Special Education Law; Understanding I.D.E.A. to become a CONFIDENT Advocate for your exceptional child! with Special Guest Catherine Michae

Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents. Today's guest is here to talk to us all about education and education law and how to advocate for our kids in school. And, you know, what do we need to know as parents about the school system? This isn't a us against them kind of thing. It's just we don't know what we don't know. And oftentimes schools aren't telling us what they know that we need to know and how we can best advocate for our kiddos. So today I brought a special guest on. Her name is Catherine Michael. She has literally in her 22 plus years of working with families as a juvenile and education attorney, she's literally seen and done it all from dealing with grade appeals, inappropriate pictures, hundreds of educational due process hearings, expulsions,

and many of the issues that all parents face when raising kids. She just loves to talk about what she's learned, what she's seen, and how she's helped parents to navigate the school system along the way. Catherine is an attorney licensed and practicing throughout the state of Indiana, Texas, and Michigan. She works with families, does educational consultation, and she's also a parent coach. She's a wife and mother of two grown daughters and represents students and their families in a variety of education and personal injury matters, including special education due process, Section 504 matters, expulsion, disciplinary issues, personal injury of children, sexual abuse, private school issues, and discipline, as well as civil rights and disability claims experienced by students. Catherine Michael has been featured hundreds of times in both the national and local media. She's a frequent guest on syndicated radio and television shows for her education law experience, and her nearly two decades of career experience in education has focused on ensuring that the needs of children in schools are met. She's represented school shooting victims, children abused in school, and hundreds of special needs children whose families needed a voice. There were so many topics that we could have talked about, but stay tuned. You're going to learn a little bit about what you need to understand about the school system, when you

should consider getting an attorney, what situations really are the ones that you need advice on, and some top parenting tips from Catherine. So stay tuned. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Fineman.

Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling? Whether you are at your wit's end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman.

Welcome to the show, Katherine. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I mean, as I told you before we started, I love your podcast.

I think you are doing just such a great service for so many families. And I am just really happy to be here with you today. Well, thank you for that. I do love being a resourcer for families and making sure that even if they don't have a service in their local area, that they know that there are wealth of resources in the world that they have access to now, especially because of COVID, you know, on Zoom. And so I love sharing other people's resources, services, and companies with my parents. So thanks so much for being here. Tell us a little bit about your background in education law and kind of your main focus now or why families come to you now in this day and age. Yeah. So when I started off,

I was actually a healthcare attorney. And for any of you who've heard me before, I mean, you know that it was a situation where I just started getting some education related clients, children who had cancer who were in the hospital or getting chemotherapy. They needed, for instance, a shortened school day or to be able to attend at home. And this was long before Zoom. So I started with those cases. And then I got into where we were getting children who had dyslexia, who weren't receiving any type of special education services. And they started coming me in there in high school saying what are our options and that was what really led me to taking more and more education related clients because i saw this massive underserved population with real needs and what i i surprisingly found according to um anybody who's teaching right now um they would say unsurprisingly found is that in our system we are really structured in our schools to cut corners and kids who struggle often get passed from grade to grade to grade teachers don't talk to each other in the previous grades so i found you know over the course of my career thousands of children who should have been made eligible for special education and weren't children who aren't getting specialized reading programs children who have we talked earlier about reactive attachment disorder they're going to need a really supportive environment both at

at home and at school and really weren't getting programming or staff that understood these needs. And interestingly, there's something called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And every state has taken this federal law, because they have to follow it, it's federal law, and put it into their state law as well. And it requires testing, evaluation, counseling, therapeutic PE, goals across a child's areas of needs, services, summer services.

Most parents have no idea. And the only enforcers of these laws are the actual parents. The state departments of education will appoint hearing officers, but their job isn't to enforce those laws. So it was a really interesting thing that I discovered. And it has been perhaps the most fulfilling legal career I ever could have envisioned because you really feel at the end of every single day that you're helping someone. Yeah, this hits close to home for me.

What do parents need to understand about the school system? Because like you said, it's the parents advocating, but we don't know. We're relying on the school to tell us because that's their profession, right? Like that's their expertise. Well, the school doesn't have to teach you the law. I'll start off with that. All they're required to do if you have a child with special needs who's already qualified is give you a copy of what's called your procedural safeguards.

The school is not in a situation where you're going to go in and they're actually going to tell you what you need to know. Because frankly, oftentimes, and I have many, many teacher friends, we were talking before about how I have a lot of teachers who actually attend my master classes, because the teachers don't know the law either. And so often you will get a group of people together pulling together an IEP and a teacher doesn't, they've never had classes on how to structure goals.

They don't know what's available under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. They don't understand their state law and the timelines. They may have had a two hour class at some point. So as a parent, it really becomes important for you to start learning this on your own. One thing, and you and I talked about this as well, that I have is I used to just do coffees for parents. Once a month, I would just pick a place and invite everybody who was a client. They could bring as many friends as they wanted.

And I would just say, here's how you can advocate for your child. Here's what you need to know. Here's what you need to do in an IEP meeting. And I actually created a website where I do that twice a week now so that parents can actually go in and attend in something that's super budget conscious to actually learn what they need to know, how to go into these meetings, to know what the law actually entitles their child to, to understand evaluations, to understand testing and measurements, to understand transition, vocational programs, extended school year, what all of that really means and what their child could actually get once the parent has a good hold and understanding on what's available. Why don't parents have these conversations with the school?

What do your clients tell you? Or how does that work when a parent knows their child is struggling, they've reached out to the school, the school says, well, we have some accommodations, we can do this you know, plan, but maybe, and teachers are hard pressed, right? They have so much to deal with. And so often I think parents maybe won't push the issue because they don't want to strain the teacher. Yes. You know, there's a couple of things that happen most of the time. And I can tell you this for sure. A parent starts to notice there's problems years before they actually come to my office. And it'll be, you have a fourth grader who's struggling with reading and they've gone to the school. By fifth grade, they're really struggling. In sixth grade, they finally get their child in evaluation. By seventh grade, they finally have an IEP. The school says we're putting a reading program in place. Child hits eighth grade. They're still testing at a fourth and fifth grade reading level. They start high school. They're now failing the classes. The parent knows that how are they going to get into college? That's basically the time I will see many parents come to me because let's be honest, people are a little intimidated by lawyers. And you're saying you're talking with me. I'm not that intimidating or scary. I mean, I do education law, but parents are, the thought of scheduling an appointment with a lawyer is terrifying.

And so one route they'll often try first too, is they'll get a parent advocate. Parent advocate will go to the meeting with the school with them and a parent advocate is just someone trying to help that other parent. Some of them have training, some of them don't. They'll go there, the school will say, you know, we're offering what we have. So basically the parent gets to meet and we have a situation that unless I get this child's reading at four or five, sometimes six, seven grade levels in the next four years, this child is going to be very unlikely to be successful in college and frankly, pretty unlikely to be successful in life. I mean, most of the things that you need to do take reading. And so for me, it is, what do we need to do? And so I go to experts, we go to reading specialists, we have psychologists that are specialized in dyslexia and dysgraphia,

and say, what type of an intensive program do we need for this child? And how do we get them caught up and then there are a variety of ways we can take that to schools in some places i you just have a group of teachers who they've never heard of you know believe it or not i have teachers who have never heard of heard of wharton gillingham which is one of the most well-known dyslexia modalities there are there are um so in situations like that i'll say here are the private providers that can do it. We want the school to pay for it. And you can either put this program into your school for many other children and include this child, or we want you to pay privately for it.

And interestingly, a lot of times they would prefer to pay privately for it than really update the system because they're looking. It's such a bummer. It is such a bummer. I mean, I think that should be one of the screenings and like preschool screenings. Well, they have a screening for dyslexia, right? Well, here's the thing. The law actually requires in every state that they already do this. So here's there's yes. So that remember what I said initially about, um, the laws are only enforced by the parents. I mean it, you are a private attorney general as a parent. If you have a child in the public school system and a lot of people aren't sure really what the attorney general does. So I'll just say you're the equivalent of a prosecutor, right? You can choose to go after them if you find a violation or you can choose not to, but the law is not going to be enforced otherwise. And that doesn't mean that schools are filled with bad people who want to violate things left and right, but there's no financial incentive for them to do so. These cases,

if a parent brings what's called an educational due process to get their child a reading program, have changes in their IEP, all these other things, those actions have no monetary damages associated with them, none at all. So to put that in other terms, there's going to be no penalty for a school that hasn't provided this programming. Although worst case scenario, someone like me comes along and there are probably only a few hundred of us in the US who actually focus in this area full time.

somebody comes along and says you've got to pay for this program most of the time right if parents can afford it they're gonna do it on their own I think they just are and if they if they you know can choose if their child's disabilities are really minor and they can afford it they're gonna go to private schools so basically this leaves this group of parents who you know they could be living in an area where they don't have great tutors or their tutors are going to be other high school kids there are no private schools there are parents who can't afford to do this and what what I often find and the thing I think most of us have to get away from in life and it's really hard it's hard for me too is this fear that if they take action someone's not gonna like them I mean I have heard that from probably 90% of my clients that they waited for years and years because they thought the school would be angry at them and I thought you were willing to condemn your child to a life of not being able to read because you thought someone who you would not see again after last year isn't gonna like you but I've heard it so many times and there is this fear right of challenging you know and it's it's interesting to me how someone will come and paint our house and they won't do a good job and we are not afraid to speak up right to say you know I hired you to paint my whole house you've missed to all these areas. We will be vocal. We want this done. This is our contract. Okay. When it's

people's children, there is something, whether it's our mama bear comes out, but the problem is our mama bear doesn't really come out. And when it does, it's usually we're fully enraged because it's been this whole long list, right? Whether it's spoken or unspoken. But that is the thing that I try to encourage parents to do enough. You've got to look at school as a service provider and if something is not going well in the services that you're basically contracting for you need to speak up you need to be very vocal and if it's not working you need to get help and because there are so few attorneys again that's why I started you know here's how you can help yourself here's how you can file state complaints here is what a parent advocate can do here's how you file even an educational due process on your own because there are states out there where there are no attorneys who focus in this area. And so parents really can feel alone, but that's why they need to connect to each other and see this isn't that scary, right?

Asking for what you need should be something that is in all of us, not being so fearful that we're not going to be liked, that we would actually allow it to work to the most vulnerable of our, you know, of our discussion, the child, their detriment. That is a really good point. And you are spot on with that. I know that from personal experience, but also some of my clients where you just feel like you'll do anything you can at home. Yes. Just to not cause an additional problem for your child at school. You don't want them to be singled out. You don't want them to be, you want them to be singled out when it comes to their accommodations, right? And they're learning, You want them to be paid attention to, but you also don't want to be that parent, you know, and be tagged.

What are, aside from the learning different abilities, that sort of thing, there's also behavior, emotional and behavioral kinds of needs that kids have. And, you know, the bullying and whether it's the bully or the victim, right? There's different rights and different things we focus on for all of the kids. Talk about some of those situations that you can be helpful.

So I'll break that down in a couple different areas. So special education isn't what it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. So when we talk about behavior and behavioral needs, so a child can be qualified for special education if they have academic or functional needs. So if you have a child who is academically, you know, they're actually really doing well, but they have social needs, they have behavioral needs.

Maybe they're a child who has high functioning Asperger's and they're going to really need a lot of social supports. They're going to need counseling at school. They're going to need practice at how to initiate conversations, how to deal with bullying. That's something that can actually be offered by your school.

They can be qualified. It's not going to affect anything about going to college, anything along those lines. And it just provides that additional support. So that's something for parents to know who are struggling with a child who may have an emotional disability of some type, whether it's anxiety, depression, a bipolar condition, or again, some of the other things where we're only seeing it in relation to behavior and ability to socialize.

So let's take that when we're applying it to general education students. So that would be anybody who doesn't necessarily have a disability. Although, you know, in life, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I mean, frankly, we do.

It's just where we need those extra supports. So if we have a child in general education who's basically experiencing bullying and harassment, the first thing that I always think about is in our workplace, that wouldn't be tolerated. If I'm walking down the hall and I get shoved into somebody's door, right, on a routine basis, somebody in my office would immediately take action and say, we're not doing that. That is, that's prohibited. So when we look at that in schools, we have to have that same understanding of assault, battery, intimidation, harassment shouldn't be tolerated. But how we deal with it in a school is different because we're talking about a child, right? And it's another child who's being bullied. Often bullies are kids who are going to have their own emotional disabilities and own challenges. I am not in favor. I don't think I've had a case where I've really been in favor of expulsion. If a child is too dangerous and too aggressive to be in a public school,

they need to be in a therapeutic day placement, an alternative placement, or in some cases, even a residential placement when we have real severe mental health issues. Sending a child home and saying, you're harassing other kids, you're being mean to them, so go have a week off, vacation, doesn't fix it at all. Usually, if a parent has a child who's being bullied, they need to go immediately to school staff and ask it to stop. And school staff need to be sitting down with that child who's the bully and saying, we're going to help you. Let's talk through this, you're going to have a lot of supervision over the next few weeks until we get this nipped in the bud. But there are a lot of responsibilities schools have there. So that's an area where parents should say, you know, this shouldn't be tolerated and you need to take action.

Do you think it's the fact that there's so much more of this going on? And I think even maybe basic rights of teachers aren't allowed anymore. Like a lot of times teachers can't do what they would normally do to make sure that there is discipline in the classroom, because you've got one kid that's saying, my family's going to sue you. If you hold me accountable to this, you've got maybe another student who's just, just doesn't care and about consequences and they just do it anyway. And then the administration doesn't see it or, you know, they're, they're putting in all the traditional maybe techniques and things behaviorally. And those traditional techniques aren't working for that child. And so like, is it that our teachers' hands are tied in a lot of cases? It's not that our teachers' hands are tied. I can tell you that for sure. So let's say,

and I think that it's that our teachers aren't being given the supports, the resources, and frankly, the salaries that they need. So that's my thought, right? I think teachers are underappreciated and underpaid, and they're not being trained. They don't know their rights. They don't know the rights of their students. And when I say know the rights of the students, a child who a teacher says, you need to sit down right now, and who responds with, my parents are going to sue you, you can't sue a teacher for that. I mean, let them try.

That child is reacting in a way that they're hoping to intimidate that teacher for whatever reasons, right? But well-trained teachers then are going to have the supports in the classroom to immediately note that child's name. Is this child, are they starting to get intimidating every time that it's going to be English because they're going to get sent to the principal's office or they can't do it, right? Behavior is communication with kids, right? Whether it's a, they're trying to avoid a task, they're tired, they have low blood sugar, whatever it is, most of us, right? And not to say that there aren't kids out there with personality disorders or all sorts of things but most of us again coming back to want to be liked want to get along don't want to make life hard on ourselves right threatening a teacher at school and getting sent to the principal's office constantly isn't a happy experience so most teachers don't realize you have a kid who's you know being awful every single day why don't we track down what why they're being awful. I mean, I've had cases where I had a client who every afternoon they had a behavioral episode, almost every single afternoon. And it turns out that they were beginning to get,

they ended up being a type one diabetic where the blood sugar was dropping in the afternoon and they were just getting really ornery, jittery, angry, right? We could have said, there's a problem with our system. You know, kids don't act like they used to, but the fact is we've got a ton more sugar out there we're seeing also many more children with type 1 and type 2 diabetes especially type 2 we also have a different structure let's just be honest we have a different structure in schools now we have a lot of teachers again are complete you know they didn't back in the 50s and 60s they didn't have rooms with 30 40 60 students kids weren't changing all day long if you're a teacher and you're teaching for seven periods and you got 50 students, you're seeing so many students, you're just burnt out. And so we've really changed the structure of education without looking at what science has taught us about human behavior. I mean, our education system,

I mean, any of us looking at it would from the outside would say, I could totally see why a kid wouldn't learn in this. And I don't think either you or I would want at this, even this point in our lives where we've got a lot of self-control, we've got a lot of, you know, ability to handle complex tasks. If I told you, you and I, Jackie, are going to go in and we're going to go through a classroom every 45 minutes all day long with bells and crowded hallways and books. And when we finally finish this overwhelming experience, we're going to go home and have to work on algebra two and maybe calculus for three hours, we wouldn't be in the best mood either.

And so we look at what our kids are doing and there's a reason we have problems. What's shocking to me is that we've known this for 20, 25 years now and we haven't fixed it. Yeah, that's a really good point. That is a really good point. And I think also in a lot of cases, the breakdown of the family system, we have a lot, our dynamics, family dynamics are so different than they were But again, our education system and structure and schedule has not changed. That is a very, very good point. So what situations would you say are, like, when does a parent need to consider getting an attorney?

So it, first of all, it needs to be, if they have it, if they have a child that they believe have, have disabilities, whether those disabilities have been diagnosed or not, right. But they're seeing that child struggling academically and functionally. The first thing I think they need to seek is an outside, what we call psychoeducational evaluation. And that's a full scale evaluation of their child with somebody that they trust, not someone whose name has been given to them necessarily by the school when a parent asks a school to do it they actually have to and and i'll i want to jump back to that testing thing you said about the screening so under that individuals with disabilities education act known as idea there's something called child find schools have to locate and evaluate any child they suspect or have reason to suspect has a disability Okay, so a parent can say I don't want my child to have an evaluation and that's fine, but schools already have this affirmative duty, and that actually includes children in private schools.

So if the school has not taken action and you're looking at your child's failing grades for years, you can do one of two things. One, ask the school to evaluate your child. Or if you have insurance that will cover it or you're happy to pay for it, go and get an independent evaluation even on your own. Look at that.

If you're in a state that has a lot of education attorneys, just schedule a consultation and go in and talk to them. Most education attorneys, I mean, we're the, we're the equivalent of like civil rights attorneys. We're not going to be in the, you know, high office building with the fancy office where you will sit there for 30 minutes and then you'll get this outlandish rate. Most education attorneys are there because they love children.

They've either been through the experience themselves. They have a child with disabilities or they got into this because it became a labor of love. So that's the other thing. don't be afraid of just seeking somebody out. And, you know, another thing that they can do is seek out in their state what are called parent advocates. And parent advocates are parents who have gone through the process and may be able to provide you some guidance as well. And I say that because it's sort of like, it doesn't mean you have to hire someone, it doesn't mean that you have to take action, but sometimes, again, beginning to learn your rights is going to be the first step in knowing what you should do. And it's sometimes it's a very worthwhile investment for parents. Now, you and I talked before, there are many states where unfortunately there's nobody who actually does this. I mean, there are states where there are no attorneys. And again, that's one of those things where they should just start researching online, start to try and understand idea, call their state department of education and ask for input. You're really, as a parent,

going to have to be very, very proactive because again, unfortunately, the school's not going to advise you on the law, right? And most of the teachers, again, they're not taught it either. You know, there are teachers who they've been developing IEPs for years and, you know, they don't know necessarily what related services can include for a child. They don't understand, for instance, a child who has an FM system, how that's supposed to be used in their school building. So an FM system is actually for children who have hearing issues or some hearing loss.

And I will have schools where the child really has needed one for years. Schools never put it in place because hearing aids will sometimes only do so much, especially if you're in a noisy classroom, even with that preferential seating. So an FM system is actually a teacher wears a little box around her neck. The child actually is able to connect and they can hear the teacher's voice directly, even in a loud classroom. So there are all sorts of things available to children that schools actually have to provide and pay for. And parents just, they need to undertake on their own to learn and ask. So, you know, whether or not they can find an attorney or a parent advocate, it really is, it is about just seeking out that knowledge and you shouldn't have to, right? It should be provided. But unfortunately, I feel like there are many things in life that we just have to learn how to do because unfortunately the world just doesn't necessarily give it to us otherwise. I think parents get to, there's just too much, right? And they don't know where to start and they don't want to sound like they don't know what they're talking about. And they don't. So find a parent advocate, reach, you know, look for somebody that can support you,

that can be there by your side. And then if it gets to a point where you've been trying to work with the school and they're still not accommodating and your child is still failing in their grades, then maybe it's time to seek out an attorney. Yes. And the other thing is if you've got a good case, right, let's say a parent comes to me and a child is in 11th grade, yet they're at a second grade reading level. They haven't been made eligible. IDEA has something in it called a prevailing party statute, which means, and this is in their state law as well, is that if a parent brings an action and the school either, you know, through settlement or a parent goes through hearing, the school has to pay their attorney's fees. So, and a lot of the education attorneys will have a multi-state practice. So they're really only picking cases that if they file,

they're pretty sure they're going to actually make it through successfully for the family. So that's something important for families to know, because there's a lot of fear of how much will this cost me? And again, that's the next hurdle to overcome because in many families, cases, it may not cost them anything. In others, in others cases, it does, it certainly doesn't cost all that they think it will. And then you also get those parents who were like, I wish I had had this 10 years ago, because I've spent thousands upon thousands in tutoring that now I realize I didn't have to. We've been told that, you know, your child needs to advocate for themselves and they want your child to do more, you know, work than the parent does. And I'm finding that that's actually sort of a way that they can get the parents off their back.

Exactly. That's, that's exactly what that is. And it is, I mean, frankly, it's one of those things where I really don't like when schools, private or public, turn and do that on the child, because that child is already struggling. And, you know, we just talked about, I mean, school is really tough now. I mean, you and I, I spent a few days, you know, at a school, like I, one of my school clients, I was actually supposed to, we were talking about what are we going to change within the school day to create a lower stress environment? What are we going to actually do to sort of make sure that we have times built in for children with special needs to have some downtime?

And I went in and just spending three days observing. I was like, I felt like I had been in an airport for three days. And, you know, that's, you know, I will tell you that even in these school shooting cases that I've handled, I mean, those places are like pressure cookers. And when we even look at the amount of homework that students have compared to 30 years ago, it's skyrocketed. The stress level, the noise in schools, it's really different. I mean, if you can even get that visual feel of the 60s classroom, right? I mean, they didn't have smartphones, number one, right? Television was different. So we have all these other you know, lower stress level environments. And then you just have more of a calmness in the classroom. You know, there was five, 10 minutes of homework each day. I mean, our scores were higher than they are now in most areas. So I mean, to me, that has been really fascinating when we look at that, because the brain can only hold so much at any given time. And that's a good point, too. And there's lots of variables, right? We're not going to solve it all in one day. There's lots of things Like, again, the family system is so much different.

Kids were going home. Yes. The primarily two parent homes. They were getting outdoor time.

It was, yes. Yeah. Not that two parent homes are always better. I'm just saying that it, you know, that the family dynamics were a lot different than they are today.

So there's lots of compounding things. And again, I do feel for the teachers, but really it is oftentimes, I think the administration. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

And I think many teachers would agree too. They need more supports, like you said, higher pay, all those things. But also that the administration needs to do more. And I think this is the other thing that I'm seeing and finding with a lot of my clients too, especially the parents of teenagers, kids are seeing through all, for lack of a better word, the BS, the facade of how great the school is, how much we offer.

Look at all the bells and whistles and things that we can provide your student, but their actual day in and day out messaging that they're hearing is inconsistent. And the kids are seeing through that. And so as a parent, it can be really tricky to navigate that, right. To try to be telling your kid, you know, encouraging your kid to go to school and to do their best and to, you know, all these things.

And they're like, this is just kind of a facade. Yeah. And they see through that, you know, and, and, and teachers or administration aren't practicing what they preach. And I think that's really hard on kids.

It makes me wonder if we're going to, you know, end up seeing more online schools pop up. I know that's becoming a lot more popular. And I'm actually, you know, when they first started prior to COVID, I think they struggled a lot, especially the online charter schools, the online private schools. COVID really changed that.

And the software systems they're using are really good. I have seen a lot of kids very, very happy with it. And even how some of them are structured and certainly they're all different depending on what state you're in. But I've seen some that are structured in a very succinct way.

Like, for instance, one I love, you do the homework first. Like, they actually have a homework hour. You can have your camera on or off, but you're supposed to be doing the homework. Then you come together in the class and you go over it.

Does anybody have questions? Then you turn it in after that class. So you can actually work through everything. You're learning.

You're doing. um I you know I've seen others that have the video before and then you do the homework in the class only I I mean the dynamic that they've been able to offer is phenomenal yeah it'll be interesting to see where this all goes in the next 10 years or so yeah well I just want to thank you so much Catherine for being here I think we're going to have more conversations about this uh we've made a connection and I don't foresee foresee this being the last time that we connect I just I really appreciate your time and your expertise well thank you so much for having me. It was, this has been a great conversation. 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.