Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #220 No Such Thing as Smart or Dumb

Transcript

#220 No Such Thing as Smart or Dumb · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: time poor parent who just once answers.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Now the idea that a teacher or a parent would
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: make a child feel that they were smart or dumb
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  Speaker 2: just staggers me.
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  Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, My mum
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  Speaker 1: and dad.
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  Speaker 3: Gooday. This is Justin Coulson and Kylie Coulson.
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  Speaker 2: We're the parents of six children, six daughters, and I'm
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: the author of six books about raising happy families, and
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  Speaker 2: we exist really to help you to make your family happier.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the podcast.
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  Speaker 2: We got a five star review, Kylie, and I'm going
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  Speaker 2: to read it to is that okay?
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  Speaker 4: Sounds great?
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, This is from Tilsey Wilsey in the United States
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  Speaker 2: of America. We got listeners all over there. We showed
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  Speaker 2: up on like Hong Kong and a bunch of European
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  Speaker 2: charts in terms of how the podcast, like, the podcast
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  Speaker 2: is literally going all over the world.
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  Speaker 3: It's amazing. That is so exciting.
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  Speaker 2: But Tilsey Wilsey said, I love that, and I love
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  Speaker 2: the names. Hello, five star review, Kylie and Justin. You're
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  Speaker 2: a wonderful team. Even though my boys have grown men.
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  Speaker 2: Now I love your insights. I want to continue my
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  Speaker 2: relationship with them and look forward to how I can
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  Speaker 2: be a wonderful grandmother one.
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  Speaker 3: Day, not just yet, but one day.
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  Speaker 2: I love that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Tilsey.
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  Speaker 2: It's funny how many people I have say that they
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  Speaker 2: listened to the podcast and they don't have kids.
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  Speaker 3: At all, or their grandparents.
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  Speaker 2: And what we love about it is it's religious conversation
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  Speaker 2: about relationships and how to make relationships happier.
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  Speaker 4: So book Club is tomorrow night.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we three, we three three, and we're.
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  Speaker 4: Going to be discussing I mean every week I say
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  Speaker 4: the same thing. We're going to be discussing some really
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  Speaker 4: really cool stuff.
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  Speaker 2: I just need to for people who are new to
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: the podcast and don't know what we're talking about with
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  Speaker 2: book Club, here's the way it works. Book Club is
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  Speaker 2: part of the Happy Families membership. So at Happy Families,
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  Speaker 2: we know that a lot of people want ongoing support
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  Speaker 2: for their families. We've got the podcast, it's free, we've
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  Speaker 2: got a Facebook page, we've got a website. But to
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  Speaker 2: get into the really nitty gritty stuff, we have this
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  Speaker 2: membership where people can sign up. They get a monthly
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  Speaker 2: webinar with me. We have if you're a premium member,
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  Speaker 2: you get Q and A's with me at least.
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  Speaker 3: Monthly, sometimes more than that.
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  Speaker 2: There's a whole lot of other things that we do
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  Speaker 2: as well, but one of the central things is book club,
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  Speaker 2: and you look after that. So we're going through one
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  Speaker 2: of my six books right now.
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  Speaker 4: Well, I think that we actually create a book club,
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  Speaker 4: so i'd read your books. Is that why we did this?
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  Speaker 2: You know, before we even started doing book club. So
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  Speaker 2: I've written six books and Kylie had only read one
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  Speaker 2: of them and used the excuse that, oh, I'm really.
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  Speaker 3: Busy because I'm a mum my mate.
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  Speaker 4: I think that's a very legitimate answer, Thank you very much.
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  Speaker 2: My husband's written six books, but I'm not interested. I
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  Speaker 2: know what I'm doing. I've got this cover.
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  Speaker 3: I live it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you read twenty one Days to a Happier
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  Speaker 2: Family for book club?
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  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no no.
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  Speaker 4: I had read that one two years to do it,
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  Speaker 4: but I had read it.
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  Speaker 3: I did have to reread it in time for book club.
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  Speaker 3: But nine Ways is new.
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  Speaker 2: So nine Ways to a Resilient Child is what we're
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  Speaker 2: doing for book club this month as part of the
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  Speaker 2: Happy Families membership, and.
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  Speaker 4: Obviously being nine ways to a resilient child. We're talking
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  Speaker 4: about all these things that we can do to help
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  Speaker 4: make our children more resilient, and tomorrow Night's discussion we
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  Speaker 4: are going to be talking about there's no such thing
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  Speaker 4: as smart. This really struck accord with me because I
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  Speaker 4: remember when we moved over from New Zealand to Australia.
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  Speaker 4: I was in Grade five and I took a test
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  Speaker 4: with the rest of the class and I didn't do
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  Speaker 4: very well. The crossover from what I had learned in
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  Speaker 4: New Zealand to what was being taught in Australia was
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  Speaker 4: pretty significant, and I really like I passed, but only
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  Speaker 4: just They sat us in order of how we did,
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  Speaker 4: how we ranked in the test, and if you were
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  Speaker 4: number one, you got to sit right next to the
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  Speaker 4: teacher and you weaved your way through until you hit
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  Speaker 4: number twenty five. I was twenty four, and that experience
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  Speaker 4: has literally stayed with me my entire adult life, and
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  Speaker 4: I always think about the fact that I'm not very
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  Speaker 4: good at maths. That's something that I've always believed as
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  Speaker 4: a result of that experience.
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  Speaker 2: It's stunning to me that this could happen in a classroom.
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  Speaker 2: I know it happened many years ago, because we're not
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  Speaker 2: spring chickens anymore. But I still hear stories like that today.
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't happen very often. These are very much horror
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  Speaker 2: stories in the twenty twenties. But the idea that a
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  Speaker 2: teacher or a parent would make a child feel that
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  Speaker 2: they were smart or dumb just stags me. You know
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  Speaker 2: why I actually called this chapter, There's no such thing
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  Speaker 2: as smart or dumb. We had our eldest daughter. She
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  Speaker 2: was sitting in the back seat of the car talking
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  Speaker 2: to one of her friends. I was driving them somewhere,
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  Speaker 2: and they were talking about their future, their potential futures,
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  Speaker 2: the kinds of lives that they wanted to live. One
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  Speaker 2: of her friends actually said, oh, I could never do that.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not smart enough. And I've hit the brakes and
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  Speaker 2: pulled the car over and turn around and said in
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  Speaker 2: the back seat, and I've got there's no such thing
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  Speaker 2: as smart or done. There's there's people who work at
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  Speaker 2: stuff and people who don't.
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  Speaker 3: Now, I wonder our.
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  Speaker 4: Kids friends are scared to get in the car.
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  Speaker 2: She looked really scared. Now I need to clarify something
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  Speaker 2: really clearly. There are some things that some people will
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  Speaker 2: not be able to do. Not everybody can become a
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  Speaker 2: rocket scientist, not everybody can become a liberace or an
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  Speaker 2: elk genre, a concert pianist or whatever. But I don't
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  Speaker 2: think that it's our job as parents or teachers to
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  Speaker 2: look at a child and tell them that they can't
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  Speaker 2: do it. What I think we want to do is
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  Speaker 2: give them all the support in the world so that
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  Speaker 2: they can move in the direction of what fulfills them
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  Speaker 2: and let them decide for themselves if they can or
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  Speaker 2: they can't. But the whole idea here is there's no
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  Speaker 2: such thing as smart or dumb, And to me, that's
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  Speaker 2: a resilience promoting mindset, because if you believe that there's
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  Speaker 2: no such thing as smart or dumb, there's just people
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  Speaker 2: who work at stuff and people who don't, you're probably
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  Speaker 2: going to work pretty tenaciously.
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  Speaker 4: What stood out to me in the book is you
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  Speaker 4: talk about how we're actually born with this resilience, you know,
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  Speaker 4: when you think of a little baby. Once they start moving,
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  Speaker 4: they asked, is so intent on learning that next skill,
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  Speaker 4: whether it be you know, sitting up or starting to walk,
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  Speaker 4: And you watch them they literally will fall down a
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  Speaker 4: hundred times in a day. But they get themselves back
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  Speaker 4: up again, and they keep at it. I just I
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  Speaker 4: love I love watching them, you know, explore their world,
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  Speaker 4: and they don't see a fall down as a mistake
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  Speaker 4: or a failure. It's actually just another opportunity to get
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  Speaker 4: right back up again. And you watch them do that.
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  Speaker 4: They're so energized by this new found skill. What is
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  Speaker 4: it about life that just kind of completely shatters that
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  Speaker 4: by the time they hit school age.
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  Speaker 2: I wish I'd heard what I'm about to say before
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  Speaker 2: I wrote the book, But I was at a conference
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  Speaker 2: a couple of years ago and heard, as somebody say,
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  Speaker 2: to learn a musical instrument, a person has to make
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  Speaker 2: a lot of mistakes, maybe even a million.
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  Speaker 3: To learn how to speak a foreign language.
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  Speaker 2: A person has to make a lot of mistakes, maybe
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  Speaker 2: even a million. Like you don't see child fall down
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  Speaker 2: for the fifty seventh time while they're trying to learn
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  Speaker 2: to walk and look up and say, actually, Mum, Dad,
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  Speaker 2: it's too hard.
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  Speaker 3: I give up. I'm just going to crawl for the
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  Speaker 3: rest of my life. You don't say that for two reasons.
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  Speaker 3: First of all, because.
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  Speaker 2: Children who are learning to walk don't have the verbal
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  Speaker 2: capacity to say a sentence that complex, but they just
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  Speaker 2: keep on trying. We are wired to learn and master
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  Speaker 2: our environment and grow. We're wired to be resilient and
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  Speaker 2: push through these hard things. But you're right, society and
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  Speaker 2: sometimes parents and sometimes teachers and sometimes other people around
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  Speaker 2: our children, we actually we teach them that we can't
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  Speaker 2: and we do it by example. Like, for example, cross
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  Speaker 2: country is coming up for a lot of school kids,
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  Speaker 2: certainly around Queensland and in other parts of the country
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  Speaker 2: as well. Cross country is you know, the major athletic event. Well,
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  Speaker 2: it's a big running event that happens in most schools.
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  Speaker 2: And what's actually happening increasingly is I hear parents say, oh, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 2: we're not really an athletic family. You don't need to
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  Speaker 2: go or no, no, no, we're not runners. I don't even
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  Speaker 2: run the the letterbox, let alone run three kilometers. And
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  Speaker 2: there's this mindset that we don't have to try. And
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  Speaker 2: you know, I'm not a singer, I'm not good at maths,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not good at that.
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  Speaker 3: That doesn't that's not in our genes or the opposite.
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  Speaker 2: You know, you know where we've got this particular heritage
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  Speaker 2: and therefore we're angry or we're very good with our
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  Speaker 2: money or with this or with that. We actually pass
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  Speaker 2: these mindsets along and they're so limiting and they're so unhealthy,
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  Speaker 2: and we call this a fixed mindset.
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  Speaker 3: So that's the first topic in book club for tomorrow night.
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  Speaker 2: We need to take a quick break, but when we
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: come back, let's talk briefly about our second big topic
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  Speaker 2: that we're going to cover in book club.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcasts.
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: Are Screens Creating tension at home? Tweens, teens and Screens
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: is a webinar to guide families to healthy, safe superscreen solutions.
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: Bye today at happyfamilies dot com, dot au slash shop.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: It's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time
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  Speaker 4: poor parent who just wants answers now. And we are
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: talking about book club. We have book club tomorrow night,
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: and we're up to week three. We've got one more
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  Speaker 4: week left, and we've been talking about some really exciting
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: things and simple ways that we can help instill resilience
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  Speaker 4: in our children.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so we've talked about having a growth mindset, or
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  Speaker 2: at least we've skimmed the surface of that in our
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: last brief conversation.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: What's the second thing that you're going to be talking
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  Speaker 3: about in depth tomorrow night.
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  Speaker 4: It's all about relationships.
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  Speaker 3: Ah yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: I thought you don't actually share this story in the book,
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  Speaker 4: But as I was reading through it a story that
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  Speaker 4: you've told multiple times in our home with our children,
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  Speaker 4: as we've been discussing different things, and it's about a
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  Speaker 4: young African American student who steals a book from the library.
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  Speaker 3: I love this story. Olli Neil is his name.
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  Speaker 4: Can you tell the story? Because you tell it's so
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  Speaker 4: much better than I do.
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  Speaker 3: Sure thing.
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  Speaker 2: So, Olli Neil growing up in the nineteen fifties in
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  Speaker 2: the Southern States of America, segregated South, so you've got
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  Speaker 2: all these black kidskids who are going to this impoverished
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  Speaker 2: school with no resources. And Olinnil, I think from memory,
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  Speaker 2: was around about fourteen years old at the time. He
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  Speaker 2: was one of one of a very very very large family.
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  Speaker 2: It was either eleven or thirteen kids or something like that.
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  Speaker 2: His dad had next to no education, a grade to education,
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  Speaker 2: and he was a peasant farmer, just try to scrape
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  Speaker 2: by and keep his family fed.
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  Speaker 3: And Olli hated school.
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  Speaker 2: So one day he wags class, but he knows that
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: if he gets caught outside of school, the truancy officer
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  Speaker 2: is going to give him a beating and then take
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: him home to his dad, who's probably going to give
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  Speaker 2: him a beating as well. And so he decides that
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  Speaker 2: instead of taking off from school, he's going to go
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  Speaker 2: into the library, because that's where kids go, right, That's
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  Speaker 2: where you're safe, That's where you can't get in trouble.
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  Speaker 3: No one gets into trouble in the library. While he's in.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: There, he's looking at the bookshelf and he sees a
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  Speaker 2: book on the shelf that kind of captures his interest
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  Speaker 2: just a little bit. The book is called The Treasure
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: of Pleasant Valley, And I mean, what fourteen year old
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  Speaker 2: is not going to be interested in a book with
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  Speaker 2: a title like that, especially when you like for the
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  Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. The cover had a fairly racy illustration of
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: a woman on you know, looking a little bit saucy,
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  Speaker 2: I suppose you might say.
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  Speaker 1: So.
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  Speaker 2: The book was by an African American novelist called Frank Irby,
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  Speaker 2: and Oli Neil walks over to the shelf and picks
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  Speaker 2: it up and thinks, I wonder what the Treasure of
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  Speaker 2: Pleasant Valley is? And when no one's looking, he stuffs
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  Speaker 2: the book underneath his shirt. I mean, books are free
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  Speaker 2: to borrow from the library, but for some reason, because
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: because he's a delinquent teenage boy who's got attitude, he
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: decides that he's going to steal it. He walks out
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: of the library, takes it home, reads it, and when
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  Speaker 2: he talks about this experience, he says, I fell in
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: love with reading. I'd never really enjoyed reading. I only
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: read because I had to. But I fell in love
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  Speaker 2: with reading as I read this book. The next week,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: he walked back into the library.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Where no one's watching.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: He sort of sneaks the book back onto the shelf
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: and sees another novel by Frank Yerby.
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  Speaker 3: So he's like, oh, well, I liked the first one.
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  Speaker 2: I'll steal that one too, puts it under his jacket,
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  Speaker 2: walks out of the library, comes back about a week later.
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  Speaker 2: There's another Yurbi novel there, so he does the swap,
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  Speaker 2: steals that one, does it until he's read four of them,
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  Speaker 2: his Yerbie novels Now on looking back at this, what
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: oli in Neil says is this became a transformative time
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: in my life because I fell in love with reading
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  Speaker 2: and began to devour everything. In fact, what ended up
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  Speaker 2: happening for Olli Neil is that he became a top
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: level student.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: He fell in love with learning. He read his textbooks,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: he read the newspapers, he read everything. It was almost
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: like the Frank Irby novels had.
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  Speaker 2: Changed his view of the world because he fell in
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: love with what books can teach us and what words
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: can teach us. Anyway, he ended up graduating with first
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: class honors from high school and got into law school
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: in the late fifties early sixties, very unusual obviously for
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: an African American kid to be going to law school,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: especially in the Southern States. Became a civil rights lawyer
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: at the time of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Junior.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean, this is when it was all happening,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: the Selma stuff, the bus boycotts, all of the things
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  Speaker 2: that we watch here in Australia and see from a distance.
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  Speaker 3: He was in the thick of it. Now. Oli In
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  Speaker 3: Neil ended up going on to.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Become not just a lawyer, but a judge, and eventually
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: he was appointed as like the chief judge in the state.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: He became the first African American in the nineteen eighties
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: to be the chief the Supreme Court justice.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Basically in that state, it.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Was a really big deal, really high honor, and only
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: in Heil would keep on going back to his school,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the place that he'd gone and stolen those books from,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: so that he could talk to the students and say, hey,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I was where you are now, and look at the
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: life you can create. Just work hard and study and
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: kind of tried to give them that growth mindset that
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: we talked about earlier in the podcast.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Anyway, at one.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Of the school reunions that he attended, he bumped into
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Missus Grady, the school librarian, and while he's talking to
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Missus Grady.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: He this is my favorite part.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: He says to her, I need to tell you how
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: impactful your school library was in the life that I
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: now live. And he tells about how he sold the
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Frank Irby novels and one week at a time, brought
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: them back, put them on the shelf and said, Missus Grady,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to say sorry for stealing the books,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: but since she didn't really know, I just want you
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  Speaker 2: to know what a difference to the library your library
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: made in my life, and Missus Grady says Oli Neil,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I have a little story to tell you, And she says,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: I saw you still that first book. But instead of
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: yelling at you, which is what I wanted to do,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: instead of telling you, how dare you? What do you
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: think you're doing? You borrow that book properly, young man.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: She said, something inside me made me stop. And I
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: was afraid that if I yelled at you, that you
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: might never actually borrow a book from my library ever.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: And I just wanted you to love reading, so I
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  Speaker 2: let you go.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: She said.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Every library and instinct in me was saying stop right now,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: but I just had to let you go.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: She said.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: That weekend, it was wrestling on my conscience so much
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: that I got into my car and I drove the
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: seventy miles to I think it was Memphis that she
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: drove to. Seventy miles that's like one hundred and twenty
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: kilometers one hundred and ten hundred and twenty k's And
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: I'd imagine that the cars weren't as comfortable in the
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifties and the roads probably weren't as good either.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: So she did the drive, went to three different bookstores
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: until she found a novel by Frank Yerby which she
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: bought and put on the bookshelf, and then she watched
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: and waited, and a week later she said, Oli and Neil,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I watched you come back into the library. I watched
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: you put that first novel down and pick that second
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: one up and steal that too, And she sort of said,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I've never been so excited to see a student still
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: a book as I was when you stole that second novel.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: So the next weekend she got in the car and
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: drove to another city and went to another couple of
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: bookstores and bought another Frank Ubie novel. And the following
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: weekend she did it again. And then she said, Olie,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: I had to stop after I'd done it three times
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: because I'd run out of money for petrol, and I'd
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: run out of money for books. The school wasn't paying
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: for it. I was coming out of my resources. I
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: just did it because I knew that something had sparked
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: inside you. And in that moment, there's this wonderful awareness
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: that Olian Neil has that this is a teacher who
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: has made it all about the relationship and all about
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: the student, and because she'd done that, it had changed
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: his life.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: For the better.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: So tomorrow and I'm book Club, We're going to talk
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: about the importance of you know, that one real relationship.
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: Our children don't need to have a bajillion people around
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: them who can support them. But if they can just
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: have one significant person in their lives who takes them
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: under their wings and loves them and supports them in
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: ways that helps them to feel seen, valued and heard,
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: then they can flourish and they can have a sense
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: of resilience in their lives.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Well, book Club, it's tomorrow night for our Happy Families members.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: If you're not a member, please visit Happy Families dot
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: com dot au and get on it. It's where you
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: want to be. I think that you're going to get
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: so much from it. Memberships from as little as twelve
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: dollars a month seventeen dollars for a premium membership. We
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: would love to have you there. We really hope that
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: you've enjoyed the podcast. Thank you so much for participating
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: and listening, and just like Tilsey Willsie, if you do
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: enjoy it, leave us those five star reviews and ratings
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: at Apple Podcasts. It helps other people to find out
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: about the podcast and make their family happier. We really
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: appreciate the work of Justin Rulan from Bridge Media and
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: our executive producer Bruce. If you'd like more information about
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: making your family happier like joining book club than becoming
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: part of the family, you can get all the information
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: at happy families dot com dot au