Episode 197: Bullying and the Mental Health Crisis: How Parents Can Support Kids and Build Peer Support with Rebecca and Dan Burd
/In this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we dive into an urgent topic affecting many of us as parents: the mental health crisis among children, teens, and middle schoolers. With October being National Bullying Awareness Month, this discussion feels particularly timely. I’m joined by Dan and Rebecca Burd, creators of the impactful musical Speak Life End Bullying, as we explore the connection between bullying and mental health challenges and discuss actionable steps we can take to support our children and foster a positive environment in schools.
Here are the topics we covered:
Changes in emotional awareness of middle and high schoolers
Defining bullying versus teasing and sarcasm
Understanding the emotions behind harmful messages from kids and parental responses is needed
Teaching kids healthier connections and emotional resilience in peer dynamics
Supporting kids in how to be brave during uncomfortable social interactions
Understanding the concept of "Speaking Life”
To know more about Rebecca and Dan Burd, visit their website speaklifethemusical.org and follow them on Facebook @speaklifeendbullying and Instagram @speaklifethemusical.
Tune in to learn how we, as parents, can support not only our own children but also help create compassionate environments where all children can thrive.
I would love to hear from you! If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on the podcast or any takeaways or wins you’d like to share you can leave me a message here: https://www.speakpipe.com/laurafroyenphd
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody. This is Doctor Laura Froyen. And on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent podcast, we are going to be diving into a topic that I think has probably been on a lot of our minds as parents and caregivers for young ones. We're gonna be talking about the mental health crisis that our young kids, our teens, our middles are facing and what we as parents can do to support them. How bullying is related to this crisis and what our role is in, not just supporting our own kids, but supporting our kids and being active and supportive peers in their schools. So to help me with this conversation, I'm so excited to have Dan and Rebecca Burd. They are the creators, writers, directors of a beautiful musical called Speak Life and Bullying. Dan and Rebecca. Welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.
Dan: Thank you for having us.
Rebecca: Thank you so much for having us. This is the conversation we love to have and we're so so thankful to be here with you.
Laura: I'm so glad to have you.
Dan: I'll let her go ahead and introduce us, and what we do.
Rebecca: Yes. So we have had the honor and privilege of working in schools with teens, mainly middle and high school students since 2001. We were impacted by a story of bullying ourselves when we were very young, we were just in our twenties. And we hadn't had our kids yet and we heard a story, this is about two years post Columbine and for those who don't know, that was really the mass school shooting that started the real conversations that have been ongoing now about mental health and bullying and how that relates to our children. And so we were so impacted by a story that we heard in a meeting one day as we were meeting with a lot of other people who were working with teens. We were, we were originally from New York and so we were so impacted by this story and that really got us moving as artists to, to really do something to try and make a difference. And so that's when we wrote the film and we were privileged then to tour with the Sorry, I wrote the musical. So we were privileged then to tour with the musical in a live format. To over 31 states. We impacted over over 375,000 students. Over the course of 15 years working live in middle and high school assembly programs. And then that brought us to where we are today with the film and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that. But what we love to do is to be in our middle and high schools really serving our educators and our facilitators and even more so our parents by offering ways in which we can truly get involved and make a real difference in our kids' lives in regards to these super important issues of mental health and bullying.
Laura: I appreciate that. You know, I'm thinking back to Columbine. I was in my freshman year of high school. I was, you know, that was my spring of my freshman year. It was a very, very eye opening event, you know, I was, I was in a small farming community. It was very scary to think about going through that as a child. There's a whole another level and layer to it. Now as a parent, I'm sending my kids to schools and seeing this happening in younger and younger schools systems too. I feel curious about what it was for you guys that really lit that fire under you. What, what was the story that you heard and what was it that really made you want to get into this topic?
Dan: Well, for me, I had been bullied all through 6th, 7th and 8th grade. I was horrifically bullied, continuously made fun of, had my, had my own story that we may be able to get into a little bit from. But, after, you know, Columbine, both my wife and I, we were working as youth workers on Long Island up in New York and there was a like a youth worker networking kind of meeting so we could meet lots of people from around the island. And there were probably 50 people in the room at the time, all different ages everywhere, from like older teens to like 50 60 70 year olds. And the guy that was running the meeting pressed play on an audio clip from an author named Frank Peretti. And so Frank Peretti had written, he's a fiction author and he had written his only nonfiction book and it was about his life and this book was just getting to come out. It was called No More Victims. Actually, originally it was called The Wounded Spirit. And, then they changed it actually to no more bullies so that it could impact the schools a little better. But, this guy played this 15 minute audio clip of his life of, you know, growing up and being horrifically bullied for having a disfigurement and a speech impediment and all of these things. And, at the end of that audio clip, there was not a dry eye in the audience. You know, everybody seemed to have been impacted but because of what I had gone through and how we were already doing, you know, running a performing arts company and doing arts, we kind of looked at each other and said, we need to do something about this. We don't feel like we can just leave. And so we walked up to the guy that was running the meeting and said, you know, we wanna, we, we just want to do something about this.
And he's like, well, you guys are the artists go do something about it. And so we did, we went back and we met with our staff and we all read the book, we don't know when it came out and we're very, very moved by it. And it was probably the, there's moments that are pivotal moments in your life that you remember. And for us, this was a pivotal moment because it kind of diverged the track that we were on and set us on a new path. Even though we were doing performing arts, we never knew that we were going to do performing arts for anti-bullying production, you know. And it was very interesting. We wrote our first version of this show and started taking it into schools and, you know, knocking on one school door and then another school door and another school door and finally one school was crazy enough to let this group of artists in. And, you know, there's 25 people in the cast and full sound, full production. And we traveled for 15 years rolling through the cast. And, you know, constantly taking college age kids every September through, you know, February, we take them out on the road and we'd see 30 40 50 high schools on a tour. We did that for 15 years, constantly honing the show every year. We would be the people that were in the mall just sitting there looking at people going by. What's the new style as, you know, updating the songs, updating the costumes, updating the jokes. And when you're alive, that's great. You know, you tell a joke on stage and it doesn't work after the show. You're like, hey, we're gonna switch out that joke. It didn't work, you know, constantly keeping it up to date. And, so that was a lot of fun and, but it was that moment at that meeting that really just completely changed our life.
Laura: Okay. I can't. So sometimes my brain just gets a little like curiosities going. I feel very curious about. So having been in high schools and middle schools for the last 20 years, I feel really curious. Have these kids changed? Because I, on the outside, see like what, you know, so my kids are 11, almost 12 and 9.5. And so I'm not there yet and they're also in a very small private school. So what I'm not seeing, you know, like the Skibby toilet and Riz and, like, all the stuff that's happening in middle school and high school right now. I'm just seeing it through this lens of, like, I don't, I don't even do the Clock App or any of those things, you know. So, like, I'm totally removed from it but I have this sense. Yeah, I have this sense that the kids are better, that they're not the same. Yeah, that they're more aware, they're more emotionally skillful and I don't know for sure if that is hopeful thinking on my part, I'm an eternal optimist and I really love seeing the good in people. But like, what is it really like? And have they changed? Are there aspects of kids that are the same, you know, the threads that run through? Sorry, I'll let you talk.
Rebecca: No. Uh well, such a cool question. It really is because I.
Dan: I think in, in regard, I think there's two things that have changed in regard to bullying and mental health. Specifically, the introduction of cell phones has completely changed the game, for our generation in terms of not for the better. My kids, we have three teenage or young adults and three young adults and teenage boys. And any time they're struggling with mental health, it always comes down to the phone and they come to me and they're like, put their phone down and they're like, this is, this is really, really bad. It's just destroying my mental health. And they're old enough now to know it and, and to help, you know, process through it. But as young kids, just, statistically speaking, in 2006, 2007, the rate of mental health and suicide ideation and suicide completion, all of those things skyrocketed. And it's the exact same time as the introduction of the iphone and social media and they just completely correlated. And so that I think, I don't think social media, I don't think an online presence or following or whatever you want to call it has helped our children with their mental health. And I think that the introduction of uh zero tolerance bully anti-bullying policies in schools has also shifted what high schools look like.
So as we sit, you know, we'll take teenagers and we'll interview them,we'll sit them, you know, in like discussion groups and have conversations with them and say has had, have you seen bullying gotten any less on co on campuses? High school, middle school and across the board, the answer is no, they haven't seen it change. But what they, what they've said is that it's just different, there's not less, it's just different because they know that the rules don't let them do kicking punching, shoving all the things that we were used to and the overt bullying and making fun of the, the way we would consider bullying. Or I would, I won't put you in my age bracket. You know, that, that I would consider bullying, but if you were in high school prior to the iphone, prior to everything, you know, 911, it was not, not 911, Columbine, it was different. And so those, those two things specifically, I think it has shifted to online, a lot of online bullying through video games and apps, you know, Discord and all of those, the the Clock app, there's a lot of bullying that's there and they've learned to make bullying a type of thing that has a a cause like a reason like, oh it was an accident but it's, it's hidden, it's not over so that they always have an alibi.
Laura: So plausible deniability.
Dan: Those were the exact words I was looking for, but I couldn't find them. So yeah, they have plausible deniability.
Rebecca: And statistically, we know now that 64% of kids are saying they're being bullied, cyberbullied specifically. But in our, if we were just took like the kids that we get to talk to all the time, I would say every one of them said they have experienced some form of cyberbullying in some way, shape or form for our sons. They were gamers. So like it was happening when they were gaming and, you know, through all the things kids were saying and how they were being treated and I'm sure they were being caught up in those things as well and also probably not using kind words and treating people in kindly times. So for them that was where a lot of it took place. But I, I think it's such an interesting question because also I think it's true that not much has changed because it's very interesting when you think back, like, even if you go back to the movies, like our show was actually written, premium pre any of those types of things and you'll see some things that are like similar about it, but we wrote it way before that. But I mean, we can go back to Greece and to some of these movies way back in the day that we saw.
Yeah, Breakfast Club, all of these ones that we would remember as parents and the problems, the issues those kids were dealing with, the same kids are going through the same things. It's just, it's showing differently because of the introduction of social media. We say, and the challenge in our film at the end, it says, you know, it used to be that when you got bullied in school or got bullied on the bus, you could go home, shut the door of your bedroom and it was over at least until the next time you had to walk in. Now our kids are legitimately haunted. Like when we look at the phones, there are kids that are targeted and hunted and then they're told to, you know, you're worthless and why are you even here? And you should take your own life? These are the types of messages and messaging that's happening online when we think our kids are safe in their own bedrooms and they're not.
Laura: Makes my heart ache and I just feel so curious about what is going on for those kids who are sending those messages because again, I can't help but, but believe in the inherent goodness of people and understanding that these kids who are saying these things are children too. So do you have a sense for what is going on inside those kids? And God, what do we do as parents if we find out our kid is the one who's saying those things?
Dan: I think that we need to be careful as parents, as counselors, as people, as artists not to say this kid is a bully. You know that I am a bully. I am a victim,
Laura: Identity statements, right?
Dan: We want to be real, real careful with that because I look at it this way in schools, you can say there that statistically it's divided up around, this is a generalization, but there's about 10% of kids that would consider themselves to be the bully. About 30% of kids in the school would consider themselves to be the victim. And then around 60% of those kids would consider themselves to be the bystander. The one that just says, I don't want to get involved. Nobody messes with me. I don't want to mess with anybody else. And so, what I try to say is I find those same statistics inside my own life that even though I run an anti-bullying nonprofit and even though I tell kids all the time to speak life, there are moments and there are people and there are situations where I can find myself being the bully. And I would say there's probably about 10%, maybe 5 to 10% of the time. And I do my best to avoid those situations. You know, there's things that you can do to help mitigate that amount. But if we looked at ourselves and said, yeah, probably 10% of the time, I'm the bully to somebody, whether it's my kids or whether it's my boss or whether it's the poor woman on the other side or the guy on the other side of the counter that's taking my coffee order wrong. You know, and then 30% of the time I would say, yeah, I'm the victim and 60% of the time, I just stay out of it. I don't want to get involved. You know, I can look at myself that same way.
So we want to look at our kids that way as well and not say, hey, you, you're being a bully or you are a bully, but rather say you're making choices that are hurtful, hurtful and you don't have to make those choices, you know, and, and as parents, we need to look at ourselves and give ourselves a little bit of grace too and say my kid isn't the bully but hurt people, hurt other people. And so my kid is hurting. That's one of the things that our show really, really talks about. And one of the things that most people walk away from the show really grasping is yes, they already know that kids are being bullied. They know that kids are doing the bullying. But when you look at the identities behind these people, like you just said, you believe that people are inherently good. And so we show that where is the hurt? If, if somebody is hurting you, where is that hurt coming from for them?
Rebecca: And that's very eye opening for kids. Something that they're not, we think they're thinking about it. We, but they're not because here's what I think. I think most kids wake up in the morning thinking how am I gonna get through today? How do I make it from A to Z and not become the victim of somebody else's negative words or negative actions? They don't wake up saying, hey, I'm gonna go in and bully somebody today like that's not their innate person. That's not who they are. Most, yeah, most kids, they find themselves inside school now, something's taking place and say their peer group or something's happening around them. And what they see is in order to stay away from becoming the target I'm gonna engage in what's going on here even though it's not really my character, even though it's not really what I'm like, I'm just gonna laugh along or I'm gonna play along with whatever is happening in this moment. And now you take that child outside that moment and most of them would say, I don't even know why I acted that way. That's not my character. That's not what I think. I don't really feel that way about that person and they'll immediately feel regret.
They'll immediately feel like, oh, I wish I would have done that better and maybe next time they come back and do it better, but maybe next time they'll feel that same survival mode tendency to just go with the flow and go with the crowd and not stand out and not try and be different in that moment. And I think, I think for parents, I want to encourage you that if your child is caught up in a situation like that, get curious. I love when you say get curious because it's the biggest tip. We can give parents around this. If you see your child act out or you get that dreaded phone call from the school on one end or the other. My kid had been bullied or my kid was involved in bullying. Immediately. Get curious with that child. Don't go straight to judgment because you can truly, when you get curious, figure out that probably something just took place like something happened and maybe it happened on the phone and you weren't aware of it. Maybe something happened in their sports situation. Maybe a friend, a best friend sent them a text or a message that really hurt them and their suffering. And as parents, we've got to ask those questions.
Laura: Yeah, you know, in my family, when the kids were younger, we talked a lot about emotional hot potato and how, you know, often when we're feeling an uncomfortable emotion, we just try to quickly pass it on to whoever will take it as quickly as possible. But something else that comes to mind when I think about these dynamics is just from a, like an in group out group piece. And, you know, the kids in this phase of life are so concerned with belonging, particularly belonging within their peer group. And there's this false sense of connectedness that comes in when we do something together against another person there. And I think that, you know, we as adults know that when we kind of, you know, in the marriage and marriage and family therapy world, this is called triangulation where like two people will team up to kind of exclude another person in a triangle, you know, it's a really destructive form of connectedness. But in a dysfunctional setting, which many schools are, you know, when they're trying to figure out these social things, it can feel really connecting to kind of be in the group that's doing the thing. I, I think, have some compassion and understanding and grace. But how do we then go about teaching kids that there are other ways to be connected, there's other ways to feel that sense of belonging. Or maybe even, you know, I keep thinking about that 60% that you were talking about that bystander effect. How do we go about raising kids who are going to be the ones who step in and stick up for another one? You know, the other kids.
Rebecca: It is, you've hit the nail on the head. It is truly what our children are looking for. The tagline throughout our film, we sort of have the, the adult figure, the person who kind of comes in and speaks truth in a situation. He's actually our janitor. We pick somebody who is just sort of like on the periphery. Yeah. No, not the parent, but just somebody who's an observer and he sort of comes in in different moments and he speaks into situations, but he uses a line at the end of every conversation with each student and he says, you've got to love him because at the end of the day, that is all our kids are looking for, they're looking for love, they're looking for belonging. Like you said, if that love and belonging feels like it's coming from getting caught up in a situation in which I'm actually being mean or I'm not being kind to somebody else or like you said, that triangle where I'm going to side with the person where I won't be at the targeting point of that, of that triangle, right? So I'm going to go over here because that feels good over here. I think what we've discovered and I, the absolute key to breaking through that with a child is we've got to connect them to empathy. Our children when they're in survival mode are just thinking about how do I get from A to Z in a day? But when we start telling a story and we know the story is so powerful, right? Because it sticks. And that's why we know this film sticks. We've talked to kids 10 years after seeing it and they're like, I remember where I sat, I remember the character I connected to, I remember exactly that little seed that was sort of planted in my heart and my mind that I hadn't thought of before and it changed the way I thought and spoke to other people. And why is that? Because when kids suddenly have a moment where they go Oh, I didn't realize when I act that way or when I say that that person feels that I don't want to feel that I don't want to make other people feel that. What could I do to change that or? Wow. I hate that girl in my school. I hate that guy in my school.
They're always so mean they do this or that. Oh. But they might be, maybe there's divorce at home, maybe there's this at home. Maybe there's something else at home and suddenly they begin to go. Oh, so when they're speaking that way to me, it's not about me. It's about something they're feeling and they're going through and all of a sudden you don't just take it as harm to self, you're suddenly going, oh, like, wow, that person could be hurting too. And maybe if I just get curious about that instead of judging them, this could be different. And so as we see kids this little window of their heart opening up to empathy all of a sudden that child who said, you know, I'm going to sit back because I don't want to get involved and I don't want to become the target. They kind of go, hey, wait a minute. But what if I did get involved? What if I just chose a positive word or positive action that could steer this conversation differently? What could happen? And they realize the power they actually hold and I think that's one of the things our kids feel right now is they don't feel very powerful, they feel like all that's been sort of stripped from them, especially post 2020 when the whole world got disrupted. And so I think kids find out the power of their voice, the power to stand up for someone. We always say, if we could empower that 60%, even 10% of that 60% ignite culture shift inside that school because suddenly people will find belonging inside moments that speak life to people. So instead of like this negative bowing moment and now everybody's involved in that and that's how I find belonging. Now that person comes out with that negative word and everyone else in the room goes whoa like we don't talk like that, we don't act that way like that's not cool. What just happened? We just shifted the culture of that room, we just shifted the culture of that conversation. Now a child knows, hey, to love somebody else I or to feel that feeling of belonging, it actually comes from loving somebody, not pushing somebody down.
Laura: I really like that. I feel very curious about the kids that you get to work with the teenagers and the middle schoolers. What you're suggesting takes an enormous amount of courage, guts and bravery. And I feel very curious about what the response is for these kids? Is there, is there skepticism, is there this desire to brush this off and not take it seriously? Like, do you have a sense of the, there are the kids who are kind of hungry for this opportunity to step up? Like, what, what's going on with these, the kids that you get to see?
Dan: I think it runs the gamut, you know, you have the kids that are like, no way I'm doing that and then you have the kids and we kind of speak to them. They're, they're the kids that have the social credit. You know, they're cool enough that they know they're good with their words because they've been using them to hurt other people. They're, they're like me. So for me in sixth grade being bullied, 6th, 7th and 8th grade, I became the joker. I built up a wall and would use humor as a way to get people to laugh. And I would either make fun of myself or I would make fun of somebody else and I would, you know, self deprecation in order to get somebody else to laugh because I decided there that they would laugh at what I was doing or what I was saying rather than who I was because I didn't want to be made fun of, for who I was. I just built this wall. Well, I became really good at it and at first it was a defense mechanism like just self defense but self defense mechanisms became offense mechanisms and I began to use it against other people and I would, I would be sarcastic and I would make fun of other people. You know, and, and you would cross the line from teasing into bullying when, when you would be hurtful, purposefully hurtful to shut somebody else down. And so for me, I know that in order for these kids to be able to, to take that step and make that step, some of them are going to have to have that, that social credit. You know, it's gonna need to be a football player. It's gonna need to be somebody that, you know, everybody already is looking at that, that they're like, oh he's one of the cool kids, you know, and they already have a little bit of respect, a little bit of street cred, those are very, it it's easier for them to kind of make the switch.
But we've seen it across hundreds of high schools, you know. So even on Long Island, am I allowed to say the name of the high school? Islip High School there? You know, if anybody in I slip, shout out to Islip. You know, one of the principals there said that after our show, the one of the biggest kids that he would have considered a bully in that school began walking up to different kids and saying things to them. And he's like, oh gosh, what is this kid saying? Like right now right after this, if this didn't impact this kid, what possibly could. And so he went up to the kid and he noticed that he was crying and he had actually gone up to each one of the students that he had bullied and was apologizing to them and asking for their forgiveness. And he said this kid turned around and became the biggest advocate for anti-bullying in his school. He said he would see two kids fighting, he would grab him by the collar, bring him into the office and sit him down and say, you know this isn't okay.
You know, we gotta, we principal Mike, you gotta tell him what, tell him what's going on, tell him about Speak Life. You know, and then we've had, we've had other kids that we pull into the chick fil a here in our own town and, and one of the girls, you know, seen my stuff and she's like, wait, are you with that show, you know, speak Life and Bullying? And I was like, yeah, actually it's always fun when someone recognizes you. And I'm not even in the film anymore, but she recognized me from being at her school, I guess. And she was like, oh my gosh, she said that film changed my friend group. She said before that we used to make fun of each other all the time and it was always joking and this, but we knew we were making fun of each other. It's kind of what bonded us a little bit. And after that, it completely changed our group, we began to be kind to each other. We began to respect each other. It changed who we were. So when we talk about changing the atmosphere of a school, we don't have to have every single one of the kids in a 1000 person school holding hands and skipping out of the auditorium singing kumbaya. You know, we, what we want is to impact groups like that because if we can change one person, you know that one person in her group, I guarantee you they did not have street cred in that school to shift the culture of the entire school. But the one kid in their friend group of five or six kids had enough pull and decided to make that change that all the other kids, girls in her friend group said I want to make that change as well.
Laura: Yeah. All right. I really like that. I'm thinking about so you were a little bit ago, you said you were talking about that line between teasing and sarcasm and then moving into bullying. And I, you know, I think that some folks have a sense that we use the word bullying too much that we throw it around, you know, and so what do we really like, maybe we should have had this question at the very beginning. But now that we're, you know, halfway through, like, can we define it? Like, what does bullying really mean? Because there's a certain aspect of social development that is developmentally appropriate, that you're not coming to my birthday party. But three days later, you are like, that's not bullying. So what is bullying?
Dan: Bullying from a technical like dictionary standpoint is continued abuse with the unevenness of power. So I have, I have more power than you do and I'm going to use that power to continue to put you down. It's not an equal playing field that is when bullying is considered. And in many regards, teasing is a joking with somebody else and it can actually, it can do two things, it can create bonds between people, you know, like even we had Justin Simmons on he's a safety for the Atlanta Falcons and we had him on another interview and I was like, Justin, you know, if you go up for an interception and you miss it, those guys are gonna razz you, you know they're gonna be on you, they're gonna tease you and it's going to draw, it's gonna pull you together as a unit, it's gonna bond you together when teasing is hurtful and the person that is doing the teasing doesn't care or doesn't stop or doesn't apologize, then you're, you are bordering on bullying, especially if it continues. So you can say, oh, I was only teasing but if that person is hurt from it and they, they're communicating that they're hurt from it and as a friend you don't stop. Like if I tease my wife about something that she did, she'll come back to me later and say that it hurt. I didn't like when you did that. If I press it again, I am bullying her. But if I apologize, if I stop, even if I just walk away, like we're married, so I'm not going to walk away. But if it's just in school and it's two kids and they happen to be sitting around a table because of some, you know, weird environmental thing that made them happen to be at that table for that day. And somebody makes a joke about you know, oh green, you know, you, you blend into the background, not you specifically but like, you know, camouflage or whatever. It's meant to be funny. It's meant to tease, it's not meant to be hurtful. But if that person gets hurt and the person doesn't stop, that's when you move into the boundary of bullying. That's my
Laura: Yeah. Do you have anything to add, Rebecca?
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean, I think that this is an important conversation because, you know, back when we heard this audio clip that changed our lives. I would say what we understood is that if you were being bullied or felt that you're being bullied, all of the target was toward that person. It was like, just be stronger. Like you can stand up against what people are saying about you. Like don't let other people's words affect you.
Laura: You don't be an easy victim or an easy target. And I mean, our entire tagline of what we do is words matter. So words matter, period, they matter. We need to be very careful because they do have the power of life and they also have the power to speak hurt and even to the point of speaking death over other people if we're not careful. So our words matter. But when we think back to those moments in high school for us, the messaging was just like be stronger. And when we sat in that audio clip, what Frank said in that moment, that was so shifting for us is he said when it's truly bullying, it is abuse. And if we as adults sit back and we know that hey, this child's being targeted, like we see it through text messages, we see it through consistent reporting of something that's happening and happening. And we don't step in and actually say, hey, this needs to stop like we are going to that abuse is going to change the outcome of that person's life. We talked to 67-year-olds who can tell us the name, the place, the moment exactly what was said to them that actually shifted what they wanted to do with their life. Maybe they loved a certain thing and they were passionate about it and somebody said something negative about it and then somebody else did and somebody else did and somebody else did. And before they knew it, they just abandoned it completely because of the pain that was connected to it. And so I think we have to be aware in this day and age with our kids to be careful to say, listen, not everything is bullying. It's become a tagline. It's become like an easy word to use.
So assess situations like, hey, that's your girlfriend, that's your best friend. Like they said, they're probably not trying to bully you. They were probably teasing and maybe it went a little too far. So let's use honesty and go and say, hey, you know that to hurt me when you said that. That conversation then steers toward apology and change. Well, there's forgiveness there and we can move forward and move on. But if that person then like Dan says, turns around and comes back and it's again and again and they're pressing hard. That is when as parents as we're observing it, seeing it, teachers educate like whoever you are. If you're seeing it happen, another peer, it's time to step in. It's time to bring protection there. I always say it like if my kid went to a family member's house and came home and told me, hey mom like uncle so and so was just making fun of me and treating me terribly and please don't leave me alone there anymore. I didn't feel safe. Do you think that next Sunday I'd be dropping my kids off at that family's home. Never. But think about how often that happens at school. Our kids come home and say, hey mom, this is happening. This kid's saying this to me. It's repeated, it's over and over and we're like, okay, honey, I'll go see something at this school. Be stronger and I'm dropping you back off tomorrow for some more.
Dan: Because you don't have a choice, you have to go.
Laura: So what do we do when our kids come home with these, you know, these pieces, you know, these, this information or we see it ourselves. You know, I feel so lucky that I get to be involved in my kids' school life. So there's times where I see interactions that I feel really uncomfortable with. Like what do we do as the parents to support our kids? Like when do we know when we get involved? Like what are some things that we need to know as parents?
Rebecca: Yeah. Amazing question.
Dan: It's, and it's a very difficult question because I don't think there's any one right or wrong answer. You know, I see moms that don't let any of that slide, you know, like they're in the school. They, because that school works for them. I'm not sending my child to a school so that they can become something for, for the government or for, you know, even a private school, they're, they're not going there and becoming the property of the private school. I'm entrusting my kids to this institution so that when they come back to me, they're smarter, better, faster, stronger. And that is not the case. So I'm fully behind moms and dads, you know, mom-bassadors and dad-vocates, we call them to, go to the school and say, hey, this happened, what's going on, you know, and the some of the problems that we find is even in our own story is we get told, oh, we're taking care of it, we're dealing with it. Well, what is being done? Oh, well, we can't share that because that involves another student. So we can't tell you what we're doing. So basically, okay, you know, nothing's being done. So it's not with the involvement of the parents. But I will say from our experience, most of the problem, most of the time starts at home. And so it's up to us as parents to create environments in our home where our kids feel safe, to talk to us, they feel safe to, to open up to us, they feel safe. We want to create a culture of speaking life in our house before we demand the school create a culture of speaking life because we have, I work with schools on a on a daily basis that it is a no win situation when parents advocate or, abdicate sorry, their rights as parents to a school district and say you raise my child. And then yell at the school because the school isn't raising their child properly. It's up to us as parents of these kids, as loving parents and everyone listening is listening because they're going, I need to do this better. How do I do this better? You know, that's why they're listening to you because they want that, they want to know how can I be better at this? And so for us, we think of creating a culture of speaking life in your home. It's the best defense, it's the best.
Laura: Tell me, can you tell me what you mean by Speaking life?
Rebecca: Yes, speaking life. We called ourselves Speak Life End Bullying because we wanted to lead with a solution. We truly believe that when we take the power of our words and we use them for good in someone else's life by speaking words to them that we know can uplift them, encourage them, push them forward. It doesn't mean that we can't speak with honesty, we can speak in honesty and include love and kindness in that conversation. But when we choose to, to look at someone as another living, breathing human being who has feelings instead of just coming at them with our own pain or our own hurt. When we pause, when we take a second and we think about the words that come out of our mouth, we think about those responses. It can change everything and in our homes as parents, whether we realize it or not, we're modeling that every day, all day. So when we're dealing with stressful situations, when Dan and I are in conflict, my kids are watching. Is I going to say something negative about my husband or to my husband or something derogatory or something that pushes him down? My kids are watching when I'm on the phone with my girlfriend because my other girlfriend said or did something that frustrated me. How am I modeling? Am I talking poorly about them? Am I gossiping? Am I saying these terrible things? And now my young daughter, my young son is overhearing this conversation going oh, well, I mean, if mom can talk that way about so and so who I know she likes? Certainly it doesn't, I can do the same thing.
But when we are modeling in our homes with one another and in our conversations with our kids that we speak words that are life giving, we don't move in that other direction. Suddenly that child is going to feel extremely uncomfortable around negative words around all of those things and they're not gonna repeat it when they're involved in friend groups where it's the culture of the group, they're gonna want to either remove themselves from that group or they're gonna want to like, say, hey, guys, we need to shift this. This is not okay. We are going to create those foundational principles in our children's life on a daily basis. And that also is where we build trust and it's where we build an opportunity for when something does happen at school. We are the first one they're running to. We are the first one. We're gonna have the conversation and, and then be careful. This is where moms, especially our mama bear, comes out, right? You want to pick up the phone, our kids are still listening, they're still watching, right? So now we have to go, okay, let me be curious. There's probably two sides to this story. My kids side and then the other side of what might have taken place. Let me try and get curious to find out what happened. Show up, be in that principal's office. Don't even make the call. Like show up, say, hey, I want, I just want to understand and then when you understand, I would encourage you to then approach them with a solution. Don't tell them all the things they're doing wrong, don't? You guys should and you shouldn't. Yes, they know they're probably understaffed, overwhelmed. Don't know what to do.
Laura: 100% yes.
Rebecca: But you could show up and say, hey, listen, you know what either, hey, I found out a good about a great program. Maybe this could help or what could I facilitate that could help my child's classroom function better. When we've done that, taking those steps offered solutions. If we don't see the school, then responding, then getting involved and our child continues to come home. That's when I would say to a parent, you know what, in any other situation, you would not send your child back. And I want to encourage you that you do have the power to make a different decision and a different shift every single school day of your child's life. It's never too late to shift them, to move them, to find something better for them. Three different kids that I've raised, not one of them has had the same educational experience. We have homeschooled, we have private schooled, we have public schooled, we have dual enrolled. We have done all different things with each one of our kids because all three of my boys are vastly different. Their needs are different, the environments they flourish in, they have different needs. And so what we've learned to do is just pay attention and see what does my child needs and don't be afraid, you know, better than anyone else. Moms and dads if it's in your gut and it's not right. It's not right. Find what is right for your kids because nobody knows better than you?
Laura: Oh, I think it gave me chills. Thank you for that. So I, I feel like we're kind of coming to the end of our conversation. I just wanna, you seem to have a lot of ideas for how to support parents with this. I know that you're coming out with some resources for schools. And for parents, can you tell me a little bit more about what you have to offer?
Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, moms I've been working sort of in this area the last three years as we launched our program back into school. So for those of you who are wondering, hey, how did you go from a live musical to this film? That transition of that was actually 2020, that moment in whiskey no longer being lived. And that was when we made this great relationship in connection with this NFL player and his wife who are just phenomenal, all of their giving is to at risk kids. And they thought, wow, what a, what a better way to make a, an enormous influence on kids that are at risk than to put this on film so that any school could use it at any time because we were so limited when we were live, we could only be in one school a day. Well, now this program could be anywhere at any time. So parents, this is available to you. We will scholarship schools if they don't have funding for it. So if you have, if you're looking and going, oh my goodness. My kids, middle school, high school need this, feel free to reach out to us. speaklifethemusical.org is where you can go. There's a little school section you can click on. We would love to get in touch with you. We'd love to serve your school and your community. But also know that like we said, it starts at home. And so we knew like, okay, this can happen in the school but sometimes schools aren't open to it. Sometimes schools are not doing the thing. So let's do it in our own home. So now we've made this available where parents can bring the film into the comfort of your own living room, press play and I guarantee you in 60 minutes, I mean, pull the popcorn out, make it a fun night. Like, yeah, like have fun with your kids and say, hey, I just want to like this. This is a great film that I heard about. Let's watch it together because I really want to hear what you think when it's over and then we're going to facilitate you with just some really simple, easy questions. And all of a sudden your kids are going to start talking about things. I guarantee that you have wondered about them and they may not talk about themselves. They might be like, oh, you know that character Emma, I think they should have done this or this or that.
But listen, be quiet and listen because what they're doing is telling you everything you need to know about where their heart and where they're struggling and what they need. Right now, it's all going to be right there. And then you've just communicated to your child in 60 minutes that what you're going through matters to me. I'm here to learn. I'm here to understand. I'm here to help. Once those conversations are open, we have five trainings there that then you can go in, you and your spouse, you and your partner, or if it's, if you, if you're single parenting, go in there and listen and we're gonna give you tool after tool to keep that conversation going to help build that trust to see the signs to know how to respond. But most importantly how to build that Speak life culture in your home on a daily basis in really practical ways. So we want you to have that. You go to that same website to find that information, just click on home. It's actually coming out this month. Next month is October's Bing and Balance Awareness Month. So we're super excited to be given insurance.
Laura: Wonderful. And what age ranges are appropriate for this?
Dan: For our school. We specifically target our school offering, we specifically target middle school and high school. 99% of the anti-bullying programs that are out there are targeted for elementary school level kids. And there's very little that's actually out there that's really good for middle school and high schools, high schools have to take whatever the middle schools you're using. And middle schools normally take what the elementary schools are using and just kind of tool it up a little bit. So we designed this from the interface from the film to all of the lessons. Everything is designed for middle and high school students. Now that being said, we have had parents that have come back to our and we will sometimes we'll do an evening showing for the parents to be able to come back and see the film. And we've had parents with kindergartners that have come back. There's nothing in the film that a young kid couldn't see, the some of the barriers for young children are that it's an hour long and Justin, you know, does a 12-minute talk at the end. So those are some things that are difficult to get through for the young kids, but they love the music, you know, some of our, some of our closest friends, their kids just sit there with it on play and love watching, listening to the songs and dancing around to the song. So there's nothing in it for a younger kid that they couldn't watch. And it might even give you the opportunity while the older kids are watching it to be able to have that same conversation with your kids. You're just gonna have to tailor the questions to the younger kids.
Laura: Sure. I mean, I think that this is likely a conversation too that is like most important conversations that we have with our kids that, you know, we start early and often it's not a one and done sort of thing. Right. And so it sounds like this is a really great conversation-starting, like, starting place, but then you've got to keep going. You can't just talk about it once and be done. Right.
Dan: Exactly.
Rebecca: So, our kids are ever-changing, you know, with the way your child's going to respond to these conversations about mental health when they're in fifth grade, as opposed to when they're in 10th grade or 11th grade, vastly different. And so that's why the film works over and over and over again because you could watch it with your kids now and then bring it back up 6, 10, you know, a year later watch it again. You're gonna have different, they're gonna have different opinions, different point of views because they're growing. So, like you said, I, what you said is everything. We have to keep having the conversations, we cannot stop having them. It's, it's, it's so risky right now when we don't keep those doors open to conversation with our kids all the time.
Dan: If you, if they go to, you know, parents, if you're interested in knowing what this film is like um you can watch a trailer at speaklifethemusical.org, you can go there and you can just scroll down a little bit and click on the trailer. I think there's actually three different trailers there of different lengths. And then if you're interested in knowing more and, and finding out more resources, you can also go to our Instagram or Facebook page at Speak Life The Musical.
Laura: Perfect. Thank you guys.
Dan: Speak Life End Bullying is our socials.
Laura: Got it. Okay. Speak Life End Bullying. I'll make sure I have all those links in the show notes. Dan and Rebecca, it was lovely to speak with you. Thank you so much for the work and the words that you're putting out in the world.
Dan: Thank you for having us.
Rebecca: We, we're so grateful for you and how you do this consistently for parents. It's so important.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!