Are Our Children Learning? with M. Teresa Lawrence and Vivian Belmont

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The following is a paid podcast.iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an
endorsement of the products offered or theideas expressed. Welcome to Becoming the Journey.
This show will be a series ofconversations that will inspire listeners along their
life's journey. This show's mission isto cultivate a community of mentorship by sharing

(00:21):
our experiences in our life's journey.Nobody's journey is a straight line, So
no matter where you are in yours, this show is for you. Meet
Grace lobray Hie listeners, and thankyou for tuning in to Becoming the Journey
on wrven ten iHeart Radio. Today'sshow is about children's education. I don't

(00:47):
think I can say it any betterthan that, or not just children's education,
but maybe education in general. Andto be perfectly honest with you,
I have and I'm so happy tohave two women who are pioneering in a
movement in education I like to callit. And anyone that knows me knows

(01:11):
that I speak many times about mypassion for re educating the education of our
young people, and these are twowomen who pioneer that movement. My first
guest is Maria Teresa Lawrence, whois known by M. Teresa Lawrence,
who was born in Cuba and immigratedto the US at an early age.

(01:36):
She resides in Daniel, Wyoming,which is a community of one hundred and
nine inhabitants. Her office is acovered wagon. She is a creative visionary
dedicated to helping others to reach theirfull potential. She's an accomplished attorney,
publisher, educator, and entrepreneur,and the author of a children's book called

(02:00):
Gloriousness. My other guest is VivianBelmont. She's a trailblazing and I say
that with a lot Augusto early childhoodeducator whose mission is to support steam exploration
and for those who are not familiarwith that term, that is science,

(02:22):
technology, engineering, art and math. She encourages imagination and perseverance in children.
She is a two time winner ofthe BJE Curriculum Innovation Award and was
selected to attend the prestigious International EducatorWorkshop in Italy. Full disclosure, I

(02:43):
have known Vivian for over fifty yearsand she is such a positive force in
education. For years, she hasalways spoken of her dream of opening a
children's discovery space and I am soproud to say that she is the founder
of Imaginology Kids in Los Angeles.Ladies, let's start with you. Tell

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us how you got onto this missionof education. Well, first, Grace,
I have to say, I'm sohonored to be here and hearing Vivian's
bio's just fantastic. I feel soblessed. I got onto the mission of
education because I homeschooled my son andI noticed what was going on in the
schools and I said, we cando better. I am very passionate about

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creating a curriculum that includes wealth consciousnessbecause we have a population that feels entitled
to have their loans dismissed and theydon't know how to handle money, and
I think that has to change.And children at an early age need to

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know that money is a reality inlife. It is not and we are
all deserving of wealth. And whatevermindset we have given to our children that
says that they're not deserving of wealth, that debt is a good thing,
and that if they go into debt, somebody else will bail them out.

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That's not teaching personal responsibility at anylevel, and that needs to change.
And I truly believe that. Butand Vivian, I'll touch on you in
just a second. So I'm goingto expand the whole education world and say
that it has many arms like anoctopus. So mentoring, volunteering, financial

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literacy, emotional diversity, visualization,these are all part of the education system.
And wealth not only in monetary terms, but wealth within yourself. Vivian,
I know you too long, soI'm a little bit prejudiced here,
But what made you want to beinto children's education? I hate at school.

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I never wanted to be a teacher. I didn't have any admiration for
teachers. And then when I hadmy own kids, I realized that in
preschool they loved it. They wouldrun to school, but by the time
they were in second grade, ordefinitely third grade, they already didn't like

(05:18):
school. So I realized there wassomething very wrong with our educational system.
That it wasn't just me, asa kid with my personal experience that had
a problem with school, but mycreative, beautiful daughters at the time,
you know, were not happy inschool, and they were getting stomach aches
and not wanting to go. Andthen so many years later, I have

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a son who's now nine years old, the same thing. He would run
to preschool and loved every minute ofit, never wanted to leave. And
then when he entered first grade,it was okay. Second grade, yeah,
already he didn't want to go toschool. So there was a huge
problem with our educational system. Becausehuman beings are meant to learn their curious

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beings. We haven't gotten to wherewe are today without our curiosity or ingenuity,
our teamwork, our dreams and visions, and somehow they all get shut
down by third grade for many,many, many of us. And so
I wanted to see what I coulddo to change that. And by working

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with many many children in the preschooland elementary school level, I realized that
really what they were missing was theability to learn what they were interested in,
to find what their interests were,because they were being told all day
long, and do this, youdo this, you do this, you
do this, and they never reallyhad a chance to explore on their own

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what the world is. You know, what is water, what is dirt,
what is wind? What is light? And just play and through that
play discover their risks and passions andthen go deeper into it as their intellectual
ability grows and they learn to readand communicate, and so yeah, I
needed to start my own place sothat I could offer children the opportunity to

(07:13):
play and discover on their own.So, Teresa, I'm going to quote
you a little bit. Something yousay is success is found in being open
to a world of possibilities. Ourthoughts, imagination, and beliefs create our
reality. What expand on that alittle bit? Oh, it's just perfect
And it just dovetails with what Vivianwas describing. And my book Gloriousness,

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I believe that children are shut down, that they are not giving permission to
use their imagination to imagine the greatworld that they're in. And I think
whatever we imagine, whatever we giveourselves permission to imagine and explore, becomes
reality. And in my book Gloriousness, I tell the story of a little

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girl who starts off very messy,and she has no idea what she's going
to create in the world. Andshe asks her mother, you know what
is it. I don't feel happy, and her mother says, no one
can make you happy. You haveto decide you know who you're going to
be on your own, And thenshe goes through the process of creativity and

(08:24):
imagination and exploration of possibilities. Andshe puts on all these different outfits and
she says, you know, Iam infiniteness, I am cuteness, I
am fishiness. And at the endshe decides that she is gloriousness because she
has made a positive choice within herselfto be who she wants to be.

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That's what's missing in the school system, and Vivian has found I believe a
fabulous you know solution, So withoutit. But isn't messy good in a
way? I mean we always lookat the negative connotation of word no.
No, it's a fabulous thing tobe messy because it gives you a point.

(09:11):
It gives you a point to tolook in a mirror and say,
what is going on here? Whydo I feel this way? It's important
for children to feel emotions and toand to have the ability to recognize that
when they're in pain and they're notenjoying something, there's something inside of them
that needs to be released and exploredand honored so that they can move on

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to something better. That's the Yeah, yeah, I think the word messy
comes up here at Imaginology kids alot and I see a lot of so
we have children here from toddler throughten years old. And with the toddlers
and the youngest children often become accompaniedby a parent or a babysitter. And

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when the child is laying and movingthings around and dumping things out and throwing
things gently through the space to seehow they move, all the adults that
come with these kids say, oh, oh, pick it up, pick
it up, put it away,clean it up, meeting it up.
It's a mess, clean up themess. But so they don't really get
to explore, you know, howthings move, how things sound. They're

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more concerned about it's messy than whatis my child actually trying to figure out
by dumping this bucket or emptying thisbag. They are more concerned with how
it looks. And so I thinkthat all so many of our adults running
around this world have a preconceived notionof what is okay, and then we

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put that lid on our kids,saying, don't make a mess, quickly
clean it up. If you do, don't leave a mess. But creation
is messy, life is messy.Play is really messy. And if you
ever walk into a classroom that's tooneat, especially in early childhood education,

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you've got to ask yourself, like, why is it so neat because play
is really messy and most of ourtime here is spent, you know,
tiding up after all the kids leave. But it's a huge job. Yeah,
So by you, by the twoof you saying that, in my
mind, I'm thinking, well,you know what, MESSI is just a

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way of children learning how to andmaybe I'm using the wrong word, but
clean up a mess. So it'sit's maybe a road to solving a problem
a solution. You know, youmade a mess, Okay, that's fine,
the mess is great. What'd youlearn from it? Okay? And

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now we kind of have to solvethe problem of unmessy? Am I reading
that right? Is that the rightway to say that? I don't know
if MESSI is a problem. It'sa gift to recognize that we're doing all
of these things to learn and togrow. And my mass is different than

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Vivian's description of the learning process inthe classroom because I'm talking more about emotions
of messiness, of this doesn't feelright, And it's okay for a child
to say this doesn't feel right?Why doesn't it feel right? And to
figure out on their own that theyget to choose how they feel. They're
going to release whatever emotion it is, whatever experience happened, and move on.

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And when they do that, they'rejust going to be much healthier at
health They're not going to be livingin some past experience that's going to shut
them down. And that's kind ofwhat I meant. I didn't mean messy
as being bad. I meant everyonehas got it a messy experience. So
isn't having that disruption in your life, let's call it that, okay,

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or some disruption. Isn't that alearning curve to solve the problem or to
learn what's undisruptive in your life.So we're talking about mess on an emotion
social emotional level, and on aphysical level, and somehow, I'm sure
they're connected. And yeah, I'mtrying to figure out how how the world

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works and how we work within thatworld is a complicated untangling of emotions and
materials, right, physical materials andemotions. Though, It's very complicated,
and it is complicated, and wedo it every day. Look, the
political arena right now is messy.Okay. Well, we're saying to ourselves,

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well, how do we unmessage?We should coin that unmessage that's right.
There is another there is another sideto that coin. You know,
we can't live messy. We canlearn from it and see how we change
it to something more positive. That'slike failure. We talk about failure,
or young people talk about I failed, I failed, But what they're not

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understanding is failure is not defeat.It's just learning. It's learning to do
it differently. Or you know,we all live a ladder, okay,
and each rung is a learning curve, and so I just feel if we
present things differently to young people,they'll get more of a positive reaction from

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them. I was going to say, if you take as a premise and
you teach to a child that everythingthat happens to them in one way or
another is a gift, and they'regoing to figure out that gift. Failure
is always a gift because you figureout what didn't work, You figure out
the processes you went through to getto that failure, and you pivot and

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you change and you move on toa bigger playing field where you have an
opportunity to try again and succeed.And not most, but there are children
that fail and then they stop andthey put a label on themselves. Failure
and that should never happen. It'sjust a learning process. As you say,
don't we do that with a lotof and I'll call them inner city

(15:11):
kids or disadvantage kids. I mean, don't we don't We often say,
well, you know you like thatbecause of where you came from, knocking
them down before they even have theopportunity to pick themselves up. And so
you know, it's the same thingwith that label failure when you put a
negative connotation on it instead of apositive connotation on it. Ahead Vivian,

(15:35):
Yeah, here again, a methemologicalkids. When their kids are building or
painting or whatever they're doing, ifit doesn't work out, the building tumbles
or somebody knocks it over, orsomebody draws on their painting, and they
get really upset and they walk awayor say they want to give up a

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lot of them, but some ofthem say, no, that's okay,
I'm just going to do it againand it will be better. So I
ask myself, you know, whatis it about the child that gives up
and the one that wants to continue? And see, you know, a
destruction as just part of the wholeprocess. And so I must think it

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comes from either they came into theworld that way or it comes from something
at home. So here we alwaystell them that it's okay if it didn't
work the first time, because everyinvention, everything that you see in this
room or on this planet, wasinvented by a scientist or an artist that

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tried a million times before they wereable to make it work, and a
lot of people make fun of themalong the way. It's like, oh,
why do you need that for?You don't need that, that's ridiculous.
But then when it was made,everybody would say, oh, well,
that was actually a really good idea, and then other people start copying
it. So I think self confidencereally is a great part of what every

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human being needs because we all areextremely gifted. Every one of us has
multiple gifts, and without self confidence, those gifts go unopened and then turn
into frustration, anger, isolation,and so on. So in our educational
world, we label our children soyoung, the gifted program, the special

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needs program, that you know,all these and divide them up into little
time groups by age, by months, by ability or perceived ability, and
I think, you know, lookingat our entire school structure, to eliminate
all of those little boxes, thatwe put kids in might help a lot
in the long run to have amore healthy society where we can recognize everybody's

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gifts or whatever they are and helpthem grow without dividing them up into little
labeled groups that don't interact with eachother. That's that's there another thing.
So where does that start? Okay? So you you you have the home
life, and you have the schoollife, and then you have their friends.

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Okay, do we educate the parentsto teach their children differently at home?
And or? I mean, youknow, parents come from you know,
their parents who have ideals and ideasand you know, a whole spectrum
of beliefs, and they kind oftake on some of those beliefs and they

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project them onto their young children.And we all know that right now.
We sort of live in an interscene society, you know. And so
how do we get to the parents? Do we get to the parent first?
Do we get to the child first? I believe you have to get
to both first. And I wasprivileged to be on a nonprofit board in
Oregon for many years called Neighbor Impact, and they ran the head Start program,

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which I think is a fabulous program, but part of the program is
educating both the parents and the childsat the same time, and it is
a reprogramming of what they are teachingtheir children and the belief system. Everything
everything goes hand in hand, parentand child because Grace is right. We

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all grew up in households that hadprogramming, that had beliefs on who we
were and who we were supposed tobe. And it's my entire mantra that
children get to choose who they getto be. And when we label somebody,
as Ivan said, we are reallyseparating everybody and just shutting down their

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gifts. It's like you put alabel on somebody's special needs and for the
rest of their life they're they're holdingonto that label. I'm special needs,
so I can't do this. Well, what if instead of that, we
said, yeah, you can doit. You have You're going to do
it your way. You're going tofigure that out and have them step up
to the plate. And it wouldbe amazing what would happen because people would

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step up because we totally believe thatthey can. The minute you are forcing
the image of you can't, thatvibration is going out into the world and
it's affecting people. I truly believethat if a whole bunch of people believe
this person is special needs, they'rein there, they're feeling that, and

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they're they're internalizing that, and that'swhat they believe. You know. Instead
we should be saying, we shouldbe sending out, you are brilliant,
you are beautiful. What is yourgift that you're going to share with the
world. It's a change in mindset, and I understand that. But in
the school system, and I don'tknow how they relabel, but in the
school system, a autistic child,child with challenges, a child that has

(20:59):
a D or whatever will need morespecial education, let's quote special education outside
of the mainstream. How do wedefine them without defining them. I was
going to share my experience in theclassroom because I've been a substitute teacher in
just the preschool age, and allthe children are put together. They all

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played together, including the autistic children. But the autistic children do have special
teachers with them, but they're notexcluded. And what I found so beautiful
about the interaction in those classrooms wasthat everybody was learning from everybody else and
nobody was I mean, obviously itwas such a young age, so these

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kids hadn't yet formed, you know, everybody was just playing and it was
really beautiful to watch that. Andthose kids were getting extra help. That's
what I've seen, and I reallyenjoyed that. I was going to say,
not every the public schools just don'tdo that. I mean, they
do an i EP, they evaluatethe child, they can't afford to have

(22:04):
a separate substitute to watch over thisone particular child, or I mean,
we do have to teach differently.There's a group of people now starting something
called and I thought it was fascinating. It's called education therapy, and they
teach the child through therapy. It'sa form of therapy, teaching them through

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therapy, just like there's van zandtis teaching young inner city kids through music,
and there's a school in Atlanta that'steaching inner city kids, disadvantage kids
through hip hop. They're not beinglabeled, but we're teaching them differently.
How do we get the public schoolsto do that. I'm gonna give you

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that. I'm going to get Vivianthem. The public school system has actually
been doing that for years in differentstates and different ways. Already thirty plus
years ago, I was involved inthe program called Learning to Read through the
Arts, which was sponsored by theGuggenheim Museum at the time, and we
were going into classrooms where children wereidentified as low score readers, and through

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the mime and flowning that I wasdoing at the time, we were inspiring
these kids to read and write becausethey wanted to write out their scripts.
They wanted to read the book aboutmime. And so learning to academics through
through the window of arts has beenaround for a long time. How to

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really make it work on a grandscale for all children has been, I
guess, a struggle for all theseyears, and we're still working on it.
But I don't know why it's sohard. It's just a little bit
more difficult for the teachers, Ithink, to run a school or an

(24:00):
academic year based on purely that theycan't just open a book and go to
chapter three. They have to reallythink on their feet, which is hard
because you have a lot of kids, too many kids in a class,
I think is part of the problem. Honestly, I'll pass it on to
Turisac. Oh. Well, myopinion of this fabulous idea is that it's

(24:25):
not going to happen in the publicschools, and Vivian, what you've described
is beautiful, and it seems verythat it has really influenced a minority of
kids, when what Grace is talkingabout is the entire school system, and
I don't see this happening. ButI do think that COVID gave us a

(24:48):
gift and that parents had to homeschooltheir children and people had to find different
ways, creative ways to teach theirchildren. And I do think that parents
are waking up to the fact thatthere are better ways of educating their children.
And I think that waking up parentsto this opportunity and this possibility is

(25:12):
probably the first step. But Idon't see this happening in the schools.
I wish it were. You know, charter schools do that and the parents
get to pick which charter school theirkids go to if they're lucky, but
most people don't have a choice wherethey go to school. They just go
to the public school nearby. Soit is my wish and intention that the

(25:34):
entire education system gets revamped. Andon that note, I'd like to remind
my listeners that I'm talking with myguests m Theresa Lawrence and Vivian Belmont on
my favorite radio station, WR seventen and we are talking about I'm going
to use my term re educating theeducation system for young people talking about charter

(26:02):
schools. As two people who areinvolved with the education system, what do
you think about universal school choice,school vouches and charter schools. Are we
doing a disservice or not to thepublic school system and maybe that's why they
haven't woke up yet any opinion anyway, Yeah, the charter schools are actually

(26:26):
public schools. They're funded in greatpart by the taxi money, but for
some reason they have the ability tohave more control over the programming that goes
on inside the school, but itis still a public school. So in
that sense, I think we're movingin the right direction because twenty years ago

(26:49):
there were very few, if anycharter schools, and now they're popping up
like mushrooms, literally, with tremendousamount of churches, at least here less
angels. I'm not sure about therest of the country, but we have
so many more choices here in termsof charter schools. As far as being

(27:11):
a disservice to the public school system, I think there are a lot of
wealthy families that are now choosing tosend their kids to the public schools rather
than the they call the now independentschools instead of private schools. So there
is a movement that I see,at least here again in Los Angeles,

(27:33):
of the families to take on thepublic education and try to change it.
Because as the more educated families becomestakeholders in the public school system, there's
more more hands on work from thefrom the parents point of view, with

(27:56):
committees that oversee every thing from uhspecial programming to integrating various programs into the
school day, such as the arts, whether it's performing arts, visual arts,
and so I see it moving veryvery slowly in a good direction.

(28:17):
But every change is so slow itfeels like nothing's happening. But I think
it is happening, it's just superslow. What do you think. I
think anything that gives parents a choiceis valuable and helpful for their children because
when they're seeking choice, they're there. I mean, the parents want the
best for their children. Now thethe other the other point of view,

(28:44):
is it hurting public schools. Well, it has been my experience that the
parents who are well educated and arejust so ferocious that they want their their
kids to have the very best ofeverything, or the first ones to sign
up for the charter schools are thefirst ones to implement all of these other

(29:04):
things. And the commentary for theregular public school system is that that there
are children being left behind because parentswho are equally passionate about having their children
succeed do not have the time orresources to investigate and research and sign their

(29:27):
kids up for those charter schools.Well, there is a you know,
there's a catching up and that thatissue needs to be resolved, But I
don't know how to resolve it.Is school choice kind of leave and I

(29:48):
keep going back to disadvantaged or ina city. Does that kind of leave
them behind? Because do they reallyhave a school choice? I mean,
a middle clas asked well to dowealthy whatever you want to call them.
Family can afford to send their childto that private school, to that Catholic
school, to the Hebrew school,whatever it is. But does that kind

(30:12):
of not does that kind of thatchoice? Is it not? It's not
balanced in my mind. But it'sa thought, right, guys, it's
a thought. I have a questionfor you, Vivian. That's so In
Imaginology Kids, Vivian teaches gravity,water movement, science of sound, and

(30:34):
recycled process art. What is thatall right? So recycled process art ist
ticking what most people would consider trashand use it for arts. So,
for example, after a birthday party, there are many balloons that are popped
and thrown away. We use thoseballoons for collage. We use empty containers

(31:00):
or old strainers or anything that youmight throw out, We clean and use.
So the kids use it to makeit's like a huge painting that has
a lot of texture to it becauseit's done over a period of months,

(31:22):
and they work on it in alarge group over a period of many months,
and it turns out to be thisbeautiful piece of art that really could
hang in an art gallery. Andwe've had a lot of people comment that
it's really stunning when they're done.But it's so you don't have to spend
money to make arts. So I'veworked with a lot of educators who say,

(31:45):
oh, I wish we could doart, but we just don't have
the budget. You really don't needmuch of a budget. You need to
buy glue, you need to buymaybe some paint, but the paint you
can make it last forever and everby watering it down, and uh,
there's really no reason that you can'tuse anything around that you find in a

(32:08):
recycling bin to create arts. Andthe kids are so creative and they love
the different textures. So it's youcan use old string, you can use
rubber bands, I mean anything tocreate texture on a huge canvas, whether
it be wood, cardboard. Westay away from paper because it's too flimsy.

(32:32):
But yeah, they use old paperthat they can crumble up and tear,
and so there's there's that's recycled arts. They can make sculptures and yeah,
it's it's really amazing when it's finished. So you're teaching mixed media to
a younger group, that's what you'redoing. It's that's fantastic exactly. That's

(32:57):
what it is, mixed media.I want to see that, arn't viv.
I've never seen it yet. Showto me. I take a picture
of it. I'll hang it inI'll I'll hang one or two in BDS
when in Vancouver. Okay, here'sa question there. I'd love to I'd

(33:19):
love to here's a question. Well, thank you, you're welcome here.
And also I wanted to say Idon't really teach the kids I believe you
can't really teach anybody anything. Theykind of teach themselves, but you can
support them with the materials and guidance. But uh, you know, I

(33:44):
don't teach them about water, butthey play with water using everything from pipe
pets to brushes, to air pumpsto freezer where they can freeze huge blocks
of ice or tiny crystals, andso they're learning. They ask questions like
why does it do this? Andwe always answer, I don't know,

(34:06):
what do you think? So they'relearning to think. They're learning to communicate
their ideas. Whether their idea isright or wrong doesn't matter, because if
you look at science over the years, you know, they say, well,
this is the right food to eatand everybody will be healthy. And
then ten years ladies like, ohno, no, no, no,
it's wrong. This is the rightfood to eat and everybody will be healthier.

(34:30):
So everything changes. There's nothing that'sreally set in stone. So to
be open minded and just learn tothink and see, I think is really
the way that these kids learn,at least here and I think everywhere.
They would be happier if they wereexperiencing they're learning rather than getting it second

(34:50):
hand. So as Teresa put it, they're creating their reality, they're creating
their learning in a way, andand talking their own stories. Do you
think that parents should share with theiryoung people their vulnerabilities and their emotions of

(35:15):
things that they're going through, sitat the table during dinner, which very
rarely happens these days, I thinkin homes. And if you're going through
something, the children should understand,and in a way, you're educating them

(35:37):
from a financial point of view,something happened financially. It's not that I
don't want to buy this right now, we can't and because and in a
way, isn't that kind of teachingthem that emotional diversity and maybe a little
bit of financial literacy. I mean, if we're more vulnerable with our children.

(35:58):
And the reason why I say this, I was realy at a conference
where the question was asked, andI must say it was a high net
worth conference where the question was askedof these families, you know, do
your children know, you know,what they may inherit? Do they understand
that when they do, what todo with it and how to use it?

(36:20):
And I have to tell you,the majority in that room said,
no, you know, we're notgoing to tell them. Yet we'll tell
them as they, you know,get older, and I, in my
mind, I think that's so wrong. Do you think our vulnerabilities are important
to share with our young children.I'm going to take that, okay.

(36:44):
I think that our children know everythingthat is happening with us emotionally just naturally.
They know something is wrong and you'renot telling them what's wrong. But
what are they learning in that momentthat when they grow up, they're not
going to share their vulnerability with theirchildren. They're going to hide the truth

(37:06):
from other people, and that it'sokay to hide that is not okay.
I totally agree with you, Grace. It would be better for everyone if
parents shared their vulnerabilities, shared theirstruggles and how they were going through them,
as opposed to not sharing them,because sometimes parents are struggling and the

(37:29):
children believe that it's their fault,that they're the cause of this pain that
the parents are going through, andthe child doesn't say anything and the parent
doesn't say anything, and it's notgetting anybody anywhere. Your description of sharing
vulnerability, sharing truth, sharing aplan is beautiful because it moves people forward

(37:52):
in authenticity and in truth, andit's really empowering for both the parent and
the child. Is Yeah, Iagree also very much with both of you,
because I think children understand everything.Even though they might not have the
language, especially the younger children,to express it, they can read it.

(38:17):
And we should share our emotions withour children, and then it's it's
easier for them, like Theresa justsaid, to understand what's going on if
you talk about it, And notonly is it easier, but they'll also

(38:38):
be able to identify these emotions.What is mommy or daddy feeling. They're
feeling angry, they're feeling frustrated,they're feeling nervous, they're feeling so when
they have those feelings, they actuallyhave the vocabulary to say, yeah,
I'm very nervous about tomorrow, insteadof just withdrawing and not communicating at all.

(38:58):
So modeling, I think he says, what you're talking about in grace
is modeling behavior, modeling sharing feelings. And yeah, we all are used
to hiding everything, and I thinkthat goes way way back. You know,
why why do we all hide?And I think that it's a survival

(39:20):
mode that must have been important backin the days when, uh, you
know, if we showed out vulnerability. We might be eaten by a predator.
But you know, hopefully that's nolonger the case, and we should
be able to be more vulnerable andopen and honest with at least our immediate
family, if not the rest ofthe world. It would be a much

(39:44):
better place if everybody could be honestwith themselves and the rest of the world.
I'm working on that. Well.Yeah, look, I think we
all do. I mean, II it's difficult. Vulnerability is a different
called emotion because you have to knowwho to be vulnerable with and who not

(40:05):
to. I mean, because sometimesif you're vulnerable with the wrong people,
then you know you can get steppedon or take an advantage of. So
you know, there has to beagain, to go back to that word,
balance, has to be a balancethere. But children, if we
show them those vulnerabilities in the familyand emotions, then they learn to be

(40:29):
vulnerable with us as parents, whichcould in a way stop the violence and
the alcoholism and drug addiction and suicidalthoughts. And if at a young age
they learn it's okay to feel andit's okay to talk about it, That's

(40:52):
just the way I look at it. But I don't know many families who
are comfortable with that back and forthvulnerability. It's it's difficult. I think
that in the schools they're starting toaddress that or a few years ago where

(41:12):
they have meetings with the children andtry to help them identify their feelings of
in the you know, whenever theyhave the meeting, so it goes by
color, it goes by you know, how the color feelings, and so
they're they're helping. If it doesn'thappen in the home, it can happen,
you know, in terms of theeducational system. It can happen and

(41:36):
should happen in the classrooms because allthese kids bring a lot of pain and
frustration and fear with them into theclassroom, which makes it impossible for them
to really learn. So addressing allof that in school is something that is
really important moving forward, along withyou know, everything else that they're trying

(41:57):
to teach these kids. Social emotionalfeelings and development should be part of every
child's education. On a delegation tothe school right, education in the schools,
in the home, mentoring. Imean again I talk about that many
arms of education. How detrimental ismarketing on our young people today? My

(42:21):
answer to that is, it dependson the mindset of the child. If
the child doesn't have the boundaries tosay this is who I am and is
really caught up in the drift,which is I would say a large majority
of children, which means that they'revery influenced by what their peers say,
by what their community says, thenmarketing is detrimental. However, if you

(42:45):
get children who honestly say that's marketingand I know who I am, it
will have no effect on them.But I know that we're not there.
So the answer to your question isit depends on the child. In general,
marketing has always been detrimental, notjust to children, but to anybody
who lives in the drift, becauseif you listen to something long enough,

(43:07):
you start to believe that it's true. Do you have an answer marketing,
I mean it could be indirect marketingalso, because, for example, kids
influence other kids. So even ifyour childless, say, doesn't watch commercial
television, but their friends do,their friends will highly influence what they want

(43:29):
to play and purchase. So Ithink marketing actually has a very detrimental effect
on a kids. Even if youtry to protect your child and family from
the marketing. It's everywhere. It'sit seeps into every part of your life.
Even if you try to avoid it, it's unavoidable and it will influence

(43:52):
kids to do things and act inways that really are often shocking and surprising.
So that's my take on marketing.It's it's it's so powerful and you
don't even realize it's marketing, especiallywhen you're a kid. It's it's it's
terrible. It's infilustrated to public schools, the classrooms, everything, everything.

(44:15):
It's self gratification that kids hone intoand influential and all those things that you
know, we try to avoid inthe wrong way. And so I'm not
a I would agree with Vivian that, yeah, I've seen it a lot.
And so Teresa, talk to mea little bit about the Truoness program.

(44:39):
Well, the Truoness Project is aheart centered project design to help children
know that they are the authors oftheir destiny. And it started because I
wanted to give out my book Gloriousnessout to immigrant children throughout the world.
And this week I'm actually filing fornonprofit status and so we're going to be

(45:02):
up and running in just a fewweeks and My hope is that people will
donate and I'll be able to packagethe book and send it off to NGOs
all over the world to distribute tochildren in need. And if people want
more information on it, they canreach me at your Trueness on Instagram or

(45:25):
they can email me your Trueness atgmail dot com fantastic I dive. You're
up imagine Ology Kids. Just talkto us a little bit about what a
day looks like with your kids.So every day, i'd imagine Ology of
Kids is different. We never reallyknow what to expect. And what we

(45:46):
do have is the space set upfor the children. So when they walk
in, there are various materials setup throughout the space. We have the
water lab that has some tables orlarge containers set up with water. We
have all the tools for the kidsthat they can use, so everything from

(46:09):
pipe peds to strainers, to animalsthat look real, so they can create
a pond with slighter turtles and somegreens that we have that I bring in
from you know, from outside.They can create an ocean with seashells and
creatures that live in the ocean.They can really create anything they want in

(46:32):
the water lab. But if theydon't want to go to the water lab,
they can build. So the kidswho come here a lot know that
they can ask for anything. Sothey might have been working with thousands of
yards of fabric the week before,and they might say, you know what,
can I have the big blue fabric? And we'll say sure, what's
your plan? And they might noteven have a plan. They just want

(46:55):
the big blue fabric. So webring out the big blue fabric. Can
we see what they do with it? And they might stretch it across the
entire space and then say, youknow what I want? I want more
material, and so we just bringout the materials as they requested or needed
for whatever they're doing. They mightend up making a big, big mountain
out of fabric. They might builda big mountain out of every single block

(47:22):
that we have in the space,from cardboard to cork, or they might
not do anything like that. Theymight just sit down on the table and
draw, so you really never know. They might use the fans. We
have lots of fans. They mightwant to explore wind, so they might
say, can you bring out somemore fans? We want to play with

(47:42):
the wind. So then we'll askthem what do you want to put in
the wind? So they might saypaper, they might say the scarves,
or they might say who knows.They really call the shots and resupport them
in what they're doing. So thesekids are three years old and up,
but the toddlers are in a separatespace, so they have their own room

(48:07):
where they there are no choking materialsand everything is safe for a toddler.
But it's the same idea, verymuch similar materials. It's just a smaller
space that is set up for toddlers. So they can build with huge foam
blocks, they can roll around onsome tricycles, they can build with Uh,

(48:35):
let's see, we have a playkitchen, but usually instead of having
the fake the toys for food,we have strings for spaghetti, you know.
So it's it's it's a different feelingthan your regular preschool where they do
have all the plastic or wooden toys, and so they're really using their imagination

(48:55):
as much as their large and finemotor skills throughout the day. And it's
really interesting to see how the agegroups blend. Also because a three year
old working alongside a nine year oldyou might think is odd, but it
works, you know. It reallyworks because the kids, it's like a
big family. So sometimes they wantto work with a younger child. Sometimes

(49:19):
they are like, you know,I just want to do my own thing
and these little kids are in myway. Can I have my own space?
So we accommodate all of that.We also have a light laboratory where
they can go investigate shadows and reflections, so they have many, many options.
And throughout the day they just movearound the space and move in and
out of different groups. So it'sa very much changing dynamics throughout the day.

(49:46):
We have kids who are here allday, and we have kids who
come from ninety minutes. I've beenthere. It's fantastic And I want to
thank Vivian and Teresa for being onthis show. You can do me a

(50:06):
favor. Buy two books of Gloriousnessand donate one. Give one to your
kid and donate one, And ifyou're ever in La go and experience Imaginology
kids. And I know Vivian hasa dream to franchise and I'm going to
be right on board with that.So thanks everyone for listening to this episode

(50:27):
of Becoming the Journey. I'd loveto have you keep tuning in on WR
seven ten iHeartRadio and you can followus on Instagram at Becoming the Journey.
There's any topic that you'd like meto touch on, just message me on
Instagram and we'll touch on that topic. Thanks again, Teresa and Vivian love

(50:47):
it. Thank you, thank youso much, so nice to meet you.
Teresa. You have been listening toBecoming the Journey hosted by Grace Lavray.
Tune in weekly to or more conversationsthat will inspire listeners along their life's
journey. The proceeding was a paidpodcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes

(51:10):
neither an endorsement of the products offeredor the ideas expressed