3 Major Obstacles Parents Face when Homeschooling | 17

Brett Campbell (00:01.654)

Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I’m Brett Campbell, Chairman and CEO of Euka Future Learning. I’m joined by my amazing host as always, the founder and Head of Education, Ellen Brown. Ellen, how are you?

Ellen Brown (00:14.742)

Well, thank you, Brett, ready to get started.

Brett Campbell (00:18.554)

Amazing. What are we talking about today? Ellen, I gave you the, uh, the task of let’s, let’s bring another amazing topic. We’ve been getting some great feedback from our past episodes on our past episode about money, good or evil and talking about financial literacy. You see how to slow down there. When I said that, uh, I noticed in the podcast, if I say financial literacy fast, I, uh, I can’t say it fast. My, my tongue can’t keep up with the, the annunciation. So

financial literacy to all of those who picked that up in the last podcast, including me. Anyway, I digress from that. Gave you the amazing tasks today. What are we talking about, Ellen?

Ellen Brown (00:56.45)

We’re going to talk about conflict resolution, which is something that all families need to work on. So it’ll be really helpful to think about, you know, how do we teach that in the school curriculum, but also how does that look in a normal day to day family?

Brett Campbell (01:12.43)

Hmm. Conflict resolution. It’s, uh, as you know, I’m a stickler for words and words have big impact. And yeah, even the last episode, when we talked about money, you know, one of the titles we had was money, good or evil, right? Because when people hear certain words, they based off their past, you know, their past history and the way that they’ve built themselves throughout life will react.

in some way, shape or form to specific words. And the word conflict itself, I know personally, some people crawl up into a ball when they hear that because they just do everything in their power to have zero conflict or to try and remove all conflict from their life. But I want us to start by just looking at that word and knowing that conflict itself by definition is actually not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing if done in the right manner. It’s just like everything done with intention.

and thought and focus. It’s actually the unlock to a lot of, you know, whenever I’m teaching personal growth or anything, the likes, you have to go through conflict resolution. You have to go through, let’s call it, if we, when a, a layer under for, for the, the naming convention is you have to go through hard conversations. You have to face the music in some way, shape or form, you know, you have to at times see

what the cause of this conflict is. And I’m excited, I love this topic. So I’m glad you brought this one up today. So I can talk about this stuff at Nausium, but where are we starting from, Ellen? Where do you wanna go?

Ellen Brown (02:50.39)

Well, look, I thought it might be really helpful to know that within the Euka program and, you know, basically built on what’s happening in the Australian curriculum, conflict resolution is something that we’re purposeful about putting into the program and making sure that we can build on that each year. So.

we start, we might as well start with the six different steps that we go through, say for foundation and grade one, we might look at step number one, and we’ll go through each step and we can talk about each one. So the first one is an important one where we’re actually just introducing the concept of conflict resolution. I’m having the same problem as you at the literacy part. The conflict resolution is something we introduce because quite…

Quite normally, little ones often feel that there’s winners and losers in a conflict and that’s all that it is. So step number one is in foundation and grade one, looking at what is conflict resolution and how can it be more than just one person winning and one person losing? Do you wanna talk to that Brett?

Brett Campbell (03:48.366)

Hmm. Yeah. Okay. So conflict resolution. Interesting. I had a, I had a fair bit of it yesterday. I had a list, third birthday party. We had a big bouncy castle here. I had a bubble machine going. We had the swimming pool. We had kids everywhere. Lots going on. Some kids trying to jump off, off the spa pool into the, the swimming pool and other kids doing this. And I found myself having to adopt these principles quite consistently. Interestingly enough,

and this probably won’t surprise you, but also with some adults as well. So when I look at conflict resolution, if we distill it down to sort of its first principles, let’s call it of what it really is. And conflict resolution is just another form of communication. I talk about this deeply with the team here at Euka, especially as our success is built upon our ability to be able to effectively communicate. Writing communicating isn’t just.

Ellen Brown (04:22.946)

I guess.

Brett Campbell (04:46.166)

the words we say or what you hear. It’s so much deeper than that. Communication itself actually has a framework and I’ll share the framework. There’s about eight sort of steps through it, okay? And I’ll share the higher level framework of this and hopefully, you’re listening and you’re able to now see communication through a very different lens. It’s not just about who can say the fanciest words or who’s the most wittiest or who could have the best comeback or…

who can say the thing that can bamboozle the other person so that they’re just like, okay, then I don’t know what else to do. Right, so communication always starts with the message. Okay, so that’s number one, the message. And that is the what and why. It’s like, what are we actually trying to do here and why are we trying to do it? So let me use an example here because recently, Yuka has, we’ve gone through an extremely peak period of time in January, February and-

It’s generally as always our busiest time of the year. Uh, but this year has just been unprecedented growth families, you know, thousands and thousands of families, tens of thousands of families are seeking new ways of learning. And, and, um, you know, we put our hand up very proudly that they’ve come to us. And what that creates is, is a number of complex, um, issues, let’s call it. You know, when you got like, imagine yesterday, we had say 50 people here at Ayla’s birthday, imagine if 500 people turned up at our door.

and wanted to come to the party, I’ll be like, oh no, what do we do here? Um, and of course we don’t want to turn people away who are in need and desperate need of, um, you know, of coming to the party in this example, right? We want to make sure everyone is looked after and, and that can create some, um, potential communication barriers. And so why I share that is I’m going to use that as an example, because I think it’s a really good opportunity, um, for a lot of our families to

get another layer of understanding as well. So there’s probably a couple of prong lessons here, our ability to run through a communication framework, but then a real life example of how we took it on board. Because who am I to sit here and talk about that there’s a framework and if I don’t use it, right? So first things first was I made a decision to communicate with our audience, with our future members, with our current members.

Brett Campbell (07:06.858)

with our social communities that, hey, look, we are currently experiencing unprecedented volume like we’ve never seen before. So the purpose of that was I needed to communicate a message to our community so that they understood what was happening and understood why they were experiencing delays in communication. Now, again, I also experienced it in such a way and we could talk about it as we run through this. I shared it in such a way that

We also took absolute responsibility of the situation because it’s not about, oh, I need to communicate and tell them the excuses as to why this isn’t working because people smell excuses a mile away, but we’ll run it through that framework. So the first thing is the message, it’s the what and the why. The second is the sender. Who is the person sending this communication? Now I’m using an example here, obviously, this is a video example to a large audience of people.

run as I’m going through this, this can be used whether it’s in a one-on-one setting, in a one to three setting, whatever the setting may be, the framework is the same. So you need to go, is this the right person delivering the message? Right? Who is the right person to deliver this message? Then the third is the receiver. Okay. This is something that quite often goes missed is who is the person receiving this message? You quite often see this on say, telcos, right? You’re

someone’s just berating the telco customer support person on the phone and they’re not the person to be receiving that message, right? Because it’s like the lady at the counter at the airport when someone’s flight’s canceled. Like I’ve just seen people act like absolute mad people going up to the counter and it’s like this person’s fault, right? So we need to look at it through who’s sending the message and who’s receiving the message.

The fourth is we got to look at all the different codes and meanings, right? So there’s little things called codes, like the way that you smile, the way that you look, the way that you… So the video that we put out into the community is me sitting here directly speaking to a camera. I didn’t have a script that I wrote. I wanted to do it raw. I had a couple of points that I wanted to make sure I touched upon, but when you’re looking at who’s the sender,

Brett Campbell (09:32.066)

who’s the receiver, what’s the actual message. We wanted an authentic, transparent message. If I sat there and just read off a teleprompter, you’re never gonna get a true authentic message because I’m just reading words and it’s missing the meaning. So that’s what codes and meaning is really powerful for. People think they needed to deliver this monumental speech sometimes, but the reality is that’s absolutely not what you need to do. You just need to be able to get the intent through in the message. And a lot of times,

People feel that, people feel the energy and they feel the truth and the depth of it. So the words in which you use, you gotta know who you’re speaking to. The amount of times I’ve seen medical experts try and do a podcast and they’re speaking at such a high level that only another medical expert’s gonna understand. It’s like, you’ve gotta really be able to know your person who’s receiving this. And then of course the delivery method as well. Ideally, I’d love to have, you know,

personally gone to everyone’s house, knocked on their door and said, Hey, look, we just want to apologise for our delay that you’re experiencing. It’s not good enough. We are trying to do our absolute best here. That even though we’re still trying to do our absolute best, I understand that that’s not solving your problem right now. Now, I’d love to have done that, but I couldn’t, I mean, we’d have frequent flyer points out the wazoo cause I would have to travel all around the place, but that would have taken me probably four years to even accomplish that. So the delivery in this case was the best approximate

outcome that we could receive was doing a transparent video that we’re able to post to our community. The fifth level of the communication is we look at, it’s called interpret meanings. Right? So interpreted meanings. And this is a nuance and this is quite a technical, communicative nuance, but it’s how you are coming across in a way, for example, you may come across rude when you’re actually just trying to be funny. Okay.

So you may be trying to say a joke, but the way in which you say it might sound quite blunt or it might come off wrong. Um, and you’ve got to really look at what those interpreted meanings are. So I’ve, I run into a fair few interpreted meanings or misinterpreted meanings when I communicate, um, because yeah, I communicate a lot with a lot of people and I’m speaking about really important things. I’m, I’m definitely going to.

Brett Campbell (11:51.534)

across the line sometimes, or I’ll say something that might not be appropriate, and you’re like, oh, you know, that didn’t come across the right way. That’s not what I actually meant. Right, so an example here as well, and this will give everyone an insight into how we operate here at Euka. But again, this is communication, right? Which is sort of the inception of what we’re doing, is at our offsite leadership meeting we ran last year, we had all our leadership team in the room. I sat there.

And I said, look, I want us to practice deep, empathetic communication. And went through an entire workshop, went through an entire, um, explanation of it. And I put myself there on the seat and I said, look, I want to open the absolute floor for anyone to be able to provide any feedback that they have experienced. From me. And if it has made you feel uncomfortable, or if it’s anything that didn’t come across right, or you thought I said something rude, but you didn’t want to say it, that something like that, right now.

I don’t want to make this sound like I say rude. Like I’m not a, I’m very intentional in the way I communicate, but I also get it wrong at times. And one of the leadership team spoke up and said something. And I said, can you please provide an example of that? Cause that’s really important as well. Like, and again, this is conflict resolution sort of in action itself is a sitting there and I’m like, can you please provide an example of what you mean? Cause the worst thing you can do is you say, you made me feel uncomfortable.

And so, well, okay, thanks for explaining that, but I need time to stay, can you give me any examples? And someone’s like, no, I can’t. And so, well, we’re gonna reach a stalemate. That’s what you call a win-lose situation. You’ll never get, well, a lose-lose situation. We’re not gonna be able to resolve it unless someone can truly identify. So for me, I said, can you please provide an example? And this person provided an example. I was like, oh, is that how you interpreted that? Look.

First of all, and again, this is not an excuse because it was delivered in however the way it delivered and it made you feel the way you felt. But this was actually my intent behind when I said that, or I got you to do this. And it was like, oh, well, now that I’ve heard it that way, well, that makes absolute sense as to why you would have said that, Brett, right? So that’s that interpreted meanings of, and this is why I speak up so often when someone says something because I’m like, I need to truly understand what do you mean by that?

Brett Campbell (14:11.982)

you’ll hear me all the time Alan in leadership meetings. I’m like, what do you mean by that? I need to, I don’t understand. And it doesn’t mean you’re dumb or you weren’t listening. The reality is sometimes you just need to hear something a second or a third time or explain slightly differently or with less tone or let like, there’s so many nuances to it, which leads into the sixth step of communication. And that’s the understanding or misunderstanding.

because before communication can be resolved or conflict can be resolved or you can get an outcome of communication. Even if this comes down, you run this through the filter and this happens in every household. What should we have for dinner tonight? I don’t know, what do you wanna have? Oh, I don’t know, what do you wanna have? Oh, well, I made it up last night. That’s a conflict. It’s a very light one, but it’s like, it could lead to a, well, we’re not eating. Well, I’m gonna go get my own thing. Well, you get your own thing then and I’ll eat that. So, ah, right?

So things can spiral out very fast if you don’t sort of have a base framework to run things through so the understanding or misunderstanding So before you can move to the resolution, so I just want to make sure that we’re on the exact same page Right. So that example I just used with one of our leadership team where they experienced they said something that they experienced and They didn’t like it. I was like, oh, well, first of all, that’s certainly not my intent now You can sit here and go well, I didn’t mean it like that. That’s not what I said

Well, it doesn’t matter because that’s how it was interpreted. So if you want to move through and create a resolution, which is where every part of communication wants to end on as a, as a fully resolved outcome, you need to be on the same page and you need to go, well, I don’t understand that. Or I think I’ve misunderstood this. Let’s get on the same page. Let’s make sure we’re speaking the same language before we can move on to the next steps. So once that was resolved, that was beautiful. Cause not only

did it resolve the potential resentment that person may have continued on to hold for some time? Because this is where relationships break down is it’s very small snippets of resentment. And it’s the old straw that broke the camel’s back scenario, right? It’s the married couple who end up breaking up over this. Yeah, the woman walks into the bathroom and the toothpaste is squeezed from the center again. They’re like, that’s it. I told you not to. It’s got nothing to do with the toothpaste. It’s about the

Brett Campbell (16:35.234)

10,000 other unresolved pieces of conflict that have just built up and built up and built up and you don’t understand why. When you have a framework to work through like this, it’ll really help you to unpack and go, ah, is that what it was? Well, okay. And that comes with humility in a whole other areas as well, which we can touch upon, but I’ll get through these nice and quick and I’ll jump back to you as well, Alan. The seventh is the background signals. Okay, these are the things.

These are the things that aren’t necessarily being said, but they’re being felt or, so for example, if someone’s late to a meeting, right? Or if someone’s talking to you and they’re slouching in their seat, or they’re not looking at you when they’re talking, like they’re looking into the sky, or they’re looking at their feet, or they’re just not, you don’t feel the connection of the communication, right? That’s a, there’s a lot of telltale signs from those type of signals. Yeah, you could tell when,

If you’re having a conversation with someone and then you get to a bit of a pressing point where you know, someone has said a lie. Let’s just say, let’s just say you’ve caught your child in action and like, you know that your child just drew all over the wall. Okay. Now if you run up to your child and go, what did you do? Did you do that? Like, they’re going to be fearful to start with and they’re going to go straight into protection mode. Right. And no, that wasn’t me. So,

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you do it, but anyway, it’s, and if they’re coming from a place of, I don’t feel safe now to be able to share or admit or put my hand up to express that I actually did do that, you’re never going to have the ability to be able to teach them what they should do and what isn’t, what they shouldn’t be doing. And so these things are really, really powerful mechanisms when you’re looking at any form of resolution or any form of communication. That’s why you never blame.

You black, no one likes to, you have to have such a deep level of empathy and, and emotional intelligence and humility to be able to take a scolding and go, yeah, look, you know what, you’re right. That was me. And I shouldn’t have done that. Or I wish I didn’t say it like that. People just double down, double down, and then they’ll lie becomes a bigger lie. And then there’s so far down the lie that they’re just, they don’t know how to escape a lie. And I, that happened, that’s happened to me as a kid before. And I was like,

Brett Campbell (19:01.65)

it, you know, again, going back, looking through my life and, and trying to figure out all, all these things. I’m just like, I just got, I backed myself into a corner where I just could not tell the truth. Right. But when you understand how communication works and all these different signals. So, and the last one is from my perspective, one of the most important, um, and that is feedback. That is feedback. Like the ability to be able to sit down and say, Hey, look, and I’ll use the example with our leadership team as well. It’s like, um,

After that, we’re able to have an open discussion about it. And we’re able to have a conversation where, and we’re able to get feedback from both sides, because my feedback back to this person was, Hey, look, just so you know, if you ever experienced that ever again, what I would love for you to do is to let me know. Like, in fact, I want to hold you absolutely accountable to holding me accountable, right? Because in order for, for me to continue to grow.

and for you to continue to grow in order for us to have the best open communication, transparent communication we can have, we need to be open and honest with each other. I don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to agree with someone, but you can at least have the humility to hear it and understanding it. Oh, I could probably see how you’ve arrived at that as a conclusion. And so those are the eight, uh, let’s call it pillars of communication. So there’s the message, there’s the sender, there’s the receiver.

There’s the codes and meanings. There’s the interpretation of those meanings. There’s the understanding and misunderstanding, so the alignment. Then there’s all those background signals that sort of floating around. They’re not said, they’re sort of, they’re the subconscious situations that really occur. They’re the feelings, so to speak, that you arise from how people are. And then there’s the absolute nail in the coffin on that as the feedback loop. So the ability to continue on and.

As you go through that and you have open, honest conversations with people, it’ll shorten the resolve time needed drastically. Right? So what do you think about that, Alan? There you go. There’s a bit there.

Ellen Brown (21:09.994)

Oh, oh, Brett, it’s, it was, it’s an absolute masterclass what you just shared. And, you know, from the different perspectives of between adults themselves, um, you know, which is a huge one in a family and then between adults and children, um, absolutely, yeah, there’s lots of gems in there. I’m going to listen to this again so that I can pick out some of those. Cause I, I really do think there’s just so much value there. It might be just be worth me just running through so that parents know

what is it that we’re actually sharing within the curriculum that they might even be able to use in their own homes? So the first one that we said, and so much of what we’ve broken down into the minute levels in our teaching is all wrapped up in what you’ve just shared at the highest level. So it’s like, this is where we wanna get to, how do we get there? So we start by saying, what is a conflict resolution? And is it…

How do we teach kids, or one of the first steps is to teach that whole win-win concept that you don’t have to have just your way in order to be able to find that what you’re actually doing is a win, you know? So that’s the first one. And the next one was like you were saying about active listening, actually listening and teaching children to be able to say, so what is it that, when you’re telling them this is the problem, like the drawing on the wall, tell me what is it that I’m feeling upset about?

And then having your child go, it’s because I’m not supposed to draw on the wall because now it looks messy. Having them to be able to speak through what the conflict is about is really important in showing that they understand that. Then that’s their empathy, you know, perspective, understanding different people’s perspective. That doesn’t come naturally when they’re little. It takes them a couple of years to get to the point where they can start to understand.

what another person’s feeling. So we don’t start bringing that up until about third grade, fourth grade, really thinking, let’s talk through how do you think that person’s feeling. Using a lot of role play, or you see something happening around you, it’s absolute gold. If you see a child doing something that’s not your child, and you can say, how do you think that mom’s feeling? Or how do you think that child’s feeling? And talking those things through. So about third and fourth grade, we start with that.

Brett Campbell (23:23.696)

Mm.

Brett Campbell (23:29.154)

Let me touch on empathy for a second, because that’s one of the actual five pillars of emotional intelligence, which upon talking about all this stuff, we are gonna, I’m gonna actually run a full communication masterclass, I think. We’ll be able to, I might run it as a, I’m gonna put myself out there right now, I might run it as like a live online training. We can get all the families to jump on and we can go through, I think it’d be fun.

Ellen Brown (23:29.182)

And then… yeah. Yeah.

Ellen Brown (23:38.83)

Mmm.

Ellen Brown (23:46.942)

I’ll be joining up for that Brit.

Ellen Brown (23:56.014)

Thanks for watching!

Brett Campbell (23:58.742)

Um, but if we look at empathy and really uncover what empathy is and you touched upon it, it’s, it’s actually recognizing firstly your own emotions, but then recognizing other people’s emotions as well. And then you wrap that up with the social school element, which is how do you then manage that? Cause there’s the awareness of emotion, but it’s like, okay, so I’m aware that person is very angry, but how do you manage that? Right? Is it the fight or flight? Do you disappear? Do you lean into it? Do you communicate with it?

how do you communicate from that level? But if we look at empathy itself, and I’ll share a few cases where you can look to improve your empathy. And first thing is you wanna look for signals, right? Look for signals, look to, and this is where you put the private investigator hat on and you’re like, okay. So I take communication really serious. I love it as an art form. It is an absolute art form. So I probably go to a lot deeper links.

than most, but I just understand the absolute value of being able to effectively communicate. Gets you nice upgrades in hotels and airplanes and everywhere if you know how to communicate really effectively. So if that’s something that attracts you, learning to communicate effectively is very, very powerful. But it’s looking to look, learn, sorry, learn to look for signals. For example, when my wife goes, oh, do you wanna do this?

Or do you really want to go to here? That basically is saying, Hey, look, I want to tell you that I don’t want to do that. And I’m hoping if I say it in this tone that you might go and you might be the person that pulls the pin on this. Right. So it’s the between the lines. It’s almost like when I’m pulling into a park. So it’s hilarious. So me and Emily, like we’re so alike in many ways, but so different in so many ways as well. Right. And we have this running thing where wherever we go to.

like a shopping mall or something, and we go to park the car. I would never park the car where she would park the car and she would never park the car where I’d park the car. Right. Which is hilarious. So she’ll go, Oh, you want to park there? I’m like, well, that’s why I’m turning into the car park. So yes, I do want to park it. You know what I mean? But it’s like, learn to read between the lines. The next is being able to listen to understand what you talked about, which is your active listening to really be able to enhance your active listening. The real big one here as well as reserving judgment.

Brett Campbell (26:21.866)

A lot of people try and jump straight to resolve and straight to judgment. I did that in my early years of communication because I thought one, I wanted to solve all the problems. And it was really just misguided, um, enthusiasm for me because someone would say something and I’d have 10 solutions. And I’m like, it didn’t, it took until, yeah, Emily sometimes was like, Hey, you haven’t even let me finish what I’m saying. I’m like, ah, you’re right. I apologize. But when I didn’t know how to communicate, I was like, well,

You come to me with the problems and I’m just trying to solve you. I’m trying to help you. All right. So here I was thinking I was being told off when I was in my heart, I’m trying to help, but in her heart, she’s like, well, you’re not listening to my actual problem, right? So talk about conflict resolution. Um, so reserving judgment is really, really important. The other is to be able to, again, how to improve empathy is in this time and people that you really care about. Like that’s a big one. You got to, you got to let them know. You got to let them know that.

Hey, look, I’m really embarking on a journey to effectively communicate. And I want to learn how to communicate. Cause I believe if we’re able to communicate effectively together, we’re going to be able to have one less conflicts. We’re going to be able to have so much more fun. We’re going to enjoy life a lot more. Um, and we’ll be a lot happier. Like, I mean, who doesn’t want to do that? Right. So, but you need to let people know. Like you can’t be in a partnership. Like you can’t be listening to this podcast right now and going, man, that’s some good stuff, but I’m going to implement that and then you’re going to implement it with your partner and they got no idea.

And here you are trying these, oh, but I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to listen between the lines, but my partner doesn’t get it. Yeah. Because they don’t know that you’re on this particular journey of trying or wanting to deepen your communication. Um, then the other is the old walk in their shoes, right? It’s like, don’t judge a person to have you walk a day in their shoes. We’ve all heard that one. And that’s that seek first to understand principle is, and there’s a, another key term for it as a steel man. So.

you steel man, if you had to be on the other side of that person’s argument and you had to provide a compelling argument for that person, that can totally transform how things happen. So if you’re ever gonna, before you even go into a conflict resolution, is steel man the situation. Like seek first understanding, go what would actually make this person have to think or feel or say that? Like what would they have had to experience? Then you really gotta immerse yourself in it. And then of course, actively demonstrate.

Brett Campbell (28:45.234)

empathy, if you can actively demonstrate, like go out of your way to show people that you care. So tell them, but go out of your way to actually show them and ask, Hey, how was your day today? I’d love to hear how your day was. Like, what’d you experience? You know, like most people don’t do that. I go, how’s your day? Yeah, good. Okay. Cool. Great. See you tomorrow. Let’s chat tomorrow versus talk to me. What’d you experience today? And then you can have that sort of open dialogue and you’ll learn a lot more about the person. But then another

real powerful tip on how you can learn, um, well, how you can improve your empathy is watch and learn. This is a big one. Like watch for others and how they demonstrate empathy. So how I’m communicating here, you’re learning right now, cause you’re hearing me say words and you’re like, you know what, that actually sounds like a really good way of saying that to my partner or to my child. Like how do I actually sit down with them and, and let them know that drawing on the wall or

staying out late or doing something that you said no to, how do I let them know that that’s not okay and that’s not appropriate without making it sound like I’m berating them or I’m telling them off or I’m making them feel inferior? Because if your end result is to just get your child to understand and go, oh, I won’t do that again. You don’t have to have the trophy of, yeah, I’m the boss, I’m in charge, you do this, you listen to mom, you listen to dad.

That’s how it is. You’re, while you’re living under my roof, that’s well, if you have that parameter of while you’re living under my roof is my rules, what do you think your child’s going to try and do as quick as they possibly can get away from your roof and then 25 years later, you’re like, Oh, my children don’t come and see me much or your child moves out and you’re like, Oh, I actually miss my child. But yeah, but you probably could add a few more years if you didn’t scare them out of the house. Right. But anyway, those are just some, some extra tips on, on how you can look to improve your empathy.

Ellen Brown (30:41.662)

Absolutely love that. So look, that’s definitely where we get to about grade six and grade seven, when we start avoiding blame, helping kids to move away from blaming others and starting to use I statements. So, you know, it might be about how I feel or what I’ve seen, or, you know, that kind of thing, rather than this person did this and that. So you know, with little ones, it’s all about blame. So by about grade six, grade seven, we want to really help them to just stop in the midst of that

kind of conflict and start to say, Okay, but how are you feeling? And what was your part in what was happening? You know, it’s always the sibling thing or that kind of thing. So that’s about grade six or grade seven. And then it’s really a wrap up by the time we get to high school, we start doing things like practising problem-solving techniques, brainstorming solutions, identifying options. And so that’s

We obviously don’t do that in the midst of a conflict. So we’re talking about actual lessons that we have in the program where we say, okay, here is a scenario, what kind of options do you think that the person might have and how do you think would be a good way of solving that kind of thing. So that when we were hoping that we can transfer that into a real-world situation where they’re getting into conflicts all the time by about grade seven and eight. And then grade nine and 10, it’s about self-reflection.

and self-regulation. And I know this is one that I have a problem with. I suppose we’ve got things we’ve got a problem with every one of these things, but it’s about slowing down and being purposeful and things like your breathing and being able to respond calmly, even if you’re feeling really heightened emotions. So by the time they’re in grade nine and grade 10, we want them to start thinking through, how am I feeling physically in a conflict? And how can I…

prepare myself before a conflict ever happens so that when I am in one, I can stop and breathe. There’s lots of different methods from that, I’m sure, Brett, and then we come to year 11 and 12. By then it’s all about reflection. How have I managed conflict in the past and how can I improve that in the future? So we’re very purposeful right from foundation all the way to Drutti grade 12 about helping.

Brett Campbell (32:40.058)

Mm. Yep.

Brett Campbell (32:57.876)

Yep.

Ellen Brown (32:59.074)

kids to develop the skills because it just doesn’t come naturally. You know, if you’re going to be able to handle conflict, well, it’s something you have to be quite purposeful about.

Brett Campbell (33:03.586)

Hmm.

Brett Campbell (33:08.042)

Yeah. And, and like everything we’ve discussed in this podcast, in our last episode about money and the previous episode about health and wellness and fitness and mental fitness, it all starts with us, the parents, like communication does come easy if they are surrounded in an environment of intentional purposeful communication, right? That, that is where it is cultivated and

Ellen Brown (33:32.071)

Mm. Yep.

Brett Campbell (33:37.914)

I say, and I’ve been saying this probably the last two years, my, that when anyone comes to me and they say, Hey, I want to start a business or I want to do this or I want to pursue X, Y, Z, where should I start? I said, the first thing that you can do to improve your toolbox, to improve your, I call it a stock value. Like, imagine we’ve all got a stock value and we’re all on the stock market as humans. And yeah, generally the higher your value.

the better the outcomes in most cases for most things. And value of stock can be increased by knowledge, right? And we’ve got access to all the knowledge that we require. Now YouTube is there, there’s websites to get books from for free. Like there’s no shortage of information. Now it’s like, what is your approach to acquire this information? And I say the first thing that I would recommend anyone, and I wish I had have had this as a recommendation when I was growing up was,

Learn communication, learn the art of communication because communication builds relationships and your relationships, you know, you talk about that. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That’s such a valuable thing. But then there’s another layer on that. It’s like, who knows you, right? And if you’re a person who is a great, effective, clear, calm, concise communicator, people will naturally wanna be attracted to you, right? Because…

you have this aura about how you’re able to say certain things in a certain way that everyone wishes they could, because no one wants conflict. I mean, there’s a few people who just, they love it, but deep down they don’t. That’s their particular mechanism, right? But everyone would want to be able to effectively communicate. Like I don’t know a parent on the planet earth.

Like I had heaps of friends over here yesterday and you see it with parents. Everyone has their own communication style, the way that they say yes or no, or how they get their child to do something, et cetera, that they wish that they would. And I’ll tell you what, if, if us as adults took more communication, focus, and we, we try to understand it. And even, even out of this episode now, so, oh, you’ve talked about empathy. Oh, what, what deeper can I go?

Brett Campbell (35:52.17)

with empathy, where, what could I learn? Go and Google empathy and go read up about empathy. And you’re like, oh, he talked about steel manning. What is that? Oh, self-awareness. I need to look at this. I guarantee your life will be a factor of a hundred times better with your ability to be able to communicate. Now, of course you’re always, you’re still going to get things wrong. It’s a lifelong learning journey of communication. But I’ll tell you what, if you can create effective children, communication within your children.

Just think of the goodness that will do for them moving forward in the life. Like I’m spending an enormous, an enormous amount of time with Aila around communication and she’s three years old and like just knowing when she makes a mistake or she does something that she knows she doesn’t, she shouldn’t be doing, we’re able to have a conversation about it and she’s able to, she does the crime. She still goes and does the time.

but she knows what she needs to say and why she needs to say it. Yeah, so the other day she was jumping on the couch, just jumping, jumping. I’m like, Aila, please stop jumping on the couch. Yeah, I generally have a three-strike policy. I’m like, Aila, please listen to dad. Please stop jumping on the couch. She slowly, she slows down, because she knows it’s like kids are smarter than you think. I’m like, Aila, this is the last time I’m gonna ask you, please stop jumping on the couch or I’m gonna have to take you to your room and you’re gonna have to think about it.

Okay. And then she did one jump on the couch. And I’m like, well, if I don’t follow through here, and this is where we go back to, you know, to one of these levers of, if I don’t follow through, if I don’t get this message across to her as a receiver, every time I give that three countdown, she’s just gonna ignore it. So I had to follow through with what I said, right? Which is the interpretive meaning. So I’m like, come with that. She didn’t like it, of course.

We went into a room and I’m like, sit over there on the chair, please. When you’re ready to come out, knock on the door, right? Knock on the door and I’ll be here waiting. She probably waited about 30 seconds. Like she didn’t do it immediately. When I first did this, she sat there, like it was soon as the door shut, she’s like bang, trying to get out. Cause of course they don’t understand. She’s still struggles to understand fully, but you can see the development and the growth in it. So…

Brett Campbell (38:17.546)

She comes over, she knocks on the door. Once she stopped crying, she comes over because she knows that she can’t open the door and still crying because I’m like, I can’t communicate. I can’t hear you. I can’t understand what you’re trying to say to me. Right? Please go over there and sit down until you’re ready to finish crying. You can keep crying. You get out what you need to get out. Like I’m not saying stop crying because then that’s basically saying her feelings don’t matter. Right? So she comes, knocks on the door. She’s finished crying. She goes, sorry daddy for jumping on the couch.

I won’t jump on the couch because I’ll wreck the couch and we have to buy a new one.” And then she came up to me and she gave me a hug and she goes, I missed you. I thought it was so beautiful. And I was like, oh, like now, yesterday she was jumping on the couch. Like she clearly didn’t learn the full lesson. But the point is, and this is where a lot of people give up with communication. They’re like, well, I’ve tried. I tried. So how many times did you try though? Really? Versus how many times do you know you really need to try? Especially with a child.

I mean, I don’t have teenagers, you have a totally different conversation about that with, you know, you probably have to tell your teenagers hundreds more times. But it’s if it’s not working, we need to change the way in which we’re communicating. We need to change the words, we need to change the interpretive meanings. We need to, you know, maybe it’s a different person who needs to deliver the message, right, etc, etc. But absolutely a very, very important topic. And, you know, it’s imperative, obviously, that we cover it in the curriculum, because it is, in my view,

the starting block of everything, the starting block of everything in life, to be fair. So Ellen, any final words before we wrap this one up?

Ellen Brown (39:47.754)

Yep. Yes. Look, I would totally agree with you that, you know, communication, if you’ve got that right in your family if you’ve got it wrong, it doesn’t matter what kind of academic program you’ve got, you know, you’re really doomed. There’s not much that you can get unless you get this communication right. And I would leave with one word in saying that, you know, teenagers,

is an absolute golden time if you work on this communication while they’re little. And then there isn’t conflict, there’s not as much conflict resolution, not even nearly as much needed when they’re teenagers. If you’ve done that work when they’re smaller and it just gives you the opportunity to just enjoy them as young adults, which is fantastic.

Brett Campbell (40:18.487)

Yep.

Brett Campbell (40:32.894)

Yeah. Get in before the hormones start going crazy. All right. Well, on that topic, if you’ve gotten value from this episode, please let us know. Please also share this episode with anyone that you think would get value as well. Um, and, uh, as always, if you have gotten value, jump over and give us a five star review. We’d love a five star review. Uh, leave us a comment over there on iTunes. We’re on Spotify. We’re on YouTube. We’re everywhere where you can listen to the show. Thank you very much for tuning in and Ellen.

Ellen Brown (40:35.763)

That’s for sure.

Brett Campbell (41:02.443)

Look forward to the next one.

Ellen Brown (41:03.554)

Thanks, Brett.