Latest / Inspiring Stories / Making Our Next Generation Great with Danielle Linder
Transcript
- Thank you for listening to De Pictures Media Radio. You rat you readything to me? Oh well jus well not a bad so I just need to so supon Lass. So is it? Jazz is an welcome back to everyone. Our next guest is an esteemed educational consultant in early childhood education and renowned parenting coach. Danielle Lindner is also an accomplished entrepreneur and author. She holds a master's in Education and elementary Education honors from Fairly Dixon University and is the founder of the London Day School, a prestigious institution that provides nurturing and enriching environment for young learners. Danielle was also recognized as a Top twenty five Leading Woman Entrepreneur by Leading Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners, a network home to the impressive roster of talent talented female entrepreneurs. So why don't we welcome Danielle to the show and ask her story about how she actually got started down her path and what letter to her successes. Something we can the story of how you either, how you got started doing the early childhood education, I guess is what we're focusing on. Well, I went to school when I went to college. I was originally considering going to law school and that, and when it came time to go, I thought, I don't. At the time, I thought if you wanted to be a lawyer, you had to be a litigator. And I was not someone who wanted to get up and yell and fight with people. I now know there are many other kinds of law that I probably would have loved. I mean, being an entertainment attorney probably would have been fun. Yeah, But I decided that I'm going to you know, I loved kids. I loved babysitting, I loved working with children, and so I decided I was going to go back for my master's in elementary education, and I started teaching in the public school system. And then after I had my children, I left and I was in corporate in the corporate world for a long time, and then I noticed that my kids were in you know, I also had worked in a preschool during when I was in grad school. To make money for grad school, I worked as a preschool teacher and I loved it, and I realized that that was the only job where when I went home at night, I still wanted to go back the next day. Like, I just loved it. So I went for my master's I got that done. I worked in corporate totally, not with kids. It was recruitment process outsourcing, doing operations. And then when I had little kids, I noticed that the preschools they were going to weren't really offering much other than, say, you know, a babysitting type of environment. And one day I said to my husband, you know, I would really like to open a preschool that focuses on STEM and carriage education and foreign language. And you know, if we have children here, you know, four to eight hours during the day, we should really be utilizing that time in a really productive way. And so he said, okay, go ahead, And that's how I started out in the journey. It was really much harder than I thought it was going to be. But now, fourteen years later, looking back at the first two year olds we have that are now amazing high school kids, that they're well adjusted and they're kind and they've taken what they've learned in preschool and it's gone with them, I know it was worth it. Even though it was very tough in the beginning. Yeah, my my first stab at uh at say preschool or or or daycare with my with my first my first child was an absolute nightmare and they locked her in a closet. What yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's horrendous. But I hate to say that it's not something it's something I've heard of before from you know, horror stories. So when I was actually researching who you were and everything for for this particular podcast interview, I was like, Wow, she's amazing. Why couldn't you have been my first? It's like and and then I also saw that it along with the with the early childhood education, did you also write children's books? So yeah, I had to toss that in there. I know it wasn't officially in the in the in the interview notes, but hey, you've done it, and it's it just speaks to who you are as as a person trying to educate children. You know. I started writing the books because I saw kids having issues that weren't being addressed, like separation, anxiety and being afraid of the dark, or having low self esteem, having tantrums. And I wanted to write books that could be used as a part of our preschool curriculum to teach kids in a fun and relatable way that you know, just because you've got glasses. You know, it doesn't mean you should be embarrassed, Like it's a great thing, it's exciting or you know, just because why are you afraid of the dark. Let's dissect it and realize it's shadows, it's this, and and let's make you know, make it fun, make make the and you know topics that were really like worrying them all the time. Let's let's like not skate away from it. Let's kind of address it in school in a safe environment, like separation, anxiety. You know, I know you're sad Mom left, But what do you think mom is doing right now? You probably think she's going off to a party, having a great time, you know, doing all this fun stuff. But no, she's at her job, whether it's being at home and getting things already at the house, or whether she's at a corporate job. And this is your job, and you know, trying to explain the kids, because I think kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. So that's really what the curriculum is all about. And it's a out giving kids a real stewardship about their lives, letting them know that they can do things to make the world a better place, and that being kind and caring and consider of others will make their lives better and then the lives of their friends and family better as well. So that was really the key for me to be able to get you know, I have these kids for such a nice block of time, and they're not always getting character education at home. You know, some parents are amazing at it, and some parents they need character education. So that's what I really wanted to bring into our curriculum, which is why I wrote those books. So along with that, I do know that you're so passionate about about early childhood education helping kids in everything, that you also have developed a parenting guide. Yes, so over about twenty years of working with parents and kids and coaching parents, I thought, you know, I love coaching parents. I love working one on one with parents and families, and you know, when we work together, there's never been a problem we haven't been able to, you know, work through with good tools and strategies. But I can't be everywhere, every moment in it, with every family. So I thought it would be good to write a little pocket guide with just a couple of the a couple of the ideas and strategies that parents could use right away for some of the bigger issues that seem to come up all the time, like separation, anxiety, like biting in school children who tantrum, children who are having you know, very bad shy shyness, or you know, communication issues. And I figured I should just put it in a book and that way it'll be accessible to everybody. Yeah, okay, So I shared the story about my oldest daughter being locked away in the closet. Let me expand on that story, and Whimy actually made me go back and check on her. On the way over there. She's in the backseat of the car and she's like, I don't want to go. I don't want to go in. The closer we got, the more anxious she became, and something just take me in the back of the neck and said go back and knock on the door and find out what's really going on, because it was uncharacteristic of my kid. She's a happy kid, happy go lucky kind of kid. Right, what hech Right? So, I noticed somewhere in your writings that you talk about intuition and should parents stow the intuition away or follow through on it. I think there's there's a there's a real balance between intuition and just anxiety. But I think intuition is really is a gift. We've been given this gift. And there is a book written by a former police officer named the called The Gift of Fear, and it talks about things like, you know, if you're say a woman, and you're in an apartment building and the elevator door opens and you feel and you see someone in there that your intuition is saying, this doesn't look like a safe person. Trust that. Trust it. What's the worst that has to and don't go in the elevator? What's the worst that happens? You offend some stranger that you don't know because you're like, oh, I'm going to take the next one. And I think that goes with our kids too, Like if you something in your mind is saying so strongly something is not right here, follow it up. What's the worst that happens? You know they're fine, and you know I don't I think that. You know, you don't want to be checking every single day, calling every hour on the hour, because then at some point you know they're not able to get their their full day of school, and then they're they're not being able to get the full experience of school. But I think, like what you were saying, something was wrong and you could sense it, and I would have done the exact same thing. I think that as parents, we just get the sixth cents and it's important to follow up on those things. And it is a gift. It's a gift because who knows you saved your child from who knows what you know by just following that. Yeah, the the idea of listening to our kids, what about that? It is like because I obviously I was listening to my daughter the whole time. I was really listening, not just hearing her right right? So what about that? She? How how deeply should we be listening to our kids? Well, I think we look for patterns. So if your daughter every day said I don't like school, I don't like school, and you went and visited the school and you may be observed without her seeing you, and you saw her playing and you saw her having a great time. But the next day she said I hate school. I don't get in school, then I think you have to take it with a grain of salt and just know that you know she likes school, but she also likes being with you, and she knows that if she pulls your strings, maybe you'll keep her home for the day and you know, do something special. But you know, if your daughter keeps saying I don't like school, I don't like school, and you go into the school and things you're seeing, things that don't seem right, then you need to listen to your kids. I think it's I think you know, we would we we would have kids often, kids that I would work with, where the parent would say, they're getting, you know, bullied in school. They don't have any friends. And Bobby and Johnny and Sally, they're so mean to him. I wrote actually a paragraph a chapter about this. They're so mean to him, they're hitting him every day in school. And my first response was, oh, you know, that's terrible. You need to talk to the director of the school. You need to get a visit, see what's going on. And it turned out that there was those children didn't even exist in the school. They were not even students. There were no one in the school with those names. And when the mom went to observe, you know, from a far away, he was having a great time, best time ever but he was just the type of child that wanted to pull on her strings and you know, get what he wanted. You know, say I don't like my lunch because it's this or that. I don't want to go to this thing because of this or that. And after a while you start to realize when you're when you're being played, and when there's really something, when it's not crybal, when it's like this is this is a problem. So it's a balance, you know. But I think we always have to listen to our children. Initially we always do. But if something keeps going and it's, like I said, a pattern, then more investors warrants more investigation, and then sometimes you're like, okay, look, you're going to school. I know you're having a great time. Let's move on. Like I'm not falling for this, Okay, well I do. At one point I volunteered at at at one of my kids' schools, and I volunteered there not so much because I wanted them to have the best of education, especially in the preschool kindergarten area, because I know it's a it's a great building block, right and you talk about how great building block that is, and so I volunteered there so she could have that best education, and we both had a great time at that school. So I even got to teacher teach a math class to to five year olds. Oh yeah, I should should say that I by way of education, I have a a chemical engineering degree, so I was well qualified to teach five year old math. But but we had a great old time, you know, the play and everything else that went along with trying to teach them to add in subtract. So that was pretty cool, you know. So going back to the building block thing though, you said in something else I read, you said something really cool about how big of a building block this is for our children. Yeah, it really is. In our school, we take a scaffolding approach to learning, and you know, sometimes parents will come to us and they'll say, you know, my child is four. They've never been in school. I mean this is mostly post pandemic. They haven't been in school. But now they're let's say three, So I'd rather they not do the two's class or the two and a half class. And we say that if they haven't been in school, the two and a half class and the skills that they learn in that class are really important for building the academic and behavioral foundation for the next class, and every in every class, you're building upon what they learned in the last class. So skipping just based on age isn't really doing the child a favor. Now, I can understand you don't want an eighteen month old with a two and a half, you know, with a three year old who would never do that, But you know, you might want to have your child in a class with kids that are a little bit younger for maybe half the year, just to make sure that they've they've gotten the emotional and the social skills and academic skills that they need to feel confident when they move up to the next class, because being a small fish in a big pond is really hard. And I always, I always say let them be a bit, let them beat the big fish in the small pond, let them gain some you know, self esteem and feel good about themselves rather than always constantly struggling. So I think building blocks is really important. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, I totally see where you're going with that. Well, I want to ask, is how how has the pandemic because my kids were mostly grown, well, how has that affected our little kids? You know, it's a fact. We've seen a big effect. So we've seen kids that have come into the preschool environment, Like I said, they're already three, and they've had no preschool experience, meaning they've had very little socialization, they've had very little academics, they've had very little you know, play even with other people because they've been in a pod and their verbal skills and their gross motor skills and their fine motor skills are all delayed. We're seeing them across the board. Wow. So it's a language, especially language, because you know, kids need to see the mouths of people talking. And people were masked for like three years, so you know, you have someone that was born a baby born ron at the pandemic and for the main years of their life where they need to learn the language, people had masks over their faces. There was a huge detriment, a huge detriment. On top of that, we were also seeing kids being sick more because they you know, part of going to preschool is you get cold, you get things, but it builds your immunity. And the kids coming every day with masks on, their immunity was just they weren't sick. During COVID, no one was sick. There was no flu, there was no RSV in the school. We didn't have lives nothing. As soon as the masks came off, the kids were like everything got sick with everything, everything because their immune systems. You know, we're struggling. So it's been it's been tough. Yeah, well you probably one day that that's a a real detriment to to both children, children and the elderly. The r S f right because it attacks the respiratory system in different in a different way than in the flu or just as stupid cold does. Right. It's like, and I remember the first time my kid came home from school with the sniffles. I was like, yes, they got the sniffles. That means that they got germs from someplace else. Yeah, it's like a strong immune system thing, right. And it's interesting because you know parents are always they always blamed the preschool first why my child got sick. But the reality is if they're going to a supermarket and touching a shopping cart, there's germs. You know. Kids put their hands in their mouth all the time, no matter where they are, so the usually the cleanest place is the pre school. That's the place that's constantly wiping up constantly, washing hands, you know, but not too many parents when they're at the grocery store are necessarily watching their children, you know, keeping their children from putting their hands in their mouth all the time, after they've touched the carter and the you know, all these things. So you know, oftentimes it's not it's not the school. Oftentimes the school is the most sanitary environment, believe it or not. Yeah, well, I know, there's like a for toys for example, right there's a standard of cleaning, cleaning and sanitizing solution that preschools. There's so many rules and regulations in terms of cleaning and sanitizing and like above and beyond. You know, toys are cleaned constantly. But the reality is if you have a group of three kids playing with a toy and one of them puts their mouth on it and then the next one grabs it, you know, what are you going to do. But that's, like I said, also part of building their immune system, So it's not always a negative. But yeah, so it's not always a negative. But I think when you're looking for a preschool, it is really important to make sure that they are licensed and that they that they do have this, you know, cleaning standards, sanitizing standards that you know that that they're checking all those boxes. I have a checklist in my book too of in the back of things to look for when you're looking for a preschool, and that's a part of it, Like is it clean? You know that's that's a big part of it. I think, yeah, yeah, that would be. There are certain types of germsy because because the school situations is they're not clean, you can come up with like a staff germ or something, which that's just staff. Right. I would say, I'm sure eighty percent of schools are wonderful and clean and following the rules. But the twenty percent that you don't want to you don't want to go, well, they're also the ones that probably hang the kids in the closets exactly most likely. Yeah, so switch up gears for a second here. Because you're an entrepreneur, right, and you're an award winning entrepreneur. I can't let that, yeah, like go just go away. What does that mean to you as a business owner to to know that people are looking at you that way, Hey, I won awards and stuff like that. It means you said a standard I think for me. The biggest thing was it was a great example to my I have two girls, and it was a great example to my two girls that, you know, their father is also an award winning entrepreneur, believe it or not, and so it's kind of nice to say, look, mom can do this too. And you know, just because you're a girl doesn't mean you can't, you know, start your own business and be successful and have employees and and you know, create something amazing and wonderful and follow your dreams. And I think that was the biggest thing being having my girls be proud of me. Yeah, And also it does set the bar really high too, because then you always want to make sure that you're on brand, and that you know, my brand is I want to be known as the disruptor, the best preschool out there, the best program, the program that produces kids that are nice and kind and smart and you know, great citizens of the world. And so that's a lot of pressure because the bar is set really high when you win an award. And I'm not one of those people that can just win the award and then say well I got the awards, So I'll just always say I won the award, you know, I need to feel like I'm like I could win it again if it was available again. Yeah, I understand that that part. What does a Danielle Littner kid look like? How do they act? Well? You mean mine own kids? Or is to go through our the kids go through your program? They could be scary ground asking asking you with your own kids. No, no, we won't go that way. No, the kids that you educate. Unfortunately, I can say that people have always said that my girls, my own kids are sweet and kind and respectful. So that's all I can ask for, right, Yeah, what we hear about the kids that have graduated from our preschool from other you know, public schools and private schools, because we do have a ninety eight percent acceptance rate for kids parents who want their child to then go to a private kindergarten or first grade, is that the kids come out the most prepared academically, the most mature behaviorally, behaviorally, soial and socially, and they have a love of science like they've never seen before, and that they are the kindest kids and the most respectful kids. And that's all I could ask for. I mean, that's our goal, that's that's what we want, and it's funny. We had a story. We had a little boy who graduated from our program and he was in second grade and he was on the soccer team and his mom said, he would get the ball and every time he would get the ball, if somebody went to take it from him, he would just give it to them, you know, okay, like he'd stop. And at the end of the game, she said, well, why aren't you keeping the ball and he said, well, at London Day School, we learned that it's not nice to hog stuff. We have to share. And she said, not went on the soccer field. Wow, that's quite an impression. So maybe you know, we're not raising kids who are going to be, you know, the star quarterback because they're just too nice. But that's okay though, right, you know, they don't have to be the start of the star quarterback. But if you're if you're helping raise raise a kid that that that say, for instance, they get elected to be president of the United States, of saying the President of the United States, because you're in New Jersey, h and and that and that president does something really kind of loving for the world to to to help maybe some starving kids or something, because they can because that's what they can do as as president. Then that's a great reflection on your system, isn't. Yeah. I think that our country has lost its way for many many years, not just this year or last year or whatever. I feel like we've really lost our way in terms of valuing character, and like I talk about trickle down education, whereas like we as parents have to be role models and teach our kids about being respectful to others and you know, having conversations with people that have different differing opinions and being respectful. You don't have to agree with everybody, but you know, being able to you know, have a conversation and a dialogue and you know, be open a door for somebody. You have a little courtesy. I think like we you know, I talk about about how parents don't ask their kids to write thank you letters anymore when they get a gift. I mean that used to be like there, you had to do that when I was a kid, or you weren't going out to play like you were, you had to get your thank yous out. That was like mandatory. And you know that stuff's not really happening anymore. I think it's just we're in such a fast paced world where everyone wants to instant gratification and we're forgetting about just the niceties of you know, being kind, kind of like mister Rogers would say, be kind, be nice. Yeah, you think about some of the messages that we got as kids, like mister Rogers, Captain Kangaroo and all all those. Yeah, and conflict resolution is a big part of our program. You know, we teach kids like you need to learn how to resolve your conflict in a positive way. You know, Screaming, fighting, grabbing, pushing, that's that's not good for anybody. So we try to give them strategies that hopefully they carry with them into the boardroom or the presidency, you know, whenever they get to that point. Yeah, you put up tantrums and some given point. And what are the things that I read in a psychology paper. I'd read a lot of crazy stuff. Was the tantrum was an outcry for attention, and not necessarily that you should give into the tantrum, but how you should address the tantrum. And you just said something that was important with conflict resolution is how you're teaching kids how to get the right attention upfront so they don't have to resort to the other tools, right right, Well, you know, I always tell parents that a tantrum is definitely an outburst for attention. However, a child doesn't care for the most part, whether they get negative attention or positive attention. They just want to be seen. So on one, trying to give them strategies to solve their own problem. But two, if they tantum, you know, just say, take your time. When you feel that you're ready to come talk about this, we'll talk about it. And then when you see them doing something wonderful, catch them being good and praise them, give them so much attention for the behaviors that you like that they realized the tantrum ring is not paying off for me. I'm not you know, it's not worth it, and the tantrums eventually will go away. I remember when my daughter was really little, or I mean not that little, she was probably like maybe seven. She loved pandas and she really wanted to go to the San Diego Zoo and see the pandas. So we thought, okay, they're at the zoo. How hard could that be. You just go to the zoo. And we got to San Diego and we called zoo and or. We called the hotel and said, no, you have to have special tickets for the pandas. It's very limited. You have to call like a year in advance to see the pandas. And I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do. My daughter lost it. You would have got like I mean, you would have thought someone was murdering her in her hotel room. She was so beside herself. I came for the pandas, I can't see the bandas. She was hysterical, so I let her have her time. And then he said, okay, now that you've done all that, are you Are you seeing the pandas? And she said no. I said, what do you think maybe you could do to get you closer to maybe seeing the pandas? She said, I'm not sure. I said, well, maybe you should call the zoo directly and tell them you're seven years old and you love pandas and you adopted one of their pandas and your heart broken. Is there any way they can get you to see the pandas? I said, it may not work, because sometimes it just doesn't. Sometimes they have a limited number of spots and that's all they have. But maybe get you closer than this what you just did? You know for ten minutes at LISTA. It's a step towards righty. So she called the zoo and thank god, because I was trying to get a message across I'm praying. They said, you know what, we're going to put an extra car on that day for in your family. You can see the pandits And it was such an amazing lesson about making lemons into lemonade with her, And I was so grateful it worked out because you know, it was perfect. It was perfect and she saw like, oh wow, you know, yeah, screaming and crying and all that, really it got me nowhere. But thinking through the problem and you know, telling the person what I needed and what I wanted and why I wanted it, you know, it paid off for me. So that's where I would like our kids to be able to do. That's a great lesson. Wow, I wish I wish our pandemic had worked out like that. The pandits were sick that day that we got there on the serious No, the pandits were sick, you know, And I just explained to the kids, It's like, well, if you were sick, did you would you want to come out and play exactly. They're like, no, I want to stay in bed and be and it's like, yeah, that's what I thought. So we're not going to see the pandas today because they don't feel well. Yeah, so really interesting place at San Diego Zoo, though, It's like it's crazy, there's so many other animals to see things like that. So one other question I did want to ask you, and we're starting to run out of time, and it is like I hate this point in the show because shut around a time you get it, Like, I want to get that into how do you tea how how do you have or do you have a story to tell? How to show how you teach kids to deal with with fear? With fear? Yeah, well, it depends on what it is. I mean. For the most part, I let the child ask the question first because I don't want to plant something in their head that's not already there. Okay, so you know, I don't want to say, oh, are you scared of the dark, because maybe they weren't, and now I just made them maybe I should be. So for the most part, I say, as best as you can break things down into easy chunks that they can understand based on their age, and just you know, address it from like as as as scientifically as you can, but as easily as they can understand, like about lightning. You know, they're terrified. We had a tree fall next to the school one day and the kids were terrified, and we said, all right, come on, everybody's sitting in a circle. You know, let's talk about what do we think could have made that noise? And then all of a sudden, they're not really thinking about that they're scared. They're kind of thinking, I don't know, let's problem solve. And you know, I think trying to divert them from the fear for a few minutes and get them to start trying to problem solve along with you can really help a lot. And you know, we got to the point where we said, let's, you know, let's see if we can make a noise that loud and by hitting our laps and banging our hands. And after a while they're giggling and laughing and we heard another another thing of thunder and they were just thrilled. So like we were able to just turn it all around by just you know, making it fun. Now, there's certain topics that you can't make fun, they're just you know, too horrific to make fun. But in that case, I say, just still have you know, be have an open mind and sit with you to sit down with your child and ask them what's making them scared and try and focus on the whatever good you can find in the situation and focus on that rather than the bad thing that might have happened. Yeah, yeah, okay, So with that, the best ways to find your books and maybe if and uh maybe even work with you if they especially so if if parents, if parents would like to work with me one on one with parent coaching, I always do a complimentary consultation to see if it's right for them and their family. And they can find me at Danielle Lindner dot com is d A n I E l l E Lindener l I N d n e r dot com and there they can book a session with me, or they can buy my book, or they can do both. They can watch hopefully this podcast. There's a lot of good information for them at my website. Pretty cool. It was great meeting you. It was great meeting you as well. Yeah, all right, we thank everybody for listening today. And if you have little ones, Danielle has a great system and she should probably try to work with your if if it's at all possible, So go to her website Danielle Lidner dot com. It will be in the show notes, and have fun with her and you and your kids. It'll be a great time and she's going to create a wonderful world around our next generations. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank everybody for listening, and find that subscribe button or if you stumble across our support page, hey, toss up a little support so we can have other guests like Danielle come on, all right, help us to so bad so along, I don't know, so away Shu from the match. So what this says? A reason? Save me out job in shows? We can't tri serve. Wait, so she got to The show has been produced by Depictions Media. Please contact us at Depictions dot media for more information.