 Hello, and I think we're back. Somebody tell me if we're not. I hope you had a good break that you did some networking. If that's what you wanted to do, I think it's a great setup where you can either talk with someone individually or you can go in with a group chat. If you have another idea for a group chat that we can set up, I think we could do that. And if you decided to do your wordle, please do not share what the word is today because some of us have not done it yet. I know what I'm talking to educators. A lot of you are doing that. Our next speaker is always a special treat, Dr. Jean Clinton. She has been a child psychiatrist for nearly 30 years. She's renowned nationally and internationally as not only a psychiatrist, but an advocate for children's issues. And she's going to build on a lot of what Vanessa LaPointe spoke about earlier, especially about the idea of human connection and mental health. A Dr. Clinton specialty is brain development and the crucial role that relationships and connecting this play in this development. Perhaps one of Jean's most famous quotes by now is love builds brains. So before Jean Clinton joins us, once again, just looking in the chat to know that I'll be watching the chat throughout this session and I'll be taking note of any questions that you have for Dr. Clinton. And when I join Jean a little bit later, I'll address, try to address as many of your questions as possible. So let's keep that conversation going. But for now, please join me in welcoming Dr. Jean Clinton. Well, thank you, Maria. I am so, so thrilled to be here. And you just have to know that I'm moving myself and my five children and seven grandchildren under five to BC. When I hear what amazing things that from your ministers, Malcomson and Whiteside, I am in awe. And so I want to first of all start by acknowledging that I'm here in Hamilton. And the city of Hamilton is situated upon the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. And today the city is home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island. And we recognize that we must do more to learn about the rich history of this land so that we can better understand our roles as residents, as neighbors, partners and caretakers. So I was saying to Maria and the team, I was just a little bit anxious here because what we've heard from Dr. Vanessa LaPointe, I am going to be sharing with all of my children because I think she is the bee's knees. It was just so amazing. Now, part of the reason that I think is so amazing is because I agree with everything that she says. It's so in line with my own way of being, my own philosophy and I loved it. So be along with me and start following her on Facebook. So you've heard that I'm a child psychiatrist but I'm not going to be talking to you, going into depth about diagnostics and we've heard a lot about how challenging things are for kids and youth and adults and children's lives. I'm going to be talking about the huge power, reinforcing what Dr. LaPointe was saying, the huge power of our connectedness, our relationship with children and with youth and how that is going to be our way forward. So I hope to inspire you to bring back the joy in education and in children's life and to think about rising to resilience. That's what this is all about. So you might say, well, Jean, what are you doing talking to people when the mental health crisis is so high that you should be in an office? But to be honest with you, as Vanessa implied, we are not going to treat ourselves out of this dilemma. And as we'll hear from Dr. Maté, I'm sure we have to be really careful that we don't pathologize, make disorders of what kids and adults are experiencing as life events. They're not mental health disorders. They are how the frit am I going to cope with everything that's going on? So why do I do so much of this knowledge translation work? That's what I call it. Well, the reality is, as I said, we're never going to treat ourselves out of this mental health crisis that we're in. Anyway, I had a wonderful teacher, the late Dr. Paul Steinauer. And Paul said, Jean, we still have to stay linked into clinical practice. But we feel so much like we're standing in the middle of a rushing river, trying to catch kids and families one at a time. Why can't we spend more time preventing the kids from falling in the river in the first place? Or if you like another analogy, why are we down in the valley with the ambulance when we should be up at the top of the cliff, preventing things from kids from falling over in the first place? So I have become an upstreamist. And my friend Maria knows that periodically I become a little bit of an extremist, but that's another story. So as we've started today in such a good way, I really want to share with you how powerful the learnings I have had from First Nations communities. As you read this slide, you recognize the wonderful work of Cindy Blackstock and her group, but also some of the some of the peoples from Ontario. And why do I, why am I so to spend this precious time with you talking about what I've learned? Well, I heard Tom Porter, a Mohawk elder, speak a number of years ago, and it changed my life. That's why I want to share it with you. Tom spoke about the belief in the Mohawk tradition is that children are the sacred ones. They are the heart of the nation. And that it's our sacred responsibility to raise up our children. We'll talk about the power that struck me like lightning and said this has to be our North Star belief. You know how the North Star guides you wherever you are. You can, you can find your true home. That is has to be the belief. The other thing though that he talked about, which is so important for us in mental health, is he shared that children with special rights, I call it special rights, not special needs, because needs implies deficit, but these are children who are rich in potential. If we only see it, we'll believe it. So that did you hear that was a little twist on that on that phrase. If you believe it, then you're going to absolutely see that potential. But what he said is that every child is given to us for a reason from the creator to teach us, to teach us a valuable lesson. And I'm not going to talk today about epigenetics, but he also talked about intergenerational trauma. And what we're learning from science and lots of great stuff that's happening right there at UBC with Michael Coborg and his lab, Coborg and others, and help the human early learning partnership is that in fact, experience gets under the skin, puts little tags on the DNA and tells the DNA how to be active, and it lasts for generations. So this 2000 plus year old history of belief is so true. And we're only now catching up to it. But you know, my friend, Joanne Schroder, as I was talking to her to prepare, she talked to me about the principles of learning that you've adopted in BC. And I just, you know, I just, they're so crucially important. Why am I sharing this with you? Because if we have this North Star belief, if we have this recognition of how we lead the good life, the Mino Bimada in Iroquois, the good life, as exemplified by the principles of learning, we're immunizing our kids against mental health problems. But you know, we have to check our mindset. We, more in Ontario than you in BC, because you have a competency based curriculum, but many people are still caught in this dilemma. What is education about? Is about filling the bucket, you know, get, we know the curriculum, we know what kids need to know. We are the adults, we know best. So we want to fill the bucket. I call it stuffing the duck, by the way. That's another famous phrase Maria that I get in trouble with. But is education, think about it about filling the bucket or igniting the flame? A love of learning. So I know that you in BC, as I hear your ministers talking, are really getting the education is not just about let's do this academic achievement and oh, we'll do well being a little bit on the side. You are doing what I've talked about for some time is looking at the double helix of education. You know, the DNA's got those two strands. Well, one is well being, one is academic achievement. But what's binding them is relationship, relationship, relationship, that connection to others. So what do I mean by well being just to ground us in this? It is more than not being sick. It is about flourishing. It's about thriving. It's about reaching your potential and being able to cope with normal stresses of life. So man, oh man, do we have an issue right now? We absolutely do. I am not denying that we do have an issue. The people that I chat with, the epidemiologists who are doing the long time studies say we don't really have disorder, like diagnosable disorder up. But do we have perception of anxieties tripled in Ontario? We have parents and adults saying 70% of them in our parent survey were saying that they've experienced depression during COVID. So we need now more than ever to be focusing on mental well being. We're never going to treat ourselves out of it. So we absolutely need to be creating the conditions in schools where adults are creating pervasive cultures of caring. It's not about becoming mental health therapists. So let that be very, very clear. This is a mental health and schools policy. It's not about you turning into therapists. It's about you being there, as Vanessa so beautifully reported. It's about you helping the students, even the littlest ones, being able to have a sense of purpose, hope, belonging, belonging, belonging, and meaning in daily life. So you know, you heard about that, the flipping of the lid and how that limbic system has been really driving a lot of our behaviors. So what we need to be thinking about, I'm saying for the mental health of kids in schools is how can we create this sense of belonging in the class, in the community of the school, and it's through the culture that is created. We need to be creating the idea that when we create safety for our students, when we create a sense of belonging and significance and mattering, and when we create a sense of them being situated, they know why they're there. This makes sense. It's not just about being with their peers. It's also about getting excited about learning. So what's a shrink doing talking about this? Well, it's because I am an absolute brain geek. I love the brain. And so what we know about the brain, and I'm going to talk about the brain in infancy, and childhood, and elementary, and then about the adolescent brain. But what we've learned about the brain, as Vanessa, Dr LaPointe, was telling us, is that it is our master organ. It's who we are. And how does it get built? Well, it gets built by all of the experiences that we have. You hear my Scottish accent is Scottish. Isn't that lovely? Anyway, so my Scottish accent, I have that because I grew up for 11 years in Scotland. So my neurons, you see those pictures of neurons, they're the main brain cell. They got fired and fired and fired up, and they wired up together, and they created networks together. So what got used got wired up. Now, back in the olden days, when I was a medical student, we thought that the brain structures that firing up was mainly all in place. And then there was learning that happened when a baby was born, and that the brain was kind of like a machine. That if you broke it and you didn't have a replacement part, well, oops. But now we know the brain is far more dynamic and changeable. It's called neuroplasticity. As you're learning so much at this wonderful conference, your neurons are firing, they're changing, you're remembering stuff from before. So your prefrontal cortex is being activated, your hippocampus, new learning and memories going, Oh, I've heard about this before. This is so cool. So what we now know is that our brains are being built by the combination of nature and nurture, by nature and nurture. We had my first degree is music and philosophy. And we used to go to the bar and we would drink, no, we wouldn't drink, we would, we would contemplate. Anyway, we would argue what was more important, nature and nurture, genes of the environment. Well, it was a great time, but it was a waste of time. So what are the environments that we need to be creating for kids in our schools and in our homes? It's this environment. It's an environment of joy. Loris Maliguzzi from Reggio Emilia said nothing without joy, nothing without joy. How can we bring that more into our schools, into our homes? This is my oldest son and my oldest grandson. And I love this picture to bits. But what is telling us is that we are wired to connect as we've heard. The brain is a social organ. As Vanessa said, if we don't get that connection and those attachment relationships don't happen early, you actually die. Babies, infants that early work by Rene Spitz showed very, very clearly that infants and toddlers have mental health issues too. Oh, and by the way, while I remember, for Professor, for Minister Whiteside, let's, I know she knows it, but let's gently remind her, this is a K to 12 conference, but she's also now the Minister of Child Care. And so we have to make sure, you have to make sure, and I'll help if you need me, that she knows that the kids under six also have mental health challenges and that the plan needs to also be thinking about the littlest ones. So there there's a plug developmentally for the littlest ones. But what does this mean if we are a social species? It means that we need to rethink education from the social perspective. Now, so what do little ones need? They need to learn how to attach to other people, to significant people, to learn how to play with their peers. I'm going to talk about the huge importance in your school mental health strategy of building the competence of the peers so that the kids of others, other young people to turn to when they're distressed. And those other young people are healthy. I'll show you what model we're looking at in Hamilton. But so the little ones, they need to they need to learn how to express and manage their big, big emotions. How do they do it? Through co-regulation by having other adults in their lives. And this is what's so true in the little case of grade three. They need you as adults to co-regulate them. That means, as Vanessa said, lend them your calm. Lend them your calm. Bring it to them. This is a mental health strategy being your best self. You know, a famous infant specialist said, you know, what is more important is who you are is more important than what you do. So then we come to we've gone through it. Okay, we made it through. We made it through early years. We've built the brains and the kids are out playing and exploring and learning in their environment. And then along come to adolescence. Well, you know, it used to be thought that because there's so much brain growth and everything's in place in the early years that there wasn't much structural change that happened afterwards. Well, hello, along come to adolescence. People, as you know, used to think, oh, yeah, it's all about the hormones hitting. Well, it's not just about the hormones hitting. For sure it's about the hormones hitting. But the hormones hitting turns on massive brain change and massive brain development. And so what we know is there's huge maturation going on in the brain and adolescence. What we know, essentially, and I love that word essence, because that is what my dear colleague and friend Dan Siegel talks about. And tune in, June 1, Dan is coming to Hamilton, virtually, as well as live. And I'm going to be moderating that day. I'm going to be talking to you, Maria, for tips. But what he talks about is the essence of adolescence, that we know there's lots of changes going on, because people have been looking at their brains in the scanner, even though I would have loved to donate one of my son's brains for medical science. I learned more about the freaking adult brain, adolescent brain than I ever wanted to know with him. But you know, the nice thing is that there's so much change, as you see in this slide from Jay Geed, that adolescence is a time when you can rewrite your story. We need to be creating educational systems where kids get excited about running to school like they did in kindergarten, that we need to get them slouching and rolling to school in adolescence with just as much excitement. It means that we need to be thinking about, what are our systems? Do we have the adolescent brain and mind? So talking about the adolescent brain and mind, look at this guy here. So in order to understand adolescence, we have to understand that they need and seek novelty. The brain, the dopamine levels are different, that's your reward neurotransmitter. So they want excitement and novelty, bring it into your classrooms and thinking. You know, I'm very involved in deep learning with Michael Fulin and team. And he talks about change the world by engaging in the world. Well, here you've got a dude engaging in the world. Do you think he knows that this is dangerous? This is up in Tobermory. It's a huge rock down into a rocky grotto. Does he know that it's dangerous? He does absolutely, but he does not think this is so risky. What he thinks is this is going to be so much fun. He's got friends who are exciting and prodding him on. And he thinks, won't it be just such a thrill for that boat that's gone by? Those tourists are going to just have such a thrill at that. How do I know so much? Because that's my boy. That's my boy. So what has he taught me so well? What my five kids and as I watched my seven grandchildren under five, what was driving that was his emotions. What was driving that was the seeking of the thrill. And what we know is that not just what old Descartes said, that I think therefore I am, but the work of Mary Helen Immordino Yang tells us, I feel, therefore I learn. So if we can create conditions where kids feel safe, where kids feel significant that they belong, that they matter, that they have connection. When they feel that they have a plan in mind, they have goals and directions, man or man, learning happens. And guess what the magic ingredient is? It's relationships. Just as Dr. LaPointe said, relationships, relationships, relationships. We are the social species, so wired to connect. In fact, what I do is I steal, I'm a magpie, I steal lovely shiny things and translate them to be understood. And this is one of the things that I came across that talks about relationship. Relationships are the ingredients of the brain's development. Relationships build the brain. So now let's think about social and emotional well-being. What we're seeing, and I know we're seeing this in our kids, and we saw those, the four F's that Vanessa talked about. What we're seeing in many kids, I just spoke to a large audience of parents last night, we're seeing that kids have more aggression just now. They have fewer boundaries, and you know, people are saying, oh, they're damaged. They're not damaged. They're not damaged. They have missed a couple of years of socialization, but we have such a huge drive for growth, create the conditions, and they will come. But in order to create the conditions, we need to be amping and ramping up our social and emotional learning platforms, our physical platforms, bring back play. But I learned this from my friend Bruce Ferguson, a wonderful psychologist from Sick Kids in Toronto. And he says that, you know, there's some social and emotional curriculum that's taught, you know, like I love mind up. I'm on there scientific advisory. There's an example or Roots of Empathy. I love Roots of Empathy. I'm on the board there as well. So there are taught curricula, you know, lots, tools of the mind, many, many things. But then, and I say more importantly, there's caught curriculum. And that's the way the culture, the tone of the school, you know, that that pervasive cultures of caring that we need to be creating in the mental health strategy. So what are some of the guiding piss pillars, the posts is we need to help our educators recognize you connect before you correct, you connect before you correct, you validate, you understand, you sit with them, just I love Vanessa, that you're present with them. Of course, your limit behavior, absolutely. But you know, we also know, as we heard already, that it's so vitally important that you are given the opportunity to examine your own psyche, where you are, you know, self care. I've talked to teachers all over the world and they say, you know, I don't have any time for self care. And by the way, it's selfish. Well, I want to change that mantra and say that self care and the self compassion that we heard about is not selfish. In fact, it's a professional responsibility. So here's a bit of a kicker. Why? Because we know that the teacher creates the weather in the classroom. You need to be able to reflect and say, who is turning up today? How am I going to be present with the kids? We need programs that are for mental health in schools that are supporting educators to think this through. But you know what? The leadership creates the weather for the teachers. So we also need to be working on administration. So we heard a little bit and I'll just spend a minute talking about how the brain on stress absolutely gets that limbic system driving that emotional system deep in the brain means that you can't access that top of the brain like Dan and Vanessa teach us that you can't reach that prefrontal cortex. And during COVID, man, oh man, has that been what we've gone through? So we can absolutely in schools create the conditions where we diminish the stress of students, where we increase the connection, we help educators and other peers. Let's not forget about the huge importance of other peers that we build the relationships and so that the peers are able to care for each other as well. So I want to share with you, this is just one slide, but I want you to take a picture so that you know about school mental health Ontario. What we know that is the best way to think about school mental health is to think about it in tears, not TEAR, but TIAR. And so what in Ontario we're really focusing on and kudos to you for starting to have mental health leads in every district and then mental health teams, you need to go about this through an implementation science and see what the conditions are for success, not bits and pieces, but coherence in it. And so the coherent framework for us in Ontario is school mental health Ontario led by my dear colleague Cathy Short. Now look at that green bottom part, that's where the majority of kids are. These are equal in size here, but just to show the three tiers. So this first tier is where you are as educators, where you are. And that is welcoming kids, including kids, understanding them, promoting mental health well-being, and partnering with the home, the school, elsewhere. So welcoming, that's the social and physical environment, I'll give you some of the hints for that, including students in the engagement, doing mental health literacy. And then the next phase up is, yep, absolutely happens in schools. If you've got, what was it, 10 million coming in for other folks, but we need to focus on that big, big, big group of kids who need the support and aren't yet in this area where there is, it's needed for some. And then lastly, we need interventions that are good for a few. Now don't think you're alone here. I'm part of a Canadian School Mental Health Leadership Network. We are looking very, very deeply across the country to see, don't read all of this slide, but just the vision is that Canadian system leaders will have research based information and shared practice knowledge to inform decisions. So we meet together. And one of the main things that we're thinking and talking about overall is how can we shift the mindset. So you know, what we think affects how we feel affects how we act. That's the basis of CBT is the basis of so many different things. But what we also heard from Vanessa is our mental state also matters, how our feelings are interfering affects how we think affects how we act. So again, it means that we need to as adults and children's lives we need to be thinking about how can we bring our best self forward. And Vanessa, you can take a slideshow of this, you're going to get the slides as well. But this is from Bruce Perry, who wrote a great book called What happened to you with Oprah Winfrey. And so what he talks about as Vanessa has pointed out or here are some things you can do today and to make it through the pandemic. It's a free article psychology today, the pandemic toolkit parents need, the brain wants routine, the brain needs sleep, not just for rest, but for re invigorating cleaning up all the gobbledygook, you need the exercise that Vanessa talked about, find your calm, to find your calm so you can lend your calm. Now I've been a child psychiatrist for 35 years, and I know that many of us have no idea where that calm is. Find it, look for it, seek it, family meals as we've heard, reaching out to others makes a huge difference, limit these darn machines. And again, as Vanessa has pointed out, always remember where your focus goes, your attention goes. So here, take a picture of the slide as well. Here is something very practical that you can do as, and you know, I know there's some of your parents in the audience. And so I love the compassionate leadership systems leadership that you're doing in British Columbia and would love to bring it here to Ontario as well. But you know, when you're, when you're dealing with the child as an educator, rather than the F twos that I call, find it, fix it, ask them, what are their needs, values, goals and strengths through these questions? What do you need right now? What's most important? What are you hoping for? What's going well and what helped you most today? So what's the key message or one of them? Put your own mask on first, lend them your calm, be the calm they need the co regulator. Why? Because you know, at the end of the day, they're not going to, they're not going to remember what you said or what you did, but they're going to remember how you made them feel. And if we can, if we can get courses for educators on laughter, man, oh man, huge, major injection into the prevention of mental health disorders. So here is a little brief video I want to close with to remind you just what we need to be thinking about as we think about the wellbeing of our kids. When a child is born, we do everything we can to protect them, nurture them, love them. A child's heart and mind are fragile. As they grow, we want to teach them everything we know. We send them to school to fill their minds with wonderful knowledge, to give them the tools they need for life. At school, they get a taste of what things are like in the world outside. There is friendship, romance, disappointment, embarrassment, discrimination and bullying. What are the tools we give them enough to prepare them for this world? We have an enormous responsibility and an amazing opportunity. If we truly want to prepare them for the world outside, we must also educate the heart. Because to navigate the world outside with compassion, acceptance and tolerance, we need to teach them compassion, acceptance and tolerance. This can begin in our schools and it can start today. It can happen at hockey practice, dance class, at day camps and music lessons and it's already happening around the world with astonishing results. If we want our children to grow into socially and emotionally capable young people, we must ask for a balanced education that puts importance on educating both the mind and the heart. So I want to finish with a tale and it's a tale that I heard from again from my friend Joanne Schroeder and it's a tale about a town in BC place called Revelstoke and what I learned from my friend Joanne and the work of the Human Early Learning Partnership is that they have looked at how kids who come in to kindergarten who show some vulnerability on the early development instrument come into an education system that educates through the heart and when they look at those kids through data on the middle development instrument in grade four those kids are no longer vulnerable, they're actually thriving. So I want to leave you with a homework assignment and that is one, know my gratitude is huge for what you're doing in BC and what we're learning and what you guys do every single day. I want to give you the homework assignment of every day for the next week, gratitude and attitude of gratitude change your brain biology and so I want you as you swing your feet out of bed or however you get out of bed in the morning before you move you think about three things that you can say me glitch thank you for it may be the sun has risen it may be that the rain is is going to stop for 15 minutes today in Vancouver it may be that you are thankful that your partner snoring didn't wake you up I don't know pick something but three things an attitude of gratitude changes everything so lots of things to think about I hope this has been useful for you and I look forward to my conversation with my dear friend Maria thank you and here I am Jean thank you so much you should see the chats that are coming in and I was thinking about that idea about people don't remember what you say they don't remember what you do they remember how you made us feel and I do have to tell you how you make all of us feel and you know first of all you don't take yourself too seriously but you have we have also many reasons to take you seriously and and the knowledge that you share but just your attitude about we are not broken that we are and our children are constantly evolving in a sense and so thank you for that my pleasure also that that oh sorry sorry Jean also that question about if we if we are our children have come through this time our children youth and ourselves and our colleagues feeling let's say shaken and you talk about the interaction between environment or experience and brain development it's why people are worried I think a little bit about the the permanence of this change can you explain to us about what you mean in that term mechanistically what happens how are we going to do things now that help our children and ourselves come through this and what's happening in our brain yeah yeah so so important to clarify thanks Maria um so what we know is that adversity turns on the neurons and it certainly makes all kinds of different connections and lays down memory lays down ways that you know an experience comes in and it sparks us and it reminds us of things our kids have lost a lot in terms of graduation and other you know our littlest ones some of them are behind in their language so the brain needs the stimulation of being with your peers etc and they haven't had that so those those connections have not been made it does not mean that they're gone forever no frickin way that's why we have neuroplasticity and we love it but if we bring kids in and say you're broken we need to fill you up we need to stuff you with this curriculum we don't care what you learned are you when you're aware are you kidding they learn tons and make a panic about that we're behind especially don't make that panic create connection belonging excitement and learning and those neural pathways get wired up or they get rewired now i'm not i'm not diminishing the fact that there will be some kids who have experienced trauma but what we know about trauma is human relationships and connection makes a huge difference in the healing of that trauma that connection is so very important so recognizing it and recognizing and asking those compassionate questions and then getting them to the support they need makes all of the difference in the world we all are the solution thank you and we we are out of time for this chat but um there is a question that i want to plant it and and i'm going to promise the person who submitted it that i will ask this question of others i don't have time now to do it i'm wondering if we could get some kind of a note from you but the question is about technology that there's this thinking now that because our students have been connected by technology they're still connected so if you can in two or three words answer that then we'll try to figure out a way to get a more full answer together so the answer is no they're not we need uh they've got they may have connection but they don't have deep feeling felt feeling felt as dan seagull talks about is what we need in connection so yeah connectivity is not the same as human connection you see me going deep down into the body and all of the polyvate all that stuff so there you go i saw the polyvagal stuff i saw that all you saw i stuck in yes and just one thing to leave on somebody posted that their child when they were in preschool or kindergarten or something learned the phrase calm bodies make wise choices and that that became their mantra for their whole family so the children the youngest can be the wisest for us sometimes uh huh sounds like mind up to me thank you so much dr jean clinton and i'm sure we will see you again very soon well i hope so thank you my friend thank you everyone have a wonderful conference