 Hi everyone, my name is Ria Lala and my work and my joy is helping parents create richer deeper connections with their children and building their emotional and building their emotional awareness Deepening it between parents and child. I Wasn't always into parenting I did this for 15 years in the corporate world and I realized that there were a lot of similarities I can translate from that into parenting and I know that not everyone in this group is a parent However, I'd love to leave you with some great hacks that you whether your parents or not can take home today and Start using with your children or with your lover or your friends so when we talk about emotional awareness what we're really talking about is our EQ and There's a variety of different elements to emotional intelligence But I'm going to talk about the three that I think is most relevant to raising children That are aware and connected and and fosters a really strong relationship with their parents. So the first part of that is How self-aware a child is so when we talk about self-awareness, what are we talking about? We're talking about how aware is a child or anybody for that matter About the feelings that they're feeling and why so for example Imagine a child who's doing a cartwheel and another child is observing that child doing the cartwheel But they know they can't do it or they think they can't do it as well and in that moment. They're feeling Maybe some fear maybe some insecurity Maybe some embarrassment and so they just walk away and they go. No, I don't want to do it How aware is that child to know that that's what they're feeling in that moment and why that's occurring? the next part is how How able somebody is to regulate their ability to self-regulate so once they can are aware that they're feeling this feeling can they can they manage to Process that emotion in a way that doesn't hijack them So they're not in an emotional flood where they're crying or they're upset or they're not an emotional drought or desert Where they're tuning out or they're cold or they're distant or they've just shut down and the next part of that is perspective-taking which is so Important for parenting and when I talk about perspective-taking is how well can a child or anybody for that matter? Climb into somebody else's mind and look around and imagine what it's like what their perception is of the world and try And understand why they think and do the things they do so That's what Dan Siegel calls mind sight or and that's where empathy comes from how a child learns empathy the ability to climb in Okay, so what's the real-world? application of this and how does this foster Connections between children and I'm gonna give you three examples that have happened real-world examples that have happened as I've worked With parents just in the last couple weeks. So I want you to imagine a Child in fact two children and the mother decides to give each child a cookie And so first child looks at his cookie second child looks at his cookie then looks over at his brother and says He got a bigger cookie than I did and in that moment That brother starts to feel frustrated and Angry and all of a sudden he decides he's gonna pinch his brother just to feel better about the situation So he pinches them the grown-up version would be maybe somebody feeling It's shouting out mean words or saying something a little bit nasty to Because somebody else got an opportunity that they didn't or maybe they shut down and they're not as friendly or giving of information Because they didn't get something so in that moment the mother who would be observing the son who pinched the other brother She says to him. Why would you pinch your brother and that's not very nice And you know, we really shouldn't pinch in this world and then all of a sudden that brother who pinched feels shame and feels blamed and Upset and the whole thing escalates from there When really if that child had the ability what he would have said is mom I'm feeling really scared inside. I Actually feel that you might love my brother more than me and that makes me feel insecure And I know that couldn't be true But right now that's how I feel because he got the bigger cookie and then what would happen The mother would get down to his eye level and say She would connect and the way she would connect is by a bunch of in a variety of ways One is by nonverbal cues because 80% of our communication is Done nonverbally so she would get down to his eye level and she'd look at him And she'd make sure her body language was open and accepting she touches hand She'd look in his eyes. She's saying a tone that was soft and gauging. I'm so sorry that that's what your perception was I'm so sorry that you feel that way Tell me more about what's going on for you I'd love to know and all of a sudden that child would have an opening where he could discuss everything that was happening Without feeling any fear But if it's a child had the language to do so that's what would ideally happen. I'm gonna give you another scenario A little while ago. I was I was coaching a woman and she said to me that her daughter is always clinging to her and and The mother told me that I don't think there's any amount of love that I can pour into my child that would make that would satiate her and Then and the grown-up version would be pretty much the same or you have a partner Maybe your friend or somebody that's just extra clingy and you kind of feel like you know that you want to kind of keep them away But if the child had the language They would be able and the and the parent had used some really good questioning And again got down to their eye level and became curious put on their curious detective hat The child would have said I Kind of feel like you don't want to spend time with me because you seem really busy There's like a lot going on I just want you to spend some time playing dolls and then I'd feel like you really want me here But you just I don't think this is interesting or important to you And then the mother could do everything she could do to heal that situation Right and again looking at her non-vibracuse looking at the language that she's using where she's curious and inviting In my last scenario I want you to imagine a child that's in a tantrum and they're upset and they're angry and they're stomping around and The mother sees all this reaction and decides to put the child into time out So the child I don't know. I don't know if you've if you know what happens to monkeys But if you take a group of monkeys and one young monkeys acting up and you separate the monkey from the group That monkey goes insane So here we have a child who for whatever reason maybe it's because they observed the kid doing a cartwheel better than they did And they just felt upset because their sadness and their fear and then security their secondary emotion was anger Because there's always sadness and fear Under anger we have to look at what the primary emotion is So that mother would have probably brought that child close and got looked into his eyes and said hey Tell me what's going on for you right now. I'm so curious. I really want to know I really want to understand what made you what made you scream and yell and instead of putting the child in time out They actually give him a time in where everything's soft and gentle and inviting What's the similarities between all these situations? There's always a conversation that's happening under the conversation and if we look in all those scenarios if There was self-awareness So the child and the parent was able to understand what each one of them was feeling at any given moments And why if there was self-regulation so that the mother when she sees her child champ tantrumming Doesn't go into her own tantrum or her own anger and is able to soothe her nervous system so that she can soothe her child's nervous system if The mother is and this child is able to take perspectives if the mother's really able to climb inside their child's mind to see What's going on for them? One thing that I find very helpful is to imagine that everything your children do That there is a kernel of truth in it that everything your children do that is what you might consider suboptimal that there's that they're That there's something that you're trying to gain from gauge from you and Something there for you to understand So one hack that I think is very effective for parents is you know, whenever you see somebody that's angry like a child to Always lead with your right brain to your right brain Which is your emotional side the soothing where you look at all your Nonverbal cues and you get down to their eye level and it's only when you see that your child's system has been soothed and they're calm Then you read lead with logic and this applies for grown-ups as well too often We just go into some logical explanation as to how somebody should have handled something or what somebody should have done And when really what people want to have is just to be heard They just want to have their rent. They just want to you know, say whatever on their mind right or wrong Sue them and then lead with logic and then you'll find that you can calm situations down much more quicker One question that I have found extremely useful for children is And I've been asking my son this and daughter this since they were about you know, three and a half four is How can mummy love you better? How can mummy understand you better and the reason why I find it so useful is because it employs all of this the three skills of eq at large so Because you really have to brace your heart for what your children will tell you when you ask that question And I really believe that how much your child tells you is a function of how comfortable and safe that they feel So when I asked my son when he was around for the first thing he said it was well I really feel that you should respect when I don't want to wear the jacket and I wish he would hug me more and Here I am thinking what I practically want to eat this child and his perception is that he doesn't get enough hugs And at that moment it was really painful to my heart and I'm thinking I Want to showcase to him where I've hugged him in the past I want to showcase how much time he's been playing but in that moment I have to use my own self-regulation and get down to his eye level and and and become curious and Ask questions understand how he wants to be loved My daughter the other day when I asked her this question. She said to me mummy I feel like sometimes when you kiss me You hurt my face could you push too hard and sometimes I just don't want you to touch me and at that moment I have to accept that as her truth So the way I do that is I ask her now I become very curious to get to the granularity of how she wants to be loved So can you just explain to me so when I hug you do you like the big bear hugs? Would you like the you know the soft little hugs wafty? She was no no no I like when I asked you to hug me. I said okay, and it made a footnote So if I invite you all to ask that if you have children ask your children that question If you have a friend or a lover because it's very very seldom as friends I mean can you imagine how many friends come up to you and say hey, you know what? I'm really working on myself I really have some issues and I'm trying to figure out how I can Circum them and can you teach me like give them an open invitation? Can you teach me how I can be a better friend or how I can be a better lover or how I can be a better parent? Because then it's safe you've opened the door for them and you're let and now they have the ability to tell you anything And then when they tell you what they tell you you need to use your own self regulation to be able to handle that That takes a lot of courage to ask that question, but it's a great question But that's not even the best part of it After you've asked that question to your children or your friends or your lovers The real ninja trick comes the next day The next day when I want to show to them that whatever they said to me was important Whatever they said to me I took to heart and the way I do this is I'll say to my son. Oh so I'm mummy's really working on our hugs right now and I've been giving you some hugs. How am I doing and then he's able to give me that feedback in real time and This is the benefit of that a he gets to do the save as that there's a feedback loop that happens Where he can now remember that mummy is working on this and therefore You know she cares and I when I get that thumbs up get to square my shoulders and go yes mummy's doing a good job and That way if you repeat that over time Then a you get to learn a new skill of how your child wants to be loved and how they want to be touched and how They want to be spoken to and how they want to be kissed And You get to feel good about it. You get to feel good that you're doing a good job That doesn't preclude That doesn't preclude the fact that children also need to learn how to put some love into their own wounds Right. I mean it's not for me as their parental will solve all their pain and their issue Sometimes the conversation is how can you put when you fall? How can you kiss your own boo boo? Or how you how can you solve your own problem? so This self self-awareness Self-regulation and perspective taking How does this how does this inform education of the future? We talk about critical thinking we talk about we should have more meditation we more creativity in schools But the number one predictor of how your child will do is How well you've understood your inner mind such that you can understand your child and if that's the case The person that spends the most time with their children is going to be us as the parent You we have a window of opportunity when our children are young to capitalize upon when those neural connections that are making those Deep grooves in their brain to make sure that the connections are the ones that we want and to think about What is the cost of all those misattuned moments for our children? So for the education views at the education of the future has to involve the parent We have to figure out how I have ideas on this Which I won't have time to share today, but how can we involve the parent and create the conversation? So there's no blame. There's no shame. There's no feeling of oh great. There's that's one other thing I have to do in my day How can we involve the parents in the education system and by the way the school is the best place? This having a school I mean there's different courses out there, but the school is the best place and how can we create a dialogue with parents? So they feel safe so they can share all the parts that they don't want to talk about behind closed doors How can we share that with them and share a new way of interaction so they can have really? extraordinary connected relationships with their children so That's that's what I have to share with you guys today And as we think about education of the future One thing that can certainly be helpful is having a actual school that can house and and I really do believe that if in line with not just everything we're talking about but a school of the future would involve something that is built in such a way that is sustainable environmentally conscious and Something that is in line with what we want her children to embrace and so I want to invite my husband to come up on stage with me for and He's going to be telling you all about a vision that he had a few years ago to build with shipping containers and Before I hand it over to you I don't know how much you guys know about shipping containers But I just want to give you the quick down and dirty with them if you I mean I'm sure you've all seen shipping container construction, but personally we think it's one of the coolest mediums to build with what you've got is Really strong court and steel containers that are designed to be stacked nine high and sail the seven seas of these things are termite resistant Mold-resistant earthquake resistance fire resistance there When you stack and rack them you can increase their structural integrity their modular So you can continuously add to the size and the shape of it literally it's Lego blocks for grown-ups And so since he I guess told me he never had enough Lego when he was a child to make cool stuff Here you go. You can talk a bit about what you did I I'm Paul and thanks for the introduction Ria so back in April of 2009 I got the opportunity to go down to the Caribbean and Investigate a plot of land that we had access to that was near the University of West Indies The demand for students down there was quite high Sorry the demand for accommodation was quite high and we saw this as a wonderful building opportunity to or a vestment opportunity to undertake so I Was down there for a week and I was contemplating contemplating How was going to build it if I was going to build it at all and the option down there was concrete and block construction and I'm a man of the world. I I've traveled I Read what's going on in the world And one of the things I'm keenly interested in is sustainability and reuse and recycling and so and so forth I thought how how can we incorporate that into that and I remember reading some articles Some months earlier about shipping containers construction and a light just went off my head and I thought this has to be done so So that was in the April by the same September I would sold our house shipped everything down there and we literally started the process we break ground a few months later and You can see on the screen there. We took the delivery of our first couple of containers there I should mention all he's ever built before that was a deck a really epic deck, but it was just a deck I figured I knew how to swing a hammer so You know and again light rear said this is just Lego blocks for adults, right? So So I really mentioned why containers that these things are indestructible. They spend their lifetime on the back of a truck or a ship and For the intended purpose that we have here. They're really over designed so they're a good building material for the infrastructure of a building relatively cheaply acquired from the local port and It's just a matter of anchoring them to a concrete foundation and Cutting out walls and putting in doors and windows and all that sort of good stuff So So this building project was going to be well is 45 20-foot shipping containers There are 19 Studio apartments made with two containers where we removed part of the internal wall So the students can move from one container to the other and there are two three container units sort of a small two-bedroom type unit We There were Two separate days where we took to the delivery of the containers first day we delivered 16 the next day 33 it was a Representative with lots and lots of challenges during this project because like I said, I'm not a builder. I'm actually build software for a living but For example in this day we started out the first truck comes into the yard gets stuck in the mud I Had six trucks down the road all lined up ready to come in and no way to get the truck that was in the yard out of the yard So it was you know quick thinking. What do we do? What do we do? We managed to get a backhoe which came in and Plunked down a whole bunch of old bricks and stones and rocks so we're able to move on I Don't think I've ever deserved a beer more than I had After that one day to be honest, but it was a great day The first two units we pretty much dropped on the ground we considered our prototype apartment and Here we learned what we were going to do for the next 20 we Framed the inside with steel Studs you don't want to use wood down there because of the termite problems we Figured out what we're going to do with the bath from how we're going to run the plumbing up the back of the buildings or the Utilities electrical plumbing water hot and cold waste And the insides eventually Turned into something like this So put it in laminate floors tiled kitchen self-contained kitchen with the fridge microwave and The bathroom The regular stuff which you sort of saw on the previous photo shower sink basin. We even made all the beds Had a guy sort of fabricate them all on site And these things are going to be indestructible compared to what I might have been able to buy for the same price Down at the local furniture shop as We Cut various holes and various parts of the building I realized we had another opportunity to save money again and reuse for instance that the deck pan of the walkways were the Walls we cut out from the internal Apartments so we would cut out an 8-foot wall from the inside of the apartment cut that in half And that becomes the deck pan for the walkway All the locking rods on the back of the containers were removed and they became the railings for the walkway then Another thing we had to figure out was how what's the end result going to look like what and What are we going to put on the outside? We're just going to paint it. I kind of thought no because I don't want you know suburban You know this this suburban suburban area to be to look like the local port We could see the end vision, but sorry we could see the end vision But I mean it wasn't until we were kind of front page of the news And not in a good way that we realized that oh, I don't know if people like this So this was in Trinidad all they would ever had was containers that were sitting on concrete blocks not with an entire foundation and certainly not three stories high so It was the first time this was done in the Caribbean and it scared a lot of people and it upset a lot of people I think lipstick on a pig was the line that I heard online that really stuck with me and Hurt my feelings. Yeah so So painting them was was out of the option So I looked into a couple of options ultimately settled on stucco So first stage of stucco was to glue inch and a half a pile of starring the same stuff You would find in your fridge or freezer or chilebin This is gives you a great thermal barrier. So the Sun is not heating up the steel box and turning it into a sweat box so and on top of that you would put a fiber mesh layer onto the outside of the building in preparation for the final coat and The final product ended up looking like this so Here this is this is fully complete. We're open for business and People are starting to move in so the adoption of this has proved has has been very well received Being fully teneted for the whole time I've heard a father Looking at the units one day and he walked in he said well nothing but the best for my daughter And you know where do I sign sort of thing? So it's been well received by the by the local community and We've even had the UN approaches to put some thought into providing Accommodation slash community into Haiti and numerous other people have asked us for our you know Knowledge and how we can assist and whatnot so and Yeah, so there we go There you go one idea for the school the people Thank you so much. So About ten minutes so for questions or reflections five minutes Sorry, you may have have gone over this really quickly when you were showing the construction of how the the The boxes go together. So when when you take out a wall how do you Re-insert the structural integrity. We didn't remove the corners The corners of the main component that our structure structurally rigid So we left the corners that the posts alone and then you know Within a foot down from the we made the cut So you're just removing the the side panel and we only removed eight feet of it not not the whole wall So because the wall is still part of it, too, right? Yeah What's your vision for how you teach parents this these emotional skills? So what I what I've found as I've worked with parents there seems to be a lot of guilt and shame When that comes up and in a safe spot, they'll talk about the parts that are Difficult and challenging for them. So my vision would be you know in a school of the future From the time that it first of all, it's known throughout the community that from the time you're pregnant there's a place that you can go to get to get information on how because it starts right at birth really and What you can do to create a really connected attuned relationship with your child I would also like to see that, you know, there's a very disconnect There's there's a disconnection that happens when parents start school with their children It's almost like the kids the the teacher might be Trying to forge new relationships with people in the classroom, but the parents don't get that same opportunity I'd love to see Some buddy systems or little networks or groups that are created and in it everyone's able to share Through role plays and really One the way I get people to feel comfortable as I share my stories of where I've struggled and where I've got it wrong And where I did lose my mind and I did yell and scream and and then how I healed afterwards And there's something about that sharing that allows other people to feel safe when they when they hear it So I can imagine that if I had a group of parents and they were now about to send their kids to grade one And they had had no exposure on on, you know, conscious parenting and how to connect I would love to bring them to a room and try and imagine all the different Situations that have could come up or they could experience and I found that there's generally five big areas Like five main themes that come up that if they just understand how to handle like have enough opportunity to Handle those five situations. They can use their own parenting flair and handle almost every situation that comes up in a really connected way So it's not about, you know years of training here It's about giving them some really strong fundamentals and give them a chance to feel the words in their mouth. Yeah Thank you both very much for sharing your vision. Thank you