Glenn Dyke: Understanding Behavioral Health and Fostering Child Success

Today's guest is a ton of fun. He is an amazing resource for any of you that have school age children. Today, we're going to be speaking with Glenn Dyke, who is the owner and CEO of Blind Mule Behavioral Services. He has well over 20 years of experience working in the public school setting as an elementary and secondary teacher, as a behavior specialist, school administrator, education specialist, and behavior consultant.[00:01:00] 

Glenn and the team at Blind Mule Behavioral Services specialize in providing technical assistance, coaching, and professional development to schools and districts throughout the Mountain West and beyond. You know, Glenn is a smarty. I'm going to try to get through his, all of his certifications and his degrees here.

So he specializes in school wide discipline classroom management. and tiered behavioral support for even the most severe problem behaviors. He does this because of his long list or his long pedigree here. Glenn earned a degree in psychology from the University of Utah, a special education teaching certificate and an administrative supervisory license from Utah State University.

He also has received his master's of education at the University of Utah and is a licensed and board certified behavioral analyst. He is an impressive guy and his organization really provides significant services to both schools and the students and the families. But what I find most impressive about Glenn is one, [00:02:00] his very authentic nature, but the passion that he has for the kids that he services.

I think this is going to be a good one. Enjoy it. Hi, Glenn. Thanks for joining us today to chat about the great things that you're doing in the world. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate that. No, it's great. So it would be great to just jump right in and get a little background on you and, uh, blind mule.

Yeah. Blind mule. It's kind of a weird type of a name. It's not a typical, but what blind mule does is we provide behavioral services. to schools. This is like helping teachers in the classroom, helping school wide type of systems, and then also helping staff work with individual kids. That's awesome. Yeah.

Blind mule. It's a bit of an odd name, to be honest with you. I don't know much about mules. And I don't even know if it matters if a mule is blind or not. I think that a mule might be a mix between a donkey and [00:03:00] And a horse, but I, I hate even saying that right now because I don't even know, I'm not even sure.

Yeah. I'm not even sure. I just read an article yesterday on blind mules. I had never heard that term before, before your company and it has to do with drug trafficking. Oh, yes. Yeah. I do. I did know that. Definitely a different podcast. Yes. I was like, what? Right. Drug, drug trafficking. Yeah. They set up people to, um, yeah.

Like you're going to visit Tijuana and you go down there and then somebody stuffs your bags with drugs and you then transport them over to the U. S. and you get caught, you're the blind mule and you're going to jail. Yes, well, and actually I think the legal argument is I was a blind mule. I didn't know I was carrying it.

To get out of those charges. So in the article, they said that that's not a legal argument. Oh, it's not. Yeah. Well, I mean, it can be, but it takes like years to get off. I think that's probably has more to say about my business acumen than [00:04:00] anything else, because how many schools have internet filters about drugs, right?

Like every single one, the decision to actually say, Hey, I'm going to go with blind mule, I did not actually even think about it being a legal argument for drug trafficking. I had no idea. But it has meaning. It does have meaning. Can you describe that again? I know you said you have a story behind that. So, I mean, everyone has these, these people that are, that are mentors in their lives, right?

And have pretty big influence on their life. And so I, so my mentor, I, and I had many great mentors, by the way, when I first, uh, Started working in the school settings. I had a lot of really great mentors, so I don't want to leave anybody out, but to focus on one in particular, his name was Ken Ravis. And unfortunately, I only got to know him for like 5 years.

So I started. I started this process in like 1995 and, um, he passed away in like 2000. It was like January one, like at six in the morning or something like that, or really early in the morning, January [00:05:00] one. And he passed away just because of cancer. So he had some crazy form of cancer, but he had such an impact on my life.

He kind of took me under his wing. We would go out, we would travel out throughout the States and we would help schools problem solve with really challenging kids. So I spent a lot of time with him on the road. He had this big souped up type of SUV vehicle, and he loved music. So we would get on the road and he had this suitcase of, uh, and it was like a traveling bar is what it was.

He would flip open the suitcase and he had all sorts of like mixers and drinks in there with cups. They was like the best travel companion ever. But he would say, Certain funny things and sometimes I comp, I would complicate things too much, especially earlier on. I was what about this? What about this and Ken wanted to leave them with something really simple really specific about like what the next steps are And and so he would say things like [00:06:00] don't worry about the mule going blind.

Just load the wagon And I'm like, Ken, you're not listening to me. So I was like, no, what about all these other things? And he would say, again, don't worry about the meal going blind. Just load the wagon. And in the back of my head, I'm like, I don't even know anything about mules. So, and then he passed away.

And I never really was able to have an in depth conversation about what it really meant. But it just ruminated, not ruminated. I perseverated on it over and over and over again in my head. That, that phrase, don't worry about the mule going blind, just load the wagon. And now what it means to me is, is, uh, if I ever get caught carrying drugs, I know what the legal argument is.

No, that's not what it means to me. Now it just means to me, oftentimes we paralyze ourselves with all these things that are unknown. And, and then we fail to act. We fail to do like the simple things, the A, the B and the C. And, and it has an impact on. And all of us, it impacts [00:07:00] just, we just, we get frozen and we don't act and we don't do what we just know are like things that we just need to put into place, no matter what, regardless.

So, for me, I'm like, okay, that's what it means to me. I, like, there are lots of things that we don't have control over, but what are the things we do and, and let's put those things into place and let's kind of get moving forward. We get traction that way we get moving forward and then we, you know, we look back, we see some growth progress and then we continue in that process.

So that's what it means to me. And so what better way to honor a mentor other than to like, you know, name a, somewhat of a business after him. Absolutely. Thanks for explaining all that. I love the explanation and I love the name, the visual and who cannot relate to the experience of paralysis by analysis.

But decision paralysis. Yeah. I mean, look at Cheesecake Factory. Who goes there? It's just because their menu is so big and you're like, I have no idea. So, I mean, lots of people get there. No, no offense, but, um, yeah, [00:08:00] so many choices. This is kind of going off topic a little bit, but there's this really great snippet of, uh, Will Smith's, I think it says autobiography.

And he's talking about the same idea, the inspiration for the blind mule and that concept, this idea of going brick by brick and not getting overwhelmed by the totality of where you want to be at the end. And definitely recommend you check it out, but he just talks about how. Growing up, he and his brother were put to task to build this wall for their dad.

And it was just like this gargantuan project. I think it, I don't want to be over exaggerating this wrong, but I think it takes them years and they're young kids and they're getting salty and like, why are we doing this? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And at the end of this long monologue, he, he said, he learned it was just to go through the motions of the brick by brick and just be patient with the process and not get overwhelmed by where you're trying to get all at once.

So I've never heard that. I love that. Yeah, I've never heard that. I don't have to. I'll send it to [00:09:00] you guys after this. So what services do you provide? What does Blind Mule give to the schools and how do they help the kids? Yeah. Oh, it's a good question. So I'm a board certified behavior analyst. So the lenses that or the glasses that I kind of put on are from a behavior analytic.

Framework. And, you know, we just look at like behavior has reason, it just doesn't occur. It's not because the kid's this or the kid's that. There are underlying, maybe layers, there are, there are situations, there are contexts for which behavior occurs. So we kind of dig through, try to figure out what those contexts are.

And then the idea is that, yeah, behavior works, right? And it's communication. So if it is communication, like what's the kid trying to communicate with that? How do we teach them another way of doing it? So we also work within classroom systems, classroom structures to help them to help teachers. So we kind of do what's called ecological assessment, kind of assess like the environment and what are the strengths of that environment?

What are, you know, these little tipping points, leverage [00:10:00] points where we can create behavioral change and then we focus our strategies there and the same with a school setting as well. So there are strengths, there are. I guess tipping points or leverage points within a school setting where you can create, you know, traction behavioral change.

And really, when we start looking at those systems, we're looking at really preventative systems, right? Or what are the structural elements that we use in the school setting to, to prevent the establishment of, of, um, behavior starts occurring, it's going to get reinforced. So a big part of it is just prevention.

So can I ask you a question? My, um, my son a few years ago, when he was in high school. They pulled some kids out and they were asking the kids questions about what they didn't did not like about the school. And 1 of the things my son said was, he's like, I don't like that. You can't wear your hood on with the hoodie and they gave him a good reason why and they said, well, the reason we don't like kids having hoodies on is because it closes [00:11:00] them off.

Some people are using it so that they don't have to communicate and don't have to engage with other people. Yeah. And then at that point, my son was like, Oh, okay. And it made complete sense to him. Is it simple things like looking at that type of thing on how to get more kids engaged with the school or prevent isolation and those kind of things?

Yeah, you know, that's a really great example because it's purpose over power, right? Like there's a reason for certain things. And I think taking the time to get people on the same page as it relates to the reason purpose is really important. Because sometimes it doesn't happen, and what happens in teachers classrooms, I think there's also a lot of autonomy that needs to happen there, right?

But also, when we're outside the classroom, uh, let's say, for example, that, I'm trying to find a good example here. Well, let's just take the hoodie thing, for example. If the rationale behind that is appropriate, then, you know, one teacher may be okay with it, another teacher may not be okay with it, and sometimes that just makes it [00:12:00] harder for other people.

So it, I guess it's, it really, every school is its own little entity and organization and, and there's an adaptive component that has to be there, but, you know, what, making sure everyone's on the same page with what that involves is, is an important piece. So I don't know if I answered that question, Andrea.

I'm not satisfied with it at all whatsoever. So, well, I was kind of coming from, although you answered a question, by the way, which was good. Um, I was, um, I was actually looking at it from a different perspective in the sense that the school had noticed that troubled that they might have had maybe a propensity of kids that were troubled would wear the.

Hoodie over to close themselves off. And so they were saying if we put in this rule that says you can't wear the hood on the hoodie that will open up these kids that are trying to [00:13:00] close themselves off and may have behavioral issues. And I was actually asking if that was a piece, um, An example of something that you may go into a school and say, because you were talking about from a structural standpoint.

Yeah, I was trying to bring a very, very simple and it didn't come across simple. No, actually, but, but I also think there's a, there's a much deeper conversation to be had. Like, why do we have kids who just are trying to hide? Right? Why do we have kids who are just trying to like, disappear? We don't want that to happen.

Right? And if that is the case, then. You know, what sort of structures can the school put into place to help those kids who are just trying to disappear or hide from the school setting? Right? I got to be here, but I'm not going to make myself present. And that's a concern, right? Because because there's a reason for that.

And the reasons for it could be many. But having structures in place to identify kids who may be at risk for whether, you know, some type of mental health or some [00:14:00] type of just reaching out, asking for help may not intentionally be reaching out and asking for help, but their behavior may actually be indicating, hey, something else is going on there.

And so I think the idea of using it as a flag to be able to have somebody to reach out, connect with that kid, be okay. Is everything going? All right. Anything you know, what can we do to help? I think. being proactive with those conversations are really, are really important, right? Yeah. So it's not just a matter of a hood, but it's also a matter of like, Yeah.

I love that you said behavior is communication. That's just going to stick in my brain forever. Yeah. If behavior is communication, that's how people are receiving you and perceiving you. But when you don't have control over your behavior, it's such Unfortunate thing for a child because now they're being perceived and reacted to based on the behavior they're presenting, but that's not representative of them.

Could you talk more about what you're seeing and how you're helping schools and [00:15:00] teachers even in that vein? How do you, how do they navigate those situations when the behavior coming to them is one thing and not discriminating or disciplining based on what would be a norm, quote unquote. Yeah, so I think I think a lot of behavior serves the purpose of like connections, right?

So like connecting with somebody and and it may not be necessarily the right group that you want them connecting with and and the idea Would be is are there other groups that they could connect with there are times? when kids are just in their element and we don't see those types of Behaviors and then the idea would be is there are times when those those behaviors are occurring and so like certainly there's there's things that are different.

And it's kind of just trying to figure out what is different. And I would say for a lot of kids, um, prior success in the school setting is a big predictor of challenging behavior. So if they haven't been successful, [00:16:00] they don't have a track record of being successful. Like I want to do really well in school, but they have no successful track record of being able to do well in school.

Like their motivation is just down here, right? And they're not going to get a whole lot of traction from that. But then when somebody is like, Hey, I need you to be doing this and this and this, and then, of course, behaviors pushing back, you're going to get, you may get some behavior that pushes back against that because.

I don't want to fail, right? I don't want to fail. I'm tired of failing. And so sometimes it's easier to like give up than it is to, to keep trying to fail. So part of this is like, how do we, how do we create more success into kids, right? Success begets success. And we have to have some, some starting point in that process.

So, you know, I think prior academic success in school settings is. Is an important piece. And then at the same time, you know, socialization is the other really important, like communicative tool, acceptance, belonging, and that applies to adults and kids, right? So how many positive adult role [00:17:00] models are in that kid's life at the school setting, how many opportunities are there?

To have this positive connection. You know, we hear a lot about resiliency and we want to teach kids to be resilient, right? And there's been a lot of studies out there and I just hear like my mentor Ken just saying, it's not something you teach, it's something you can create. And if you look at, if you were to boil down all those studies that have looked at resiliency and kids being resilient.

It comes down to like one factor, and that one factor is like a meaningful adult in their environment. That's what it comes down to. There was somebody there that was just unconditional. That was just like, I got you. That was the safety net. And what I think is crazy is that, you know, when kids enter preschool, kindergarten, the number of adults that they come into contact with, it's just astronomical.

It just takes one person. That's all it takes. And I think as a, as a system as a whole and community. village, whatever. [00:18:00] We all need to work a lot harder just to be Hey, I gotcha. Right. No matter what. That's hard in the traditional public school setting because like I know our schools around here are like 34, 000 kids.

I took my daughter out of the public school for high school and brought her into a charter school. And the charter school has a program that they pair up the kids with an adult on campus for all four years. She's had the same mentor for four years, and that mentor knows about her anxiety. She can go to her for anything.

But that's stuff that you don't get in a large public school setting, because there's just so many kids, and it seems like the schools are so big these years. Right. And three, four thousand students, it's a lot, right? Mhm. And we have lots of kids who just do just fine in those settings. We also have lots of kids who, who struggle in those large group settings.

And I think anxiety is a big one or other mental health issues, maybe even along the lines of [00:19:00] kids with attention deficit disorder, kids with autism, you know, your neurodiverse population, but even in those large group settings, it just means more adults too. Right. Yeah. So it's just a matter of like, how do we put some of those structures into place?

That's true. Yeah. Have you seen any shifts or changes, trends in general mental health in the, in the schools you're serving? I guess I see the shift, the changes that I start seeing it happen earlier at younger age, you know, like things that we would see at a later stage are happening at a much earlier stage.

That's probably the biggest thing that we see. And I think it has to do with exposure to, you know, lots of different things that might It's not in their best interest to be exposed to it at younger ages. So I think that has something to do with it. But I also think, um, you know, the pandemic. Regardless of someone's belief of what was the right thing to do, closed schools, not closed schools, whatever.

Right. But right now what we are dealing with is this, [00:20:00] there's a lot of absenteeism in school settings and the absenteeism before, before the pandemic, you always had kids who were kind of on your warning list or like your, Hey, let's watch this kid for some possible school avoidance types of patterns of behavior where not attending, not like not wanting to attend.

And there was always those kids. And then there was those kids that weren't and then following the pandemic, there's a lot of schooling at home and there's a comfort zone that occurs there. We have a lot of kids who, who struggled if they were on the bubble before they've struggled getting back to school, getting back into those normal routines because of, yeah.

I mean, if you just pair it with just the anxiety of like. You know, that, that occurs with pandemics and public places. I've never been in one before, so I don't know. Right. So, Glenn, what would be something that your company would suggest to schools to help with that [00:21:00] attendance issue or avoidance? Yeah, I mean, how do we make school, like the idea that, um, you're, you, like, We miss you.

Right. You know, we're better off when you're here than when you're not here. Those communication things, sometimes those little small communication things are do quite a bit, right? Having those, those adult student connections are really important. I think that school avoidance piece is, I mean, talking about potentially a lot of different things, but my personal experience with it, with my daughter was.

That was like the first symptom to know that she was in trouble was the school avoidance. And here she is very compliant by the rules, loved school, loved everything, and just got to the point where she couldn't go, had a stomachache or whatever. And then kind of when you're saying behaviors, communication, I think back to those times going, I didn't know when she was just being [00:22:00] sluggish or lazy or just kind of.

Get up and go. No, just go. You know, it's really, it's really hard to know when behavior is maybe bad behavior or negative behavior, or if it's really a sign of mental health, fill in the blank, whatever it is, you know? Yeah. And it could be transient, right? Just the idea that it could just be this transient period of time where we're just trying to like, Hey, I was in a routine right now.

I'm not in a routine of like getting up going. And that's hard to get back into those routines and I guess red flag or behavior that I, that I start to see as it relates to like warnings for, for school avoidance is those Monday absenteeisms, just having a hard time getting back into the groove of things.

Parents complaining, it's hard to get them up out. And then of course on Saturdays, it's. They're up, they're ready to go, they want to do stuff. And so you have this complete change because you have under different conditions. And, and I think, um, you know, I, and it depends on how serious it is. [00:23:00] Right. So, um, I think one of the challenges are, is that, you know, as parents, we got this like bleeding heart about, Hey, what's wrong, what's going on.

We're avoiding because of something, right. Yeah, if it was our happy place, we wouldn't be avoiding it. Right? Right. So as a parent, we're like, what is going on? We want to know, we want to fix it. We want to address it. But the reality also is, is that sometimes, especially with kids who have anxiety, a lot of it's just made up, right?

Something small happened. But then they ruminate on it and it becomes this really big thing. So sometimes as parents, we like, we want to know, we dig, we pry, we pry, and we make it a very real thing. And this emotional thing just kind of comes out of it. And the struggle with that is when that emotional thing comes out, the likelihood of the kid staying home goes up.

Right. So then once a kid stays home, then it's like, ah, things are better now. And so that pattern repeats. So going back to your question, Andrea, um, so if there were two things [00:24:00] In addition to like reaching out the other comments I made. The idea of a parent having like some type of script of setting rather than looking back when you're talking with your kid about what's going on, rather than looking back and having conversations with the kid about what's happened in the past, maybe there were some bullying and things like that.

And by the way, if those things are occurring, you need to be talking to school personnel about it, right? If we're talking about social things. We need to create opportunities probably rather than talking to our kid about why don't we, why don't you have any friends? That's a very hard conversation to have, but it also means like something's wrong with me when there's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with you.

It's just like all kids go through these types of feelings or at some times because of conflicts with peers. So those Monday mornings when the kid doesn't want to get up, and then the idea would be is, Hey, when you get home from school today, this is what we're going to do. So the idea would be is when you get home from school today.

We're gonna do this fun activity. So it's kind of pushing forward. And when do you [00:25:00] use that? I would say, use it on Mondays. You don't have once they get going. Oftentimes those kids, they get Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. They're pretty good Friday. They're pretty good. Monday comes around again, and it's back into it.

So some type of tool for parents. But then for those really hard kids that are going to school, but they're going home because that school avoidance to write their calling. I don't feel well. I'm sick, and that happens quite a bit. And typically there's an anxiety factor associated with that. And for treatment wise for anxiety.

I mean, it's exposure and response prevention, which means that, hey, you're going to go to school and we're not going to allow you to get out of it. And that's not an easy thing to do in a school setting because of behavior is communication. Like kids will just let their feet do the talking and they're like, watch me and they're out the front door.

Yeah. And yeah. And so what do you do about that? So that's, that becomes a really hard situation. So. Now, again, the treatment is [00:26:00] exposure, so I've had a lot of success with kids, like, working from the end of the day to the front of the day. So here's, here's the pattern that has to stop, is I go to school, something may happen or something triggers me, and now my thoughts, I'm ruminating, right?

And now my stomach feels sick and I want to go home, and I go home and then I feel better, right? That's the pattern that repeats itself every single day, and so that's the pattern that has to stop. Meaning that... When I feel sick and then I go home, I feel better because that just reinforces the anxiety.

It just like makes it It just says going home and leaving or avoiding school makes me feel better. And so that's destined to repeat itself. So how do we change that pattern? Where I've had a lot of success with a lot of kids is actually starting at the end of the day. And we're like, like, yeah, the kid can go for two hours and, and I'm not suggesting this for anyone because, [00:27:00] because like shortened days, not great.

But for those kids who weren't attending anyways, drop the kid off, um, at one o'clock, the school goes to three and the kids like, oh yeah, I can, I can make it to three because I'm here at one o'clock and it's not a fight getting them up out of bed and you can take your time getting them ready. And then one o'clock to three o'clock.

And then now they're going home. Under different pretenses. They're going home because, hey, I made it to the day. It was a pretty good day. So we're not, we're not reinforcing the anxiety. We're actually reinforcing we made it to the end. And then what we do is we just slowly start dropping them off earlier each time.

So now it's not one o'clock. Now it's 1245. Right. And then it becomes 1230 and then it becomes 12 o'clock. And so what we do is we kind of build up this tolerance for that exposure and increase that way. So I think that's a, that's a really I, we've had a lot of success with, with chronic absenteeism kids where you just can't even get them into school.

That's a great [00:28:00] suggestion. That really is a great suggestion.

Right. And you're setting them up for success from the very beginning. They, some, they're biting off a little nugget of something that they can actually chew instead of trying to take the whole thing. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Which sets the stage for the next day. Yeah. I don't mind going to school. It's not too bad.

Right. Those experiences of, I feel sick, I'm going home, that's not happening anymore. And so, and then of course with that, that's, you know, sometimes it's an oversimplification because you have to work with kids on identifying, I guess, their signals of, of when they know that they may be agitated or irritated.

So having kids identify those things and being aware, but then also what are the coping skills, the coping mechanisms to deal with those things. You know what I love so much about talking to you is you can hear your [00:29:00] concern for kids and like this genuineness of wanting to help even like now a faceless kid, right?

You know, I mean, like I could just see that the next meeting that you go in and about how that child is so important. Well, the mule is blind, but it's not emotionalist, right? No, we have. No, no, no. So sorry. You know, I, I enjoy doing, I'm very passionate about what I do because, and it's not just what I, what me, it's about what the work is that we do, right?

Help kids, right? So yeah, I'd like to see more green organizations like yours coming out there and making an impact. Right. I want to add one thing in case we could use it for something. Can I bring up something else before we close out? You can. And I have one too as well. So we're all from Arizona. I don't think we have ever said, but we all went coincidentally to the same high school.

Have either of you gone to Way back in the day, Biosphere 2 in Tucson. Do you know what that is? Um, no, I haven't, but my daughter just, my daughter went there. Okay. It was the failed experiment, like, where there was supposed to [00:30:00] be this, like, closed ecosystem. Yes. And it was supposed to, like, People were going to live in it.

Yeah. They were going to live in there and never come out and never come out. Yeah. They had to have all their medical supplies. Yes. One was a doctor. When was this? They were going to grow their own food. They could not come in and out. Oh, that sounds scary to me. Create their own oxygen from the trees in there.

Like the water, everything was supposed to be like, it was supposed to be like this self contained unit. I went to it. Gosh. When I was in college and a friend of mine and I were driving back from Boulder, Colorado, back to Phoenix. You're like, Oh, let's stop by the biosphere too. And check it out. So we went and toured.

Fast forward to last year, I was reading an article about resiliency and they bring up this story about the biosphere too. And they said, one of the reasons why that colossal experiment, if you will, it's much more than an experiment experiment, I would say one of the reasons why it failed was with the trees, the trees grew and fell over and they never accounted [00:31:00] for the fact that the trees needed wind.

To establish the rooting system without the wind. They weren't, they weren't rooted as they would be out in a normal natural landscape. They didn't have the right root structure. Again, I could be totally butchering exactly how, how this story relates, but then what a great analogy. Yes. Right. That if you do not.

have some hardship. If you're not hitting your head against the wall sometime, boundaries, um, failure, whatever you call that, you don't grow the same level of resiliency and just basic strength. Yeah. I didn't know if you'd ever heard that. I love that. No, I've never heard that before. Google it. You could find a bunch of stories about the trees at the biosphere too.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Because they had to break into it. They had to be like, Oh, this ain't working. You know, they had to like, then supply oxygen to it. And so that's why that's when it became biosphere [00:32:00] to because, because biosphere one did not work because the trees fell over apparently. I've never heard that before.

That's fascinating. That is fascinating. Yeah. Great analogy. It really is. Yeah. One of the greatest speakers I ever saw at my kid's school, what he said was, um, your children have to have hardship in their lives and if they don't have organically occurring hardship. And he was speaking to families of a private school.

So I kind of understood what he meant. He's like, it's your job to. Inject hardship. He gave actual examples of examples about what this, what these small hardships would be like, how they had to pay a certain amount of their allowance into a jar or have allowance. You know, things like that. Um, they couldn't go on a vacation until this jar reached a certain amount.

I'd have to pull it out, but it was so important to say and hear that as a young mom. No, your child needs to have something go wrong. They need hardship. And if they're not [00:33:00] encountering that, then figure something out and make it up. It's like, Whoa, make it happen. My kids had organic hardship, so I didn't have to make it up.

But, uh, that was, yeah, a really good lesson. I think it all ties well. Yeah, I know. I think that's fascinating. Yeah. And of course, like, that's how we establish grit. Right. But, but it's the ability to like, overcome it. Right. It's the, it's the history of being successful. When we're faced with those challenges, when we, when we experience those challenges and then we fall flat on our face, but there's a safety net that helps us get through it.

There's encouragement, there's guidance, there's like all these other things that need to be there in order for us to have a history of struggles, but overcoming. And I think that's the important piece is. Here are the struggles, but also the ability to overcome. And sometimes that requires a support to have that, to establish that pattern.

Um, and once that a pattern is established, then the idea is like, Hey, I know I could do this. Done it before in the past, right? It's just a matter of, I got to figure out a different way [00:34:00] of doing it. Those are great life lessons. Yeah. That's how we get become gritty. I guess. Right. That's like a phrase. Yeah.

All right. So here's the, here's my thing. My parents of, of challenging kids. Right. And specifically, I work mostly with a lot of, with a lot of moms that have challenging kids. And what I think is fascinating is that we make this so hard. We make it harder on our moms with challenging kids because, uh, and, and the specific example that I'm going to refer to is at the grocery store.

So we're at the grocery store and we hear this kid crying, right? But everyone in that grocery store is giving the parent like these. Yeah, exactly. Right. And the unfortunate thing with that whole thing is all that pressure on the parent just makes it more likely that the parent's going to be like, Hey, Just give your kid that damn piece of candy that they want.

Wait, which then of course, like the kids communicating, I want a piece of candy. Right. But it's communicating through throwing a fit as opposed to communicating through like the idea of, Hey mom, you know, like we go through, can I [00:35:00] pick out something, you know, on the way out, which is a much better way of doing this.

But of course those don't happen because they're kids, they're little ones. And then the grocery stores, of course, like put those things, they're always at the bottom, right? High level of the kids. They set us up. They totally do. Oh, yeah. And they get paid high money to like, you know, vendors to put their stuff there, right?

So like grocery stores sell their shelf space down low at high value prices. So what I would love to see is like, Hey, why can't we just acknowledge this fact that as a community, as a group, like, rather than, rather than having you go into a grocery store, I feel like there needs to be like this public service announcement.

And originally the concept is like, you know, like, you go in like the Delta flight person. Right? You're greeted with the Delta flight person about, Hey, you know, here at the grocery store, um, we're, we're going to talk about things that we could do to [00:36:00] help each other. And I feel like there just needs to be this whole focus of grocery stores with these, with these public service announcements of when you see somebody struggling, or if you are a parent with a child and you need some assistance.

Don't hesitate. Just push the button. Right? And somebody will come over and help you like we'll watch your groceries. Go do your thing. We'll watch your groceries. Not a big deal. That'd be awesome. Right? And support the parent in terms of kind of working through that as opposed to, as opposed to all of us that put pressure on the parent to like just give in to the kid because that's the easiest route.

Right? And then of course, you know, the. Patterns of behavior get established, right? Um, but I would love to see a grocery. I would love to see like community outpouring of like, Hey, let's, a grocery store chain would be great. Be like, Hey, let this, we're going to do this public service announcement. I just think that would be like, That would be awesome.

That's a great idea. Right. And of course their vendors may, no, I don't think their vendors [00:37:00] would get upset, but, but the idea is like, it could be, there's, there's so many avenues for which you could support your clientele and it could just be. So there's instruction, not only like, Hey, if you have a kid, push the button will help, but you could also say, Hey, if you see a parent with the kid, like do these things to support that person because, because his bystanders were as guilty as anything for contributing to those patterns of behavior.

Yeah. Well, in those patterns of behavior also reinforced at the parent level because the parents feeling like they're inadequate, right? And they're not controlling. Yeah, I better do something about it. And, you know, that's we go back to me and I were talking about the song be humble and kind. I think parenting has made me a much more humble person than I have.

Ever been. I mean, I remember before I had kids, I was like, if my kid walks around with a snotty nose or that my kid will never walk around with a snotty nose. And then I realized those things are [00:38:00] just like little faucets, you know, they just kind of go around or I won't give my kids food in the car. And then they'd be out there freaking out in the car and I'd be handing them, you know, some sort of fish thing.

And, um, but I think that. Well, like, uh, like, uh, I don't know. I was curious, too. I was like, I was going to get. Tipper. Right, tipper?

Like, sorry, do you want But, you know, it's, it's really a humbling experience and, and then especially having children that where, where they've had obstacles, huge obstacles like ours is now, you know, I walk by a parent and my, my heart just bleeds for them because I'm thinking that, that, that child is suffering and then that parent is suffering.

So what, you know, what can we do? And I think that, you know, maybe it is the little button. It's these unspokens, right? It's those unspokens. [00:39:00] Like somebody needs to like say, Hey, here are the social norms for this, right? But they're unspoken and nobody just kind of comes out and says what the social norms are.

And I think they should, right? Even a baby crying. I mean, I remember when my kids were crying, especially my son, cause he was my first, I would be like, Oh, I need to make him quiet. I need to make him quiet. And now I pass by a baby all the time and I'm like, oh, he's crying. He must be hungry. You know, I not even thinking twice about that fact that the baby's crying.

So, yep. We just need little buttons. But that's also not the message that sometimes we send to parents too, because we, we are saying, oh, must be hungry. But the parent sometimes is receiving the message, why aren't you feeding your kid, right? Right. So, so I, it's so funny, like, um, how, how, like these, these mixed messages, just the intention's always good because there's this.

hidden norm, right? Nobody comes out and just says, this is what we do in these situations because we don't do that. There's so many assumptions that are made about [00:40:00] people's intentions, right? Absolutely. That'll get you in trouble every time. Yeah. Thank you so much, Glenn. I have so many other things that I would love to chat about.

It's so great, right? Yeah, yeah.

For more information about Blind Mule Behavioral Services or to connect with Glen and his team, please visit them@blindmule.org. That's B-L-I-N-D-M u.org.