Hi there and welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast.  I'm Susan Stiffelman, your host. I'm the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting with Presence. And I'm also a marriage and family therapist, a longtime parent coach and educator and a mom. And I'm very glad that you're here.

This podcast is really just a chance for me to share some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years, doing this work with thousands of families around the world. And, today you're going to hear a fantastic, fascinating conversation with Jessica Lahey. Author of the addiction inoculation about how to prevent substance abuse and addiction in kids.
This is really one of the most important episodes I've recorded. So I encourage you to listen well, and please, please share this with the parents in your tribes, such great information. Before we get started, make sure that you're getting all of our updates by visiting Susanstiffelman.com and signing up for the newsletter.

So you'll get lots of news and inspiration. We have some great programs for parents, including our upcoming navigating life with a narcissistic. Co-parenting not an easy topic, but a super important one. So if you, or someone, you know, is in need of that kind of support, check that. My website, we also have wonderful classes still available, including reducing behavioral challenges with tools from neuroscience, with Dr. Mona Delahooke, fantastic class, and the resilient brain with Dr. Dan Siegel. Also one of my favorites, there's really a whole library of terrific masterclasses at Susanstiffelman.com. So check it out. All right, then let's move on to today's topic. Have a listen to my conversation with Jessica Lee. And I'll come back for the wrap-up.

Hello, Jessica. So glad you're here with me to talk about such important stuff. Thank you so, so much for having me. Okay. So before we get started, I'll just tell people a little bit about you.  Jessica Lahey is a recovering alcoholic of over eight years. For five years. She worked as a teacher in an inpatient drug and alcohol recovery center for adolescents in the scene, substance use disorder from the inside as a.

And as a teacher, she writes about education parenting and child welfare for the Atlantic, the Washington post and the New York times, her most recent book, the addiction inoculation addresses the roots of substance abuse identifies who's most at risk prediction and offers parents and educators practical evidence-based steps for prevention.

So as SSO been looking forward to this conversation, thanks for living it and sharing it so openly and honestly, and powerfully, You know, I think it's important, you know, there's, there's a part of it. That's just, you know, I think all people can benefit from being a little bit more honest about what's going on with them from a mental health perspective.

And,  just because we find out that we have a lot. Allies that there are a lot of people who feel the same way, but also, you know, as a white woman, I it's easier for me, you know, I go out there and I tell people that I'm an alcoholic and that I have, you know, almost I have over eight years of recovery and people are like, oh, that's so brave.

So wonderful. But there are a lot of people who just.you know, when they say that they have a problem with drugs or alcohol, it's just another strike against them and they don't get the hero talk, they get the, oh, you know, that makes you more of a risk for a job or an apartment or custody or whatever.

So I think it's really important for, to normalize, you know, recovery as much as possible. And that's what you're doing. So you've written that all children are at some risk for substance abuse, regardless of their genetics. According to the national center on addiction and substance abuse, teen drug addiction is the nation's largest preventable and costly health problem.

Despite proven preventive strategies, nine out of 10 adults with substance use disorder report that they began drinking and using drugs before 18. Can you explain that? Yeah, so that word preventable was such a big, all expensive term. I, as a parent. So as soon as I got my drinking sort of in hand and, and you know, was going, was in recovery immediately.

I started thinking about my kids because I was raised by an alcoholic. One of my parents was raised by an alcoholic there's, alcoholism and, and drug use and abuse on my husband's side of the family. So. We had known from the beginning that our kids were at elevated risk, but that term preventable, I just, I needed to understand what that meant.

I needed to know what that meant for my own kids. And I also wanted to understand how, what we could have done differently so that my kids, my, my kids' teachers do that all the time. My students in the rehab, you know, how could we have prevented them from landing there and. It turns out that there's a lot of great evidence about this, especially as our understanding of brain, the brain and brain development we're able to do, you know, in real time imaging.

, but,  the other thing that's really interesting about this is. Nine out of 10 people who are, have issues with substances in their adulthood, admit that they started using before age 18. But it's even more interesting than that. If a kid starts using in eighth grade, for example, if they're, if they start initiating drugs, now call in a.

They have over 50% chance of having substance use disorder during their lifetime. Whereas if we can get them to 18 or 21, the statistically the risk goes way, way down. So there are some statistical issues there with causation and correlation and some other confounding factors, but for the most. The message here is delay delay delay.

The later it is that the kid starts using. If they start using, the lower, their risk for lifelong risk of substance use disorder, it's it is it's kind of mind blowing. When you think that what might seem as sort of a small tweak. Has such major implications, but it's not a small tweak and especially in privilege.

Well, in all communities, there's this idea that parents share with one another, you know what they're going to do it. They're just going to do it. I did it for a minute. They're going to Claremont, whether it's eighth grade or ninth grade or 10th grade, it doesn't make that much difference. So let's kind of get into the we, the present addicts of.

That looks when your eighth grader is starting to sniff around, or you, you recognize that it's happening. You kind of hear the little buzz in the background of other parents, too. Well backing up, you know, that whole attitude of, you know, it's just a part of adolescents everyone's going to do. It is part of the problem because it's not true.

Statistically speaking, you know, for example, in eighth grade, only 25% of kids in that they've had more than a sip of alcohol by the end of eighth grade.on the other hand, some really strange things are happening. I was in Tennessee recently and I was looking up the statistics for their particular county and in their county.

The age of initiation for the average age of initiation for alcohol was 13.7 years. But average age of initiation for misuse of opiates was 13.5. So it used to be that we had this fairly well. There was a theory that we had a predictable sort of quote, gateway for substances and that's. It's never actually been 100% true, but it's even less predictable now.

And, you know, the problem is, is that even if we know, and you know, the vast majority of parents seem to understand that if their kid is going to misuse prescription opiates, that means they're coming. Their first one, they probably take is probably coming from someone's medicine cabinet, your own or someone else's.

And yet the vast, only 10% of parents admit that they talked to their kids about misuse of prescription drugs. So. Has a huge disconnect between. Reality and the actual numbers of who's using drugs and alcohol. And that's predictable because of this phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance. We tend to over estimate use, and not only the numbers of people that are using, but how much they use.

And also the other problem with that is, use and abuse, tense, well, use tends to escalate in order to sort of meet that perceived norm, even when that perceived norm is overblown, which is just crazy. So it's self perpetuating.and the problem is, is that part of preventing drug and alcohol use in kids is by giving them.

Real information about, you know, drug and alcohol use. So if an eighth grade, if a kid says, come on, it's no big deal. Everybody uses it, but your kid knows that. Well, that's just not true. Only 25% of kids are using by the end of eighth grade alcohol. Anyway, that's powerful knowledge for kids. So. Talk early talk often, you know, arm kids with evidence, armed kids with information and not just, you know, the things we've typically used, which is scare tactics and just say no, which don't work.

Those tactics don't work at all. So in your book, which is kind of the guide for parents, as I understand it are there. And can you share a couple of examples, practical examples of the kinds of. Conversation starters you have with an eighth grader or a 10th grader, actually. So one of the things I learned in my first book, the gift of failure is that parents wanted specifics.
They wanted like scripts for how to say difficult things. And so I was like, cool. With the second book, if people are asking me for more scripts from gift to failure, I'll give them more scripts in the addiction inoculation. So. Substance use prevention starts really early. It starts with preschool or kindergarten.

And so,  I give scripts from preschool and kindergarten all the way up and, you know, preschool and kindergarten, we're not talking about, you know, cocaine or methamphetamine use. We're talking about really practical things like why we don't swallow the toothpaste, why we spit it out. Why?the, that prescription bottle on the counter.

One person's name on it. And one person's name only in what would it, you know, can another person take that and what would happen if another person took that and why we don't take things that don't have our names on them. And then that moves up developmentally as kids get older, not only are there scripts for parents in there, because I know these are really scary conversations.

There's scripts in there.for ways kids can, build their refusal skills. Let's say they're going to a party and they want to be able to not use without looking like a total dork there's two and a half pages of really realistic excuses the kids can use for why they can't have a particular have a drink or a drug or whatever that evening, all of which are.

As I said, totally evidence-based practical, real.or maybe just stretching the truth a little and you know, the best of all for my perspective tends to be fine. Just throw me under the bus and say, I'm sorry, but my parents, my parents breathalyze, my parents drug test, you know, that kind of stuff, but there's a whole bunch of good reasons.

You know, I have, I get migraines. Well, alcohol is a big trigger for migraines. I ha I can't eat gluten. That's very trendy right now. Well, it turns out most beer has gluten in it. So got to avoid that. There's all. If you're of Asian descent, there's a flushing syndrome that happens in people of Asian descent when they have alcohol, many people with,  Asian descent when they have alcohol.

So there's all kinds of really great. That are face saving ways that kids can can say no. And I have to say that was one of my favorite parts to write. Cause I talked to lots of kids about ways that they could say no in LA, not look like a big, a big. And they want to, and yeah, they're going to be the exception, the kids who are going to sneak and who aren't going to use these ideas, the majority having been a therapist and having many, many, many, many, many teens walk into my office over 40 years, they would like breathe a sigh of relief.

If you, as a parent, help them. Save face and not feel kind of dorky. And at the same time, steer away from that, I actually was the only kid. Now this is going back many years into the seventies, but I remember having friends who were tripping on acid and I wasn't, and I would just hang out with them as the only, and so somehow inside of me, there had been something that felt sturdy enough that I was okay.

Having them think, whatever they thought I liked being for myself, I didn't drink or use drugs as a kid really.maybe every once in a while. And so I was always the designated driver. I was always though, hold your hair back, you know, kind of unhealthy barf in the bushes kind of person. And you know, at the time I liked being the reliable one, I liked being the one people could count on.

So that worked for me as a teenager.but there's all kinds of ways that you can, can work this out and, you know, the. For me, the thing that was, I was surprised over and over and over again.in reading the research on. You know, if it, if it's just, you know, the actual nbers of kids that use how overblown and normalized use,  drug and alcohol use is in the media.
And that messes with our perception of how many kids use. And I wasn't even going to put a college chapter in the book because I figured, oh, alcohol in college, they just go together. It turns out that's not true either. It's in fact, so many, few people drink in college. I, I couldn't believe it. And. The statistics actually, when you break the statistics down, it's a very, very narrow and very predictable, by the way, sliver of the college population, that drinks.

And if you can look at your kid and say, okay, well, if I'm objective and realistic about my, my own child and my own child's risk factors, then that's really useful information. And that helps you to tell. Your sort of preventions based on what kind of kid you have. So, you know, not all kids are the same and not all kids are gonna have the same risk level and not all kinds of all kids are gonna have, react to the same sort of preventions, but my kids are at high risk, so I didn't have a lot of time to sort of pretend they weren't and not talk about it.

So we talk about it fairly incessantly around here, and I can tell you, and you, you know, this, the more often we have difficult conversations, the less difficult those conversations with. Yeah. The first time it's like, ah, the second time it might be that the eye roll, like we already talked about that. And then eventually it's like, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So these conversations may be easy for me because I do them all the time, but I still rely on Peggy Orenstein book, girls and sex and boys and sex to have the sex conversation. So it's not like all conversations are easy for me, but because we have this drug and alcohol conversation all the time from all different perspectives, It's just become a thing that we just talk about.

It's not loaded at all. So that's been really great. And you write about that a lot. Can you share a little bit of how it's been for you with your teenagers? How, how you've brought it up or the kinds of things that, that volleyball. So they're, well, there's a lot of different, I mean, I'm raising my kids do differently.

My, I have a, now they're 22 and 18.  the 22 year old was raised in a more permissive household where he was allowed sips. He was allowed his own small glass of wine. That kind of thing. The research is really clear that parents with a clear and consistent message of no, not until it's legal for you, which for me is less important.

The legality while it's very important, is less important to me than, the completion of brain development. So, you know, the adolescent brain is not done developing until the early to mid twenties. And so the closer we can get them to. P that age group, the more, the more time their brain has had to develop without being impeded by chemicals and stuff like that, they're really do take a big toll on certain areas of brain development.

And by the way, not. Reversible like you can't get them to 25 and then go back and like patch up the things to didn't get developed. You know, you, you sort of, it happens. And then the door kind of closes. So when I found that out, my now 18 year old, well, he thinks this is so unfair. You know, our,  our message with him is clear and consistent message of no, not until it is legal for you.

And, and that. Because he knows what I know. We talk about our work and we talk about stuff like this with our kids all the time. So if I were to do anything other than have a clear and consistent message of no, not until it's legal for you, it would be like me saying, I have. Information on how to be the best possible parent when it comes to drug and alcohol use, but I'm going to do it this way because I want you to like me, or because it's easier for me or because it's just less complicated.

, and that, you know, that's modeling, that's not the kind of modeling I want to do for my kids. So when he sees me doing the harder thing, the thing that makes me less popular, the thing that makes me less cool. He also knows I'm doing that because I'm doing that from a place of the best possible. Given that I want my kid to grow up and have a, a brain that's free to develop and I want to, and I want him to lower, you know, I want to lower his risk of substance use disorder as low as I can, because he also knows what it was like for me to be an alcoholic and to be in recovery.

And he knows that it's hard and, and I don't want them to have to go through that. So all of that, is in, in the conversations that we have, it's all coming from a place of love and respect and evidence. That's such a cornerstone of how I work with parents, this idea that, to do the job properly or right, or as neat as it is needed, we cannot be led by a desire to be liked for popular with our children.

That they're incompatible doesn't mean we don't wish that were otherwise. And it's great when we can say or do something for our kids and they go, man, you're the best, but it's not part of the job description. In my opinion, there's a different role that we have to play in that.so could you say a couple of things, and I know I really urge people to get the book, the inoculation, sorry, the addiction inoculate.

But if you could just say a couple of things to get people's attention about the impact on a developing. Sure. So the cool thing about the adolescent brain is, you know, it's in this, there's two periods as you well know, there's two periods in a han life where the most changes and the most,  the brain is so exquisitely susceptible to what's going on in the environment and what we put in our bodies and that zero to two and, you know, puberty to, you know, the early twenties.
So. In the same way that I wouldn't drink while I'm pregnant. And I wouldn't let my zero to two year old drink, I'm also not going to let my adolescent drink because we know for example that, it, when drinking has a massive effect on the adolescent brain, not only in. The fact that it makes things more dangerous for them in the short run, adolescents are less likely to feel as drunk as an, as an adult would, if they have the same amount of alcohol in them.

And they're also less likely to sort of suffer the negative after effects. So there's less of that negative feedback loop, you know, about drinking, but if they're not feeling the effects as much as someone else an adult might, they're also more likely to take risks like drive while drinking that kind of.

So there's that, there's the fact that the way adolescents tend to drink is binge drinking and that's also really, really dangerous.but then with other drugs, you know, something that might be low to moderate risk and an adult fully formed, completed brain is actually can be a moderate to high risk in an adolescent brain.

 for example, in kids who are, users heavy, chronic. Oh, well, I guess pun intended chronic users of marijuana. They have smaller hippocampus than kids who don't use marijuana. And that's because the receptors for the active ingredients, the things that make you high in cannabis are located around the hippocampus.

And so it clogs up those receptors and it, you know, it keeps, things, keeps things busy, messes with memory formation. And so that. That stereotype of the stoner with no short-term memory will cause it's messing with your hippocampus. And a study came out just, I don't know, about six months ago showing actually thinning in the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain where we do all the adulting, all that stuff that you get frustrated with your kid about not being able to do like time management and starting and stopping and transitions and managing their time and their goals and all that stuff.

Prefrontal cortex work. And we know that,  cannabis, thins, the prefrontal cortex in developing teen brains. But I think it's also just really important. And I tried to make this part of the book as fun as possible is understanding, you know, what's going on in the brain and just how delicate it is during adolescents.

It's what's we call plastic. It's very. There the environment and the things around the kid just makes a huge impact on how the brain develops. And so the longer we can keep kids away from substances, not only are we lowering their lifelong risk of, of, you know, ending up with substance use disorder, we're also protecting their brains for as long as possible.

So their brains can be as healthy and well-developed as POS. This is such a hugely important thing that you're sharing and talking about. And I'm really glad that you, you included pot because a lot of people, especially if they were smokers in their own adolescence have really downplayed, you know, sort of.

Inevitability they've they've accepted the inevitability, or they imagined that it's inevitable and they downplay the impact for one thing. The pot that's circulating. Now, as I understand it is re is a drug different from, Yeah in the seventies, but I would have been used to. Right. It's yeah. It's a lot stronger than the skunk weed that, you know, of the seventies and,  you know, the other issue is that it's so much the way you can adjust it.

It's just so much more concentrated. And, you know, especially since teenagers in particular tend to love edibles. Well, I guess, you know, it's a really easy way to take it in. And the problem is, is when you're. Taking an edible is not the same thing as smoking.it gets into your system a lot slower when it's going through your digestive judge just of track.

And so there's a lot higher risk of just taking a lot of it thinking it's not hitting. And so you take more, but the real problem is the. You also have to think about the stuff that's supposed to be happening in the adolescent brain and how absolutely 100% normal it is. So for example, the adolescent brain has lower baseline levels of dopamine, than, than the child, a child's brain or an adults brain.

So to teenagers, when they say I'm bored, that's not just lack of imagination. It's not because your, your teenager needs to just get up and go outside and play it's because. The brain is supposed to have, they're supposed to be seeking out novelty. They're supposed to be seeking out things that are new and different because that's the purpose of adolescents is to create more competent hans.

And the way we do that is by seeking out new things. So the key thing that has to so drugs and alcohol are particularly. Attractive because they allow you to see the world in new and different ways, whether that's a psychedelic or whether that's pot or whatever. So our job as parents is to know that our kids need, need more novelty.

And we used to say risk, but that's really not accurate. It's just that novel things tend to often carry more risk.and so we need to push them towards. Positive risk. And this was really, this really was pointed out to me Siegel. I was on the phone with him and we were talking about, I put my,  younger kid in a position of, not only does he have genetic risk, but, and by the way, genetics is about 50 to 60% of the risk picture.

So my kids are already just from the get-go at higher risk than most kids. On top of that, transitions are a really risky time for kids, especially between middle school and high school. And so we moved my already genetically at high risk kid to a whole new place in a whole new state with nobody he knew in between middle school and high school.

And I was ranting about this with Dan Siegel and feeling guilty and horrible about it. And Dan just did what Dan does, which is, he said, well, Jess, You could think about it that way you could think you could be worried about all that risk. You could feel terrible about all that rescue put on your kid or, or you could reframe it and you could say, h a move is a time of unbelievable opportunities for positive risk, finding your way around a new place, meeting new people, trying new things.

And it was like, Okay. I thought I was pretty good at reframing. I mean, I talk about reframing all the time with adolescents and there, I was realizing that. I was doing my kid, a huge disservice by portraying this entire move as part of his risk picture, when actually it was a really important part of his, his protected protection protective factors.

And thank you, Dan Siegel again for turning that upset. I talk about that in the book. It just, it was a blind spot for me, and it's helped, you know, doing all this research has not only helped. Help my kids think about their lives and their risk and, and their brains in a different way. It's also helped me be a better role model and a better, you know, reframer for my own kids.

That's such a great story. We're doing a class tomorrow, actually by the time this airs, it may, but it'll still be available, but I love that we can turn our kids onto more information about their brain because they are interested. And that is such an incredible,  access pathway, to talking about some of the stuff to really get into the geeky.

Cool. Of how the brand is developing and what each area does and why, even things that might seem so benign, like caught really have a long-term impact so well, and, and teaching kids about how their brain works, is important for a nber of reasons. And as someone,  you know, When we're not in a pandemic, I I'm on the road a lot and I'm in the schools a lot.

And,  there are schools that are now teaching kids about the difference between their lower brain function and their upper higher brain functions from kindergarten on so that a kid can understand, oh, when I got mad at that kid sitting next to me and, and hit him, I was, that was my amygdala. That was my lower part of the brain.

I mean, they're teaching little kids. I have this photograph of. All of the pictures of the kids in the classroom with pictures of, a brain sort of superimposed on top of that. And they talk about what things they do and what part of the brain they're operating from. So if they're thinking about how am I going to remember to do my homework tonight, that's upper brain stuff.

And when they're thinking about reacting to something that's lower brain stuff. So, and also, you know, knowing what we know about Carol Dweck's work and mindsets and fixed and growth mindsets, the more kids understand. How learning works, how the brain works, how they can try to be their very best selves by operating from a place less of reacting and more of, thinking the more they feel a sense of control and self-efficacy about their own behavior.

I mean, that's so powerful. Self-efficacy is one of the most powerful things we can help build for kids. And I can tell you right now, the kids in my rehab classroom. No matter what socioeconomic level they came from, no matter how much support they had a lack of self-efficacy was the common denominator among these kids.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. William Stixrud and Ned Johnson. They're great. Self-driven child. They talk a lot about agency and it's sort of all falls into that same umbrella. So there are new book is fantastic. The what to say book, I love it so much. We did a class together too. And I just like, I'm like hanging on every word.

What I got the book, I was just, yeah, I'm just going to basically highlight every sentence and,  well, it was great. I was Ned, Ned came to a book signing of Anna Thomas speaking event of mine for the gift of failure. And he said his name and I said, oh, I have your book. It's in my it's at the hotel. It's I've been re I read it on the plane.

And so we had sort of a mutual admiration society that evening. It was really, really fun. I'm a big fan of Neta. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for your way of presenting your heart, your, your clarity, your gosh, your, the comprehensiveness of what. Sharing with parents and the why behind it all. Is there anything, that's the key stuff.

The why? I mean, you know, kids all the time and we know that the prevention science that works is all about helping kids understand the why. If we sell it, if we tell them, you know, don't, if we say things db things like, you know, drugs are bad. That doesn't make any sense. Why would people do drugs if drugs are all bad?

And if we get to the reality of, well, a lot of kids use drugs and alcohol because they have psychic, emotional, whatever pain that they are treating themselves. And if we can just get at. What if we can make it. So the kids feel like they belong. Like they deserve to take up space in the world. They deserve to be loved.

They deserve to be accepted for who they are. Then we are not going to end up in a situation where they feel like they need to get liquid courage or, or powdered courage or smoke courage, other places. And, you know, as, as I mentioned in the book and I quote Chris Herron, You know, we tend to talk a lot about last use.

Like my night of the last night I got really drunk, blackout drunk was really ugly. And is that entertaining I guess, but what is more important to me and more interesting to me is why I felt the need to drink in the first place. And that's because. Massive anxiety and alcohol helped in the short term.

Alcohol helped with my anxiety. Did it exacerbate my anxiety over the longterm? Oh, you betcha. But in the beginning it helped. And if someone had helped me with my anxiety. So that I had an option other than to start ramping up my drinking. And the same thing goes for kids. If we can help them feel supported and loved, and like they have self-efficacy and like they have some agency and control in the sh you know, they don't need, they'll have less of a need to turn to other things to feel like they have those things.

And a big part of that means educating ourselves so that we are like safe place for our kids to come to. You know, because it may be that we're talking about prevention here, but there are plenty of parents who are listening, whose kids are already dabbling or using. And we want to. No, without question, it says they have to come to as opposed to the last person who they want to confide.

Right. And actually on that note, so my expertise is in prevention science, and, but lots and lots of people ask me the next question, which is, so what do I do if I think my kid is using, what do I do if I'm worried and maybe I feel like it's, it's slid from use into abuse. I always recommend Dr.
Joseph Lee, his book. Recovering my kid, Dr. Lee is the head of adolescent services at Hazelton, Betty Ford Hazelton. And, he, his book recovering. My kid is just wonderful. It's a really great resource for parents whose adolescents, are, are using and that they need to start thinking about what the next step.

Thank you so much. Absolutely. Please let people know how to find you and you know anything about the book that they should particularly keep their eye out for any resources that you want to point them. So, everything is@jessicalahey.com. And if you sign up there, or if you go to my Twitter handle, which is at justly, he, I, I also have a newsletter.

You can sign up for there. And I put out newsletters, I put out, bonus materials. I have bibliographies, I have recommendations. Then I answer in my newsletter. One of the things I do is answer reader questions. I try to answer. Email a day. I'm at the end of the day, every single thing every single day before I go to sleep.

The last thing I do is I answer a reader email and I'm way behind. So I try to answer those in the newsletter so that they can, benefit more people. And not just the one person I'm sending the email to. So, everything is it, Jessica? And again, the book is the addiction inoculation. Yeah. Raising healthy kids in a culture of dependence run.

Don't walk to get the book belongs next to every parents. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jessica, for joining me and I'm such an honor magnifying the message. So great. Thanks. I hope you enjoy that episode. I just find it so important that we. Not keep our head buried in the sand or. Kind of go along with what we think is inevitable when it comes to kids and experimentation.

So please consider applying some of the things that you've learned and of course share that with the people in your community, because the more we can help the parents in our orbit learn and grow, then the more we can uplift ourselves kind of collected. If you're enjoying the series, please do leave a rating or review, tell a friend, do all of the above.

It really, really helps us get the word out. And we are really kind of trailblazers in a lot of ways as we share information that may not be so universally understood yet, but you're all helping make that happen. You can also hit the subscribe button so that you'll be notified as soon as a new episode is released.

Remember to stay in touch and get your regular doses of inspiration. You can visit Susan stifelman.com and sign up for a free newsletter. Again, there's a whole library of really terrific masterclasses that allow you to do a 90 minute deep dive into a topic that might be most relevant to you. Just great stuff that's available at very affordable prices.

Okay, then that's it for today. Here's the reminder. Ready? Remember, no matter how busy life gets look for those moments of sweetness. Stay safe, stay well. And I'll see you next time. .