Latest / Parent's Talk with Francine Juhlin / EPISODE 7: Why Kids Struggle with Confidence (It's Not What You Think)

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EPISODE 7: Why Kids Struggle with Confidence (It's Not What You Think) · Parent's Talk with Francine Juhlin

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Hello everybody. Francy and Juleen here, the founder of the
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Confidence Club for Kids and the host of Parents Talk.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I'm here with my friend Alice too. And I met
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Alice in Toastmasters a few years ago, and she's a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: toast Master's drop off. But she had a very good
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: reason for doing that. At the Ripe old Age, a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: ripe young age of seventy years old, Alice decided to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: join the Peace Corps. Alice, will you please tell everybody
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: why did you decide to join the Peace Corps in
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: your retail hirement.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I've always wanted to travel.
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  Speaker 3: Although Peace Corps will tell you Peace Corps is not
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: a travel service. I understand that it's killing two birds
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  Speaker 3: with one stone. You have adventure and you are actually
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  Speaker 3: doing service, a volunteer work. So it's two things that
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  Speaker 3: I like to do, and I'm combining both of them.
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  Speaker 3: So that's why when I was in college, I heard
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  Speaker 3: about Peace Corps and then I thought about it. But
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  Speaker 3: then I also thought, well, what can what will I
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: do when I'm out of Peace Corps?
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  Speaker 2: You know, I have to start all over again.
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  Speaker 3: And look for a job that sort of thing, So
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  Speaker 3: I said, I, So I decided not to go and.
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  Speaker 2: During my work years I found people told me.
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  Speaker 3: Peace Corps doesn't have any age limit, so that was
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  Speaker 3: really perfect.
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  Speaker 2: So I you know, once I retired, I looked. I
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  Speaker 2: mean I already looked, and once.
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  Speaker 3: I retired, I started the process of applying. So that's
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  Speaker 3: where That's why I'm in Peace Corps. But there's also
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  Speaker 3: two other One other thing is when I applied to
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  Speaker 3: Peace Corps, they sent me to Tanzania in East Africa,
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  Speaker 3: and I was there and unfortunately it was the COVID
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  Speaker 3: and all the Peace Corps volunteers had to be called
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: back home, so I didn't unfinish my two years.
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  Speaker 2: Of service there.
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  Speaker 3: I only spent nine months over in Tanzania. So this
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  Speaker 3: time around, I reapplied and they sent me to North Macedonia.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I'm in North Macedonia.
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  Speaker 1: Now Macedonia. It's somewhere that I've hardly ever heard of.
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  Speaker 1: Can you tell us how you support the people of
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  Speaker 1: Macedonia and what you do for them.
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  Speaker 3: I am in the education sector, and that means for Macedonians,
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  Speaker 3: the government want English teachers, and the government also want
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  Speaker 3: community development people.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not in the community development sector. I'm in the education.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm English teacher, but they pair me with a
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  Speaker 2: counterpart local, you know, North Macedonian person. She's a teacher
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  Speaker 2: and she teaches English, and I'm also in this particular
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  Speaker 2: model in North Macedonian. It's called o teaching, so both
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  Speaker 2: of us are teaching. Sometimes she is leading and sometimes
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I lead. It's primary school, but in North Macedonia the
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  Speaker 2: primary school is a grade one to grade nine, so
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  Speaker 2: they include middle school and my counterpart she teaches grade
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  Speaker 2: one and then four up to nine, so she has
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  Speaker 2: a lot of classes. So I just follow her around
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  Speaker 2: and sometimes she plays games just to.
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  Speaker 3: Make the kids more interested in the materials. Everything is,
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  Speaker 3: you know, they use internet programs and the secondary role,
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  Speaker 3: they call it secondary projects, so when you have time,
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  Speaker 3: you can do other projects. So one of the projects
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  Speaker 3: I did was to get some funding for a digital
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  Speaker 3: program and so they got some laptops and they got
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  Speaker 3: an interactive whiteboard and that was really cool. And what
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  Speaker 3: I try to say to the students is like you
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  Speaker 3: cannot control external environment. The only thing you can control
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  Speaker 3: is your internal environ how you think, You know your
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: emotions and the thoughts, and you know the usual thing
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  Speaker 3: your thoughts became becomes your behavior.
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  Speaker 2: So those are the things that they learned.
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  Speaker 3: And then another interesting thing that I found out was
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  Speaker 3: they had to write a little essay on who they are.
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  Speaker 3: And one of the girls, maybe fourteen year old girl
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  Speaker 3: and grade nine, and she said, you know, I like friends,
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  Speaker 3: I enjoy friends, but I don't have a lot of friends, and.
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  Speaker 2: I think I'm antisocial.
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  Speaker 3: So I picked up on that word antisocial, and then
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  Speaker 3: I told her, you know, it's not you that you
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  Speaker 3: think you're antisocial?
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  Speaker 2: Is you?
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  Speaker 3: You probably are an introvert. You need a lot of
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  Speaker 3: recharging time. And so then I whipped up, you know
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  Speaker 3: this thing about the characteristics of extroverted introverted ambiverts, and
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  Speaker 3: I think they they learn a lot from that too.
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  Speaker 1: You know, Okay, wait a minute, this is mind blowing
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  Speaker 1: because you have just picked up on something that some
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  Speaker 1: parents might need to understand that their child isn't broken
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  Speaker 1: if they're an introvert. Can you describe some of these
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  Speaker 1: aspects of interversion and personality so parents could start recognizing
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  Speaker 1: in their own kids that they just need to be
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  Speaker 1: nurtured differently.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's say in a social situation, the child or
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  Speaker 3: the person, let's say the person you know, is not
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  Speaker 3: really interacting much with strangers at that social situation, like
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  Speaker 3: a relative you never met before, and the child, the
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  Speaker 3: person just sits there and maybe just talk to the sister.
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  Speaker 3: You know that that the child knows a lot, So
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  Speaker 3: it might be telltale signs.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know. I know that I am.
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  Speaker 3: One of those people. The other one is like the
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  Speaker 3: common term is social butterfly. The person likes to know
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  Speaker 3: everybody in the room, you know. So those are telltale signs.
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  Speaker 3: But this is just not the only characteristics. I just
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  Speaker 3: read the other day that people think that most people
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  Speaker 3: are ambiverts instead of strict you know, strict introvert and
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  Speaker 3: strict extroverts. So it's a spectrum basically. So if if
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  Speaker 3: parents want to know more about it, all they need
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  Speaker 3: to do is just type introvert characteristics. You know, a
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  Speaker 3: lot of things will cone out on the internet, and
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  Speaker 3: then nowadays with the AI, they will tell you everything
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  Speaker 3: is just right there when to type face up you know.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, but I love that you recognize this in
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  Speaker 1: this girl and you helped lead her on the path
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  Speaker 1: of self reflection and self awareness. So you told me
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  Speaker 1: that you have a pet project regarding teaching life skills
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  Speaker 1: and that you're trying to design a curriculum for that.
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  Speaker 1: What made you want to do that? And what's another
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  Speaker 1: tip you could give parents that you're trying to teach
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  Speaker 1: these children about life skills?
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  Speaker 3: You know, in the work environment, they send you to training,
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  Speaker 3: or I did training on my own.
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  Speaker 2: Whatever. It is. Everything that I've learned, everything is very useful,
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  Speaker 2: and I wish that I had known this before.
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  Speaker 3: You know, when I when I start working all these
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  Speaker 3: things that you know everything and so, and I think
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  Speaker 3: the children should know these things so that they can.
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  Speaker 2: Adjust to the external environment much better.
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  Speaker 1: What I'm hearing is if I need then what I
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  Speaker 1: know now, this is what I would want it to
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  Speaker 1: have learned in school. You've already talked about the teaching
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  Speaker 1: that one girl that she's not a wallflower, she's just
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  Speaker 1: an introvert. Can you tell us one other life skill
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  Speaker 1: that is important for children to learn that you want
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  Speaker 1: to teach these kids.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. The other one is values.
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  Speaker 3: Values is based on belief system and most of the
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  Speaker 3: decisions that we make everybody, you know, it's based on
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  Speaker 3: our values.
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  Speaker 2: And each person's values can be different.
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  Speaker 3: So that's really important for people to recognize this.
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  Speaker 2: This is based on your value, So what are your values?
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  Speaker 3: You have to think about it and that again, you know,
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  Speaker 3: I'm using the internet example.
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  Speaker 2: If you if you punch in values.
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  Speaker 3: You know, assessment, there would be lots and lots of
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  Speaker 3: Internet assessments. And I have the kids do one of those,
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  Speaker 3: and so I think it's valuable for them.
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  Speaker 1: So how would you do this for the younger kids?
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  Speaker 1: It's like in my program, I offered work seats and
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  Speaker 1: the first one is design your own superhero to get
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  Speaker 1: kids thinking creatively and what type of superhero they would
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  Speaker 1: want to be. So for the younger crowd, how would
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  Speaker 1: you assess their value? Since they really can't do this
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  Speaker 1: type of exercise.
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  Speaker 3: I think for the younger kids probably not this this
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  Speaker 3: is for middle school kids. For middle kids, yeah, seven
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  Speaker 3: to nine and uh for the younger kids, yeah, I
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  Speaker 3: think the uh what would you like to do?
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  Speaker 2: How not? How would you go about? What do you?
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  Speaker 2: And why?
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  Speaker 3: And they will tell you and just just just take
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  Speaker 3: the lead from them and you can kind of leap
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  Speaker 3: them down the road of how how just ask them.
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  Speaker 3: They will pay very good, you know, they will tell you, oh,
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  Speaker 3: I you know, how how.
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  Speaker 2: Do you make a decision?
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  Speaker 3: What makes you decide to do this, and they will
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  Speaker 3: tell you exactly and then you just go on from
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  Speaker 3: there and and they will they will you pick up
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  Speaker 3: the cues from them.
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  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, put down the screens and talk to
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  Speaker 1: your kids. And I'm getting the picture that this is
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  Speaker 1: universal worldwide. It's in Macedonia, it's in Tanzania, it's in Europe,
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  Speaker 1: it's in the US. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so all I think all parents want
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  Speaker 3: their children to, you know, do well, maybe even do
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  Speaker 3: better than you know, the parent's life. You know.
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  Speaker 2: I think that that's kind of universal. And uh so again.
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  Speaker 3: It goes back to values or if there's too many choices,
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  Speaker 3: sleep on it, sleep over it, sleep, sleep, and then
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  Speaker 3: start fresh again the next day. And so that might
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  Speaker 3: also that might also help you in making some decisions.
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  Speaker 1: That's a great point, because if you are sleep deprived,
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  Speaker 1: your brain gets fuzzy.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes if you sleep on it, it gives your brain
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  Speaker 1: time to clear itself and reset, which is why I
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  Speaker 1: teach meditation. I have a whole section in my children's
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  Speaker 1: program about meditating, and my first children's book is about
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  Speaker 1: meditation for children because they need to clear the space,
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  Speaker 1: just like we do as adults. So I love that
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  Speaker 1: you said sleep on it because you can also meditate
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  Speaker 1: on it.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and and I have this interesting experience.
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  Speaker 3: So I'm teaching these grade eight nine kids, only a
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  Speaker 3: few kids, and I asked I take them, give them
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  Speaker 3: some music and tell him to close eyes and do
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  Speaker 3: some meditation.
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  Speaker 2: And then one boy said, I have nothing.
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  Speaker 3: I get nothing. It's all fine, you know whatever. But
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  Speaker 3: the rest of the kids are fine, you know, but
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  Speaker 3: this particular boy, you know, says no, I can't do it. No, no, nothing, nothing, nothing,
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  Speaker 3: And maybe he's resisting.
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  Speaker 2: I have no idea, but I just let it go.
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  Speaker 3: You know.
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  Speaker 2: There are situations like that.
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  Speaker 1: Well, meditation is just like a sport you have to practice.
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  Speaker 1: I know when I first started, it was difficult and
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  Speaker 1: I didn't know if I was doing it right. But
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  Speaker 1: the more I did it, and the more I worked
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  Speaker 1: my meditation muscle, the easier it got, and the better life.
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  Speaker 2: God.
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  Speaker 1: I think we just gave parents a lot to think about. So, parents,
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  Speaker 1: if you have any questions about things, Alice said, she's
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: in Macedonia, so we can't give you her phone number
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  Speaker 1: or anything like that, but we can give you Alice's
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  Speaker 1: email address, So if you want to contact Alice by email,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: her email address will be in the comments or in
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  Speaker 1: the description of this video. I just want to thank
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  Speaker 1: Alice for coming today and giving us so many cool
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  Speaker 1: things to think about, and that picture slideshow you saw
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of Macedonia and all the cool places
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  Speaker 1: she's been. And we're going to invite Alice back when
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  Speaker 1: she finishes developing this curriculum and we're going to talk
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: about light skills for children. But until then, this is
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  Speaker 1: Francine Juline, otherwise known as Princess Francie. Until next time, Bye,