 Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart Van Der Zee and today I am honored to be joined by Mr. Rob Latham. Rob, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so this is a really neat one. We are talking about the power of using rhythm and drums to help kids who have faced problems with trauma and all kinds of very serious problems, but using the power of drums and percussion to to kind of as therapy. Is that fair to say? Yes, we use the drum to help self-regulate and to bring order to the chaos that that child is feeling either in their body or in their mind. Yeah, self-regulation is something we'll talk about here soon and you have a book that came out and all this good stuff, but before we start and I will get into this really, really soon, but I wanted to right up front give a shout out. There's a new top tier Patreon member and you get a shout out on an episode and I want to do that right up front. So Mr. Jason Christ has joined and is now at the upper tier on Patreon. So thank you to Jason. He said he has a small one car garage drum shop called JAC drum shop here in Arizona where he is. He said he builds snare drums using a variety of shell designs, configurations, stave shells, segmented shells, hourglass shells, all kinds of stuff. I also hand-turned custom air vent grommets for drums. Pretty cool. So he's working with Doc Sweeney's hollow core snares. I just want to give him a big shout out. Jason has actually been on my, he's been a patron of the show for I think it said 36 months. So thank you to Jason for doing that because it really does. It pays for like the service we're using to record this right now. So thanks to Jason. Check him out on Facebook at facebook.com slash JACS drum shack and Instagram at the same thing. So I'll put that in the description. Anyway, thanks to Jason but Rob. So this is a cool, very important topic because kids need help. Kids need, there's a lot of problems out there. We were talking before we started that we're pretty lucky guys to be in good situations but a lot of kids aren't in that in that situation at all. So just what is, what is all this? How do you use drums and music for therapy and we'll just go from there. Okay. Well, I teach at an elementary school here close to Kansas City. It's Riju Elementary in Liberty, Missouri. The school that I teach at is a Title I school. So we have a lot of counselors. We have a lot of therapists. We help out social workers. We have the dentist come in. We have doctors. We do back snacks. We make sure that the kids are comfortable. They feel safe here. So because a lot of the kids come from trauma. They come from neglected home poverty. Maybe a parent is in jail or a single parent who is just doing their best working three jobs. So they're having to raise their own siblings, you know, if they were the oldest. So when they come to school, learning, reading, writing and arithmetic is not really high on the list of things to do because they're stressed out there. They're just wanting to survive. So what I run is what's called the care room. It's calming and recovering environment. And my badge says ISS, but we just, that's just what we changed it. Sure. What does ISS stand for? In school suspension. I see. Okay. Okay. So what we wanted to do is, you know, we're always talking about teaching those missing skills to, you know, to adults so they don't go back to prison, but we want to start it early. So when a child comes to me, maybe they're struggling in school, maybe you're struggling at home, they can come to me and I help regulate them. It could be like a 10, 15 minute break where we can, you know, play a game that works with learning executive skills. Whenever I say executive skills, it's using the frontal lobe of the brain or, you know, social, emotional skills, which is a hot topic, you know, because COVID a few years ago, kids, everybody was staying inside. So we had young kids that were not knowing how to play nice with other kids or just, they were going through their chaos at home, you know, with parents that were stressed out. So, you know, the Western world, we look at drums differently. We look at them as adding a beat to a song. But, you know, in different cultures, you go to Africa or the Middle Eastern. It is something that is spiritual. It builds community. It builds self-esteem, self-worth. And so what I do here is kind of what they've been doing for hundreds of years back there is using the drum and take Robert Lawrence Friedman. He wrote a book called The Healing Power of the Drum, and he was talking about, again, Western culture. We do a lot of head stuff. Whenever we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we say, we just say the Pledge of Allegiance. If we say Hail Mary, we just say Hail Mary. A lot of countries, cultures, they play it. So it's not only just in our head by playing it, by our hands touching something, a drum skin, our body, something, it then becomes part of us. So if I say, Bart, you can do hard things, and we just say it, well, then that's just stuck in your head. But if we play it on our body, Bart, you can do hard things. And we repeat that over and over and over. It's almost like a mantra. Then it becomes part of you, not just your head, it becomes a part of your body. In my room, I have about eight gym bays, some congas, marimbas, all tuned to C, and the kids can come in and sometimes I will just sit down with them and I will let them lead the groove. Other times I will start the groove, but maybe we won't talk at all. We'll just play and have a communication through rhythm. It's very different than what it used to be when they were at the beginning of the year. I would do a lot of talking. Let's do this, grasshopper or puppy dog, grasshopper puppy dog, play it on the drums, and you repeat it back to me. Now they come in and they'll go to it. And you know how they talk about you get on your phone and you kind of go into this matrix, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, 20 minutes have just gone by. Well, the same thing can happen with drums and rhythm. You get a pulse going and you go, oh my goodness, 10 minutes has gone by. They are regulated and they are ready to go back to class. We do a lot of other things in here too. It's not just all drums and incense. No, we do a lot of teaching. But really though, like in simplest terms, it's people, someone, a child is having like a meltdown. They're having a hard time. They've been asked to leave their class and they come to you. You're the guy who let's just calm down, let's do this. Would the alternative to you doing drums be someone more like more of like a punishment or would it be more like? Yes. This room before I came to it, and even the first couple of years would get destroyed with kids with rage. And now, and we'd have those, they call them safe rooms where it's like a small little room padded and you put the kids in there. And I know you've heard of those, but we don't have them anymore because this whole big classroom is considered a safe room. And the kids that come in here, and I have about 30 that I meet with daily, they are a community and I love them. They are great kids and all they are is life has handed them something raw on the outside of this school. And they're just missing some skills. So we're gonna, you know, just like I didn't go to school knowing how to do math. I had a teacher teach me how to do math. I am the teacher that teaches them to say thank you, you know, whenever somebody does something nice to the field of gratitude, the field of empathy to feel, feel good about themselves. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. You're using it for a very therapeutic reason, but to kids ever like like want to pick up and become drummers from this? I do. Well, I'm been a drum instructor for 35 years at a music store, music. So as soon as I get done here teaching all day, then I go teach drum private drum lessons at night. So I get to spend 12 hours a day with drums. The kids, they are starting to get hand drums, you know, this year at Christmas time, they asked for hand drums, they asked for musical instruments to go along with the games that they were also new and that they were wanting to have. But this is like the first year where it was like, Hey, I got a small Jim Bae for Christmas. I got a guitar for Christmas. And so that was, it's very exciting because that's lifelong. That game is not, you know, it's old news in three months, but a Jim Bae. Oh boy, I love those. I'll have one till they die. It reminds me of when, so David Frangione, who runs Modern Drummer, was on recently and he talked about how he, it's a great story that he tells it's sad, but he lost his eye. He had eye cancer, lost his eye as a kid. Kids would make fun of him, but he found drums and it was like a good outlet for him. So it seems like just with what you're saying that like, yes, it's good in your classroom, but really it's like kids should, and I'm sure they do realize that, man, I can do this at home and get that same soothing effect. Yes, they can regulate at home because, yes, anytime that you play the drums or play any musical instrument, but I'm just going to say drums and you get that groove going, when you get done with it, your brain has naturally produced a dose, enough dopamine that it equals one dose of Ritalin. Oh, wow. So anytime that a child comes into my room and we play it, I'm giving them that natural Ritalin, so they can go back. They're just calm. Now, they might have to come back again and they do, but some kids need different dosages. On the part where they get to, they not only get to take it home and use drums, but we also celebrated here at school at Ridgeview. We have what's a monthly assembly that's called Community Circle. And like I said, I have all these drums in here. I also have about 25 buckets. Our music teacher has about 30 gym bays. So just like if you went to Middle Eastern country or Africa and they have drum circles, to start, we're going to play gym bays and we're going to tell stories. We're going to teach lessons. We're going to tell our history. We kind of do the same thing at Ridgeview. As the kids are coming in, we will have about 20 kids playing gym bays. We're doing a drum circle and it's not really fast. We're not showing off. It's just a groove. It's to get the kids in. We're going to start celebrating you. We're going to celebrate your accomplishments. The kids that I work with, about four years ago, we started bucket drumming. So we will pick a song and it will do a short version and we'll do choreography with it. One of their favorites is to do Thriller by Michael Jackson. So we will do Dracula movements. We'll do Frankenstein. We'll do Ghost. We'll do the Michael Jackson movement and it's a lot of fun. So the kids that are normally last picked in a playground basketball game or last picked in PE, they get to get up in front of the school and do the bucket drumming routine. So we're setting goals. We're practicing. We have to do it once a day. If we know that we're going to come in, we do it once a day. So they get those feelings of feeling nervous, accomplishing a goal, and then getting that joy juice of feeling the applause that they get afterwards. What we started doing this year is we took it up a notch and so I made the whole school does it. So because body drumming is important and there's a lot of kids that might be in trauma or stressed out that we don't know about because they're not showing it on the outside. So a week before our community circle, I will send out a video of the choreography of the rhythm of the beats and when they have circle up time every morning in each classroom, they will practice it. So when it comes Friday, I got 400 kids plus my bucket drummers and myself leading them and we're all doing a celebration of rhythm and drums. That is awesome. I love that it's drums. Obviously, we love drums as drummers, but I think in general that like, I don't know, that like focusing your attention on anything, it could be sports or you like painting, whatever, that is so important for people's brains. Even as an adult, it's like, it's good to find time to not where you're not just working or, you know, doing family stuff. It's good to take time just to like, for us again, play the drums, but focus on anything. It's just great. Now, it seems like you've changed the whole school. I don't know what it was like before, but it seems like it's now a drum school. I mean, what's the reception of all the teachers? Well, they know it's coming and actually, the Liberty School District made me the district support employee of the year, so for the whole district. So it's been growing. It's taken us about eight, nine years to do it, but, you know, I have a Tibetan singing bowl that I use to teach his focus and, you know, mindfulness, you know, I put it in a kid's hand and, you know, ask him what they're thinking about it. Our counselor has a Tibetan singing bowl. My principal has a Tibetan singing bowl. I was telling my principal, Dr. Tyler Shannon, that a few years ago, how I was reading this doctor, a music therapist in New York took his drummers out into the city and played to the tempo of the city. Oh, wow. Okay. And so it was fast and it was moving and no one was paying attention to him. And then he says, let's slow it down. Let's simplify it. And so he just, they just laid a slow groove. Once they slowed down, the people started to stop and notice. Okay. So now let me bring it back to here. If I have a student that is struggling, you know, not so much. I don't want to say rage because then they, that's a whole different other thing, but they are really upset. But even like my principal, I, he has a gym bay and he will come in and he will just boom, boom, boom. And I will be with that child and we will, you got this? Let's breathe. Because sometimes we have to have two people in on there. So in a classroom and so we'll be working if I need help and he'll just pick up a drum and he'll just do a slow heartbeat. So we're trying to regulate that and I'm trying to slow and there's no talking going on. I'm not going, no, just be quiet. You got this. You know, you know, the old, my old, my parents would say, you know, the old, I'll give you a reason to cry. We don't say that here. But here it's just, okay, you can just, you got this, let's breathe and all while boom, boom, boom, boom. And you know, other cultures have been doing that for hundreds of years. You know so much more about this than I do, but I can say from having a three-year-old, which, you know, wow, that's a lot sometimes. But I can say that it's these just, and I think it's very normal three-year-old stuff, but it's like losing their mind. But if you just kind of like, again, let's just just, I don't want to say distract, but we're gonna, we're doing something else. We're not gonna, I'm not, okay, what's wrong? Stop. We're not gonna do that. I'm not gonna like elevate the situation, but I just kind of switch to something else or I start playing the drums or because we have a little drum set next to his play area and or just start doing Legos or something. They forget about it. Yeah. Yeah. It happens again, but you just, then you distract them again. I got about two years ago, I got certified in Neurorhythmic Trauma Therapy by Dr. Pamela Lynn Seraphin. And one of the things that she said that just stuck with me, when you are playing, you know, if you're just time stops, you are no longer thinking about what you're angry about. You're not thinking about that you didn't have breakfast. You're not thinking about, you know, the fight you got in with your brother. At that moment, all you are is focusing in on me, who's trying to help you or, and that beat, that slow rhythmic beat. And, you know, and the brain, it wants that order because whenever that child, whenever you're three year old is, you know, it's that's frustration, you know, they're trying to tell you something that life is not right. Yeah. And please help me make this moment right. Yeah. And it doesn't help that the three year old, if you elevate up to, I work with this thing called conscious discipline. And it's, I created by Dr. Becky Bailey. And so there are three brain states. There's your survival state, which is where you're back in your brain stem. Okay. And then there's your emotional and your limb big station. And that's your emotional. And so that's the side of the brain where we want to be as the adult is we want to be in the frontal lobe, the executive state. So when a child, you know, if is losing their marbles and not saying anything, and they're throwing things, they're in their survival state, they're saying this is not okay. And what we want to do is we want to try and work them up. So, you know, and it has to go, it has to go from survival to emotional to the frontal lobe, the executive state. So, you know, the first thing I do, and let me also say that just not every person that's in their survival state is destroying a room or having a tissy fit. It could just be they put their head down, and they put their hoodies up over their head. They're in survival state too, because they've just shut down. And I've been that way, I'm sure you have to where it's just like, I can't take this anymore. And I'm, I'm given up. Okay, you're, you're in fight or flight there, you're just, you're in survival state the minute. So then I go up and I'm, you know, might just play, you know, I could just like snap or have a shaker with me and just breathe. Okay, I'm not saying anything. I'm just shaking, breathing. The minute they say something, you know, it could be a curse towards me or this sucks, you know, just something. I know that they are now in the emotional state. Okay, they're at the side, working on the side of the brain. Now I got them. So now we can now start working towards being up here. Now here's the thing is too many times when I've had a three year old, and when he went into that fight or flight, I joined him, you know, I would go, sometimes it happens. And then I, and today, I mean, even today, I mean, I'm calm right now, but I probably lose my marbles about three times a week. And my assistant principal, Mrs. Heather Buckman, she knows I'm about to lose it because I have my pen and I'm like flicking it like crazy. And then she'll go, go take a walk and then she'll do it. But, you know, because we're a team, Dr. Shannon, Mrs. Buckman and myself, we're a team, one of us can step out and the other person step in because they know we've been at this long enough, we know what needs to happen. And it's because somebody needs to be here. If someone's back here, someone has to be at the front in their executive state. Yeah, I mean, you're absorbing all of this stuff and this rage from these kids and long story short, I've filmed for the last six years seminars for continuing education for psychologists and tons of classes. But again, I'm in the back just filming people always go, you must know so much. It's like, you'd be amazed at how at the end of the day I can say, well, what are we talking about? But it's always fun and good. But there's a whole thing about self care and and treat taking care of yourself because you're just absorbing all this rage from, I don't use the wrong words, but you know what I mean, this anger from kids. But it does sound like fun, what you're doing with drums and kind of regulating. But really, you're in the like, you're in the deep end a lot of times, I'm sure. And it's not all just like jambes and shakers. No, no, I've been hit, kicked, bit. Oh, man. Things thrown at me. But that doesn't that doesn't happen as much because because of the culture that we've created at our school. If a child knows that they're about ready to go to a dark place, they'll just ask for a break. Oh, yeah, that's good. And they'll come down because my room is safe. Like I said, you know, like you said earlier, a lot of places treat this room as as punishment and teachers would even, you know, they look for reasons to get kids out, you know, out of not so much at this school. It's like they they want to have their kids in their classrooms. And so they will let them take that 10 minute break to get regulated so that they can come back and and learn because they don't want to reteach things. No, no, that's a good point of really, oh, we covered this. What did I miss? And then you're everyone's getting screwed up. I think it's fascinating. I think it's extremely powerful. I think it's great you're doing it. Hopefully more people around the country and the world do it. But on that note, I do want to know, so this is your specific field. I'm sure there's tons and tons of different ways people use percussionist therapy. But I don't know, I'm sure you know a fair amount about all the different things around the world. Can you just tell us a little bit how other people use percussion in therapy? And I don't expect you to be an expert on every single world, you know, right culture, right? You know, a lot of them used it to to build a community, which is what, you know, I've taken that model and brought it here. They were to teach lessons. And you know, okay, so you take the take Jim Bay, and that's West African, Anka J, Anka Bay, everyone gathered together in peace. Okay, that's what so whenever you would have that Jim Bay, and someone would bring it out, you knew that it was going to be a party, you knew that there was going to be a celebration there, you knew there's going to be dancing, you knew that there was going to be stories and lessons being told. So, you know, that's why I have so many of them. And I love Jim Bay's and there's a spirit to it. They, I'm not, I'm hoping I'm not wrong on this, but they believe that every Jim Bay has a spirit. It has the spirit of the tree that it was cut down and made into it. It has the spirit of the animal that maybe fed the community, but now its skin is now part of it to make the sound. And then there is the person who puts it all together and the player. So the spirit of three or four things is in that one drum. And I have, at my house, I have a Makuta drum, and it's came from Central Africa. And it would be like they would put, it was a log, and they would take hot ashes, put it in the center, and then just let, you know, it burn the center out. Okay. So you also added the spirit of fire to the Makuta drum. And it took a long time. So these drums were so important to the community that if they ever had to leave, you know, or if they had to, if there was a flood coming or, you know, a fire, or if they had, you know, their food ran out, they would leave as many things, but they would not leave their drum. That drum was important. And, you know, drums in history, have been part of history. You know, a lot of women were drummers. You know, take, you know, we always think of the Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston, you know, holding his arms out in the Red Sea. And the whole thing took like five minutes. You know, but there's a story that Merriam, I think that his sister or the person who took care of him, was a drummer. And to, you know, because whenever the Red Sea parted, he had to have his arms out for a long time and he was getting tired. So Merriam got out her drum, and I'm sure it was like a doomback or a tambourine or a frame drum, you know, whatever it was, and played for Moses. So I'm like going, way to go Merriam, you know, that I wish they would added that to, you know, that Charlton Heston, you know, that would have been more life like. I mean, that's like encouragement. And that's just that even goes back to drums on ships to make people row faster and keep up the, obviously that's a rhythm thing as well. Right. And think about our own little drummer boys. You know, they were, and I tell my students, they were between the ages of eight and 12, and they had to come up with those patterns that you and I practiced for forever. You know, it was like they, because they didn't have walkie talkies or radios or cell phones, you know, they had to come up with a pattern that meant something. So a double paradiddle sounds different than a single paradiddle, which sounds different than a rough. And you know, whenever you had all that going on, and that's how we got our 25 standard rudiments, you know, it was nine year old kids that came up with that, which is amazing. And then I also tell them, I say, and you know, in those wars, you wanted to be the little drummer boy because it was considered bad luck to shoot you. You know, they wanted to steal the drum, but you know, for some reason, they, they honored you. Yeah. And as soon as that war, you know, as soon as the battle started, they put that drum on their back and then they started running around picking up the wounded, you know. And so, you know, tremors have been heroes for a long time. Yes. And we continue to be heroes. Heroes. Your work, I think you are a hero for what you're doing because of, it's very important. And just in general, kids, kids in these positions, kids, they're kind of like a lot of times, you know, it's cliche almost, but like left behind, you know, they're not cared for as much. So you clearly have a very big heart and want to help these kids. But obviously, working as a drum teacher, I'm sure you've taught a lot of kids drum set over the years and all that stuff. And it's gone through periods of, you know, you know, everybody wanted to play like Neil Peart. Then then we had the Carter Beauford, then the Danny Garry's and then, you know, it's. That's interesting to think about. Yeah. You know, I want to be like Bonham. I want to, I taught for a while and it was like, young kids were all super into the band Imagine Dragons. I know I play it all the time. Yeah. Still believer. Yeah, exactly. And it was like, okay, we'll do that. That's fine. But you also mentioned, so you did talk about them a little bit, but you mentioned the work of Becky Bailey and Pamela Lynn Seraphine. Correct. And everyone who's thinking it, yes, she was, Pamela was either married or you said they're not together anymore. Yeah, married to Danny from Danny Seraphine from Chicago. Pretty cool. These two ladies are absolutely brilliant. Okay. I learned from Becky Bailey first and she was the one that got excited about drums. And so when I was talking just a little bit ago about the brain states that that's Becky Bailey, that simple kind of simplifying the brain in three little and three regions. Okay. And so when we go throughout our day here at Ridgeview, and there's a lot of schools that go through, and it's called conscious discipline, we talk about the brain states, my students know about the brain states, you know, I got third graders that will tell them that, you know, that their lid is flipped and they're in the emotional state. Or, you know, they'll tell me about what they were feeling. And we'll talk a lot about feelings. You know, we use puppets and stuff, and they'll will do a lot of acting out through using puppets. Whenever they're in emotional states. And whenever, and then it gets them to their executive state. So I get to travel with them at some of their events. I've gone down to Florida, I've gone to Texas, I've gone to Louisville to talk about what I do here using drums. And nice. And it's always a lot of fun. Now, Pamela, Dr. Seraphine, Lynn Seraphine, she took those three brain states, but then showed me how each part of the brain affects that brain. Have you seen the video of Mickey Hart with the funny cap on, and he's playing drums and he's lighting up? No, the Mickey Hart from The Grateful Dead, obviously, yeah. Yes, and he's done a lot of stuff about, he does a lot of stuff about drumming in the brain. And you should look at it, because anytime I look up, and it's fascinating. And so whenever you're playing the drum or any instrument, your brain just lights up. I mean, it's not just a little bit. I mean, it's like a full on party. So, Dr. Seraphine, she talks about how the drum affects each area of the brain. So, you know, the cerebellum, that's like motor skills, and that's balance, and that's the coordination. You get into the frontal lobe. That is where, you know, you're studying. That's, you strategize, you're like having that conversation with the soloist, you know, the musician. So, you're part of it, the parietal lobe. That is like following the conductor. You know, he's there, and you're following along, not going faster or slower. If you're in band class, you know, those fifth, you know, if you're in band in fifth grade, that's hard to do. You want to go to the, at the tempo. So, when that parietal lobe is telling you, teaching you how to do that. So again, it's all about focus. Whenever I go and speak, I have pretty much everything that Pamela told me in all these slides. And I use them for the educators that are there to learn how rhythm, and it's for them too. I mean, they always talk about feeling really good after the 90 minute presentation I just gave, where they go, oh my goodness, I'm going to go buy a Tibetan bowl, or I'm going to go buy some shakers. I'm going to go, you know, because we forget, you know, music's supposed to be played and it's supposed to be fun. Yes. So true. It's cool that you are spreading the message of this around the world. And you're doing that right now as well. I mean, so, before we talk about your book, let's just, I think it might be cool to maybe talk about like, people can do this at home, I would imagine. Like you can do this with, it sounds like it doesn't just have to be kids, like if you yourself are having a bad day, I mean, I don't know if you work in a cubicle in an office, you should take a Gembe with you and start playing in the middle of it. You can take a frame drum with you. And what I do is, you know, I will get out at a Tibetan bowl and I will go around in circles and I will say, take your hand and go no faster or slower than me. Your hand's going to match my hand. And so we'll do fingertips and then I'll say, hey, how does your hand feel? How does the drum feel? Does it feel rough? Does it feel cold, warm? Take a deep breath in through your nose. Hold it. Breathe out through your mouth slowly. Go no faster or slower. Now go to your fingernails. How did it change? How does it feel? Take a deep breath in through your nose. You know, it's just kind of just slowing and you're using senses because so many times when, and I'm just guilty is whenever I get angry, I clench up and, you know, I'll start cussing, you know, under my breath. I mean, that was one of the benefits of a mask whenever during COVID is I could, you know, say all these words and no one could read my lips. But now, now I gotta use those filters again. But you take that, you know, a little frame drum or a Tibetan, have that my, like I said, my principal, my counselor, they have it in their office. Now, a principal's job's pretty stressful, you know, dealing with, you know, school bureaucracy or an angry parent or something. And I took a picture of him one time and he had his Tibetan bowl and he was on the phone and he was just going around in circles, just going around in circles, feeling that vibration being in the moment, probably focusing in on his breathing, because breathing is a huge part of it too. You know, we got to get the oxygen to the brain. Yeah. And we got to slow that heartbeat down. One thing too, that like, I think someone like you and your school and just kind of like the general kind of perception of stuff like this that I don't think should be the case is like, oh, that's hippie-dippy stuff. And it's like, I kind of see where people are coming from or like with like Mickey heart or things like that. It's like, yeah, I get, I get the perception. But this is real deal stuff where I guess that would be your hurdle. And I think I have people in my mind that I know of like older generation who'd be like, oh, they're kind of, they kind of poo poo everything. But then they take a, they take a bunch of meds to try and get the same thing. And I'm all, I'm all for better living through chemistry if you need it. But you know, there's just something about, you know, being in the moment playing and, you know, with Becky Bailey, Dr. Bailey and Dr. Lynn Seriffen, you know, there's the science. Here's the thing is I kind of like the science of things. And whenever you can show me the brain and you can show me and, and they got, they always show these videos and it's pretty cool. And that's one of the reasons I love LinkedIn is because I belong to all these and I'm not being bombarded by political propaganda stuff like that. Facebook stuff or, you know, what they're having for dinner. They, you can see these neurons, the brain neurons. It's a magnificent thing. And you can just see that one, you know, there's a strong neuron here. And then there's this neuron that's like searching. And it's, you know, it's happening whenever you're practicing, you know, we got to learn how to memorize something, you know, any daily life thing, you know, learning how to walk, learning how to talk, eat, just survival. You know, that's a, that was a neuron connecting with another neuron and then just building strong. And, and the, I mean, there's science is there. And so whatever anybody talks about the hippie-dippy, you know, I'll laugh and say, yeah, you know, we have the incense going and stuff like that, drums, we do sit around and yeah, but it's work. I mean, and of course I'm saying that from the standpoint of like, I think this is real deal stuff and working, but you mentioned when we were originally talking that you enjoyed the Bill Sherman Sesame Street episode. I think shows like Sesame Street or, you know, really a lot of PBS shows, they understand the like importance of music and rhythm and how just even like memorizing things to a rhythm with a drum going in the background. It's just, it's really important and it's really powerful. Right. I was an avid viewer of Sesame Street when Aram is a kid and then whenever my children were, they're 22 and 19 now, but I would watch it with them. Now it had changed because I didn't have Elmo, but I think I had a lot more, you know, characters, you know, to go from where they seem to spend like a half hour on Elmo, but the music was always there, and Mr. Rogers, I loved Mr. Rogers and he would always have a song. Now the thing that I loved about Mr. Rogers was he would, he knows that our world was very noisy and there was times that there would just be like dead air. Yeah. He would not say anything, you know, I'm putting on my shoes. You know, he wouldn't say I'm putting on my shoes. I am now tying my shoe. You know, there was just that dead air that I saw this on a documentary where he was, that was purpose, that was on purpose and I didn't know it at the time, but I thought that's brilliant. So whenever I do my presentation for adults or for kids, when we will do this thing called a wave and it's drums playing at different times and then we'll gradually go down to where there might be one drum playing and then there's none and then I will do that and we'll just sit there and then I'll point to my ear and that's you listen to what's going on around you and they're in the moment because a lot of times, I mean, like I was in a meeting this morning and we were doing something with our hands, but you know what, I was already thinking about what I was going to be doing on the, you know, thinking about this interview. I was going to be thinking about what I was not in the moment and so whenever we're in this group, I try to create a time where they are right here in the moment and we got to slow our days down. It makes me wonder, do you have like, if you had to give one example kind of in summary of like, you don't have to say his name or her name of like a kid who just like a success story of like, tell us about it. I'll give you, I'll give you three. Okay, okay. We do a lot of music videos. Okay, we'll pick, we just for like Black History Month, we just did Buddy Guys Skin Deep. I go home, I work up the, in my studio, I work up the keys and the music and everything and then I'll come in here, I'll set up a little studio and my kids who wouldn't sing at the beginning of our time, now we'll sing Skin Deep, you know, they will sing it, you know, one at a time, you know, so they have my attention. I have, and so then I use GarageBand here on the computer and so I build a whole choir of kids and then we'll make a video of this and I always use Puppets. So I have like a green screen in here. Wow, that's awesome. And you know, I bring in microphones and we video this stuff. Okay, so we were working on a video and there was going to be puppets and the kids, like I said, kids love puppets because Dr. Becky Bailey says it takes two people to regulate. Okay, I am, if I'm not there, it still takes two. And so if I'm by myself, my frontal lobe becomes my second person and says, you got this, you know, let's breathe. Okay, a kid, a child cannot do that at age, you know, seven or six or seven. So I have to say, okay, breathe with me. All right, so I have these puppets. Kids love the puppets. We use them a lot in the videos. Student is okay at school, but you put them on a bus and he has a little trouble. And so he got kicked off, off the bus. He loves coming to school. School is not the problem. The bus is. And he knew that I was working on this one video that was going to be played at one of our community circles. So he walked, you know, his parents or his mom gave him the choice, you can stay home because you kicked off the bus, we can't get you there. So he walked. He wanted, he did not want to miss out on this opportunity. So he walked to school. We, we did our thing in here. He got to spend the day at school, be with his friends, be with, and then he walked home. Another thing, again, a sister was having, she got sent home. They were having some problems. This, the boy, he was like on the fence. He could either go, you know, is either way. So I built a good relationship with him. His mom, his sister got kicked out. I didn't really work with the sister. Mom gave him the option, well, you can stay home with your sister because she doesn't have to go to school. And she says, no, I want to go and help Mr. Latham. I want to go to school. I want to go to school. Wow, that's awesome. And so he came in, had another kid who misses, he was brand new to here about two years ago. Oh my gosh, he did not, he did not have the skills of self-regulation and he got frustrated and her and I, we chased him all around the school for about an hour. And he even told me I needed to get on my knees and pray. And I was like, dude, I'm, I'm like, I'm six four. But you're pretty, but now he is in here and he goes straight to the drums. He goes straight to our marimbas and he just plays and he doesn't miss a day. And his grades are just going higher, higher, higher things that he hated to do. He hated to write. He hated, you know, doing this, but because, you know, music just has a way of exercising the brain, his grades are going up and his confidence is going up too. Cause a lot of it, you know, a lot of these acting out is just, they just don't have the, feel like they have the confidence to be able to do the work that's set before them. Yeah. Like they're, it's, it's like, it's almost like a movie you see, like a kid, if you see it on screen, you can go, that kid's just embarrassed. Or like, you can kind of hear their inner thoughts of like, I don't want to do this. So now I'm going to be the class clown and freak out and cause a problem. But wow, those are cool. I love hearing that. That's awesome. I mean, first off, congratulations for the success of your program and for your school. It sounds like it's just, it's paying off and very rewarding to you, you know. We have other schools that come and visit our room and they want it like, they want that magic pill like right now. Yeah. But you know, this is something that we've been doing for, you know, eight, nine years. And so it's, we're still learning. We try new things all the time. And when I say we, I'm talking about Dr. Shannon and Mrs. Heather Buckman. Yeah. So that's my team. Yeah. Yeah. But you have then put this kind of your practice down on paper and digital, let's talk about your book. The feeling is bright, self-regulation through rhythm and rhyme. So tell us about the book. Okay. So it really started out about during COVID. We, you know, we were that from March to the end of the school year, we, you know, we were kind of, we couldn't be in school, but they wanted us to be a presence to the kids. And so what I would do is every day I would write a social emotional lesson in poem and play it to drums. Okay. So, and then I would record it and put it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so that the kid and then the kids could get on it. And I just made it, you know, available to everybody. Sure. Yeah. So that's where it started. And so we were out of school for like, like 42 days, school days. So I wrote a poem, 42 poems, you know, that is teaching social emotional skills. So that, you know, that's what I would do my day and because they were paying me. So I needed to be working. So, and so I took my English degree from college and just wrote every day and loved it. And it's just amazing that it was it exercised the mind. Yeah. In a different way that I hadn't in a while. And then I'd had to put rhythms to it. And, and I were, what, we're three years into it now. I still write every day. So what Becky Bailey, Dr. Bailey did was she knew what I was doing with the drums. And she knew what these rhythmic mantras that I was creating. And so she wanted to do it. And so what I did is I recorded 23 of them, my favorite 23. And then we made a book about 12. And then you can download the whole 23 songs, which is my voice, children's voice, we call them the mindful maestros. And then like about 20 drum instruments. And, and okay, so I went back kind of like in my 80s musical collection, you know, the Peter Gabriel's and the Stings. And the thing that I always loved about them is that how they use percussion in their music. And so it'd be like, you'd hear a triangle on the ans and a shaker maybe on every now and then, but it would like all over the place. So whenever I was recording this, that's how I would like go into my 80s Peter Gabriel Stings self, you know, and create drum parts on how I remember hearing them that I enjoyed that. So whenever you use your headphones, you know, you might hear a triangle on the right hand side, I was really going for the stereo shaker drum set, you know, and of course I had to go and my my three favorite drummers, Stuart Copeland, Phil Collins and Neil Peart, you know, I couldn't help. So whenever I would play the drum set, of course, I would come up with something that was kind of like what Phil Collins would do with some of his solo albums or with Peter Gabriel, you know, like when the melt album where he couldn't use any cymbals. And so it was very tribal. So then I would put these kitty, the social emotional, you know, get off the struggle bus to drums. And so it took me three years to do it. What we wanted to do is Dr. Bailey and I, we wanted this product to be something that could be more than one time, you know, we go, we get on our phone and we flip through and we see nothing. We want the book. So we got this, this artist who does this beautiful work named Jolie Spelman, she did collage so that every time that you look at the picture that goes along with the mantra, the poem that I wrote, you see something different. When I did the music, I made it so that every time that you listen to it, you go, Oh, I didn't hear that shaker or I didn't hear that talking drum before, you know, so you have to listen to it because it might just be subtle in the background. And then we put lessons with it. So Jolie Spelman wrote three art lessons on ways to do collage. So whenever you down, you buy the book, you get the music, the downloadable music, and then you get like six lessons. So you get three art lessons from Jolie Spelman, you get two music lessons with me, you know, it's like all you just need to do is get a shaker or you can clap or something. And it's kind of just focusing in on the beat, the groove. And then since I wrote the words to it, you know, one poetry lesson. So I did a lot, I did one, I did this poem where there's a lot of blanks where you can, if I'm in, in a, in the city, that poem is going to sound different than if I'm in the country or if I'm in my, you know, in my bedroom. But it can work to any of those situations. And then, hey, put some drums to it. How do you, how does it sound? And so I, like I said, it took three years and it came out better than I ever dreamed. I mean, the like illustrations alone are incredible. Like from reading a lot of kids books now, I mean, these are real deal. This is the real thing. I mean, they're incredible. So and then the music and all this stuff is just awesome. There is a video that you shared of you discussing it, which I'll share basically where people can get it. But is this typically sold more for like, for classroom use, obviously, because there's lessons and courses? It is sold through conscious discipline. And yeah, you have to go through there. And so like, I spoke this morning at a professional development Zoom at a, I did a Zoom call through to this other school. And they all had, all the teachers had a copy of the book, and they were going to be like doing it today. It was like, this was, they were going to build a community of teachers doing exercises out of the book. They were going to be discussing it. Maybe they were going to be doing the poetry. Maybe they were going to, you know, I led them in stop pause, breathe and think, which is one of the songs that we do. And you know, it comes with hand motion. So we do the stop sign, we do the pause sign, we do the breathe, we do the think. Okay, again, it's getting back to that, you know, I do it playing drums. But I also had to teach it as a body drumming. So we would do slap our legs, clap. What do you do when you get mad at the game that didn't go your way? Do you throw the ball at the face of a friend, kick, scream, then run away? Do you feel the need to hit our bite because his anger is inside of you? You feel it all through your body, but you don't know what to do. There is nothing wrong with the feeling you get that emotion, let you know you're alive. But how you react, that's a different thing you must choose wisely in life to thrive. You need to stop, pause, breathe and think. Will this act hurt my friend? Stop, pause, breathe and think. Will this make the problem end? Stop, pause, breathe and think. How will these actions affect me? Will I get what I want and the problem leave or others stay away and keep me lonely? And then there's more like that. But because we, thanks. Because we did it, we, you know, we could do the heads part where I, again, I just read it to you. What do you do when, you know, if the problem is already and then we're just, we're just reading it. But the fact that I involved them in a rhythm, it is now part of them. And you do it to kids who have trouble with conflict resolution. Now they also have the head start, but they also know, stop, pause, breathe and think. There's some kids here at this school that before they leave my room, I look them right in the eye. And that's how we leave. Whenever you come, whenever you leave my room, you have to tell me the color of my eyes and I'll tell you the color of your eyes. And then we wish each other well, because I believe in eye contact. And that's a, that's a life skill there. But on, on some of them, I'll go, Bart, your eyes are brown. I wish you well. And then stop, pause, breathe and think. And they will do it along with me. So again, you know, I give them that little bit of a triage before they go back and be that awesome kid that we know that they all can be. But they're just learning the missing skill of self-regulation. Yeah. I mean, just, I think it's incredible. And you've got a very good vibe to you, obviously, from doing this for so long. But I think kids can just see that you're doing this. It's very genuine. You love the drums, you're a drummer, but also it's just, I feel like you've taken some different things that you obviously like working with children. You like drums and percussion. You've put it together. And I think this book, it's like, it's just kind of a, it makes perfect sense. It seems like everything came together correctly to make this happen. I'm 55 and I couldn't have made this book at 45 or 35. So, you know, it's, everything is a fabric. Life is a fabric. And, you know, and we're all, very cool. Yeah. So, I will share it in the description. There's a lot of people out there who are teachers and work with kids, both drum teachers and, you know, normal school education kind of teachers. So, they can check out the description there. And Rob, do you want to tell people where they can find you? Obviously, I'll put the link in the description for the book. I feel like social media, all that stuff. Yeah. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter, you know, and I'm real easy to find Rob Latham. So, Rob Latham, wherever at Rob Latham, you know, Rob, Rob Lee Latham, I think is on Facebook, you know. And then I'm on, like I said, I love LinkedIn. And so, you can find me on LinkedIn. And then I teach, like I teach here at Ridgeview Elementary in Liberty, Missouri. And I teach drum lessons at Palin Music here in Liberty. Oh, cool. So, you know, drums for 35 years. Yeah. If people are around there, then go talk to Rob and try and take some drum lessons with him because I think it seems like you're a great kind of, you got to be patient when you're teaching drums. And I think you have patience. I do. I do. So, all right, Rob. Well, thank you for being here. Congrats to Ridgeview, obviously, on all the success as well as a school. This is a cool different episode than some of the normal just company histories and stuff. So, I'm very happy to have you on here. Thank you. So, thank you, Rob. Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure.