all you, you know, you're gonna get kicked off the team 'cause obviously you're partaking in alcohol. And so the kid's trapped. There was an instance with a young man who was, we have this rule that if it's covered up by a swimsuit, you never take pictures of it and send it online. It's the swimsuit rule. It's real simple because that's often what's online. So this young man got caught up. He was sending body parts to, he thought, a young lady. And that's the thing now with, you know, kids. And it turns out that the young lady was really a Nigerian 42-year-old guy and told the young man to, um, to clean out their— his parents' bank account. And if he didn't, he would send all of his pictures to all the kids at school and his parents. And, uh, the young man ended up um, taking his own life because he didn't want his parents to not have any money. He didn't want to shame them. He knew what he had done is wrong, and he was so embarrassed that he— the only way out was to take his own life at 13. So there's a situation where a child is faced with an adult problem and a kid's skill set. So we talked to our kids long in advance before that with these problems. First of all, If you're ever online, never, ever, ever take pictures of anything under a swimsuit and send it, because once it goes out, you have no control. What if you send it to your best friend and your best friend says, oh, I won't share it, I won't share it, and it's sitting on his counter and his brother comes along and sees the picture and shares it with all his friends? Can you control that? So we have this book called Cellphonia, and it says, feel free to take pictures and send them to others, but make sure your pictures are clean. If they can't be displayed on a billboard, they should never come across your screen.

Such a good advice.

Oftentimes, um, these perps will ask your kid to go to a different platform. They'll say there's too many people on this platform, or we should go to this more— this is a more intimate platform, this is a more fun platform. What they're doing is taking the kids off of the radar webs and putting them into an unsecured web line. And so if anyone ever asks your children to you know, to change platforms. That's a big red flag. So you talk to your kid way in advance about that. No one should ever ask you to go to a different platform because you know what, you could get trapped. And if you're ever— no one has the right to make you feel uncomfortable online. And I don't care what you think you're, you know, we will never ever get mad at you if you come to us because someone tries to trap you online and make you do something you don't feel okay with. That's a trap. And we will never ever get mad at you regardless of what that is. And you set those little things up way in advance. And a lot of that can be totally eliminated by screens in the bedrooms. You might think that you are sleeping and your child is up playing video games online, like setting their alarm at 2:00 and playing until 6:00 and then going back to bed and then letting you wake them up. Why are you doing that? Well, if I don't play, I don't have any friends at school because I'm really good. And I'm on this team. So they're, you know, if everyone in their family charges their screen in a different room at night from 11 to 6, then a lot more healthy people would— because when the screen wakes you up, even if it's just to check the weather, your brain doesn't do its cleaning at night and gets all colluded and stuff. So That's, you know, and then sleep deprivation causes increased levels of irritability, increased levels of anxiety, and increased levels of depression. So picture just this irritability issue. If people are sleep deprived, everybody's irritable. So you say, oh my gosh, did you see that dress? And they hear, oh my gosh, did you see that dress? You know, so people are, they have a disconnect from the very beginning because they're sleep deprived.

Oh yeah, anxiety, depression, irritability. I'm miserable when I don't sleep. So, okay, we've talked about so much. I've taken so many notes. You're, you're chock full of so much advice. Um, this is amazing. I want to talk about positive parenting because I want to know what, what I want us to explain to everyone what positive parenting is because I love that term.

Well, you may have been raised in a very negative environment, like, you know, if, if you do this, you can't do that. So, uh, you know, you have to do your homework or you can't play video games. Um, how about this? You get to do your homework so you can have free time. Never call video gaming a thing. Because if you say, if you clean your room, you can play your video game, you're giving it a money valid commodity. You say, hey, when you clean your room, not if, um, you get to, uh, you can have free time. And when you tell a kid what they have to do, they use 1/8 of their brain. Okay, yeah, you tell a kid get to do, 7/8 of their brain comes out.

Hold on, I'm gonna take a picture. Put that back. I want to take a picture of that. That's awesome. I love that. Thank you.

So today you get to clean your room, you get to put stuff where you want to, and you get to put, you know, do it whenever you want to because it's your room versus you have to clean your room today. I mean, nobody likes to be told what they have to do, but we all like to be told what we get to do. That's an example of positive parenting. Would you as a parent like to hear the words that are coming out of your mouth? Or could you— or, you know, we think about when your mom or dad has said stuff, they were probably negatively parented, or parented out of fear. You know, this will happen to you if you do this. So we were like, um, Sometimes when your kid does something that's just awful, say, wow, that, that's really draining my energy. That's an energy drain. Or they try to get in your face and argue with you. You cannot argue with a person that's not there. So you know what? I can only— you must be really frustrated. I'm really frustrated. I don't deserve to be talking to you right now. You deserve some space. You deserve some space right now versus shut your mouth, I don't want to hear that. See what I'm saying? I think you deserve some space of your own for a minute. And then also the, the word but versus am. Never say but. Kid wrecks your car, you know, you wrecked my car, but I still love you. Okay, well then I'm off the hook for wrecking your car. You wrecked my car and I still love you. So you're recognizing what they did wrong and you're throwing the 'and' in there. That's, um, very powerful.

It's all about our word choices.

I like this. So, and, and sometimes there are no words, and, and it's easier, it's better when you don't have any, when you only have negative thoughts. To look at your kid and just say, I don't have any positive words, so I need to go away for a while. I'll come back and we'll talk about this. But, and you know, because it's very hard to parent positively if you've been parented negatively. It's kind of like you imprint how you should parent. But we found that with kids today, because if they're not going to get what they need from you, they get it from this. Mm-hmm. Um, that you need to establish that trust and communication with them. And we have to communicate differently with kids today. I, these books have been around for 17 years. Every time a book of mine goes to print, it gets adjusted a little bit because how we talk to kids now is not how we talk to kids 17 years ago. Kids change, people change. We have to change along the way.

So true. That's so true. I have two middle school daughters and their insecurities just make me so sad. And I know they're not alone and I know kids suffer from so many insecurities. Can you help us? What can we do to help our kids with their insecurities?

Well, I had a— my niece was 11 and really tall and geeky and she didn't think she was good at anything and So this costs money, but I went and had her makeup done professionally and then had a senior picture shoot at the age of 11. And she had all these beautiful pictures of herself, and the person thought she was in the 11th grade. And I'm like, no, she's 11. And sometimes they have to see the beauty from the outside to see the beauty from the inside. Now that works for some girls, it works for some boys. It may not work for your kid, and it's expensive, but that's a lot cheaper than therapy. It's a lot cheaper, you know, than in-house treatment. It's— and you want to raise your child to be confident yet not cocky. And that means I kind of like— this is a weird analogy, but it's kind of like A hair strand, when you have warm water, the follicles open up so the hair product can go in it. And then when you have cold water, it seals them shut. So when you wash your hair with conditioner, it's warm when it goes in, but then you rinse it in cold water so that the conditioner stays in your hair.

Okay. I didn't know that.

It's weird, but a confident kid has open follicles all the time because they can continue to get information. And a cocky kid has closed follicles, like, I know it, I don't need to learn it anymore. That's a weird analogy, but if I always think in things and then it makes more sense to me.

Oh, it's super helpful. I know how rough middle school is. It— I didn't enjoy it. I mean, it's just a hard age, but we're doing our best as parents to help them through every tough stage of life.

Well, and when somebody's mean, somebody's cruel, somebody does something wrong and it hurts your child and you want to just go and pull that kid's hair out, you look at your kid and say, wow, there's some people put on this planet to show the rest of us what not to do. And she's really good at her job, isn't she?

This is perfect. I'm gonna tell them that when they get home today.

Well, you'll know not to do that now, won't you? That kind of thing.

Oh my gosh. Um, I would love to know the best advice you have ever given or received.

In order to teach children, you must enter their view of the world.

Oh, so how do we do that?

Well, books are a great way to do that because you start reading to them and the books have the skills in them and they let you in. But you cannot parent your kids the way— I mean, there's some things you can certainly parent your kids the way you were parented, but you have to understand that, um, they've been given worldly knowledge at very young ages. And are faced with problems that we never would have even incurred due to lack of knowledge, of awareness of what's going on. And, you know, the thing is, if they don't fit in with you, there's always a group out there that they'll fit in with. So the goal is to make sure that, yeah, they always fit in at home. I think that's the most powerful advice is, you know, through trust, through trust and communication, you know, figure out a way to make your child feel like they fit in at home.

That is so sweet. I've never heard it put that way.

It takes a lot. It takes time. And sometimes we don't have time because we're putting stuff on Instagram and never do this with your kid when you're on your phone. Never do this. Your kids say, mom, mom, mom, unless you're doing CPR on this phone. Anything your kid says is more important than that phone, an email, an Instagram, a deadline. It doesn't matter. Your child is more important. It used to be when you go in a store, if the person was on the phone or if the phone rang and there was a person there, they always met the person first. And now the phone takes precedence. Oops, sorry, got a call. Just a minute. That's sad.

It is so sad. I know, I know. And we're, we're not the best examples, so I have to remember to put my phone away. 100%. Now, you were a math teacher, and I would love to know what being a math teacher taught you about kids, because I'm guessing it made you an even better counselor.

You can't teach kids, like, with math Um, you know, I didn't, I didn't have like improper fractions. I had big-headed fractions who needed to reduce, reduce, reduce. So what it taught me is if you want to teach kids something, you have to tie it to something in, in their brain. Like distributive property, the 7 on the outside of the parentheses is the mom, and the X, the Y, and the Z are the kids. Well, she has to distribute her love evenly to all the kids. She has to kiss all of them, because if she only kisses one of them, they'll feel left out. And they can take that story and they can relate it to their, their life, and then they never forget it. So mathematics is, is relationship-based anyway. People think mathematics is arithmetic. Mathematics— there's mathematics in everything we do. It's everywhere. But unless you— there are some kids who are geared that way, they just see it. But unless— so if you're bad at math, you had a bad math teacher. You didn't— you're not— no one's bad at math. I mean, you're not. You just haven't found a way to relate it to what's in your brain. Just like—

I wish you were my math teacher. What the heck?

I taught— well, I taught skiing. And like one day, my math— my 8th graders, and these were the kids, they had given up. You know, so I love that group because one day we did our math like Leonardo da Vinci and they had to lay on the floor and paint on the top, do their math on the top of the chair, tape it to the bottom. And I mean, it was just all these 8th graders on the floor. It was funny. And you know, so they, they never knew what they were gonna do. But when I taught skiing, you want kids to bend their ankle. You want them to bend at the ankles, not at the, you say bend your knees, their butt goes over their feet. So you say, put a water balloon between the tongue of your boot and your shin. Let's put an imaginary water balloon there. Now squish the water balloon. And they, then they move, right? See what I'm saying? So it's all about tying what you want them to do into their worldview and hooking it to something that's already in there. Then once it's hooked, then you can put more knowledge in there. But to just shoot knowledge, I tell teachers all the time, You are not teaching stuff to kids, you are teaching kids stuff. That's a huge difference.

You are amazing. I, I can't believe how many notes I have taken during this interview. I'm like, oh my goodness, this lady is full of so much knowledge. So I've asked you a ton of questions and you know I could keep going, but, um, Tell us what else you want to share that I didn't ask you.

Oh gosh, have fun. You have to have, you know, if you have an experience where you, you take a positive event and you burn it to, and you hook it to a positive emotion then you burn a positive memory in your child's brain. So you need a couple of those every day, every day, so that they'll want to be there.

Oh, I think I'm going to make my children listen to this interview. That's all I can say. So tell everyone where to find your books and where to find you.

Um, you can go to Julia Cook Online. That's my website. I have a Julia Cook Online Facebook page. You can email me off of my website. I kind of work a lot, but I always try to get back to everybody. The books are pretty much everywhere, but if you want them personalized, you can get them from my website, Julia Cook Online, and there's a place where you can ask how to sign them. You can also go to the website. If you click on Buy Books, there's a dropdown menu. It says titles and topics, and that has all the titles and what they cover. And don't pay attention too much to the age because it just depends on the kid. For sure. We have a big release coming out in January. Watch for that. It's not social-emotional. It's called— well, it's called I'm Money and I Don't Grow on Trees. And that'll be everywhere in stores on January 2nd, which is Blue Monday. Which is after we spend all way too much money on Christmas. So, uh-huh.

Yep. Well, I can't thank you enough for spending time with me. I know how precious your time is, and I really appreciate it because I absolutely loved talking to you.

Thank you. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

This is Rebecca Green reminding everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time. This show has been produced by Market Domination LLC. To discover how you can have your own show completely done for you and turn it into a real published book and become the authority in your marketplace, Go to www.marketdominationllc.com/podcastoffer.