 Hello and welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, how can adults help to build emotional wellbeing and confidence in children? And I'm in conversation with Sarah Gilbert. My name is Sarah Gilbert. I live in the North of Ireland, in Murie in the North of Ireland. And I am a trained drama teacher. I'm an actress. And I currently work as a voiceover artist for Radio and Television. So many questions already. So the focus of today's episode, the kind of question is how can adults help to build emotional wellbeing and confidence in children? And I just kind of wondered what your sort of jumping off point was there. This is obviously something that I wanted to ask you about because you've done some work in this area. So what are your opening thoughts? Okay, well, it's a long story. I suppose I would have to go back to when I was teaching, which has brought me, this is now nearly 30 years, I suppose, nearly 30 years in the making of me. I suppose I've pondered it for a long time, but never had answers. And I suppose I still ponder those answers. But when I was teaching drama, I trained as a drama teacher. And I taught for 10 years. And through that time, I always felt that once I could put children on the stage and put them through exams and they could do performance and festivals. It was a what I would call a facade of confidence that behind their eyes and in here in their hearts, you just knew that it wasn't there. And it frustrated me so much that I didn't know how to get there, how to make them confident from within rather than from without. So after about 10 years, I gave up teaching at that time and I retrained as an actor. I went back to London and I did, I went to the drama studio in Ealing and did a postgrad in professional acting. And what was very interesting about that course was what they did was, as our principal of the school said, we will, you're like a finely tuned clock. And what we will do is take you apart so that when we build you back up again, you are finding new pieces of you. So when you're acting, it's not as if you're putting on layers. You're actually delving deeper into your own self to find that character. That sounds a bit scary. It is scary because, tell you what, because it's an emotional rollercoaster and you're constantly eating. And I think that's that we found ourselves putting on weight because you're feeding an emotional need. Do you know what I mean? So I found that very interesting because it helped me to find and delve into other parts of me. And it began a journey really of self discovery. So when I came back from London and I was teaching for a while and then I was doing TV and theatre and working when my son was born, I decided to focus on radio work. Plus with radio work then that I could work from home because I could record and send everything that needed to be sent. So I didn't have to go anywhere and I could spend more time with him. So during that time then because of working with radio, I was given the opportunity to write and started writing radio dramas and documentaries and things which I didn't know if I could do or not, but I got the opportunity so I did it. And then I wrote a book and then I start when my son got to about five and he started school. The whole idea of children and feelings reared again because I was then dealing with a child and then I was going to school every day and seeing other children. And one particular incident that really got me thinking again, he was about five at the time and I took him to school in the morning, you have a little porch where the children take off their coats. And one teacher was talking to another child who didn't want to go into the classroom and he was crying and I don't want to go and I want to go home. And the teacher was, as children do when they're first year at primary school. And the teacher had said, you know, you come with me, you're a great boy, you're the best boy and you're my boy. And my son stood looking up at her, waiting for her to speak to him and tell him he was a good boy. But she didn't. She took this little fellow by the hand and she completely blanked my son. But she was focused on this child to get him into the classroom. It was no reflection on anybody else. But he didn't see it that way because he was five. And he just looked up at me and he said to me, Mama, I'm not a good boy. I'm not the best boy. And that just broke my heart. And she never knew that. She never understood the impact that her words had on him. And for quite a while afterwards he said to me, well, I'm not the best boy. So I knew he was still thinking about that. And then I started to think, you know, here we go. I'm back to square one again. And I'm seeing the insecurity and the uncertainty in his eyes. And I started to think, how can I do something? I really wanted to do something. So I wrote these little children's books about feelings and about emotions. And it sort of evolved from there. So that's what the program that I'm working on now, the little sunflower program, is about helping children. And how we do that is, well, that's a big question, isn't it? It is a big question. Well, tell us a bit about the little sunflower program and how that works and what your kind of hopes are for it. Well, little sunflower is a series of five story books and five animations which are attached together. Now they were to be hard copies, but because of the situation we're living in now, it's been made into a digital package. But they've also been made into audio visual so that you can watch and listen at the same time for the whiteboard or Google classroom and then the animation at the end. So it teaches children a life skill. I know you're part of tapping. Yeah. So these characters go to school and they interact. They're all different animal characters at school and it's how they listen to each other, how they perceive each other and how they learn to understand that we're all different and we're all special. I had somebody write music for me and there's a poem that goes with it and it's been turned into a song. So the children are children singing it and the last line of each verse, there's five verses to go with each book. It's relevant to each story is that big or small, I'm different and I'm special. That's all. So that is the concept behind it that it's like a mantra that they can learn and keep with them and continue to repeat over and over and sing. The song's quite catchy. So I want that to get in there and stay in there and that they can sing it and learn it and become like a part of their life and just to call on at any time they need it. And why do you think that it's helpful to have it in that way, something that they've heard many times become familiar with? It sounds like almost like a bit of an earworm. Why is that a positive? I think the more you hear, well, unless it's a negative, obviously, the more you hear something positive, the more you will begin to believe it and the more we hear something, if somebody tells us repeatedly that we're great, we will start to believe it. Same as my son only had to hear once that another child was wonderful and he believed that that child was wonderful and he wasn't. So that only took one time. So I think the more we hear, I can do this. I am good at this. I am positive. I am happy. I am wonderful. I am super and fantastic. I am incredibly talented. Whatever it happens to be, relevant to whatever the child is doing, it can only be a positive thing. I hope and I think so. And how do those stories and animations get used at the moment? Have you had kind of feedback from people who are using them? Have you used them yourself? Well, it started out as a pilot program and then as a trial period. And I was going to schools and delivering this package myself. Yeah. Then COVID hit. So I couldn't go anymore. So it's nearly completed, but it's been made into, as I said, a digital package for Google Classroom, Whiteboard, et cetera. And a promotional video has just been released. So I've had quite a lot of interest and feedback on it. So fingers crossed. That's good. And we can link to that all in the show notes. So anyone who's listening to this or watching can go through to, it's all on your website, right? Yes. It's on the website at the minute. There's a new website being developed, but it's on the current website, on that Facebook page as well. And how would you know if you've succeeded? So this started with this kind of, you know, deep drive to help your son to kind of really find his feet and to feel more confident. And is that the driving aim still to kind of build that confidence in children or are there other things that you're finding are coming out of this as well? It is a drive to build confidence in children. And from going to the schools and working with children, because there are soft toys involved, but unfortunately you can't use the soft toys now because they can't share anything. I've worked with some children with one child in particular who, he wouldn't do the tapping. He refused point blank to do, and that was fine. But on the second week, he came to me and he said, can I take that toy? Can I use it? Because the toys have extra long arms so the toys can tap. So he, I said, sure, if you would like to do that. And he took it and he sat in a corner and he did everything the rest of the children were doing, but he did it through the medium of the toy. Oh. Yeah. And for me, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's great for the other children were doing it, but for me, that was the huge success to get that child doing something. And the very first day we went because the idea it's called little sunflower because it includes a little sunflower, which week on week grows. And that depends on the work the children do on their emotions to help the sunflower grow. So if they keep doing it as the days, the weeks go by, the sunflower grows and that should reflect in their emotional growth as well. But when this class started this, I want this little boy, in particular, he just said he could draw. He asked could he draw the sunflower, the first sunflower. And he gave it a black face, very small, her little black face and it was just a slash for a month. But as the weeks went by and the children added to it, she gave him the opportunity to draw the big flower and it had the biggest head and the brightest colors and the face. And he, she said he absolutely was enthralled doing it. So yeah, for me that was, that one child was a success for me and it made him feel good and that's, that's what it's, that's what's important to helping children to feel comfortable and happy in their own skin. Absolutely. That sounds like a real success. What a lovely story. Can you tell us a bit about tapings? Obviously that's a part of this. And I'm aware you said, you know about tapping and I said yes, but there might be people listening who are wondering. So can you maybe explain a bit about it and how it works and why it was important as part of your tool. Well, I had heard about it a number of years ago and I got the opportunity to go on a course. And it just, I, the only way to describe it is I floated home that night. The most powerful. And experience, one most part of experiences I ever had. And it includes by using your fingertips to very gently tap on areas on your head and your face and your nails under the sword of your hand. And that's, and repeating mantras, positive mantras that I am. Wonderful. I am special. I am fabulous. I am fantastic. I am amazing. There's 14 tapping points that I use. So we repeat that two or three or four times. And each week we use words. That are relevant to whatever that story happens to be. So if it's about being calm, the teachers love that one. Because then we find words that are about being because we find words that are about being calm, about being quiet, about being thoughtful, about being gentle. And if it's about, you know, a talent, being talented, I'm talented, I'm amazing, I can do this, I'm incredible, I'm awesome. So yeah, yes, the weeks go by that evolves and the tapping changes each week, obviously in the words. Now, obviously with tapping you can include, you can start with the negative. Even though I'm feeling sad, I appreciate that I accept that and I still love myself. And I have used that, but with younger children, I tend to go straight for the positives. Yeah. And that was the question I was wondering about actually, because the kind of genesis here was about how, you know, your son overhearing, that other child being praised, and although that adult was unaware of the impact that they had in that moment, that that obviously had a really lasting effect for him. And I was wondering in your work and in your opinion, really, how much of this is about sort of undoing harm or counteracting difficulties that children might be facing and how much of it is about going in with the kind of positive preventative sort of side of things? Well, the positive of preventative is where I, the angle I'm looking at it from because I don't know the children and I don't know their circumstances. So it's very hard for me to know what those negatives are, but they're obviously, there are negatives all the time with every circumstance that we live in. We don't know what we're saying. We could very inadvertently say something to somebody that is not just not so positive. And it may not be anything to us. We may not perceive it or say it with any back meaning, but that person that's listening to it might hear it in a totally different way depending on what's going on in their life. So you just, we can't live our lives be careful about what we say because then we'd never speak. But when we do speak, we just don't know what we're saying, what impact it's having on somebody else's story. So my idea is to have something out there for those children that is just so positive, so fun, so lighthearted, so passionate that they can just really let go and enjoy themselves. Absolutely. And we're recording this conversation during the pandemic, which that could be at any point in time with a massive great length it feels like, but this is a particular kind of moment in time and it's a different moment in time than when you kind of conceived of this programme and when you started sort of delivering it and seeing those really positive outcomes from it. And I wondered if you have felt any need to adapt or change what you're doing in response to the current situation or if it has felt like the right thing still. I did have to change what I was doing because I couldn't go to the schools anymore. So in order for me to connect with children, I had to go online. So it was an idea that was going, it was going to go online eventually, but it just pushed me into more quickly than I had anticipated. And it's been a fantastic process because I'm getting to, oh, there's my dog, are you sorry about that? It's been a fantastic process because I'm getting to look at animations and colours and I've been able to record the stories and have a sound engineer put in sound effects and everything. And it's just been a lively, bright, fun-filled time for me. I love to do creative things. So it's kept me very, very busy, which is fantastic. But the content has stayed fundamentally the same. The content has stayed the same. I try to develop it a little bit further and add in a few other elements and concepts. But fundamentally, yes, it's still the same. And I wonder if maybe there's more need for it now than ever before, because actually there is this general kind of rumbling of anxiety amongst every adult, every child. And so these things that kind of build up our confidence and give us the ability to kind of express how we're feeling and to find that calm, I would have thought there would be a real thirst for that right now. I think there is. I certainly heard a lot of teachers and parents, even online, you know, through social media, it's how their children are suffering because they can't get out and mix with their friends and they can't do this and they can't go there and they have to keep socially distant at school and they're not allowed to leave their desk and they can't get too close in the playground. And that's a huge impact. I suppose little children don't understand it because they have their only starting school. So they don't know the difference. But older children, seven, eight, nine, 10, you know, it's a massive impact on them. And also, you would know this yourself, the age of mental health issues is getting younger and younger. It's down as far as 11. That's why I've been focusing on seven to 10 year old children so that I can hopefully provide them with something that they can learn and embrace in that time. So by the time they get that little bit older and become more aware, they have something that they can call on. Yeah, that's the thing. And do you feel like you're making the difference? I mean, are you proud of what you're doing? Do you think that, you know, when you reflect back on that situation that kind of triggered this whole thing, are you doing what you hoped? I, well, I certainly hope so. I've seen it. I have worked in quite a number of schools and there's been a very positive feedback from teachers and children alike. And they have loved it. Yeah, I certainly hope so. Time will tell. So that was my cat trying to get my attention. Bless her. And I was just wondering as well, like thinking about how this reflects on your sort of personal journey and story too. And that obviously there was a, you know, a journey there where you did some of your own sort of self-searching and building up your own confidence and self-esteem. And how important do you think it is that as the adults who are working with or caring for children, that we do that work on ourselves first? Or do you think that we can kind of lead this in our children, even if we're not feeling it ourselves? I think it's, especially in today's world, I think it is a good thing for us to do work on ourselves. But not everybody is open or ready to do that. We're all in different places in our lives. And I think, you know, I became more aware that even after my son was born, as you know, you have a responsibility then to look after somebody else. So you need to be emotionally strong or stronger to do what you can to protect them. So yeah, I think it's a good thing for us to be self-aware. It's not always, it's not always easy. And it depends on the circumstances that your lifestyle and the circle, the lifestyle that you're living through or how the world has treated you today. It's not always easy for everybody. No, no, indeed not. And I wonder, looking back earlier, you were talking about when you would teach drama and you'd have these children who would seem kind of outwardly confident on the stage, but then this didn't reflect in their kind of day-to-day life. And I wonder if knowing what you know now and the further work you've done on yourself and learning around the topic, what advice you would give to that kind of younger version of you, do you think that you'd have ideas about how to make that transition between stage and line? Well, I know a lot more than 20 years ago. So I know a lot more now than I did then. And I haven't really done any work on me because it wasn't, I suppose back in the nineties and that it wasn't, we weren't as aware of spiritualism and working on ourselves and doing things to open our own minds. So I suppose I can't punish myself for not being able to do that, but I was very frustrated because I knew something wasn't right and that I wasn't doing what I needed to do, but I have absolutely no idea how to get there. But it was just with the, suppose the birth of my own emotional journey that I thought, ah, okay. So when you start to work on yourself then and you dig deeper and you start to understand why you do the things that you do and what caused it and where it's come from. And it's a fascinating journey to explore yourself and your reasons for doing things. So your relationships with all kinds of things, maybe be it food or maybe the need to, for some people they need to shop. You know, we all have reasons for doing things. I suppose I could say I used to be, I used to suppose, unless I used to feel more confident, shall we put it, if I was dressed properly. And I see people like that now who have to be dressed well all the time, hair's done, makeup's done, everything. And I know for me, that was my own insecurity. I wasn't comfortable with myself. So I had to put on that. The saddest was with Back to the Acting thing again, that we put on layers for people to see is what we really should be doing is taking those layers off. So, yeah, it took, it's taken a while. I can't even say, I can't claim to be there yet, but... I think we're all works in progress, aren't we? I mean, do you think that drama is, you know, is that a good pathway for many people for this? That it's like quite a specific kind of program that you ended up doing. It sounds more therapeutic than many kind of therapeutic programs I've kind of heard of, but... The Acting program. Yeah. Yeah, well, I think most drama colleges will do that. You know, they do tend to, what they say, they unpick you and then put you back together again, like a fine-tune clock and... But I, you know, when you're younger and you are doing Acting and you tend to go on the stage and you create a character, but to be a character, a real character, you have to find that insight. You have to find that case inside of you. If it's, I don't know, psychopath or whatever it happens to be, you've got to do a lot of work to find that character, which is a bit alarming and it can be very uncomfortable because these are parts of ourselves that we don't want to see because it's not normal for the majority of us to think about things like that, but it was an incredible journey. I wouldn't have swapped it for the world. I learned such a huge amount, not just of the craft, but again, personally. Yeah, and you said in our initial kind of back and forth on the email about how drama kind of helped you to feel visible and give you a moment to shine and that finding that one thing can help others to find their moment. And I wondered if you, you know, can you talk a bit more about that? I was really intrigued by that as an idea. Well, I, as a child was, I suppose I saw myself in all those children because when I was a child, I did drama from a young age and I was painfully shy and I was even painfully shy as an adult. It's taken many years to gain self-confidence in myself and going to drama once a week, that was my time to shine. That was the only time of the week that I really was, I felt alive. It was just, because I could be somebody else. I didn't have to be me. I could be, I could hide behind that character as to say, no, you don't, when you learn, you don't hide behind the character, you become the character. But as a young person, as a child and as a teenager, it was, yeah, the drama helped me give me that time, that hour of the week. That's what it was, it was one hour a week and it was my time to just shine. And then when we caught and we did school productions, I was first in the Q2 audition because I just wanted a part so bad, I just needed it. It was just how, well, it was my need and that was good for me, it's good for my mental health. So, and everybody has their own way of finding that, be it to go fishing or to go cycling or whatever it happens to be or to play music. But that's certainly what it was for me. And did it, sorry. No, I was just gonna say, did it surprise people because it sounds like, and I've come across many people who feel similarly and it's certainly something I can empathize with too, but that real dissonance between this painfully shy child and then can't wait to get on the stage, it feels like a bit of a disconnect, doesn't it? It does feel like a disconnect, yes. And I don't even know how to explain it, but yes, I think it's because when you, if you ask me to get on the stage and make a speech, no, absolutely not, it will be petrifying, but because you're hiding behind a character, it's not you, you are being somebody else, so therefore you have, and that might sound strange, but it's true, it's just you're not being yourself, you're given permission to be visible by being somebody else, that's the only way to describe it. But yeah. See, I find I'm most confident and most happy and most calm when I'm stood on a stage giving a speech, but actually for me, that is stepping into the character of that person on the stage, it's a very different person when I'm presenting, I'm, yeah, and then the person who people get, if they come and try and talk to me in the coffee break, isn't entirely different, you know, and I find that, yeah, it fascinates me about myself and I find myself often saying to people in the coffee break, they say, oh, I don't know how you stand on stage so confidently, and I always go, oh, that bit's fine, this terrifies me. It's a, yeah, it's an interesting thing. And did you have any particular kind of characters or personas that you particularly kind of enjoyed, whether bits that you, I don't know, maybe wanted to be more like or that you just particularly enjoyed inhabiting? Yes, I think I asked a while. I just love the wits and the style and the drama and anything, any of those classics or just, oh, I just lived and breathed them. And do you think, you know, drama specifically, I'd be really interested to kind of wonder with you about how drama and acting could be used to achieve similar things than what you're doing with your work at the moment. I find myself remembering when I was at school a long time ago, then when we did one of our school productions, I can remember a teacher making all the naughty boys be in it and usually how productions works in my school were that, you know, it was a voluntary thing. But this one year, I remember the teacher deciding, you know, targeting these boys specifically and they were all in a Midsummer Night's dream. And I do remember it was really transformative for our whole school year because we were in this together and these boys who normally would not have come near this kind of thing with a barge part all had leading roles. And I have no idea what the, you know, what the thought behind it was and it must have been a real challenge for the teacher but she clearly had a plan, I'm sure. I think, funny enough, from my own experience working with young people, teenagers. Oh, it's about 15 years ago. Now maybe more, I did a production with a group of secondary school children and I was looking for two boys to do the ugly sister that was Panto. Yeah. And I had everywhere I needed and I couldn't get anybody to do this and I spotted these two senior boys. Well, I didn't even know them. And I said, any chance boys that you would consider, one was tall and one was shorter. And they didn't really know each other even though they were in the same school and they were, no, we wouldn't do something like that. And I said, well, just give it a thought. Come along to it and then rehearsal and see what you think and it's all a bit of fun. And they did do it. They took on the persona of the two ugly sisters. They wore the makeup, they wore the dresses and one of them actually, I met him about, well, about seven or eight years later after he left school. And he said, I would like to thank you for making me do that. He said, because I found a new friend that I didn't really know. And he said, it gave me a confidence that I didn't know was in me. And he says, I have trained to be an auctioneer. And he said, it was that time on the stage. He said, just made me go, wow, I like this. I'd like to pursue something in this. And so he became, yeah, an auctioneer. And I was, and I just said, you know, that's the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me that you helped me make my career. And you've met, you know, because of that, I am who I am. I was like, whoa. Wow. That's special. It was really brilliant. Yeah. And is it something you would, you know, think about, you know, doing again, sort of using drama, using the arts like that? Yes, I would love to do that. It's getting time and unfortunately things. So once this little sunflower gets out there and gets started, I would love to actually, at some point in the future, create a little sunflower production, music and dance and have it for children or some kind of play that schools could use and then devise it themselves and put it on for a proper script. So that is something that I have, yes, I have thought about a lot. I'd love to do like even a radio play of it. Yeah. Talk to me about radio. It's kind of off topic, but I think not entirely. I'm interested because I think obviously when you're just using your voice, then you can't use all the other props around you of body language or makeup or clothing or props or all those things. And so presumably inhabiting a character when you just have your voice and sound effects is hard, no? Well, it's interior, I suppose, because I don't know if you've noticed, but when I'm talking about things, I use my hands and I'm quite motivated. So I know when I'm recording something, if I have to record a piece, I am using my hands because the more you do this, the more passion is coming out in your voice. So if I was just to keep my hands down and keep talking, my voice would become quite flat as well and would lose its momentum and passion. So yeah, movement and hand gestures and all that type of thing helps to create, what is that characterisation in your voice. At the start of lockdown, we wrote a little play, my son and I did it between us and recorded it and a friend of mine, the sound engineer, put it together and it was about a little boy who was stuck at home because of the lockdown. It was only two weeks in at that point with no idea it was going to go on so long and how sad he was and he did the tapping routine on his own to help him feel happier. So yeah, and so I got my son to do it as well. Wow, how old is your son now? He's 12 now. Oh, okay, okay, so he's no longer the little five-year-old and how is he doing, does he remember this incident that had such a big impact on you? Not really, but he's naturally quite shy, quite reserved but yeah, I don't know, he is that way but I do think it's things like that that stick with us and become, I know some people say not but I personally think that what we experience becomes part of us and that's who we are, experiences are who we are and can either help us or hindrance depending on what it is and we have to find ways to either promote it or heal it. Yeah, absolutely, and I think that it's important to acknowledge, isn't it, that we are never going to, nor would we I think even want to create a situation where no child is ever gonna face any kind of challenge or adversity, it's about giving them the tools to kind of work through that and bounce back from it, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah, well, we wouldn't much point if everybody was happy all the time. We need to be challenged, you're quite right, we need to be challenged but to have the tools to feel the feeling and move on from it and deal with it, we have to feel happiness and sadness or maybe not winning the race and dealing with we can't be perfect all the time because we need to be well-rounded. And does your son continue to be a kind of a driving force for your work and this desire to support children and adults who kind of work with them? I started this when I say when he was about six or seven when they started their stories. So they're finally, it's taken a long time, come together and trying to get it done in bits and pieces. But yes, he has been a driving force and he's older now but he has been an advisor right the way through the process as a trauma child's perspective. He will tell me what's right and what's not right and what he likes and what he doesn't like and what he thinks is helpful and not helpful. And I take his advice on board because he's the expert. As I say, it doesn't matter what I like, even with the pictures in the books, when the animator created them and he said, what do you think? I said, it doesn't matter what I think, it's what the children think. So I take them to the children to show the pictures and see, were they nice, did they like them? Was it something they could see themselves wanting to look at? And yeah, it's all about them. And have there been any kind of obstacles along the way? Have you kind of come upon people who have not been so up for this or have you had to change things as you've gone? Any kind of obstacles you've had to overcome with it? Well, you do have obstacles obviously on when you're trying to do something yourself, it takes time and then I think sometimes when you go to a school and some teachers are so involved and they're so enthusiastic and they come along and they want to know, but some teachers are busy and they see it as an opportunity to do some work in the classroom and they send them down with a classroom assistant. With me, it doesn't work because there is work to do in the classroom and I need the teacher to work with me so that they know what to do for the next time we meet. So I understand teachers are busy and they have a lot on so they see it as an opportunity to catch up on other things. But for me, that is a challenge. Yeah, and I hear you, I've certainly had that experience in the past when kind of teaching as part of PSHE curriculums and it's something that kind of I latterly got very kind of bullshit about it saying actually if I'm coming in, I need you to be here. You're a really important part of this because I'm just coming in and going away again whereas actually you're the one who's going to continue with this work. And the children also need to know that it's taken seriously I think by the adults around them but they're interested in the care. The schools that I've been to where the teachers are involved and the teachers want to be involved that they have been the most successful. That has been such a fabulous feeling to know that the teacher is on board with you and wants to know, how can I do this? What can I do to make this better? And then you see the results and that's the happy part. Absolutely. So is this your everyday now or are you still doing the voice work or what does life look like? Yes, I do the voice work. That is how I earn my living at the moment. And the rest of the time I am working on little sunflower and trying to get it ready for launch for the schools in January. That's the aim. Wow. And so people listening in or watching this will they can obviously kind of look at the website and find all the information there but is this something that will be available to how do people access it and what are the costs involved and that kind of thing for anyone who's wondering. Well, you can see on the little sunflower website as it is being the new website is under development and that's going to take a little bit of time. So it will be available from January but you can see snippets of the books and watch the promotional video. There will be audio visual books or just eBooks or at some point in the future, the hard copy books and the soft toys will be available. They can't be used in the schools but they could be used at home. And then of course there's the package for the schools which is the books with the animation on the end and a teacher pack to show them how to use the program in the classroom. And you visit schools as well? I mean, presumably now at the moment that's a bit tricky but you know, people will, this will go on forever so people might be listening to this in a year's time and things might be max normal, we hope. No, well, I was born in the schools but I haven't been in the school since March because I can't because I can't, well, first of all they were off but since September, if I go to school I can't then go to another school. I'd have to leave it, you know, a couple of weeks or I could go to another school and it's a five week program. You know, it's impossible, it's an impossible situation. So I'm hopeful that with the development of the teacher pack that I will be able to the teachers do it themselves. Okay, and with that, so you know, thinking in a post pandemic era when one could go in and out of schools safely would you return to visiting schools or do you think that actually empowering the teachers to deliver it themselves is the best way forward? Impiring the teachers to do it themselves. And also the work in the classroom because they make the little sunflower and as the weeks go by and they add in the new positive words the sunflower grows. So I've had in some schools where that actually the teacher hasn't thought it outright and they've made the stalk too long at the start. So it has actually done a circuit of the ceiling of the classroom. Just keeps growing and growing and growing and the children love it because they want to see the next week how big it's going to get. That's really lovely. Yeah, it's cool. Oh, how lovely. Do you miss it? Do you miss going in and seeing the children and doing that work? Absolutely, oh, it's yeah. But I think we're all missing. We're all missing everything that we used to do. Yeah. So we have to live with it until it's over. Absolutely, I'm going to deliver face to face training on Monday in a bizarre kind of, you know, I think 30 people in a whole theater kind of a scenario but I am so excited because it will be the first time since March. Wonderful. Yeah, so yeah, but it's such, as you say, it's such strange times, isn't it? And I think it's such a motivator for our work. I don't know about you but it's brilliant being able to do things online and you can reach so many people and I've reached definitely more people during the pandemic than ever. However, you don't get that kind of that feedback, that buzz, that joy. Do you from being in the room with people who are? Yeah. But look, I started doing a counselling course actually through the University of Ulster and we're doing it because we were going to class and now we can't, we're doing it online so we're doing a lot of Zoom classes. Oh wow. It's fun. It actually makes it, I think in some ways it's easy because I can be at home and still do my work and still be at class, you know? Yeah, so it's a bit more possible to fit it all in. Although, is it not challenging doing, I mean, counselling classes, that's quite heavy now to be doing via Zoom. Sorry? Is it not quite a heavy topic? You know, that kind of study, quite tricky now to be doing via Zoom. Well, yes it is, but they've never done it before but there's nothing we can do about it except work with it at the moment and we are split into groups and the tutor pops in and out. We have a general group and then we pop out into groups of three and council each other from distance which is challenging, but we have to work with what we've got. And what's your motivation for doing that work? So this is another string to the bow. How many strings do we have? Well, yes, I teach and I'm a trained actor and I trained in tapping but I felt that because the programme is about emotional wellness, whilst I've done, I did do a counselling course before, I just felt that I needed to do more and I wanted to have a better understanding of it. So I, yeah, I'm in my first term of the course and I just want to be able to add to the emotional wellbeing study that I have and I think it's important to know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, what would be your sort of party thought? I think for maybe what I was saying about my son that you just don't know what you say, the impact that it might have on somebody else even though it's an innocent comment, that a throwaway comment that somebody else might misinterpret and take it very deeply to heart and it could have a lasting impact on them, especially as I say, especially children. But it's a catch-22 situation because say we can't not speak but it's to be, I think, to be aware of what we say and how we say it, especially in front of children and when little ears are listening. You just don't know, you just don't know.