#39 Laurie A. Couture | Empowering Children: A Fresh Perspective on Trauma, Attachment, and Alternative Education

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Welcome to Self-Directed. We are your hosts, cecilia and Jesper Conrad, and now it's time to welcome this week's guest.

00:10 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So today we're so excited to be with Laurie, and now I'll do the surname. I will say it in French Couture. I'm not sure that's how it's said in American, but that's what I say.

00:26 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So I'm very happy.

00:27 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's probably the correct way, but then you know names. They're interesting. I'm happy to meet you here today. We've met online a while ago, but I've walked the Camino, so I was a little not very much online, and now I feel today I can really get a good conversation. I know we have a lot of opinions in common. I can just read one or two pages about you and see that I have a sister here. So I'm very excited about this conversation that we're going to have today. And, yeah, maybe we should just let you say a little bit about where you come from, who you are and what your mission is.

01:04 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Thank you both so much. It was just so great to finally get to meet you Not quite in person, but at least we were all animated and in live. Yes, you're correct, my name is Laurie A Couture. I will say it the French way my family says it every way from Couture to Couture and the elders did say Couture, so it's an amazing way, in three different ways to say the name.

01:35
I am a childhood developmental trauma and attachment specialist. I am the author of the new book Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons, and the book my first book was Instead of Medicating and Punishing. So by trade, I was a licensed mental health counselor. I worked for, you know, 15 years as a counselor and I also had additional years of experience working in social services, juvenile justice and education and I am extremely passionate about attachment, parenting and homeschooling, unschooling, relaxed homeschooling and alternative education. I really want to see more and more children coming out of these toxic public schools.

02:24
I unschooled my son through graduation and I basically, early in my career, I went off the beaten path and I did all my own research, in addition to all of the in-service trainings and the CEU trainings that we had to do. So that is why I sort of went off in a very different direction than a lot of mental health professionals do. I also developed something called the Couture Protocol, or maybe Couture Protocol. That is basically a 12-dimensional system of working, of helping children heal from trauma, and one of the dimensions I will reveal is finding an educational environment that meets the child's needs. So, in other words, get them out of the system that is harming them. So I'm so happy to be here and I think it's just amazing especially this most recent trip that you took that I got to actually look at the pictures and some of the video, so I got to kind of watch it happen with you and your family.

03:34 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So you guys are awesome, thank you, thank you, welcome. I think so. You know, I'm a professional as well. I'm a trained psychologist, and when you share your line of career, it's the line I backed out of, basically because I'm just amazed just with the little things that I know. How could you survive working in this environment? Having the opinions that you have? I think it might have destroyed me. I had many reasons to back out, not just that I think I couldn't do it, but I'm just I think it's amazing you survived it personally, but also, I mean, got to work with the methods that you believe in within this system. How did you pull that?

04:31 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yeah, it was hard because obviously in the beginning, when you're unlicensed, when you first get in there, you really have to do what your supervisor says. But then, once you become a licensed clinician and then I went off and I became EMDR certified, which is a trauma treatment that works with the limbic system you have much more freedom. When you are certified and you start researching all these other methods. You really have the freedom to be able to develop your own specialties and your own expertise. And it was a very hard system to survive and I only did it. I only stayed as long as I did because, number one, I had to put food on the table for my son and, number two, these kids that were coming in. It was like I thought to myself, if I don't take them, then they're going to just end up with somebody who's giving them more of the system, more of the sixth system. Even if some of these clinicians were really awesome people, they just they couldn't think outside the box, outside of the box of medication, and you need to do what you're told in school and just, for example, in the mental health field, baseline is that the child will be obedient to systems and do what they are told in school and at home, and for me that's not what mental health is. What mental health is is that the child is thriving on all dimensions of their existence and that the family system is healthy and that the child and family are securely attached or are healing that attachment, and that the child is living with passion and joy. If that's not happening, then baseline isn't good enough to me. So that's how I survived in the system is that I had a lot of leeway to be able to go off and really work with families in a way that met children's needs.

06:24
It wasn't easy. I was always considered a rogue, I never fit in and of course, being on the autism spectrum, I had a lot of issues socially. Anyway that made it hard. I mean, I had a lot of. My colleagues did respect me and I did make friends, but I would say it was the colleagues that were very steep in the old ways of doing things, the strict behavioral, biochemical models. They had a hard time. I was very fortunate that I had some good supervisors that really believed in what in in just. They trusted me. Even if they didn't necessarily have the same strategies and opinions. They believed in me because they know I was competent, so they kind of let me do what I did.

07:09
But I really did struggle with the system and especially, oh my gosh, especially when I would have to go into the schools, because I had to work with the schools for many, many years at and it didn't matter if it was a preschool, a high school, an elementary school, middle school or even say I thought that's so called therapeutic school for at risk kids. I really struggled in all of those systems and because everything that that I wanted for my client would be diametrically opposed to what they wanted. So, yes, you know, it was a. I think it was a good decision for you, cecilia, to just just get out of the system, because people like us, we don't thrive in that and that's why I started a business, because it is so hard to thrive in that system.

08:03
Doing some, doing some, you know, individual group work where you can be independent Well, that's a little different. You know you can, you can have your own niche. But working in community mental health, that was. It's not something I I want to have to ever go back to. I don't know if I'll have to, just financially, but you know.

08:21 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah.

08:21 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So you talk about it in the past tense because you, you quit that line of career or put it on hold to do something else.

08:32 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yes, I left the field. I've been out of the field since 2016. I took a sabbatical in 2016 to write my second book and then, tragically, in 2017, while I was writing book on the sabbatical, my son Bryson died, and it was obviously I just I just had nothing in me to give, so I could not just emotionally go back. I have recently. So what I ended up doing is in after I came off of the sabbatical, I took my side gig and I turned it into a full scale consulting business because I used to. I used to. I've had my consulting business as a side gig since 2010.

09:17
But in 2020, it was amazing it happened literally one month before the pandemic hit I had two options on the table. There was a job I was going to take that was doing intakes and evaluations in a, in a in an inner city. So basically, I wouldn't be seeing clients that I would keep. I would just be doing evaluations and then funneling them to the correct services, or I could. I had an opportunity where I could literally jump off into doing my side gig full time and I had to weigh this and I jumped and took the leap of faith and thank God I did, because then a month later, when the pandemic hip, I would have lost that new job and I would have been without income.

10:03
So I ended up having this, this contract, this big contract that ended up going off into different projects and getting me other contracts. But I just had a recent situation where I couple of my contracts unexpectedly dried up. They were having financial issues so they could not pay their vendors, and so now I am looking at supplementing my business with some outside work and I have looked at maybe taking on some mental health clients with a group practice, and so that will be for me the first time in seven years doing that. So but this situation, if I you know, once I get started, it will be very different than community mental health because, basically, if the family is not a good fit for me, if they are not interested in alternative education, and you know, then you know, they don't have to work with.

11:08
You know, hey, if school is working for the child, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And we're working on other issues, okay. But usually for me we have to look at that education piece, because kids are spending six hours of their day sitting in a chair tapping on tablets, writing out paperwork, and then they go home and there's more homework, and how can you say that that doesn't ruin a life?

11:32
I mean yeah, I mean when you've lost your child, when your child dies so young, you think to yourself. I think my lucky star is every single day that I had those wonderful years with my son, that we unschooled because it had he spent those years in public school, then he wouldn't have been living his life and we wouldn't have had those times together. And now I've got these big, fat, thick portfolios of all these amazing adventures we had that year after year. I can look at them. They were so. Our homeschool portfolios were huge and I can look at all the adventures we had and know that my son got to live more in just the 13 years he was with me through adoption. He died at 23 but he came to me at 11. He lived more in those 13 years than some people live into their 80s and 90s.

12:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Absolutely, it doesn't need to be said, but I'm of course very sorry for your loss. It is just overwhelming just to listen to it even, and then to imagine living through it. It must be hell.

12:50 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
It is now every day.

12:52 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Every day. Something you said earlier made me think. I have a question I want to ask you about labelization culture, where we we put labels on children with different illnesses. We say they have and might take on it. And I might be wrong Absolutely, but sometimes when I look at it, I am seeing the parents and the system looking for an excuse for why they think a child is in a certain way. It's so much easier if you can say, oh, it's because they have diagnosis A, b, c, d or E, instead of looking at the system, not saying there isn't real autism or real something else. But but I just feel that almost everybody is getting labeled. So what is your take on this and how wrong am I on your personal scale?

13:57 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
I think you're very correct, jesper, because basically that is the system, that is the mental health and educational system is, if the child isn't doing what is convenient for the adults, then you slap a label on them and you diagnose them and then with that diagnosis that you go into a behavioral, biochemical way of controlling that child. And if they say that they have something called ADHD, well then you don't, as the adult, have to look at how your behavior and the environments you're putting them in is leading to those behaviors. But we understand okay, those of us who are natural attachment parents and have unschooled our children we understand that nature has a certain intent for young organisms, for children, and if those needs are not met, then children will not be at homeostasis and they will start giving off what I call alarm signals. And those alarm signals are not disorders, those are alarm signals saying hey, mom and dad, something's not right here, please help me. And nature puts those alarm signals into all living things to alert caretakers, the parents, to the fact that that environment is somehow not leading to homeostasis. And if you ignore the alarm signals, then that is going to get worse.

15:30
And so, unfortunately, in our culture we look at those alarm signals as behavioral problems, as emotional problems, as learning disabilities, and we medicate and we stamp it out and we put, give kids these behavioral charts and level systems to tit per tat. So if you do this, I'm going to give you this consequence, or if you do this, we'll give you this reward. So you manipulate the child's behavior to fit into the parent's wishes or the teacher's wishes or the system, whatever system they're in, and I have been able to see the worst of these systems because I have done work in juvenile justice and I have done a lot of work in children's residential facilities. My son, before our adoption, was in at least two.

16:20 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I don't know what that is. I think oh a residential facility.

16:24 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yeah, so that's what they don't care. Okay, so that's a residential, it's a group home for kids who are in the foster care system. Okay, I get it. So, basically, if children it was just a term. I didn't know. I know what it is.

16:38 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, thank you, I just don't know the word.

16:40 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Okay, gotcha. Thank you for having me define that, because, yeah, I'm so used to it I forget that it might be because I'm from Europe and we use other terms here.

16:48 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Oh, speaking to business lingo, yes, that's true, the business lingo.

16:52 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So basically what happens is if a child is in the foster care system but their behavior is deemed to be too extreme for them to for a foster parent to be able to handle, they are put into a group program, a group behavioral program, called a residential facility, and basically it's this rigid system where every moment is regimented and the children are put on what's called a level system, where if they do XYZ the way they're told, then they get put on a higher freedom level and if they don't, then they get put on a lower level where the freedoms are taken away. Now my son was in at least two of these. Now I am being told by some people that knew him that he might have been in a third. I don't have record of that, but they're insisting that they visited him in a third. So these systems drive kids literally insane and it's so much easier to be able to take a child and stamp them out and manipulate them than to look at your own behavior and say you know what? I haven't been meeting their needs, I haven't been attentive to them, I haven't been listening to them.

18:11
Whenever my son started acting out and it wasn't due to being triggered by his past trauma. I would look at myself and say you know what, maybe I've been so busy lately that I haven't been as engaged with him, and he knows that. I mean, my son would know if I was just yayaing him and that did not work for Bryson. I had to be and most of the time I was very engaged. But obviously as a single parent you know you had I would be working into my reserves sometimes. But I would look at myself and say you know what I didn't handle that right. And but see, the system doesn't want to do that because parents are being told well, your child has a disorder, so you're off the hook. You know your kid is diseased.

19:01 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And there is this general problem of responsibility, connected to the whole institutionalization of children, that parents, I think, live with the idea that the responsibility of the thriving of the child actually is not, it doesn't belong to the parents. They send them off to kindergarten, and I did that before I became smarter, and you know.

19:29
So I'm not trying to be judgmental, I'm just looking at the whole mechanism of our modern world and we have a life as parents where it's fairly normal to not feel responsible and, in a way, not be responsible because you were not there, exactly so. So parents, they, they, they co-parent with the state. Basically, they co-parent with, with professionals, with schools, and so when there's something wrong, in a way, it makes sense that the first idea would not be am I doing something wrong? The first idea would be to to adjust the child or or the yeah, adjust the child Exactly.

20:17
Because it's passed on, but it is also not the parents' faults as such, and it's it's very often when, when the kids in in our society are not thriving, it's because they live inside a system that would drive anyone crazy.

20:33 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
That's right. That's right. I mean they're. They're literally, when you think about it, our poor kids in this, in this, in in the industrialized culture. So this has actually been going on since the dawn of agriculture. This isn't a Western thing. This has been going on since we started planting food and putting our attention away from the kids and onto toiling In industrialized societies. You're absolutely right. It's it's that we have this belief that that we co-parent with the school, and actually we're not even co-parenting, we're just sending them away.

21:10
But when you think about it, our children spend most of their living, waking hours enduring distress, dysregulation. Their systems are not in homeostasis in school. They're physiological, they're physical needs, they're emotional needs, they're social needs. None of that's being met. They can't be creative, they can't even get up and move when they want to. They are stuck. And we put them in that situation as early as preschool and daycare. Even even infants are put in daycare and they are sat in these seats and they just have to sit there. They can't move. So in some cases they're doing this as early as infancy. And then when these children start to act out in their teens, then, oh my God, the kids bipolar. Oh, the kids got ADHD.

22:06 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Oh my God you know, and even without putting a label on them. Sometimes I understand why people find kids annoying, meaning that some of the children we see are on a public playground or they're going to an excursion to a museum and they are brats, to be honest.

22:29 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Oh yeah, they're acting out.

22:30 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
They are acting out and we have talked a lot about it. It's like why is it? What is it that's happening? But what you're witnessing when you're looking at them is here are they maybe half an hour of their life where they aren't being controlled? And that means they, but they don't have any normal self-control because they do not know how to behave. Not behave that's not the word I like.

22:55 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
What they want to do. They don't know what to do. Yes, and you make it great.

22:59 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And you just be able to scream. Yes, it must be wonderful for them you know you make it great, but they're trying to be around these kinds of kids. When I meet them I'm like, ooh, I look forward to school starts.

23:11 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So we get the museum's back and the playground's back, but you know, you make a really good point, jesper, about that, because I know when I would bring my son places and his friends, they, they behave just naturally in a very respectful manner because they didn't, they weren't, they didn't have just that half an hour of freedom, they were free all the time, so they, they weren't basically coming unglued. Finally, you make a good point that people have this idea and I heard it a lot during the pandemic of oh, I could never homeschool because I can't even handle my kids during school vacation or summer vacation. Well, what they don't realize is that school vacation, week or summer vacation is a detox period. Their kids are are just falling out all over the place. They're basically coming out of an imprisoned state and they're just exploding all over the place. So that's why you're seeing the annoying bratty, as you said, jesper, behavior is because they're finally free and it's almost like they're just. They're just the detox. The toxins are coming out, the emotional toxins.

24:27
But when a child is actually in a homeschooling or or unschooling situation and they are free children, then you don't see that. You see a child that's in sync with what's around them. That doesn't mean that they're not children, that they don't get excited. My son was very hyperactive. He wanted to interact. You should have seen him in a grocery store. However, the point is, is that his behavior would be respectful? It would be. It would be in context to the situation. He wasn't just out of control. Like you see, these school kids they're punching each other, shoving each other, they're ripping leaves off the trees, they're using sticks to hit, hit the trees, they're bullying kids, they're calling names, and all of that is those are innate, those are nature's alarm signals. Those are children who are dysregulated, those are children who are not thriving, and so what that behavior tells us is that those kids have a small, like you said, half an hour window to detox.

25:32
Or, in the case of school vacation, they've got one week and they're bored. You know why they're bored Because they're so used to being told what to do, or they're so used to being on a screen that when they finally have freedom, they don't know what to do with themselves. They don't have time to be. Boredom is a. Boredom is a self directed tool that, in a healthy situation, can help a child say hmm, what is it that I really want to explore right now? But a school child can't do that, only the school kids that just, they have so many passions to begin with that you just can't stop their passion. Those kids, can you know, love to read.

26:14
But it's interesting because my nephew, my middle nephew, aiden, who just graduated from high school, he said to me weeks before graduation he says I'm going to go to school Because, auntie, because I had, you know, he had got all these new books and I had got him some books. And I says, have you been able to read that one book? And he says, auntie, my school gets in the way of my reading. And he said that to me many times over the years and I think to myself isn't that horrible?

26:41
Now, if he was, you know, like I think of my son, my son, my son used to just like, like, chow down books. He could read book after book after book. He just did whatever, you know, whatever he felt compelled to do, to explore, to study. If he wanted to get on his bike and and you know, go in the woods, he would. If he wanted to do a project, he would just do it. And it breaks my heart that these kids, they just have to sit there all day and then, when they're behaviorally acting out, they're the problem.

27:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, it's horrible.

27:15 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I have a quick one. Cecilia and I have talked about the word behave, because we don't like it. It seems like other people want you to be in a certain way, but I've been sitting pondering about it and I liked the, the version of it where you talk about having your own being. I think that's where I hope that's where it originally comes from about how, yeah, how do you have your own being as a person? That would be. I would love to.

27:44 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, that's pretty upset.

27:45 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
That's where very good.

27:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
The word behave. The word that people use equivalently is the same word you would use when you perform a play. Oh, interesting.

27:56 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yes, like acting. Yeah, yeah, like yes, yeah, I think yeah, so it's.

28:01 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's not exactly the word. We have another word for the entire show, Like how is it to to show?

28:09 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It's more like performing.

28:11 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, it's like or like how does the child perform? But that doesn't. I guess some words can't translate, but it's just interesting because it's very clear in our language that this behave thing, it's not the person doing it, it's this facade, this mask, this role you take on and then you do these things in order to show the world around you that you're doing right. But there's nothing authentic, there's nothing real, there's nothing passionate about it.

28:44 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
And.

28:44 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I think we have the same problem. Yeah, the problem is everywhere that the kids.

28:50 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
I used to break sorry, go on. Yeah, I used to break my heart because when my son first came to me, especially in those first few months, he just wore masks of who he thought I wanted him to be, because he was so scared of being rejected by another family, because he had been shuffled through the foster care system in multiple, multiple placements, multiple foster homes and then those group homes, and so he was trying to act like the son he thought I would want. And so it took some time for me to help him detox so that he could be who he was. And it's interesting if I watched some video tapes of him in those first two, three, four months how, you know, almost in genuine you know, I know that's not technically a word, but just there was a lot of him really putting on the mask of I'm trying to behave the way I think you want me to behave, so that you'll love me and not reject me.

30:01
And that's what kids in school sort of have to do. They either have to decide well, do I behave so I don't get in trouble at school and at home, or do I not behave for the teacher but I behave for my peers so that I get accepted for my peers. So either way, they've got to behave in some way so that either the adults accept them or the peers accept them, or maybe a little bit of both, and so they don't get to be authentic who they are. And that's the beauty of when I would attend homeschool groups or unschool conferences is getting to see those kids for who they were and all those different, diverse personalities that you would see.

30:45
And the kids never stopped running around. It didn't matter if they were eight or 19 years old, they were just running around and always busy, but yet, but yet. If there was a sort of quiet sit-down activity, it was amazing how they could all do it. Obviously, yeah, because they were self-directed. They wanted to do it, and that was something that was so amazing to watch At the same time as outside. In my outside work, I would be watching kids behaving completely differently Is that word again?

31:21 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I want to scroll back a little bit to when we talked about vacations and parents saying I can't even handle my kids, even over the weekend, because I know another concept that you are passionate about is the attachment, and to me, when I hear parents say, oh, I could never homeschool because I can't stand my children through two weeks of vacation, I just need a break. I think the major problem is that there are some real issues with attachment. When we send our kids away and this can be very judgmental. The way I see it Many people feel they really have to, and I respect that, that they feel they have to send their kids to school because they have to work or for whatever reason. But the attachment I would like to hear you talk a little bit about that, what it is and can it be saved in a conventional lifestyle, and how do we cope with the problems that arise if we decide to co-parent with professionals.

32:35 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yes, cecilia, that's amazing. It's an amazing point because you really can't have a secure attachment in the same way that nature intended and send your children away at the same time. Now, I know there's people that are going to argue with that, but nature has a certain intent for every single organism, from the tiniest little worms and insects and single-celled creatures to the lofty giant sequoia tree. Every single thing has a certain blueprint for it. Humans seem to think that children are different than that and that anything goes, that there's no one right way to parent. Well, I hate to say, but nature's way is nature's not open to negotiation.

33:36
So nature says that there is a specific cycle that all mammals need to be on when they are young, and that is what we call the mammal attachment cycle. So it is actually in my book, my most recent book. Both books have it, but I have a much more detailed one in my new book about the human attachment cycle, and it starts this way. So picture a circle If you want. If you have a minute, I can actually draw it out for you.

34:07 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, we do, but please, if you can put words enough on it so that the people just listening can follow along.

34:14 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
And the rest.

34:15 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I hope they jump into YouTube and we put it in the show notes as well.

34:19 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Can you mail it to me afterwards, the drawing? I can sure I can put it in the show notes, for those who are only listening.

34:27 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So, I'm going to draw. What I'm going to do is I'm going to use a few different colors, so you can see this. Just give me one second here. This reminds me of picture pages when I was a little kid, this TV show where they were always drawing OK. So here's the circle, here, ok, and if you notice, it's got four quadrants, so a circle with four quadrants.

34:51 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I'm in.

34:53 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
OK, so I'm just going to write a couple words here and just we're hanging on, not that busy, so when I'm trying to have a need, ok, this need can be any need. It could be a physical need, an emotional need, a social need, some sort of a need, a need for love. The child will.

35:19 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Oh, you're moving away from the microphone, oh.

35:22 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
I'm sorry. Oh, the child will have the need. I'll just have to cover my face here, ok. And then when the child recognizes they have the need, they will express the need. So in other words, here they are no longer at homeostasis and they recognize that. So they express the need. Now, here is the only part of this cycle where we can intervene, and what happens here is magical.

35:54 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
This is step three. And this is step three. It's at 6 o'clock for those who don't have video.

36:02 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Parent meets the need as soon as possible and with sensitivity. So this is crucial because this is the only part of the cycle where we can intervene. And now the next quadrant is after we have met that need for the child or help them meet that need. The child then feels homeostasis and that means all systems inside and out feel good. The child is now regulated and what happens is, when the child is at homeostasis, they have feelings of safety, they feel good inside, they feel happy and joyful, they feel trusting and they just have a sense of feeling like they belong in the world, that their needs matter. And then what happens is that feeling is associated with the parent and what we call that feeling over time is secure attachment.

37:08
Yeah, ok, but here's what happens with most children in our industrialized society, especially those children that are sent home, sent to school. So picture this your child. Let's say, best case scenario parent and child have a secure attachment from the start, but the parent is going to send the child to daycare or school. So in this case the child has a need to be with the parent, the child expresses the need, but in this case the parent does not meet the need. Correct. The parent delays, denies or just fails to meet the need. Yeah, so what's going to happen here?

37:53
Is the child going to be at homeostasis? No, no, they're going to be dysregulated. So what that does is the dysregulation leads to emotions of panic, fear, anxiety, rage, lack of trust and lack of safety. And then those feelings are associated with the parent and what you now have is not secure attachment, but insecure or disrupted attachment. I have another one I drew out recently.

38:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yep.

38:47 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
And so basically then it gets worse, because this is not just a one time thing. So the next time the child has a knee, then what happens is that previous knee didn't go away. Then what happens is those needs kind of get backed up, almost like trains on a train track. If you picture this cycle being like a train track, well then every time the child has a knee there's going to be a backup of all these trains and it's going to be a twisted rep, so all of those unmet needs can gel. So then at that point some of those needs could actually become what they call big T's or big traumas.

39:32
So I believe that insecure attachment is a trauma, but certain things become traumatic because the child is overwhelmed and unable to cope and so therefore, they dissociate, because those emotions that we talked about of anxiety, panic, anger, lack of safety, lack of trust those emotions become so overwhelming that the child goes inside and they dissociate, and that is when you have what's called developmental trauma. And it's developmental trauma because it affects the child on every dimensional aspect of their development. So school is very serious when we send a child away, and this can even happen in high school. I mean, it can happen at any stage of childhood, it's not just the younger years that is the misnomer. Like you're a trained psychologist, you understand that when we were early in the field, if they taught us attachment theory at all, it was always just infancy and maybe toddlerhood. But no nature intends for this cycle to last for the entire childhood. And when it isn't, when parents decide, well, I'm not going to meet your needs anymore, then this is what results.

40:49 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So do you think actually that maybe this goes on throughout life?

40:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I was about to say that.

40:59 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But why is childhoods? It's arbitrary in a way. So I'm the mother of a 24-year-old, I have four in total and a 24-year-old is still a kid. She's still but she still needs me to mother her. She's still a kid, obviously in a very different way from when she was two. But if I don't meet her needs for me as a mom, I'm still breaking the attachment, I'm still moving.

41:24 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Because she's still an adolescent.

41:26 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
She's not an adult, I feel, even if my mom was alive, oh sure, I would still need her to be my mom, that's right so there's a lot that goes the other way. When you're an adult, my mom would need me to take care of her, and it becomes more complex. But still, I think when we say it's just about childhood, I can't say that.

41:49 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Adolescent.

41:50 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And young adulthood. Maybe it's a lifelong relation that needs a secure attachment and obviously it's very much more important the younger the child is and throughout the entire childhood. A secure attachment is the important part. And yet I did study it at university. It wasn't a secret, it was part of developmental psychology. But developmental psychology at University of Copenhagen also opened with this sentence the first course we had the first year with developmental. The professor said we're not discussing children outside of institutions because this doesn't exist. Wow, I was kind of ready to get up and leave, but that was like his premise. He said I know you want to talk about this. 99% of all children are in institutions.

42:47 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yes, they are.

42:48 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
With children in reality. Children in reality has lived their life in institutions. You have, your children will and this is the reality. It was heartbreaking, but we did study attachment theory and a thing I've come across many times in my life after university is the layman version of attachment theory, where sometimes professionals inside the system the school teachers, kindergarten teachers, they can say this this child has too much attachment.

43:23 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Oh yeah, because that's not well, because they're using the word wrong. You either have a secure attachment or you have a disrupted attachment.

43:32 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You can have a secure and insecure and disrupted. That's it. And the secure one is the good one, and the more the better, the stronger, the better it is there's nothing to negotiate here and, like you said, ideally the secure attachment relationship should last for life with your parents.

43:50 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So the reason it's so crucial for kids, like you know, is because with children it'll affect their development, Whereas if you're somebody 35 years old, your development is pretty set. So if your parents suddenly no longer attachment parent parenting, it's going to hurt, but it's not going to affect the blueprint for life the way it does with your kids. But at the same sentiment it definitely will harm you and could cause a grief reaction, trauma. So yes, ideally we want this attachment security throughout life, Because what it does is the secure attachment with our parents sets the blueprint for all our relationships and if we have an insecure attachment with our parents, then that means as adults we're going to have to work to repair that, to have healthy adult relationships.

44:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And also when we get our kids home for summer break. Even when we get our kids home in the afternoon after we send them off in the morning, attachment is the big, big underlying energy going on. Attachment is what you see happening when a kid has a tantrum in the supermarket. It's all the power of the need of a good, solid, stable attachment happening right there and maybe that little bar of chocolate is the symbol for this two-year-old and the mother having almost also a tantrum. I mean, I feel so sorry for these women in the supermarket. I'm really not being judgmental, but what I see is the energy of the pain of the parent who did something. We all know it's wrong, we feel it and we're taught to not feel it or to ignore it, and the kids know it very clearly.

45:44 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
But they do it intuitively.

45:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
They cannot speak academics about it, so they have grown themselves on the floor and they scream and they kick, and they shout, and they shout, and they kick, and they scream some more until they at least get the chocolate bar. But what?

45:58 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
they really need. That chocolate bar or that toy or that item is the symbol to fill the void for these secure attachment Kids that have secure attachments. If you read books like the Continuum Concept and you study Paleolithic tribes, kids in those tribes just did not throw tantrums Because they were never in a state of not being at homeostasis. When they weren't at homeostasis, their parents or their grandparents or the people in the tribe immediately regulated them. They were not un-parent. That's another problem that I see that some parents that claim to be attachment parents go the other extreme where they do un-parenting, where they expect the child to raise themselves. No children need us to meet their needs. They need to know that they matter enough for us to parent them. They don't want to meet their own needs. Who wants to give themselves a hug?

47:01 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, no, and also I find that children as they grow up mine are not so young anymore, so I'm not thinking about my own, but when they are small, I like your little circular drawing. There's a need and they express the need, but it's not very precise. It's not like the child know exactly what they need. It's not like you know they plan. They usually don't.

47:33 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
That's why especially they feel the disruption of the home-.

47:37
They feel the disruption and we have to put on the Sherlock Holmes hat and figure out what the expression is, because most kids can't say, hey, I need this. Babies cry. When they're crying it's because they might not know the need, but they feel dysregulated when kids don't. Sometimes kids know, hey, I'm thirsty, and they can tell you what they need, but a lot of times, teenagers, they're acting out by being sullen and moody or they're punching their sibling. They don't know what they need, they're just acting it out. So this is why the expression. This is where we have to be the detective and figure out what is the unmet need.

48:24 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So when the child there's a lot of child homes going on there, that's right. That's what I express, even to understand. Is this an expression of a need or what kind of discomfort is going on here? What?

48:35 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
am I looking?

48:36 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
for I think that's one of the reasons it can be so extremely stressful, especially to have your first child, but actually also especially to have your second child, because this is a new person and I think it's very much also-.

48:51 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
You've spoken how they express to yourself. It's like, oh, they do this.

48:56 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
You've got it and then you realize after 10 seconds that the second child is another human being.

49:02 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
It's completely different. That's right.

49:05 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And with babies it's one story, but I think even with adoptees. I mean, it's a person and you need to get to know this person and you're running alongside this train. The train is going really fast and you have to understand all of the mechanics, the direction, everything about it while it's going on.

49:23 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So While it's going, yeah.

49:25 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And you're asleep, deprived it and you just had a baby. It's great. You would understand why the mothers sometimes, when the dad comes home from work, would say could you please just for half an hour, because it's hard work to be this detective.

49:44 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
But you know what, though? But the thing is, mothers and fathers in peaceful tribal societies had a whole community of intergenerational family members around them, so it wasn't just the nuclear family. So that and also keep this in mind a securely attached child is going to be more regulated more of the time, so they're not gonna be constantly spilling out all these. How do we figure out this expression? My son, my son came with 11 years of trauma and unmet needs, so my son's expressions were coming out all over the place, and it was like for one single mom. It was very difficult. You must, you must, must must have help if you're a single parent, especially an adopted parent, but even if you have a nuclear family with a mom and a dad, you really need those grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. I'm very involved with my nephews and niece. My sister was involved with my son, so it's my family. It's very important because in peaceful tribal societies, you had the family and you had the tribe and you had the community involved, so that it wasn't just all on the parents to constantly figure out those needs.

51:08
You had made a really good point, cecilia, that it is not about blaming our parents or our grandparents, because this is a cycle that has gone on for hundreds of generations, from the dawn of agriculture all through industrialization. And it's not about blaming. Everybody does the best they can with the culture that they live in and our parents try their best, and we know that parents today are trying their best. But once we have this information, once we learn it, then it is upon us. It is now our responsibility to do what our children need.

51:49
And because we're trying to do better with each generation, we want the next generation to do better than our generation. We want that cycle to keep improving humanity and raising our vibration. So it's not about blaming. We are not judging or blaming anyone. It's about saying we now can get back on this cycle, the healthy cycle, so that it is secure attachment again. And that's how you do it Is you go back on to the cycle and you start meeting those needs, you start deciphering those needs, you start figuring those needs out and understanding that a lot of your adolescence acting out has to do with needs that were unmet in those first three to five years.

52:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I have a question, Laurie, because I'm sitting and thinking sometimes I get not tired. But unschoolers can be a little like, oh, this is the best solution, and I in many ways think it is. But when I look at your theory, what I see and when I look at unschooling, is we who live full time together with our children can see when they express a need. But not everybody wants to go down the road of unschooling or being a full time parent or have the needs, the economic funds, to do it. So how do you suggest parents who are listening to this and are saying, oh, she's not all wrong. It sounds kind of clever. I like that idea. But when you are not there to see the need, because they might be in school, what should you do?

53:31 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Well, first, jesper, what I'm going to say is I found a way it was not easy and it didn't happen overnight to homeschool my son through graduation as a single working parent on a very, very, very tight budget. And how I did that was I did not see public school as an option. So it takes time. It took me a long time to come up with a plan and I was able to find a beautiful, child centered private school to put my child in while I was figuring out that plan. So, but as you are making that plan, see, I want to. I want to move parents in the direction of make a plan rather than oh, I can't do it, no, no, that's not acceptable. Once you understand that we've got to make a plan, but while you are making that plan, you want to really try to focus on what is best for your child. So, for example, you can intervene with the teacher. You can call up that school and say my child's not doing any homework Period, I don't bring chores to school for you to tell my child to do. Well, my child's home time is my, is his or her home time. So there are some little things that you can do to try to help meet that child's need. You have to understand that your child, at all times, is having physical needs, they're having emotional needs and they're having higher level needs for creativity and intellectual development, socializing, playing, moving and knowing that you can, you can build a life around your child so that those needs are met. It's sometimes the simplest little thing of getting you know unplugging the screens because your child can't meet their needs if they, if they can't stop, if they can't stop themselves from engaging with the screen. So there are lots of little things that you can do. But I really feel strongly that parents, really your child has one childhood to say that well, I can't do it. You're basically cutting out all these opportunities and shutting doors before you even get started. So what you say is I'm going to come up with a plan and the plan's not going to happen overnight. It might take a couple years. But work on that plan to get your child out of that system and into an educational environment doesn't have to be homeschooling, but an educational environment that's going to be more likely to meet these needs, so that you don't have these big red axes on the needs you know there are now ever since the pandemic. There's a brand new option that didn't exist before, called learning pods. It's like a hybrid of school and a homeschool co-op put together is what that is, and so there are all these options now.

56:23
Since the pandemic, that didn't exist. And please don't think that the remote learning that your kid was doing during pandemic is homeschooling. That's not homeschooling at all. All that was with school over laptop, that your, your child's school, took your child hostage in your own home. That's what that was. Yeah, you were allowed to have. Yeah, you were allowed to have.

56:46
So, that's what that was.

56:48 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So I'm thinking one of the advice that I would give. I agree with you, this giving up style I can't do it is what it's, just giving up basically. Of course there will could be a way if it's more important. I remember saying to Jesper one point I'd rather live in my car than send my kids to school.

57:13
I mean, it's a question of how important is this?

57:17
And once you realize that, then there are many more options than you know would be maybe forefront First time you think about it. But until the moment where you can actually set your child free, I think, at least knowing what attachment is, how it works, and that there is a problem when you say goodbye to your child every morning and you're not around to see and meet the needs all day, and then you say hello again in the evening, realizing that the most important underlying stream under your family life is the attachment problem, and work with that. There's a lot that can be done in the moment of saying goodbye and the whole idea talking about this is what we have to do. A few more years, how can we make this for you? And also, when you have the hours that you do have after work in school, how do you handle those hours? Make sure that the hurt attachment, the injured attachment, is being, you know, taped back together, and maybe we need a little oil or a little you know, whatever, look at that as the most important parental job.

58:32
It's not very important to do yoga or fancy meals or Instagrammable kitchen or homework, or homework or screens.

58:41
Waste of time. Screens can be nice I'm not against gaming and movies but you know you could do it together. Then it's fun and it's time that you spend with your children, but at least recognize and realize this is important, maybe even if the kids are a little older than two years. Talk about did you have a school that wasn't met? Was it uncomfortable? Were you cold, thirsty? Did you need to go to the bathroom but you weren't allowed?

59:17 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
But the key is the parent needs to intervene with that, not just ask the question oh, that's too bad, but okay, the parent gets on the phone with the teacher and advocates. So that's. I agree with everything you're saying about trying to do damage control while you're coming up with a plan, but the key is part of that damage control is getting on that phone and letting that teacher know this is not acceptable and I won't allow it. So you're advocating for your child and then your child's going to feel like he or she matters to you, his or her needs matter to you. So, yes, did you what happened at school today and what needs weren't met, and helping them start to develop an internal sense of their needs. And the important part is you being their advocate.

01:00:09
So when my child was at, when Bryson was at the private school the child centered private school for those for that first 11 months, while he was placed with me before we legalized our adoption I would stay very much in touch with what was going on. I was advocating for him all the time. If they were saying he just refuses to do anything, I'd say you know what? Just let him be. Just let him be. He's overwhelmed. And if you don't want to melt down, just let him be. Just let him know you're there for him, let him know you care about him and let him know he can come to you. But don't be, that's not the time to be telling him he has to do his writing.

01:00:51 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
No, no, no no, I think it's very nice. You hold on to that, I'm, I'm just you hold on to the. You know, come up with a plan.

01:01:01 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I like that.

01:01:02 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I try to. I just personally try to not end up in the more radical end of my radicalism. Yeah, Because I know that it's important that we also I mean you and I agree in so many levels. Yeah, it's easy, but we're doing this podcast to talk to those who are embarking on the journey of understanding what childhood is and why there are problems and what can they do to improve their life and the life of their children. And I don't want to only, you know, preach for the choir.

01:01:45
We have to also give those who are just thinking about it, just wondering could this be a thing, A walkable path? And I'll sit down and ponder on this, I think, later on in the sunset. How can we, how can we? What would be milestones before you actually, yes, before you can? You actually have a four year old and your job is to be a nurse. You can't leave the four year old alone for 10 hours at home.

01:02:20 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
I get that. So you need the biggest thing that parents need. Is they what I needed? Whether you're, you know is your child needs a childcare plan, because I don't care if they're, if, even if they're older, let's say they're seniors in high school, it's not acceptable to leave that child every single day alone home alone, because you know so. There needs to be adults there, they need to be involved in activities. What we ended up doing over time is connecting with other homeschooling families so those families could take my son when I was at work and then, if I wasn't working, I could trade the childcare. So that way there's this dynamic sense of a community around your child. So, yes, and then my child. When he was older, my son did have some time one to buy himself, which so he could, you know, work on some of his projects, but he was never just left alone for days at a time. That's not acceptable. Homeschooling you need a plan. Yeah, you need a plan.

01:03:22 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But you can. I mean you can. If you have to work six hours three times a week outside the home and your child is 15, you can do it and it will be responsible. You cannot do it when the child is four. Yeah, yeah, you have to answer all your questions and I'll just sit down and think about, like, how do we so that you would be a walkable path?

01:03:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
But I think the first step is I liked your very wonderfully simple drawing that pointed out so well what are you doing to address the needs and serve the needs that your children have? They might not have been able to express them in a wonderfully easy way to understand and I think as parents, it could be interesting to ask yourself okay, if my kid have been to school or in a kindergarten or whatever, what needs might they have during that day where I haven't been there that I could have addressed and how can I make a dialogue with that child about it? And also, often, knowing that if you ask a child how have your day been, they are not focusing and analyzing their day. True, they are not. They are very much in the moment.

01:04:41
So, I think, it's a good challenge for parents to figure out how can they make sure the needs are met even though they are not there. We have talked a lot, but I would, so I think it's kind of time to round up the podcast, but I also Interesting question. No, but you also have two books and I would like you to tell a little about both of the books and maybe from there lead into where people can find you all, so if they want to work together with you or learn from you, Thank you.

01:05:16 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Thank you, is it Jesper or Jesper?

01:05:18 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yes, yes, all goes, Jesper, all goes.

01:05:21 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
A nation, jesper in English.

01:05:23 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah.

01:05:24 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Okay, I like that so people can find me on laurieacoutorcom. I also have a sub-stack and a YouTube channel under those names Laurie Acoutor. My books are on Amazon or on Barnes and Nobles. You can get the beautiful, thick, bold color paperback which is very big it's like a tome, my son would call it or you can get the PDF version for if you are on a tight budget, of nurturing and powering our sons.

01:05:57
Basically, what nurturing and powering our sons is about is it takes. It takes if it puts the focus on our sons, because boys are really withering and struggling in all areas, in all systems in our culture. So in every single system from the medical institution, the legal institution, mental health, education they are failing. And they're not failing because there's anything wrong with them, but it's because their needs are being starved to the point of death. And the suicide rates for boys and young men are terrible 81% of youth suicides are boys and young men. And so what we do is I take parents by the hand, exploring what these unmet needs are. We explore how these are specific to boys, how some of the traumas that boys are facing in our culture that we don't even focus on For example, sexual abuse and male genital mutilation, and we talk about what boys are going through in all of these different institutions in our society, including in the media and politically. And then at the end the part three of the book I take parents by the hand and we start filling those needs, bit by bit by bit.

01:07:21
I have a whole chapter on alternative education methods and what I do is I grade each method according to nature's intent. So if you think that nature would give public school an F, well then what would unschooling be for a grade? What would relaxed homeschooling be? What would a child-centered private school in the Woods be? What would virtual schooling be? So I grade all of those and I explain why nature would give it that grade. I discuss the pros and cons and when you may wanna consider that method. So and everything in that book. I spent six years on that book. Everything is about taking parents by the hand. So I tell people, please don't be intimidated by the giant size of the book. It's meant to be read in small, little doses. Everything is broken up by small, small paragraphs. It's full color pictures, graphics, illustrations. So that book is a deep dive into my nature's intent philosophy. My first book, instead of medicating and punishing, is a smaller overview of it and why our children act out and what to do instead of medicating and punishing.

01:08:42 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah. So if you should give parents to sons just a couple of advices on what to do with it weird things that I'm part of. I'm a son, I'm a man, so how should you help your sons, and what? Yeah, because we are a wonderful, weird combination of a lot of power and emotions inside at the same time.

01:09:17 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Well, thank you, I'm gonna call you Yesper, because I love that. I think that's great, that's beautiful, so we could do a whole show on this. But what I would say is your sons need just as much physical love and nurturance and affection at all ages, into the 20s, as your daughters do. Your sons and your daughters are just beautiful, wonderful creations of God and they both need their needs met. It's not that your sons are stronger and they need less. No, in fact, the research shows that sons actually come into the world more needy and less strong, and that's why they tend to have more developmental issues like autism. Because they have one Y chromosome and one X chromosome, whereas girls have two Xs, and so boys that have a developmental disability on their X they don't have a second X chromosome to cancel that out like girls do. So boys really come into the world at a disadvantage, and they are also very much attentive to the mother's facial expressions and I think all through childhood, but especially in infancy, and if they see moms with a blank face, a depressed face, research shows that they are more likely to suffer depression and developmental damage than girls, because girls are able to seek it out.

01:10:46
We don't know exactly why this is. It's just boys and girls are different. It is a falsehood that they are physiologically and neurologically the same. They're not. They're genetically different. But as children, they need boys and young men need that physical affection as much as girls do and they need your love and they especially need to have the secure attachment with the mom. They must have that. They need it with dad too. They need physical and emotional nurturance from dad and they need physical and emotional nurturance with mom. So I hear a lot of times dads like oh, the little girls, my princess. Well, your son needs to be your prince.

01:11:30 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah.

01:11:30 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yeah.

01:11:32 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And let's forget about the men. Up and be strong. And boys don't cry. They need a lot of love and care.

01:11:37 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
They do, Just you know just what I do is, you know, cherish them all. You know I have my. It was my son and then I have my two nephews and niece. They're my nephews, almost 23. One is 18 and my niece is gonna be turning 14. And all four of those kids, they all are different personalities and I just give of myself everything according to that child's personality and you give them an abundance of physical affection and love, and that's what you do. You personalize it in a very nurturing way, but you don't say, well, that one needs less, you know, than that one, because they all need it, but you want to personalize your love for each child.

01:12:22 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Absolutely.

01:12:23 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
That's a good last one.

01:12:25 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It's a good one to say goodbye.

01:12:27 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's a good option to think about whether we should do an entire show.

01:12:31 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I would love to do an entire show on Better Parents to Boys. That would be lovely, that would be really cool.

01:12:37 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
I think we should do that.

01:12:40 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, lori, it's time to thank you for your time. It has been a very big pleasure, and I know I walk away with things to ponder about on how I can become even better at this parenting game. So thanks a lot. For my side, it was a pleasure.

01:12:57 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's nice to meet you, I almost say, in real life. It feels like a very present and personal conversation.

01:13:07 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
So there is a little out from Zoom but this has been really nice. It has been really nice and thank you for what you're doing. Thank you.

01:13:17 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
It's nice to have some voices out there saying the truth.

01:13:22 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been such a fun hour and few minutes and I just I hope to get to meet you both in person someday, because I just feel such a connection. I'm sure it will happen.

01:13:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
It will make it happen.

01:13:35 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
We travel oh good.

01:13:36 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Thanks a lot for your time.

01:13:38 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
And you will love New.

01:13:39 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
England. You'll love New England. Hey, we will. Let's look at the map. Thank you for your time and for people out there. Go check out Lori's work it is worded and go read her books. I recommend them. Show notes. Thank you.

01:13:53 - Laurie A. Couture (Guest)
Ciao.

01:13:56 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Take care. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and if you liked them, then please share it with all your friends and family. We would also love it if you gave our podcast a review. Thanks, and if you want to support our podcast and work, then you can find us on patreoncom slash the Conrad family. We will continue to travel full time and if you want to tag along, then please follow us on Facebook and Instagram at the Conrad family, and you can also read more than 100 blog posts on our website, theconradfamily. Until next time, make a wonderful day, thank you.