Teen Survival Kit; No matter how hard it is, or how hard it gets, you’ll always be able to make it through, with Special Guest Elliot Kallen

Jackie Finneman is a 30-year family counselor turned parenting coach with more than 40,000 hours of working with children and families. She is thrilled to share behavioral strategies, supportive resources, and parenting stories from her own real-life personal and professional experiences. Parenting is a roller coaster, not a merry-go-round. We can deal with and overcome the behavior challenges within our home and set ourselves and our kids up for a successful ride. Has your roller coaster derailed? No problem. Listen in to get you and your family back on track. Hey, welcome back parents to the No Problem Parenting Podcast, where we choose to deal with and overcome the behavioral challenges in our home. You guys, I have a very special guest on with me today, Mr. Elliot Callen. Elliot is the co-founder and president of A Brighter Day,

a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping teens manage depression and stress. Elliot and his wife started the nonprofit in 2015 in memory of their youngest son, Jake, who committed suicide at the age of 19. Every year, millions of teenagers struggle with thoughts of depression, deep sadness, isolation, stress, and the feeling of helplessness. Because of their mental health issues, thousands commit suicide, making it one of the leading causes of death among teens in the U.S. Sadly, and too often, the parents of these teens are the last to learn about their child's mental problems, and sometimes it's too late to take action. A Brighter Day aims to stop teen suicide by educating teens and their parents about mental disorders and providing resources they can use to reach out and communicate when depression and stress are often affecting them on their own or the lives of those around them. They've helped thousands of teens deal with mental health issues while still allowing them to retain their privacy and dignity. Elliot is also actively involved in several other non-profit organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club of Contra Costa County and Congregation B'nai Shalom, for which he has helped raise millions of dollars. For nearly 30 years,

Elliot has also run a wealth management firm, Prosperity Financial Group, which helps individuals achieve their retirement goals and uniquely invest their assets. So first of all, my deepest sympathies to you, Elliot, and thank you just from the bottom of my heart for being with me today. Jackie, thanks for having me on. I appreciate that too.

I know that was a really long intro and a long bio, but it's such important information for people to know about. I think as parents, we try to talk to our kids. We can sometimes sense there might be something wrong or a little bit off, but you know, it's just like, oh, this is teenagers, right? This is just, they're leaving the nest and they're just kind of finding themselves and they're independent. And we say all the, say and do all these things. I know I've asked you this ahead of time. Please tell us a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are today.

Absolutely. And I think I'm a very typical parent. I thought everything was okay. um i really didn't see a much happening that was bad i i think with teenagers the difference between being a a depressed teenager and kind of a dumb typical teenager who's just a shade of gray because i think i was a dumb typical teenager but definitely not depressed and i didn't pick up on my son and his depression so what happened was he was a sophomore at the university of montana He went back for January semester. And on the evening of the early morning of January 23rd in 2015, no drugs, no alcohol. He walked up to the highway and he jumped in front of an oncoming truck.

and we were frantically looking for him the next day because his phone was turned off and no teenager turns off their phone we knew something something just felt wrong and at 6 30 night federal express knocked on the door and delivered a six-page suicide note and we called the hospital and the police and they told us what happened and we began the journey of going up to montana claiming his body, bringing it back for burial in Lafayette, California, and so forth. But the key that struck us at that moment was in the body, in the first page of that six-page suicide note, and teens tend to ramble on suicide notes, so three of those pages were worthless. But the first paragraph said, Mom and Dad, I've been thinking about this for a long time. I never would have told you how I felt. I never would have asked for your help, and I never would have taking your help and so we on the way you know you're you're not in mourning as a parent you're in shock as a parent when you just that's the first feeling you just you just don't know what to think you're you're you're crying and you you but you're not mourning yet that takes a little more time and on the way back with his body under the in southwest and you know the casket that they travel with um i knew we had to do something i knew we had to help other parents not experience this destruction and this devastation.

And I knew we'd be victims of this forever. Let's try to do some good out of it. And we came up with the idea of a charity called A Brighter Day. Originally, it was to a sports or music charity, but we did music and not sports for teens.

So we took an old concept called Battle of the Bands, repackaged it called Teen Band Showcase. And the first three or four years, all we did was play for teens, teen bands playing for teens. And we handed out backpacks, filled with resources that we created on stress and oppression. And we wrote in there questions of, are you feeling this way for the teen? We put in there, is your friend feeling this way? And then we assumed parents would look at this. So we added the one page that said, is your teen feeling this way? And we knew we were onto something because we weren't picking these backpacks off the floor. They were going home. And then COVID hit, and we had to reinvent ourselves. And we started with Teen Talent Showcase, where it could be any talent online.

And then these people watching the Teen Talent Showcase, kind of America's Got Talent, could go to our website, and we had 14,000 views on our first Teen Talent Showcase. Staggering number, but we weren't happy that we could not figure out if people were getting anything out of our resources. So we again reinvented ourselves for the third reinvention. And we sunk a lot of money into the website, into social media. I'm a writer. I have a writer on staff. We love to write. And we wrote articles, came out to newsletters, building a newsletter organically, and articles every other week for parents now, not teens anymore, on stress and depression. So we created a parental toolbox and we created a teen toolbox for teens written in teen language and on TikTok and a parent toolbox that you can get to us from the website or from Facebook or from Instagram, all about how to deal with your teen and signs and symptoms of your teen,

what we can do. So we did that and we started to get quite a following on that. We really got a nice following and then it grew even more we said well our articles are basically passive like we just came out with a holiday article because you're recording this in a month of december and although january is the number one suicide month december seems to be the setup for it and holidays create loneliness thanksgiving and christmas create loneliness for teens that are also isolating themselves and feeling sad.

And so we wanted to do something more active in there. So we now have a national text line where somebody, anybody, any age over the age of 12 can type in the word brighter, B-R-I-G-H-T-E-R to 741, 741, 24 seven in all 50 states. And they can get counseling help from a trained counselor any hours of the day for up to 45 minutes per session. They can call back as often as they want.

And it's amazing how many people every single month are using that text hotline and it's free to them. The charity pays for it in bulk, but it's free to the user. Now, not every teen, and that's for teens and parents, but not every teen is going to do well with texting. And parents, you know, just they're not going to do well at all with texting.

So we created one more step and we and we did a partnership with BetterHelp Online. And now anybody in all 50 states again can get live Zoom counseling from a licensed therapist, licensed in that individual state. they can do that inside of seven days it requires paperwork because it is a state licensed person and a parent has to agree versus the text line that no parent has to agree but now we help out so we go from passive with all of our articles on help to active and everywhere and the text in between that i have to tell you that my son probably would have looked at the text hotline as something that he could have gotten behind because one of the signs of depression for a teen is a break in sleep patterns and he was awake from 12 to 3 in the morning and that's what he would have text and his number one question would have been am i the only one feeling this way and that's what most teens ask i love that all of this i love all this and and and we're going to get into some of the the sign other signs or or things that parents can pay attention to but what I love about this is exactly what you said that your son, that Jake wrote to you in the letter is I wouldn't have reached out to you. I wouldn't have told you. It doesn't mean he wouldn't have responded to someone else. It may have been too hard for him to, to scare you, to disappoint you,

to Lord knows what, right. Um, that he's saying he wouldn't have reached out, but, um, but maybe he would have, uh, if there would have been a text, you know, a resource like this. And that's really what I just commend you guys for, for really thinking outside of the box here and going, okay, how do we get without all the red tape of having to fill out paperwork and do whatever parents may need that for support. And eventually the child or the teen young adult may reach out for that. But initially we got to meet them where they're at. So between your texting support line and even the videos and things that you're putting out on TikTok, the articles you're writing, you are reaching kids and obviously you've been successful with that and it's being utilized so I think it's just absolutely amazing thank you and I'll just put that reach in perspective when we started we handed out in the first four years about 2,000 backpacks last month 14,000 people went to our website just staggering difference between them there's no advertising on website. It's abrighterday.info. It's got resources. They're all free resources. They're all free.

The Zoom program, obviously, you have to pay for it to the counselor directly. But now what we've decided after spending some time with our partner, BetterHelp, is that the average number of sessions for a team are four. And so we pick up the first four sessions. Oh, you do? Yes. That is wonderful. I am super excited to be able to be a part of this and to help share the word and spread the word and get more people to your website and to your resources. Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that parents can be looking for and when they should seek help. So, you know, the difference again are shades of gray between a child that is walking the line of anxiety and stress and depression, which by the way,

every teen today is loaded with stress and anxiety because that's the world they're coming from. It's very different than when we grew up, but their expectation or our expectations for them are so much higher than maybe my parents' expectations, although they were plenty high from my parents, but the expectations are so different now. So teens are more stressed than ever. And the more affluent the community, the more stress and depression. And the more poverty stricken the community, the less stress. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, because anxiety is the anxiety coming out of poverty is survival. But when you have time and money on your hands, you can get depressed. It's a very different thing. So, you know, if I'm in downtown Minneapolis,

near Minnesota, and there are riots going around like that we've had in the last few years up there. You're in survival mode. Right. But if I'm in a suburb of St. Paul, that's very well to do.

And I've got time on my hands. And that's where depression has the ability to foster. That is so interesting. That's a very, very good point. I was just interviewing somebody else whose episode is going to air just before yours. I don't know the exact schedule here. But it was a similar kind of thing where he was talking about survival from bullying on the streets and his streets were in suburbia yeah bullying you know bullying is one of the signs that we deal with but you asked me the question of what are some signs yeah and i want to talk about if i could talk to you about what some parents can do about these signs too absolutely besides just reaching out to our website and all of our tools because nothing's going to be local counseling.

If you could talk to the school counselor, but schools don't really have the resources to handle this either. And I don't know how it is by you, but in California, in New York, in Florida, if you, if your child's in crisis, your teen is in crisis and you're really worried about suicide, it could take six to 10 weeks to get an appointment, licensed therapist. And that's why we came out with a zoom program that you could do in a, in a week because that's if your child has said mom and dad i am thinking about hurting myself i have no value in life 10 weeks is a lifetime right it's eternity so that's not a good solution but that's the reality that there are too many teens too few counselors the insurance industry is broken paying for teams lots of things going wrong there we're just trying to do our part to speed it up. I love it. So what parents should be looking for, and I'll start with, is isolation and withdrawal are the two main aspects of depression, not stress. And withdrawal means I'm not going to go to my classes anymore. I'm withdrawing from social activities. I'm not going out with friends anymore. I'm not even showing up anymore that I have to at Christmas or Thanksgiving or any other event.

I'm doing the minimal I can get away with and going to my room and using some excuse that I don't feel well, or I'm on the middle of a game, a video game, or something that's going to help me withdraw. And you're going to buy into it as a parent because it seems so normal that, okay, they're in the middle of something. Let them finish. Don't bother them.

School is really tough. They're stuck on their homework. They can't finish it. And what you don't see that's going on is that percolator is moving into full steam that they're not doing well in chemistry. So they withdrawn from chemistry. You don't know that. You just think, because you as a parent are asking questions. And I know 99% of all parents want to be really good parents, but they don't all have the tools to be good parents. So you come home at night and you're working. You're an example of somebody who's working and being a parent. You come home at night and you're tired and you got to cook and you got to juggle life and so does you know your husband or your partner at the same time and so you're asking your your team how was your how was school today or how was your day and if it's a boy you get a grunt okay you get monosyllabic answers that's how boys answer and your daughter might get a little bit more but monosyllabic is pretty typical boys it doesn't make them depressed if they're acting like a neanderthal it makes them pretty normal right But you're not any smarter at the end of the night.

And you might even put your hands up and say, you know, I talked to my team for 10 minutes. I learned nothing. And that's also very typical. So here's some things that you can do as a parent to really get some good answers.

Because we write the website and we write our articles really for parents, not teens. Even though we have a teen survival toolkit on our website, all of our articles are written for parents. because we think the best way to reach teens is through good parents. So everything is going to happen for the most part in two ways.

One is at the dinner table. So the old-fashioned dinner table, before there was social media, before this came out, is the best dinner table to have. So first thing parents need to do is make all dinners cell phone free. I get it.

They're busy. you want to get grandma on the line you want to they want to text their friends you if you're in a dating world as a parent you want to text there are a lot of things going on right you need to make dinner cell phone free put all the cell phones in a basket get them after dinner no matter what yeah then you can begin to engage with your team and instead of just how school was today you could begin to say how's chemistry today what are you doing how's history what's your favorite class, Jackie, that you're going through?

Why is it your favorite class? What's your least favorite class? And why? Who's your best friend? You should know that already.

What's their favorite class? What you may learn is, my best friend is Mary, and Mary and I hate chemistry. So what you might be learning is that during chemistry class, they're not even walking in the classroom together. They're taking a walk.

They're not showing up anymore. And you won't know that until they get a D or an F. Right. Yeah. Well, maybe we should even go back to if you're not having family dinners, because sometimes those have fallen by the wayside because of schedules. And we feel like, oh, we got to eat by six o'clock and not everybody's home at six o'clock. So some people are eating at this time. Some people are eating at that time. Schedule that family dinner or a family snack at night.

If it's whatever you got to do to get 20 minutes of everybody around the table, cell phone free, 20 minutes minimum, I would say cell phone free. And, and not in feeling that awkwardness of not knowing what to say or what to do. There are hundreds of resources out there. Go to, go to Pinterest or wherever you want to go to for questions to ask.

If you don't want to be specific, because sometimes teenagers too, will be like, quit bugging me about, you know, I'm, I it's fine. Everything's fine. Right. so if we get kind of can get creative about some of the things that we share about our day you know what is it the rose the thorn and the bud or something like that something great that happened something sucky that happened you know tough that happened or something that was just like you know okay or what's the funniest thing that happened today or you know whatever it is but getting those conversations started with our kids too often we won't we won't even sit down for a family meal uh because it doesn't have to be every night but here's an interesting thing that you can ask as a parent that i they don't really have on pinterest and that is if you're if you're my teen jackie and your best friend is mary ask about mary find out how mary is doing because teens like to talk through friends to you and almost like third party then talk about themselves so if mary is struggling in geology in geometry or geology or whatever she's taking they could be talking about themselves yeah give you a chance to say what are mary's parents doing well he's not mary's not telling her parents you know she's not either you're not either as a team you're keeping this to yourself it's painful to talk about that and yes it makes you an annoying parent it really

does but it makes you an informed parent and that's more important my mother used my mother used to bug the heck out of me when i was growing up about who are my friends and what how are they doing in school and then even worse she'd reach out to their parents yeah and say hey i know that you know leonard is you know leonard and elliot are good friends and i i just thought i'd introduce myself to you and give you my phone number in case anything comes up and i'd be mom why do you have to do that yeah how embarrassing nobody else does this all right um but she was from europe and the old school was your however your friends act is probably how you act if your friends are getting drunk or high or withdrawing from class, you probably are too. Yeah. And so that's, I love it.

We need to be a little bit nosier and a little bit more intrusive in some ways, but not in the way that's going to push our kids away even more, you know, here at no problem parenting, Elliot, I'm all about seek first to understand why is my kid behaving the way they're behaving and why am I responding or reacting nine times out of 10, we're reacting instead of responding the way that I am as the parent. Step two is to prepare for the worst. This isn't my no problem parenting, how to become a no problem parent, prepare for the worst. So what is your worst fear? What is your worst worry? What is your worst, like what's your kid going to do when they get home that you are just like, that's the worst thing that could happen tonight because of whatever else I've got going on, you know, being prepared for that so that we can respond to them instead of react.

And then step three is to change the conversation. So one of the things I want to ask you about is What if you really, if your worry is, okay, my kiddo, I see a lot of these signs. I've been to your website and I've got, you know, there's three signs that stand right out to me that my kiddo is displaying here. Can parents just go to their kid and say, hey, I'm worried about you.

And I want to have a conversation. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, that's where the conversation begins. Say, I'm worried about you.

Should I be? and then you begin to have those conversations like such as you know i i notice that you're not seeing your friends anymore is there something going on i notice that you're not you don't really want to eat with me anymore all right you know i tried two weeks in a row i've tried to take a walk with you because that's the second thing you can do is do an activity like a walk and because people like to talk and walk at the same time um and you don't even want to do that you don't want to be alone with me i get it you're a teenager i'm a thousand years old as your parent i get all that but you're my child and I love you and I love walking with you.

Can we go for a walk and talk? Or a car ride. Windchill time is really good, right? A car ride is great.

Take the earbuds out, turn the radio off in the car and just communicate. Because again, you can draw. One of the things I'd like to say in the change the conversation part is that we're giving our kids too much unconditional praise, too much unconditional positive, so much so that they don't believe it themselves. So I like to teach and to lead with conditional praise. First, we're not just boosting our kids up to make ourselves feel better. Like, oh, you have lots of friends and oh, you're so good at this sport or this class or this extracurricular activity. And you excel in that. If they don't believe it themselves, it's hot air from us. And in fact, it actually makes us as the parent look weak.

it makes us look like we would not be capable of handling it if they were really feeling bad about themselves or if they were really feeling like they didn't have friends or they weren't feeling good enough so the odds of them coming to us when they don't think we can handle their emotion or their feelings significantly decrease so we need to be opening up the door to them giving them conditional positives which are fact you know my mother used to have a very interesting phrase we talked earlier about the annoying parent try not to be the annoying parent but then again it's better to be the annoying parent than not my mother had an interesting phrase and it went it's better that you cry than I cry and there is truth to that if I annoy the heck out of you and you're upset with me and that's but I've saved your life yeah okay with that. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that we can learn from earlier generations. And that said, I also appreciate that you're saying it is different in this day and age for our kids.

There is just so much more exposure to things that we used to be able to protect our kids from that realistically, no matter how much you're controlling their technology usage, just even in-person school, the environment, the things they're exposed to is so much more than what we ever had to deal with. And I think as a parent now, sometimes we can't even imagine, you know, what our kids are going through, but they're going through it. So we need to really learn, do our best to learn about our kids and where they're at and what they're feeling. So I just value this so much. Any other quick tips that you want to give us?

Yeah, you've got to, as a parent now, get in front of social media. So we think, you know, we use Facebook. Kids don't use Facebook anymore, teens. They use TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. Unfortunately, all of these are highlight reels of other people's lives, and it exacerbates loneliness.

And this is what happened when my kids, they came home for Christmas break one year. And they said they were looking at Facebook that when the teens use Facebook then. And we live in Northern California. And so people go to Hawaii and people go to Tahoe.

And he said, you know, Dad, we feel like we're the only ones that are home for Christmas break. Is there something wrong with us? Yeah. Is that terrible?

Yeah. That's what it made him feel like. So, you know, I'm a sports guy. I love watching ESPN and highlights 10 top plays of the day on Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram.

Those 10 top things of my friends are there. They're having a great time in life. And I'm not it. It's terrible anxiety that comes out of social media.

You've got to get in front of it. You know, I wish I wish kids weren't on these at all. but it's bigger than you and I. We have to be in front of this.

Yeah, we can wish as much as we want, right? But it's the reality. So we need to be paying attention to it. Some tools that you have for teens and young adults that they can use to manage stress and depression. And again, I'm going to have all the links in the show notes to access your information. But what are a couple of tools that the teens listening in today can be using?

Well, besides getting therapy if they need it, or using the text line if they need it, It's creating their own highlight reel. So doing things that are positive for them. Now, you've got a 17-year-old. I'm going to bet that you're in the 99 to 90% of parents that want to be great parents or good parents.

I'm just making that up. Well, that means that you should know what your child likes and doesn't like at this point at 17. And focus on helping them with their likes. so if they like movies if they like going out with friends if they like skiing if they like encourage them to do that if because i remember so when i was in high school and i think my dad was just acting intuitively this was 10th grade my mother was now bedridden and close to death and i just had my dad to talk to and my brother and sister were in college it was just the two us. I learned how to cook. I learned how to do a lot of things because I had to. And those were great experiences that for a lifetime, the negative of that world turned out to be really positive for my dad and myself. And it was on a Saturday night, I had a really good friend, Richie and Rich, Richie, he'd probably yell at me if he knew I called him Richie nowadays. He's probably richer now. But Richie belonged to a youth group that had, that was very social. They went all around,

they carpooled together and they went to parties and basketball games and played football together and I was an athlete and it was a Saturday night and I was pacing the house because I didn't I wasn't part of this youth group and my dad saw me pacing the house and looking out the kitchen window and and being like a lion in a cage and this was before social media and he said what's going on? I said, I just got to get out of here. My old friends from elementary school were doing, ordering pizza and playing pool. And I was kind of getting away from them. And my new friends from high school, I wasn't quite with yet, Rich and so forth. I was with in school, but not with socially. And he asked me, who's your best friend now? And I said, Richie, we're a homeroom together.

he said well where's he tonight he said well he's in this group someplace by car at some social well what's a social i said party he said are girls there are guys there what's the party about i said it's both it's just they go hang out and have fun and they get to meet and they do stupid things and have fun he said well why don't you why didn't you go i said i don't know i mean there's that teenage answer i don't know he said well why don't you call him up tomorrow and say you want to go next weekend or to the next social party.

And I did, and I became very active in that. And that little move by my dad changed my life for high school because it got me involved not just with the party side of it, the fun side, but I became a leader. I became a regional leader. I got nominated for different things.

And my whole life changed because I was involved in a youth organization that was a charitable-based youth organization that had a lot of fun and played sports. And my dad intuitively said, call Richie and do something fun. I doubt even today he would know what he did. Yeah, exactly.

Take it for granted some of that stuff that, but again, I think it is true. If your kid's just hanging out and now with everything being so online, everything's so online, right? It's great for those kids who can't get out or get into the community because they live in rural areas or they just don't have access to their parents, can't take them places or whatever else. It at least can be some socialization when you find a good group of kids to play some games with and communicate verbally. I'm not totally against that. I do think that we aren't encouraging our kids to get in person enough. And we're worried. We're like, oh, but what group of kids are they going to be hanging out with?

And where they can, it's, I think our jobs, we need to be confident parents so that we can raise confident kids and help them push them a little bit to do some of these things and get into some of these social situations where they're kind of feeling shy or awkward, especially when it's new. But we want to get, build them, build up the confidence in them that says, Hey, I bet those kids would appreciate you being there.

You'd add a lot to their party or to their, to their socialization. So we do need to be less fearful of that stuff and, and actually help our kids, encourage them to be out more. you know I remember my dad driving occasionally because you know you couldn't drive in New Jersey then until you were 17 when I was growing up and so my dad had to drive places and it was the most humiliating thing to do because my dad was older he was born in 1915 and uh and I could I just I had the oldest dad of anybody I knew it was thanks for bringing grandpa to the football game that's my dad yeah right and he was always coming single because my mom wasn't available. And I was humiliated, but he did it. And he knew it was the right thing to do.

And sometimes he would say, what time do I need to pick you up? I said, dad, can you pick me up at midnight or 1130 at night? And he would take a nap because I was late for him and set the alarm and he would get up and do what he did, which is be a good dad. He didn't complain once to me, never said a bad word, never said why do we have to do it? He would just say, look, if I'm not picking you up by 11, you need to just call me and tell me where you were. And most times we were at White Castle, just hanging out, eating hamburgers at 11 o'clock at night.

Yeah. Doing absolutely nothing, but just hanging out. Yeah. Pretty harmless. We weren't in trouble. And he would be, I'm dad, I'm at, I'm at White Castle having burgers. He said, okay, what, how long are you going to be there? I said, give me an hour, hour and a half. And he'd be, well, that's great.

Yeah. Perfect. I love it. Well, I'm telling you, Elliot, everything that you're doing is, is so needed in this world right now and so helpful.

I am going to put the link, like I said, in the show notes for that. People can go to abrighterday.info to learn more about the Zoom sessions and some of the free counseling sessions that you're offering. And they can also find you on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Any parting words for us today? No, my parting words would be to the parents, because you're primarily a parental show, which is great, and teens listening, is try to get in front of this. Try to get in front. Don't be afraid to find out what's cooking in your teen's mind.

And for teens who are listening to this, don't be afraid to share your feelings. And I would tell you, both parents and teens, if we could just figure out a way to be less judgmental or non-judgmental, which would be even better, we'd be better listeners. Instead of putting it through our own filter, we put it through this person's filter that's experienced the difficulties. Right.

I love it. I love to say too, on particularly rough days, this quote comes to mind right now. I use it a lot on my signature and such. But on particularly rough days when you feel like you can't possibly endure, your track record for getting through those days so far is 100%.

And that's pretty darn good. So parents and teens, no matter what you are struggling with and dealing with right now, there is somebody else that can understand and that knows and has been there. So reach out and keep getting through those rough days, but let's make them a brighter day by going to abrighterday.info and learning more about the resources that are out there to support you.

Many of which are absolutely free. Thank you so much for being with me today, Elliot. Oh, thanks for having me on. I love this.

Really appreciate what you're doing. Thank you for tuning into the No Problem Parenting podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show. Your support of the No Problem Parenting podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families.

Thank you.