Roy Salmond – We’ve had a wonderful first season of guests, whose experience knowledge and wisdom offered a wide range of ideas on living life together as parents and as friends. 

Rachel Cram – And in communities. And those conversations have shaped us as well, we carry the words of our guests with us into our own families and friendships. 

Roy Salmond – And we’re so thankful for the wisdom that they offer. This episode is a sampling of our deliciously flavored conversations from our first season, 2020.  

Rachel Cram – Quite the year, as we all know. 

Roy Salmond – Yes! With 30 episodes of guests sharing stories, ideas and understandings that explore all the ways that we are family to each other. 

Quotes from first season of family360 

Muriel Endersby – A child’s attitude to reading is of such importance that more often than not it determines his academic fate. Moreover, his experience in learning to read may decide how he feels about learning in general and even himself as an individual. 

Dr. Malcolm Guite –  Parents should see the gift of children as the opportunity to learn from their children to live again in the present and that actually, kids are sent to you, not so you can visit your ambitions upon them, but so that they can undermine and subvert your crummy ambitions and get you to spend less time at the office and more time fishing or holding hands. 

Rachel Cram – And that’s about being in the present isn’t it. 

Dr. Malcolm Guite – It’s about being in the present.  

Ann Douglas – Parenting is ultimately about empathy. It’s hard to be a parent and it’s hard to be a kid.  If we can recognize that, then we see it’s a shared struggle and a shared opportunity. 

Roy Salmond – So welcome to our Season 1 wrap up… 

Rachel Cram – of family 360! 

Roy Salmond – We are dividing the episode into four broad themes that we’ve seen emerge over this first season. The first were calling, The Science of Family. 

Rachel Cram – Let’s define that, the science of family. 

Roy Salmond – Right. Well, many of our guests discuss discoveries around how we ‘wire and fire’ as people. 

Rachel Cram – And that wiring and firing begins long before we’re born. 

Roy Salmond – Which was fascinating. 

Rachel Cram –  Were beginning with counselor and teacher Gila Golub. Gila says, “We all look at the world through the lens of our family systems and that perception shapes our life and our perception of everything.” 

Roy Salmond – In her episode, Life Through The Lens Of Lineage, she comments on scientific findings around multigenerational trauma. We’re jumping in just after Gila describes her mother’s childhood struggles with violence and abandonment in wartime Latvia, and how those struggles remain too biologically and neurologically influence Gila and her siblings.  

Excerpt from Gila Golub’s episode #21  

Rachel Cram – When your mom was going through those struggles in her early years, you were inside of her already.  

Gila Golub – That is correct. 

Rachel Cram – That’s fascinating because that’s true of all of us.  Can you just talk about that a little bit. What do we know about that now? 

Gila Golub – Well the famous study was done at the University Atlanta where they had mice smell cherry blossoms while they were giving them electric shock.  And then they bred the mice for three more generations and then those grand-mice-puppies were given cherry blossoms to smell and they went into an electric shock response. We now know that we pass on trauma through the mitochondrial DNA, so whatever trauma has happened in our family system eventually gets passed on. We are all the product of our family system for many generations. Everyone’s family of origin affects the people that they are today. There’s research going on all over the world.  

Rachel Cram – It’s fascinating. 

Gila Golub – It really is. 

Roy Salmond – Ted Levitt is a family therapist and ADHD specialist. His episode was shared by so many of our listeners, which perhaps confirms the title of his episode, ADHD: Now Playing In A Person Near You.  

Rachel Cram – In the second of his two part episode, Ted talks about ‘learned helplessness’ as a common outlook for people struggling with ADHD or other mental health challenges. In this clip he describes scientific research that demonstrates how we learn helplessness; how our brains become wired for failure when the challenges of living press in without enough breaks for success. 

Excerpt from Ted Leavitt’s episode #26 

Ted Leavitt – So learned helplessness was first studied with a rat. They put him in a container of water. He swims around the outside looking for an exit but there is no exit. So they eventually just stopped swimming and float to conserve their energy.  Survival behavior. 

So after a few trials of that you take the rat and you put him in a container that does have an exit and they don’t even look for the exit. They just float right away because the brain has learned, “In these situations you can’t get out. So don’t try. Conserve your energy. And so then, what was an adaptive response becomes a maladaptive response. Now it’s not helping you. And so in humans what that looks like is, “I try to succeed and I don’t. I try, I don’t. I try, I don’t. You know what? Why try? Why would I try?  

Rachel Cram -You start floating. 

Ted Leavitt –  Right. You just start floating.  On a purely survival level part of your brain, it is an adaptive strategy. ‘Why would I waste precious energy pursuing something that can never be attained, when I can conserve that energy for other things that are attainable?’ The problem is it’s built on a false premise, which is that failure is inevitable, when really it’s just possible and in some cases it might be likely but it’s not inevitable.  

So the brain then overgeneralizes, which is what everyone’s brain does. That’s what they’re built for, jumping to conclusions and overgeneralizing to simplify the decision making process. 

But for the people on the outside looking in, they’re like, “Why wouldn’t you even try it?  It doesn’t make any sense. You like swimming, why wouldn’t you want to go to swimming lessons or be on the swim team?”   

“Because,” that person’s brain is saying, “well, everyone thinks I’m good at it but when I got in there I wouldn’t do well and then I’d be embarrassed. So why would I go?  I’m just signing up for embarrassment classes?  I don’t want to do that.  

Roy Salmond – Dr. Vanessa Lapointe was one of our very first guests on family360. And Vanessa used the terms, “Dandelion Child” and “Orchid Child” to describe how children neurologically present themselves to the world. 

Rachel Cram – Dandelion children thrive in almost every environment. Orchid Children require more sensitive care, yet with the right amount of water and light they thrive and are beautiful. 

Roy Salmond – Dr. Vanessa knows Dandelion and Orchid children from her decades of research but also through parenting her own children. Here she is, talking about parenting her two sons and how she responds to each differently knowing that they are wired differently. 

Excerpt from Dr. Vanessa Lapointe’s episode #2 

Rachel Cram – So you began by talking about Dandelion Kids and Orchid Kids and again, I’m thinking there are other flowers in between. But when you look at those extremes, does that make a difference for how you step into those situations where there is upset. 

Dr. Vanessa Lapointe – Yes it does because you really need to be attuned to who that individual child is. And so I have two boys at home who are now aged 15 and almost 12 years and one of them happens to be what I would call an Orchid Child and the other happens to be a Dandelion Child.  

And so my oldest son came into the world and everything’s always been a little bit easy for him. 

He just carries on. He starts school and it’s fine. He makes friends really easily. He can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. He just really fusted and bothered about a lot of things. My younger son came into the world and you could tell right away that everything just kind of got him. He was the 3 year old that used to hide behind my legs and growl at people that dared to try and say hello to him because he was just so intense and so sensitive.  And he took a lot longer than his older brother to start to manifest on the outside, in a way that I could really see that there was evidence that his brain was coming along as it needed to, that all happened slower for him.  And it wasn’t that he was delayed or behind but rather that because he’s so intense and sensitive, he just needed to grow a brain that was that much more powerful in terms of regulating itself than his brother, before we would start to see on the outside that he was able to hang onto his emotions.  

Rachel Cram – So how did you respond to that as a parent?  

Dr. Vanessa Lapointe – So as a parent, what that meant for me is that I had to sort of… I’m always pumping my fist in the air and saying, “You’ve got to keep the faith!” because it’s like that iceberg analogy. There’s all this incredible growth happening beneath the surface for that Orchid Kid that you’re maybe not going to see evidence of on the outside for years to come. But to know that by staying the course, by being attuned, by really seeing and hearing who your child is, you are gifting them the eventual reality of being able to be a really independent, really regulated, really incredible human being. 

Rachel Cram – Over the last two decades discoveries of our nervous system and brain,  

Roy Salmond – Neuroscience  

Rachel Cram – as it’s called, yes, that’s revealed the interconnectedness of our minds and our bodies and our souls. How we move forth and life is influenced by the neurological wiring woven from generations past. Our “nature” as it’s often referred to. 

Roy Salmond – However, we are also shaped by the knowledge of our experiences we acquire through our interactions with others and with the world around us, which is usually described as “nurture” in the well-known nature/nurture debates. 

Rachel Cram – And of course, who we are and who our children become is impacted by both of those. 

Roy Salmond – And that leads to the second theme we’ve seen emerge from our guests during this first season of family360. The philosophy of family. 

Rachel Cram – Author and publisher Lucy Shaw, speaks from a lifetime of experience and learning. Her 2005 book, The Crime Of Living Cautiously, is not only a great title but also a great description for how Lucy lives life. 

Roy Salmond – Absolutely! She’s so vibrant. Now in her 90s, Lucy continues to write and speak both as a poet and prose author. We interviewed her from her home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest of Washington State. We are stepping into her interview just after she shared a story about a man who spent his life cautiously invested in certainty of safety, rather than the adventures of creativity and risk. 

Excerpt from Luci Shaw’s episode #11 

Rachel Cram – I feel in your books, in your writings, you’re not really big on ‘safe’. 

Luci Shaw – I’m not good on ‘safe’. Yeah.  

Rachel Cram – What’s the problem with ‘safe’?  

Luci Shaw – It’s it’s so…what’s the problem with ‘safe’? It doesn’t go anywhere. It’s dull and it’s dead. At least it leads to death. Of course we want our kids to be safe but we don’t want to hem them in to such a degree that they never want to reach out and have an adventure or try something new or  

Rachel Cram – Define “hemmed in” Lucy. What do you mean by that? 

Luci Shaw – Well if you lived like a horse in a meadow, a nice meadow but it’s got fences all around it. It can’t get out. And yet there’s that amazing world of hills and valleys that the horse wants to enjoy. And I think that’s true for human beings. We hem them in so much that theres such fear of moving out of that and experimentation and adventure, that our lives just become stilted and stale. 

Rachel Cram -So how do you move against that? How do you get up in the morning and choose to live life differently? For you Lucy Shaw. What do you do? 

Luci Shaw – I don’t know. What do I do? It just happens so automatically that I don’t even have to think about that but it’s it’s opening up my mind to culture, to spirituality, to the wide world that’s available to us as human beings. That’s an essential part of the human being is to have this capacity to move beyond ourselves. Yeah.  

Rachel Cram – Move beyond ourselves. Can you say a little bit more about that? 

Luci Shaw – I think it takes courage to be a human being. It would be easy to protect yourself, guard yourself, surround yourself with safe things but that’s a very dry and uninteresting way to live. You have to take risks. I think you have to allow your kids to take risks, otherwise they’re never going to experience the excitement of taking your risk and having it work out to be something wonderful. 

Rachel Cram – Steve Bell is a Juno Award winning artist and social justice activist. Childhood suffering and loss brought him a uniquely described wisdom on intimacy and relational connection. 

Roy Salmond – In our conversation, he began talking about how being oriented to others, and to the needs of others, actually defines us; defines who we are. Here’s an eloquent part of what he had to say. 

Excerpt from Steve Bell’s episode #4 

Steve Bell – Well, it’s really interesting. When I’m lying on my deathbed, if I get to have a chance to really think about my life and I start thinking about the things that I love the most about Steve Bell, every single thing that I adore about me is a gift from someone else.  

Rachel Cram – Can you give some examples.  

Steve Bell – I’m a son. I couldn’t be a son without a mom and dad, right? That’s a gift. It’s impossible. I’m constituted “son” by my parents. I’m constituted friend by my friends. I’m constituted spouse by my wife. I’m constituted father by my kids. I’m constituted grandfather by my grandkids. Everything that I actually love about me, about my life, that I appreciate, none of it resides in me. It’s all a gift from someone else. And so this whole idea really comes down to then; the good life is the life of mutual constituting. It’s not my job to create Steve Bell. It’s my job to ‘friend you,’ to ‘spouse you,’ to ‘mother you,’ to ‘son you,’ whatever it is that makes you who you are but requires me for that to be true. And when you think about it, most things you love I bet about yourself are a gift from someone else. 

Roy Salmond – Figuring out who we are and how we fit in is a complex and ongoing process. Family therapist David Lloyd roots his process in relationships and the necessity of adaptation as we grow and develop from infants to children and then on into adulthood. 

Rachel Cram – In his episode titled, It’s Never Too Late To Have A Great Childhood,  

Roy Salmond – Great title! 

Rachel Cram – It was! David talks about Alpha Parenting saying, “Kids can lean into you and feel at rest in your relationship when you’re in charge.” And by incharge he means guiding with both firmness and compassion. 

Roy Salmond – In this excerpt from his interview, David describes how a parents understanding of their child’s development directs how they intervene when that child comes into conflict with another child. 

Excerpt from David Loyst’s episode #19 

David Loyst – So I’m at the community center, the drop in program, and if you watch you mostly see parents very close to their 2 year old, because of my 2 year olds walking towards that red car and your 2 year old walking, we know there’s going to be something up.  They can’t negotiate it themselves. They don’t have the language for that. They don’t have the ability to perceive others’ thoughts and feelings about that. So I’m gonna need to mediate. That’s my job. But sometimes I’m distracted. And so my kid bites your kid. So what do I do? I go in.  

Rachel Cram – So, here you come in as an Alpha Parent, and what do you do?  

David Loyst – So I separate the kids. So I’m holding my kid back and I say to the other kid, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching.” I don’t make my kid apologize.  Have you ever seen a 2 year old apology? You make them say sorry but there’s no remorse in there.  

Rachel Cram – No, because they don’t understand what’s happened.  

David Loyst – They don’t understand.  They have no idea. They haven’t developed that yet. Two year olds don’t have that ability. So why would I expect you to behave like a six or seven year old who has impulse control and who has developed integrative thinking, when you do not have the neurological capacity. 

Rachel Cram – So can you keep carrying through that situation? So you say to him, 

David Loyst – The other child, “Sorry. I wasn’t watching. And here you go. This was your car.” 

Now my kid’s flipping out, right? So what do I have for a young child? All we have is adaptation. I can’t actually talk them through that. I can’t reason like, “Look, you’ve got to learn how to share, and if you don’t learn how to share you’re not going to have any friends.”  Like, OK, let’s say you do that. Now you come back to the same playgroup, the same dynamic happens. What happens? They don’t get the car and they chomp on them.  

How did your lecture work? Not very well, because kids don’t have the ability to do that.  

Rachel Cram – At two years old. 

David Loyst – Right. Exactly. So where’s the opportunity? What can you do for your child? Well they’re gonna be really mad and they need to learn this process of self regulation of moving from this feeling of madness to this feeling of sadness and do that over and over and over again. And then you learn to become adaptive. 

Roy Salmond – So, just to recap, in this final of season one,  

Rachel Cram – Finale  

Roy Salmond – In this finale of season one. Thank you Rachel. We’re replaying short excerpts from some of our guest’s episodes. 

Rachel Cram – And we’ve categorized them into four sections of thought; The Science Of Family, The Philosophy Of Family. 

Roy Salmond – And now we’re going to share from some of our guests who spoke into some darker places, with The Heartache Of Family.  

Rachel Cram – We interviewed Dr. Ken Ginsburg, April 2020, several long weeks into lockdowns within the COVID-19 Pandemic. 

Roy Salmond – Schools and businesses across the world had closed and we were all learning the new language of social and physical distancing. 

Rachel Cram – Dr. Ginsburg is an adolescent specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. He says, “If we want our children to experience the world as fully as possible, our goal will have to be resilience; the capacity to rise above difficult circumstances and to move forth with optimism.” 

Roy Salmond – In this episode, Teens In A Time Of COVID, Dr. Ginsburg offers wisdom on supporting children through emotional crises of change, upset and loss.  

Rachel Cram – For example, the chaos of a worldwide pandemic. 

Roy Salmond – Absolutely. He speaks directly to this. And here are some of his wise and timely words. 

Excerpt from Dr. Ken Ginsburg’s episode #14 

Rachel Cram – I think for teens right now, they’re dealing with separation from their friends, their activities, their sports have been canceled. And on top of that there’s a loss of their independence. And I think sometimes as parents we can look at the lists of the things our children are concerned about and we can be tempted to say, “You know, it’s not that bad. There’s people dying,” or, “We’ve all got to just care for one another,” and we can overlook what is really important to them. And you’ve mentioned empathy Ken, and I’m wondering, how do we feel alongside our kids? How do we see things from their perspective? 

Dr. Ken Ginsburg – Rachel, super important question. The first thing is, it is human nature to belittle our own emotions because other people have it worse. And my whole life is about working with the vulnerable.  And the worst thing you can do is to say, that because you know people have it worse, you deny your own emotions. Because, if you belittle your own emotions because other people are suffering at higher levels, then ultimately, you will burn out.  

And one of the best ways of remaining caring and remaining empathetic towards other people is understanding that, yes other people may have it worse but I still have a right to my own emotions. Having empathy for other people is a super important resilience trait. And there is no better way perhaps, to build empathy in our children, then to show that empathy. Now is a moment where we could model this. And when they feel like we’ve understood them and when they understand and can benefit from being understood, they’ve learned that they’re going to want to understand other people.  

Rachel Cram – Ranbir Puar was born into adversity and rejection as the fifth daughter in a family and culture desperate for sons. She was raised first in India and then Canada feeling like a second class citizen in her home.  

Roy Salmond – Through a gentle challenge from a friend when she was a young adult and her own determination to see herself differently, Ranbir found a way to step out of her feelings of shame and abandonment realizing her relationship with others would be difficult until she had a good relationship with herself. 

Excerpt from Ranbir Puar’s episode #20 

Ranbir Puar – I really celebrated being a victim. I think sometimes we forget how comforting that story is and how it fits like a glove. And oh my gosh, I used it to drive me. It was my driving force.  

Rachel Cram – Can you describe how that would have looked?  

Ranbir Puar – Oh yeah. I would sit there and think to myself, “If I don’t do this, then I’m going to be similar to my Mom,” who I love so much, she’s passed away, but my mom didn’t have a life of her own.  

So, I kind of used that as motivation to be not-like-that. But I didn’t naturally switch from being a victim to a victor. I actually met somebody in my 20s who started to challenge my victim mentality. And I would always look at how my past broke me and I would go on and tell about, “How I survived this, I survived that.”  

And he would say, “And so, how did that make you stronger? So he changed the lens on me and I found it very aggravating to be honest because I had to think about how my past built me, not  broke me. And it was very very difficult to let go of my old sad story. And learning to reprogram how I filtered the reality of my life to look for what was right and not what was wrong shifted everything for me. 

Roy Salmond – David Anderson is director of Arocha BC, working with children and families in outdoor pursuits as both therapy and environmental education.  

Rachel Cram – In 2016, David’s family lost her young daughter Thea, to cancer. Their journey of grief continues as they reconcile new forms and nuances of their pain. In our conversation with David, he gently and profoundly shares his difficult processing in the midst of loss. 

Excerpt from David Anderson’s episode #12 

David Anderson – We fear pain right?  Naturally, all of us as humans, we fear pain. I think all of us know the struggle of, “Is the inevitable challenge and the frustration and the pain that’s going to be associated with this challenge, is it going to be worth it?”  

Because we can protect ourselves from pain. We can shut ourselves off from other relationships, from people, from circumstances, from risk. We can shut ourselves off from risk. We can choose not to risk. 

Rachel Cram – Trying to protect her hearts?  

David Anderson – Trying to protect our hearts. And I understand that, particularly for folks whose hearts have been broken, who are or who have experienced great pain. But in our case, losing Thea was obviously, it’s a horror in our lives. It’s hard to find words. It’s like a hole in your life.  

But when I compare all the pain and the suffering that we’ve gone through in our journey with cancer and our loss of Thea, if I compare that to the joy of who she was and the gift of having her in our lives for the 10 years that we had her, it isn’t a comparison. As deep as the hurt is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the joy and the gift of what it was to be a parent to her. And to have the privilege of knowing who she was and her unique presence in the world. The joy so far outshines the pain. Even though the pain is really deep. 

Roy Salmond – We’re drawing to a close with our fourth and final theme synopsis from our first season of family360.  

Rachel Cram – Yeah, there are way more than four themes, but, you know, you can only pack so many into one episode. 

Roy Salmond – That’s right. And we may have even overdone it as it is, but we hope not.  

Rachel –  We haven’t. So, we’ve looked at The Science Of Family, The Philosophy Of Family, The Heartache Of Family. 

Roy Salmond –  And we’re finishing with, The Potential Of Family. 

Rachel Cram – Yeah! Particularly amidst the uncertainty of this last year.  

Roy Salmond – 2020. 

Rachel Cram – We sometimes need to be reminded of our potential as people. 

Roy Salmond – We do. Because if we rely just on the media and the Internet, it can feel like hope is lost for our potential as people.  

Rachel Cram – And it’s not.  

Roy Salmond – No, not at all. As so many of our guests so encouragingly remind us. 

Rachel Cram – Born in Cairo to Armenian parents, Raffi Cavoukian immigrated into Canadian life at the age of 10. 

Roy Salmond – Known simply as Raffi by his millions of fans, Raffi’s spent the last four decades writing and singing songs to elicit fun, joy and respect for the earth, each other and ourselves. He offers his platform as a singer and an author to recognize the importance of childhood as the gateway to our shared humanity. 

Excerpt from Raffi’s episode #9 

Raffi – If you’re curious about the world you got to be curious about other cultures. Why fear them when you can find them interesting? Why not be curious? You could say, “Oh, you do it that way. Oh, those are the foods you love. Can I taste that?”  

Here’s the positive vision. If you think about a 6 month old, in a number of different cultures that child with different colored skin, different facial features, from different ethnicities and regions of the world; it’s the same physiological being. We are essentially the same physiological beings at the start of life. Hello. That’s wonderful.  

Secure in the knowing of how much we have in common, we can then celebrate our differences because they’re interesting. This is the glory of being human and we get to celebrate and enjoy it. 

Roy Salmond – Maggie Dent is one of Australia’s favorite parenting educators and authors. 

Rachel Cram – Her warm and genuine approach gives her an accessible wisdom that’s won her the title, ‘Queen of Common Sense’. 

Roy Salmond – She was filled with stories and laughter and we’re going to drop into her episode titled, The Road To Resilience, as Maggie is about to jump into a story about her own road to resilience as she worked through the childhood challenge of not being able to run fast. 

Excerpt from Maggie Dent’s episode #15 

Maggie Dent – One of the problems around resilience is we have made it seem like we’re supposed to live perfect lives where things don’t go wrong. So when I look at resilience, I think in childhood we need to embrace that adversity can be a powerful teacher. That failing is a wonderful teacher. And one of those stories I do share is that I had such a good dad who identified I can’t run fast.  

Rachel Cram – I love this story. 

Maggie Dent – It is such a good story because he said, “Look, you can’t run fast darling.”  

And I think we need to have conversations with our kids that they’re not good at everything. But he said, “If it feels awful always coming last, why don’t you wave at the crowd.”  

Now that strategy, oh my goodness, it just changed me feeling like a loser to a winner. And sometimes I wave so much I fell over, which was also quite funny. And then I learnt about caring for the person who was also coming last with me, so I often hopped arms with people. But the second side to that, and this is one of the most important concepts of resilience, is my dad had said I always want you to have it go.  

Rachel Cram – Even if you’re not going to win.  

Maggie Dent – Even if you’ve got no chance of winning, like you’ve got none at all. I want you to turn up and have a go. And that really is one of those kind of mindsets that really helps us become resilient later. And also what happens if I fail my spelling test and when I come home and I’m feeling yuck. You know that failure is a moment where I have to go, “On the day, it didn’t go how I planned. I’m not any less worthy than I was the day before or the day after.”  

So we’ve made it a bit wrong, especially with our test driven world, that somehow or another, sometimes our children are feeling that, “If I don’t pass the tests, my parents won’t love me the same.”  

 So the ultimate journey is, we can learn from mistakes, and sometimes they can happen randomly or because we just didn’t put enough effort in, but you are loved exactly the same.  

Roy Salmond – Our last but certainly not least guest,   

Rachel Cram -There’s no “least guest,” we love them all. 

Roy Salmond – Okay, okay Rachel. Yes we do. So our final guest from this episode is Dr Gordon Neufeld. Dr Neufeld is a child psychologist, author and developmental theorist.   

Rachel Cram – In an address to the United Nations during The Year Of The Family, Dr. Neufeld introduced a framework he called The Pyramid Of Potential, which serves as a model for the irreducible needs of a child. 

Roy Salmond – Dr Neufeld is a world leader in attachment theory, an understanding of how the parent child relationship emerges and influences subsequent development.  

Excerpt from Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s episode #6 

Dr. Gordon Neufeld – Potential isn’t something you practice. It’s not something you can teach. You could have three PhDs, go to the best schools in the world and be incredibly immature. Even the best preschool in the world cannot foster maturation. The best university in the world can’t do it. This is home stuff.  

The true personality is homegrown, not school grown. It is what happens at home. And it’s only in home where these basic developmental needs can be met. These attachment needs. That is where a child is meant to feel taken care of.  And so many parents feel, “Well, if I could get my child to the best schools, all the way from Ivy League universities to the best preschool,” and they think that then it’s taken care of, their responsibilities are. It’s what’s happening on the home front that has always been the most important. This leads to the realization of human potential. 

Roy Salmond – A quote you’ve incorporated into quite a few of this season’s interviews Rachel, is one by Mahatma Gandhi where he says, “If we want to reach peace in the world, we must begin with the children.” And I know that is also a motivating factor behind all that you do with Wind and Tide, your company, and your child development community. And it’s also foundational in this podcast. 

Rachel Cram – The quote is brilliant in its simplicity because, ‘to begin with the children,’ requires starting as the adults that raised the children. And Gandhi’s words implore us as adults to raise children towards peace, and that takes mindfulness and wisdom. 

Roy Salmond – So, this podcast, at its heart, is helping nurture adults who in turn nurture children.  

Rachel Cram – Exactly. We want to be good stewards to future generations. 

Roy Salmond – Becoming good ancestors. 

Rachel Cram – Yeah, that’s a great phrase.  

Roy Salmond – That is also at the heart of our guests. Finding a way toward peace for children, families and communities. 

Rachel Cram – Conversations on all the ways we are family to each other. 

Roy Salmond – We need that.  2020 has made that abundantly clear.  

Rachel Cram – Abundantly. 

Roy Salmond – So we hope you will join us for Season 2 of family360. Our first episode will release on Tuesday, January 5th, 202, with mental health specialist, Dr. Sharon Smith. 

Rachel Cram – Yes, a very interesting episode with Sharon as she talks from vast experience on friendship as a key factor in care from mental health. 

Roy Salmond – A really interesting conversation. So please join us for Season 2.