Help Children Recover After a Life Setback | Ep. 120

Danielle Matthews shared her journey of resilience after a traumatic brain injury from a car accident. Despite initial struggles, including losing her teaching job and dealing with severe migraines, she found solace in practices like Yoga Nidra, which helped her manage stress and improve her mental state. Danielle emphasized the importance of emotional resilience, stress management, and self-esteem for children, suggesting practices like guided meditation and breathwork. She highlighted the Pygmalion effect, where positive expectations from authority figures can lead to improved performance. Danielle also recommended teaching children to take "psychic showers" to release stress and maintain emotional well-being.

Tips from this interview: 
Reach out to Danielle Matthews at discoverintention@gmail.com for additional resources and support.
Explore using apps like f.lux to reduce blue light exposure from digital screens and support better sleep for kids.
Implement guided meditation or yoga nidra practices, even for just 7-40 minutes, as part of daily routines to help kids develop emotional regulation and mental focus.
Reframe challenges and setbacks as opportunities for growth, and model this mindset for children.

Transcript

TD Flenaugh: 0:03

We have big life events that really throw us for a loop. We don't know what to do. Some of those things may be small when we look back on them, and some of them are life altering. Our next guest, Danielle Matthews, is going to give strategies and resources on how she handled a big life event for herself and really came out very resilient and living a very productive and fulfilling life even after a big setback. So you don't want to miss this episode. Like Subscribe, stick around. Hi. Thank you so much for joining the falling for learning podcast. We have this podcast to help parents and caregivers with having the resources, strategies and tools needed to make sure that their children are on track for learning and to stay on track for success. Thank you so much for joining us. Danielle Matthews, how are you doing today?

Danielle Matthews: 1:01

I'm good. Thanks so much for having me on.

TD Flenaugh: 1:03

Great. So that thing that we ask all of our guests is, what is that spark that made you fall in love with learning?

Danielle Matthews: 1:11

You know, I've been a curious kid since like day one. I've always been fascinated by like, why do things work? How's the body work? Why am I here? What's the purpose all of this? I since I was a little kid, kind of explored that. I think it's actually what set me up to study biology in school, was because I just wanted to kind of get to the bottom of this and and, goodness knows, the more questions you ask, I feel like the more you learn, and the more you realize you don't know, lifelong learner because of that,

TD Flenaugh: 1:41

all right, curiosity really helped spur you forward. And so what were some of those activities and things that you did as a kid that helped to keep you moving forward toward, you know, learning more and growing more?

Danielle Matthews: 1:57

I was really blessed. You know, my family would always give different things to do. I was part of Girl Scouts, which is always fun. We would have different like badges we have to go for. So you have to learn different things, science experiments, for something that we did to have fun. And, you know, past the time my my parents did not believe in video games, and so I was not allowed onto those sort of things. So we would do things at puzzles, like I would be the kid that would want to go do a puzzle and not look at the box about, like, what I was supposed to be creating. I'm like, No, give me the pieces. Let me figure it out. And so my mind is always, you know, fascinated by these things. And then I did a lot of sports as well. And I think sports, you know, it teaches you a different kind. It's definitely different kind of learning. It's not so much book smarts, but it's like emotional resiliency and and learning how to overcome disappointment and setbacks and that kind of thing. And I was involved in, like, competitive swimming, I think, from the age of eight, like through college and a variety of other sports too. So that was a big piece of it as well.

TD Flenaugh: 2:54

Okay, so we, I the reason why I brought you onto the show is because you had a big life event that really made things change a lot for it, for you, can you tell us about what that was absolutely

Danielle Matthews: 3:11

so I, you know, I went to school, went to University of Virginia, I studied biology, I right out of school. I did Teach for America. So I don't know if you're familiar with that program? Yeah, it's a great program. And so I went and I was teaching sixth grade math out in Denver, Colorado, loved it. Was working with a great group of kiddos. And the summer after my second year of teaching, I was hit by a drunk driver, and I sustained a traumatic brain injury in that accident. And I, you know, because of my sports and my ability to push through I thought, oh, I'll just push through it. I'll get through the summer, you know, I'll just rest up and I'll, I'll be fine. And I attempted to go back into the classroom that fall, and it became so clear, so fast, like I couldn't handle lights. So, you know, lighting in the school, I couldn't handle noise. So imagine a classroom of sixth graders, and it was like, I couldn't remember what I was saying, couldn't remember the name of the kids, and it was a complete mess. After the first group of kids, I went to my principal, and I said, I can't do it. So I went on a medical leave for about six weeks, thinking, Okay, we'll just get this thing under control. And unfortunately, with that type of injury, it's kind of on its own healing track. And I attempt to come back after that leave, and I couldn't, and I found myself in a position I never thought I'd be at the age of 23 which was I was unable to work, so I couldn't earn an income. My job wanted to keep me, but I physically couldn't do the job. So you know, they said, Well, when you get better, you're welcome to come back, kind of thing, but we need a teacher in the classroom. And so I ended up losing my job, which meant I lost my income, and my ability to kind of live independently. Ended up having to move back in with my parents and focus just full time on trying to get well. And it was a really dark time, because I was told, after about a year, by neurologist that, you know, my body had done the healing that it would do. And they said, Danielle, this is just. Just your new normal, and you need to shape your life around it. And this was a normal where I couldn't concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time. I had severe migraines. I was in a dark room with blackout fabric, because just natural light was even overwhelming for my brain. And I just thought like, this can't be this cannot be my future. And it required me to kind of stop looking in the external world for answers and to do a lot of digging within myself. And I'd say that's kind of where the lessons on resiliency came from and were birthed, and where I learned some modalities that really supported me. And you know, now I'm in a position, this is 13 years out, to be able to support other people on that journey.

TD Flenaugh: 5:42

Okay, so tell us about some of those things that you learned to help you to navigate this normal Absolutely.

Danielle Matthews: 5:50

So one of the things was sting the sounds. It was realizing that I wasn't my thoughts. And, you know, I had this realization after I kind of okay. So being a math teacher, right, I think of everything as an everything as an equation. So you've got the external world plus your internal response, and that makes your reality okay. So I mean, take, like, for an example, let's take two boys that grow up with an alcoholic father, and like, we fast track, we follow up with them at the age of 30, and one of these boys has never touched alcohol, and the other one has become an alcoholic. And we asked both of them like, Well, why are you the way you are? And they both say, well, just look at who my dad was. So they had the same external environment, okay, but one's internal response was, wow, I'll never be this way, because this has been horrible for the family. And the other was more so well, of course, I'm going to end up this way. Look at who my role model was. And so the realities were vastly different. And so what I realized was, okay, this external event had happened. I got hit by a drunk driver. Wasn't fair. Shouldn't have happened. Could have been different, all these things, but didn't change the reality, you know. And my internal response for the first year was one of feeling like a victim, feeling like this wasn't fair. I didn't deserve it, all of that stuff, which sure true, but it didn't change my reality. In fact, it made me incredibly depressed, anxious. I was having panic attacks. It was making me not in a good mental space to have that internal reaction. And so I realized, you know, when my doctor told me, like, this is permanent, something inside of me spoke to me and said, No, Danielle, you're going to find a solution. Keep going. But at the same time, I said, Okay, well, if it is permanent, at least for a little while longer, like, how can I interact and react with this differently? How can I switch my internal response? Because that's the only piece of the equation I had any control over, yeah. And so I just said, Okay, well, what's the reality I want? The reality I want is to feel happy period that's winning for me. And so how can I do that? And I just said, I need to master my thoughts, because my thoughts are currently the thing that's driving me crazy. And I realized that I actually did not have to pay attention to them, that they could come and I could actually bring my attention elsewhere, and they would dissipate, and I started to create space from them. I started to realize I don't have to be overcome by these emotions. I don't have to follow, you know, the downward spiral that thinking about my future was leading me into, and these, like, you know, anxiety attacks I would have. And around the same time that I was kind of understanding this inner dynamic and learning to master my inner world in this way. Because prior to my accident, like my brain was just always on. I don't know about you, but it was like it was constant chatter in my head, and I never realized that I could create more space from that. And around the same time as this, I was introduced to a practice called Yoga Nidra, which just means, like yogic sleep, it's a guided meditation. And being brain injured, not being able to do much, but lay in a dark room, this was like one thing that I actually could do, because you lay down and you listen to guidance. And this was, Wow, just the most remarkable thing. Because as I started to do it, at first, I did it to help me sleep, because my brain wouldn't turn off, and so I'd wake up every two hours. I started to do yoga nidra. It helped my brain waves to just kind of re regulate, and my my this, like, my internal system, to get back into, like, the sleep state. As I kept doing it, though I realized, wow, if I do this, like, as a migraine starting to come on, I can circumvent the migraine, like, my migraine doesn't get full blown, and then, wow, yeah,

TD Flenaugh: 9:24

that's big. So you could feel the migraine coming on and really training yourself to think in a way that circumvents it.

Danielle Matthews: 9:36

Well, not so much the thinking. What I would do is I would go do the yoga intro, which would get me out of my thinking mind. That's what would happen. I would go to this space beyond my mind, and all of a sudden it was like my the really what it is like, it's your parasympathetic nervous system, which is what carries out our healing in our body. It's able to take over and sort of rebalance the system. But when we get into our thoughts and the panic, we stay in our sympathetic state. State in our sympathetic nervous system when we're in that fight or flight state, it's a stress response. Our body can do no healing. It can't do self regulation. And so I was learning how to bring myself actually out of my mind and relax into the body, let my body do what it's meant to do, and just reset my nervous system. And yeah, remarkable. And the more that I did this practice, which you're just laying down and listening, it's between 20 and 40 minutes, like it's not long. And the more I did it, the more I found this like sense of peace inside of me. It was like a peace that was it's almost like, if you envision the sky, and you know, here in Florida, we have, like, every afternoon, there's like a storm that rolls through, right? But it's like that sky I know is peacefully behind a storm, and it's going to be there when the storm goes away, and it was there before the storm even came. And it was like I started to find that peaceful center inside of myself, and that was everything, I mean, that is what allowed me to then be able to go from moment to moment and and be happy, because I could tap into that.

TD Flenaugh: 11:04

That's really amazing. And how can you turn that into some strategies for parents and educators, you know, supporting kids who may have some major life changes that happen to them?

Danielle Matthews: 11:20

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think what's interesting yoga, Nidra and just mindfulness meditation in general has a lot of great research behind it, and there are even a lot of schools that are starting to implement teaching kids breath techniques or just moment of inner stillness. When I was teaching sixth grade, we had like, an extracurricular that the kids could pick, like, what they're what they wanted to do with the last period. And I offered guided meditation, I offered yoga ninja, and it was always full. And these kids would literally get to lay down, and I would guide them through this. And it really helped them. I think there's really five, if I think about, like, the five main things that can support with. So you guys listening, it's going to help you as educators, as parents, but also doing it with your kids, it's going to help with these things. And number one is emotional resiliency. Okay, so literally, the research shows that when you do this type of meditation, there's more neural connections that happen in the prefrontal cortex, for one example, which can help with impulse control, okay? And it can help with just emotional stability. And we know, obviously kids hormones are going crazy. Everything's, you know,

TD Flenaugh: 12:30

great for middle schoolers.

Danielle Matthews: 12:34

For my guys, it was like the best thing to just be able to get themselves settled. And again, when that parasympathetic nervous system comes on, which is what happens when you're in the meditative state, the body can self regulate. And so we literally see shifts in dopamine, serotonin, GABA, these neurotransmitters that directly impact mood. So one of the second things that I would say it's great for is like stress and anxiety, because literally, there are physiological changes that are going to happen like it happened for me without me even knowing it was going to happen. I just all of a sudden, it was like I was less stressed. Nothing had changed. Right brain injury was still there. All the same circumstances were still in my life, but I was somehow not stressed, and I wasn't having these anxiety attacks. And it was like everything was calmer. So it will literally teach kids and you how to relax and how to just be more at peace in your own being. One of the other things, the third thing that I think about how it really supports is like what I would call your inner locus of control. Okay, so recognizing and this is huge, because life events happen. Like, I remember one of my kids coming in and saying, Hey, miss, I was at the park last night, and I saw the gang come by and they shot somebody, and yeah, and he was visibly like, not sure what to do with it, you know, and clearly hadn't been talked through at home. And it's like, what do you do with that? Yeah, and with a practice like yoga nidra, what it's teaching kids is how to go inside of themselves and to find a steady center that is always there, no matter what is happening externally, no matter what they see, hear what trauma occurs, whatever what some bully said to them, whatever it is, they recognize that no matter what happens out there, I am the determining factor in how I can respond. I have this peaceful place that I can always touch inside of myself like my true self, and they get really in touch with that, and that, I think, is what helps. It's like, that's what creates the emotional intelligence to be able to then help navigate and have the resiliency to navigate situations that, like a kid shouldn't be put in, but unfortunately is

TD Flenaugh: 14:47

put in. Yes, that's unfortunately how life is right. Life is for a loop. If we're ready or not, we're young or old. It does.

Danielle Matthews: 14:57

It totally does, um. Two other points, I would say, You know what I think about. So the fourth thing is self esteem, body image. It's a big thing in middle school, and it can distract kids from being able to even pay attention and learn their mind is just racing about themselves, or they have this low self esteem. And what, again, what guided meditation does is it takes you to a space beyond your thoughts. So those quiet like you get to the quiet space beyond the negative thinking. All of a sudden it it erupts. It literally disrupts this patterned thinking like I was having, of like anxiety and panic attacks and kids might be having around body image, or, you know, their own self worth, or whatever it might be. All of a sudden, we literally can interrupt it just with breath work. I mean, the beautiful thing about about understanding some of the principles with with mindfulness is like, where we focus energy flows, and so in a practice like this, we teach kids, and we teach ourselves that, look, if I focus on my thoughts, I'm putting energy towards them, I'm feeding them, they're going to grow, but if I disrupt that, instead, I'm forced to focus on my breath. What happens when I focus on my breath? I literally don't have the capacity to focus on the thoughts. I can only feel focused on the inhale and the exhale, and so my attention goes there. And guess what, when you focus on the breath, that's like the secret door into your parasympathetic nervous system, getting to take over, and all of a sudden the body calming, all of the rest, digest, restore, all of those things start to happen in your physical body. You get calmer, and the mind gets quiet. So when it comes to self esteem, when it comes to body image, huge this is a practice that is huge support. And you know, all these things that I've been speaking about, I guess, are more so on the like, the emotional aspect of things, right? But there's also, like, the fifth thing I would say is it does help with mental acuity. So there have been studies showing that this supports with learning, because kids can concentrate better. Again, more neural connections happening, and also mental chatter is out of the way. So now they can focus

TD Flenaugh: 17:04

you for one moment. I just for the audience out there, mental acuity. Can you just define it for them? Just to make sure that

Danielle Matthews: 17:10

everyone I think of mental acuity is like they're like the mind. How well the mind is able to do things like concentrate, have good memory, be able to be creative, to focus. It's like, how well the mind is really looking. It's more on like the a measure that is maybe what like in schools, we measure right test scores and these kinds of things reporting, and a more like tangible way with things. I think everything up to this point, I think it's kind of, it's slightly intangible, to say, well, we can help with someone's self esteem, or we can help get rid of stress, whereas mental acuity is more so, like, okay, like, how are we showing up on test scores? Like, how's the mind actually functioning to do certain things? Thanks for clarifying that. But with like, things like memory, I mean, and it's, it's amazing. Like, there's been studies showing, like, if you go and you say, study for a test, and then you do a yoga nidra, what's happening is that that information is now having time to soak into the brain. The neural connections are going to be stronger. The information is going to be collected and put in your brain in a way that's going to now be more easily accessible, and so it is just an incredible, like, I don't know, it's like hacking your mind in a good way, to be able to, like, take all this information and think about how much info like kids get in a day, or, if you're homeschooling, you know, the amount that you're giving your kid. Well, what if you just had this moment? You know, and you know, and depending on your kid's age, it might range from seven minutes, you know, all the way up to teenagers, they can do 40 minutes. But of this time and space to just kind of relax, allow everything to integrate. And it's huge, you know, it also improves sleep, which, goodness knows, if you get good sleep, your mental cutie is going to be better as well as you know, you're really starting out,

TD Flenaugh: 19:02

and that is a good point. You know, we forget about our teenagers and things like that. That is one thing that they're really lacking in sleep nowadays, especially if we're not really keeping a handle on the devices. And everything is a device kind of, right? You know, there's the laptops, the iPads, the phones and, you know, so they could just be up all the time, the video games or another portal outside. It's not just playing inside with your home, at home with your friend or your whoever's next to you, or by yourself. You know, we know that all of that connects to the internet, and kids often are addicted to their devices and not getting enough sleep. Lots of things keep them awake. Yeah, absolutely.

Danielle Matthews: 19:48

Well, it's interesting, too. I mean, just like the light. So this is one thing that I learned through my brain injury. Is the light coming out of screens literally stimulates your brain. So I gotta cut it so that it would take you know. Know the light out? I believe it was the blue light that was so bothering me. And there's an app called flux that I would use on my computer.

TD Flenaugh: 20:13

The rewrite method and the rewrite method workbook are your go to resource for helping kids to learn to fall in love with writing, it has the tips, tools, resources, strategies and skill building activities to help kids fall out of writing Hoot and into loving to write, get your book set today

Danielle Matthews: 20:57

on the phone as well that would take that out so like My computer looked a little more like orangey, but it didn't stimulate my brain as much. So if you do have kids that are having sleep issues and like, maybe they need to be on devices for school or whatnot, there are apps you can get that help, or there's glasses. Now, you know, I think it's becoming more popular that people can wear that will take that out. So just a little helpful hack.

TD Flenaugh: 21:20

Yes, I have not heard about that. That's new information for from me and probably for other people in the audience as well. Thank you. We'll definitely look that up and put information for that in the show notes. Wonderful. Okay, and so, as we are thinking about kids navigating, you know, big life events. What were some setbacks or something like that that you had that really how you handled it and how you kept persevering, despite some setbacks you may have had.

Danielle Matthews: 21:58

Well, when life throws us a curve ball. You know, I feel like we get put in these situations, and there's pressure, of course, and pressure can break us, or we can use it to transform us, to kind of like, break us open to a new version of ourselves, where it's like, okay, you know, there's a saying it's like, the wound is where the light gets in, and it's like, yeah, breaking open isn't terrible, like a chick needs to break open the shell, to come out. Like, sometimes breaking is okay, it opens to something new. And I think we have a tendency towards, you know, not wanting to deal with difficult emotional or mental things, right? We would say we prefer for things to be happier and easier and lighter. But the truth of the matter is the more difficult times in your life. True or not true? You grew the most. You learned the most. It became stronger because of them. It's like, we're happy to go to the gym and work out, and we know, okay, five pounds more today. Five pounds more today. Little bit harder, little bit more stress on the muscles. I'm going to get stronger. But for some reason, we like don't make the leap to doing the same thing when it comes to emotional strength, mental strength, this kind of thing where it's like, no, when there's stress or pressure, we're like, No, I don't want that. And we kind of go and unfortunately, sometimes, as parents too, we're like, want to keep our kids safe and protected from having to deal with this. And the reality is is no like, the challenges are the best part. It's showing them how to navigate them. It's showing kids how to digest big emotional events in a good way, to actually in a healthy way, deal with upset in a healthy way, deal with their own fears, and show them how to do this. And it means that we need to know how to do it ourselves, because they're learning from us, not just from what we say, but how we carry ourselves, what we actually do in the face of adversity. And do we ask, Well, how could this be a gift? What is this lesson I'm learning? I have taken on the attitude that, you know, we are here, and I believe our souls came here to learn certain lessons, and so the challenging things that get put in our path are actually what we came here to learn why we are here. And so when we embrace that, when we say, maybe this is a gift from God, maybe it's a gift from the Divine. Maybe if I, if I don't believe in that, fine, let me just act what? Well, what if I consider this to be a good thing? What would it be making possible? Right? What is this challenge actually making possible in my life? And we just change the perspective on it, it will open up so much for you. It's it's really a it's life changing when you when you do that, and when you navigate life that way, your kids are going to be able to more nap, be more easily, navigating these challenges as they come. And ultimately, like we are, we are teaching and guiding these little beings into adulthood, and so we need to eventually give them the skill set to handle the realities of adulthood, which is that life is not always going to go your way. Stuff happens, you know, and, and, and you need to realize that just because it should be, could be, ought to be different or. You didn't deserve it or whatnot. Like life has no allegiance to our plans, and it's not personal. Life is just doing life and take it personally, and we need to just understand, Okay, well, maybe it's telling me move in this direction. Maybe I've got to learn this skill now and look at it as like a game where now we just, okay, this is our next challenge in the game. Let's figure out how to how to solve it.

TD Flenaugh: 25:21

I really just want to take the time to really highlight, you know, that, yes, we make it stuck and thinking about, why did this happen to me? It's not fair, right? But really, if we're thinking about our purpose, and even you know our passion, thinking about and I just really love how you framed it, like how the wound is where the light goes, and just really reframing, you know, our thought process, instead of getting stuck in the loop, right? Like, why did this happen to me? Not there? Like, again, it's not going to change what happened, but we could change our outlook on how we approach it and then use it as an opportunity. Think about how it can be an opportunity and really pursue that opportunity. Think about what we could do to grow from this, to learn from it, to open up new avenue of our life, a new direction. So I think that's that's really good, because those things we cannot control, like what new thing is, like a tragedy or big event that's going to change things for us, but we can control how we deal with it, how we think about it in our mind, the messages that we tell ourselves over and over again, so that, I think that is such sage advice, and it's really something we need to think about doing and really modeling that for our kids as well, and then helping our kids right. Because we know our kids don't always listen to what we say, but they are often doing the things that we did, right? Yeah, they're watching, yes, so we really have to be mindful of that, and it gives you more power, right? Because here I'm, if I'm left in the powerless like, Oh, why did this happen to me? It's not fair. This isn't fair. I wish this never happened to me, rather than like, Okay, this happened, and these are the things I'm learning from this. This is how I'm growing for this from this, and this is the new thing that I learned, or the new person or opportunity that I have now that I went through this experience. And so that really puts you in a different place. So I really thank you for highlighting that, and I hope that we could take that to to heart as parents and educators who are models for kids, so that our kids can take that on as well, and it really will make the difference right, making us or breaking us right, as you were saying, like it could be a moment that's the End, or, like, you know, the start of a horrible trajectory, or the start of a new, promising trajectory, trajectory that maybe we didn't plan for, but we are taking some power towards, you know, choices.

Danielle Matthews: 28:17

You know, I am a family member of mine. She's going through a really rough time, and, you know, she's in these years, like the kids I used to to teach, and I could see it. And so for Christmas, I put literally, coal in and a diamond in a box, and I had her open, and I of course, had her open the coal first is like a joke, and and then she opened the diamond. And it was one of those big, like, you know, big, pretty diamond. It was real, but it was, it was, it was beautiful. And she was looking at me, like, Okay, I don't get it. And I said, Do you know where diamonds come from? And kind of looked at me, and I said, diamonds come from carbon, what you're looking at, that coal, when put under pressure, intense pressure. And I described all the details of I looked up all the exact details, I described it, and I said, that is what creates a diamond. And I said, right now, you have so much pressure in your life, from home, from what's happening at school internally you. And I said, You are being pushed, forced into becoming a diamond, and so don't let it break you and think that something's wrong with you. It's not. This is just the situation that is going to allow you to show you the beauty that's inside of you. And, you know, we'll see how if it landed. But it's like, it was a seed that was planted, you know? And it's like, I think there's a Have you ever heard of the Pygmalion effect?

TD Flenaugh: 29:40

I've heard of it, but I don't know anything about it. But it's, it's a familiar something, I don't know anything

Danielle Matthews: 29:46

so it was done like in the education space, and I hadn't heard about it while I was out of teaching. So the study was essentially, and I might get all the details, like, not precisely, right, but the essence of it I've got. So basically, a group came in to a class. Classroom, and I think it was like, first or second grade, and they said to the teacher, look, we've tested the kids, and there are some kids that are underperforming right now, but that are, like, highly intelligent, and they're, they're what we would call like, like spurs, like they could do, they could do more than than they're doing right now. And so tell us them this at the beginning of the school year. And then school year happens. End of the school year, they come back and they look at the test scores of these kids and how the kids did. And sure enough, this group of kids that they had identified had had spurted, had spurted ahead of the others were doing way better. And so they then tell the teacher, we never tested them. We randomly chose those.

TD Flenaugh: 30:46

Okay, I've heard of, I've heard of,

Danielle Matthews: 30:49

and I think it was never repeated, because families got involved, and we're very upset, but the idea being well, so what was different? The difference was the teacher, this authority figure in this child's life, had the idea, whether they verbally said it or just felt it, that this child could do better, that something more positive could come out of this kid's world. And so they spoke to that, whether they consciously realized they were doing it or it was unconscious, because they had been told this kid was better than they were doing. And so that's what was spoken to. And so what happened those children rose to the occasion. And so I look at that and I say, Okay, if we relate it to trauma resiliency kind of what we've been talking about. So if you do have a child that is going through something intense, rather than just kind of looking at, oh, I'm so sorry that this happened, whatever, keeping them in a victimhood, whereas you said so beautifully, they're powerless, you know? How do we get them to get their power back? Well, we speak to, wow, you're you're being put through the pressure. This is your chance to become a diamond. What can you learn about yourself? What is this teaching? This is a massive life lesson that's here, right? This was put here for a reason. Maybe it's going to be a little while before we figure out why you got this unique, very intense challenge, you know, but it happened for a very powerful reason. You're special, and so that is going to pull them into a very different potential, right? Where the Oh yes, you're a victim. I'm sorry it happened. That's so terrible. It keeps them, unfortunately, down with as good meaning as we think we're being. It's actually not helpful. It's more helpful to kind of get them looking up, looking at another potential for themselves, and how it might be just emotional intelligence that's increasing, right? Not something they're going to get a better grade for, but they're going to become a better human being. They're going to be more compassionate. After this. They're going to be under be able to understand, you know, life on a deeper level.

TD Flenaugh: 32:47

Wow. That is so amazing as we are. I mean, it's really something that we really have to sit and think about, and then think about how to put that in action for our kids, right? But it's not that difficult, right? Because we're always running into challenges here and there, small and large, and then just making sure that we are talking about our mindset in front of our kids, and then talking about, you know, how when they have a challenge, big or small, how they could think about it in that same way. But it's a great reframing and an empowering message for our kids. So any last things that you want to say to the audience as they are helping their kids, their students, navigate the ups and downs of growing

Danielle Matthews: 33:34

up? Yeah, you know, I think we teach kids hygiene, right? We teach kids to take a physical shower, and importance of that, but I don't think we teach to take a psychic shower, and that they need to also, maybe at the end of the day, do a little breathing, go inward and release that stress, that anxiety, that mean comment that was said, so that it doesn't end up lingering in the system, so they don't hold on to it, so their self esteem doesn't get impacted by it. And you know, this isn't in any curriculum that I've seen, but it's like, that's the power of yoga nidra, that's why I got certified to teach yoga ninja for kids. Because I'm like, this is such a powerful thing. I saw my my kiddos in sixth grade resonating with it, and it's such a powerful practice that you can implement, right? Do it before bed. Maybe it's part of the bedtime routine. Is that you do a little mini yoga, Nidra, right? Or you, you even, if you just, if you don't even know how to do that, of course, I can support to show you how, but it's like just breath work, just teaching to breathe. It's sort of inhale happiness and exhale anger. I mean, just a little thing like that is going to start to help to emotionally regulate. It's going to start to give that psychic shower that I think us as parents and teachers don't always give to ourselves, but it's something that we, for sure need to model and start to give

TD Flenaugh: 34:54

to our kids. Too amazing. And how can people get in touch with you?

Danielle Matthews: 34:59

I. TD, absolutely. So I'm in a variety of social media platforms. I'm all over them, but if you want to just get in touch with me directly, probably easiest just to email me. And it's just discover intention@gmail.com and I'm happy to answer any questions. Point you to some resources. And yeah, there's some great stuff I've got out there for you. Excellent.

TD Flenaugh: 35:21

Thank you so much for joining us. Danielle Matthews, we know that the parents and educators out there got a lot out of your interview and sage advice that you're giving us and for parents and educators, if you found this valuable, please like and subscribe and make sure you do something today that's going to give your child the competitive advantage. Thank you so much. Have a great week. Thanks again for supporting the falling for learning podcast. New Episodes go live every Saturday at 5pm you can watch us on youtube.com, at falling for learning or listen on all major podcast platforms such as Apple, Google, Audible, Spotify and much more for more resources, visit falling in love with learning.com we really appreciate you. Have a wonderful week.