Episode 370-The Five Intelligences Advantage with Dr. Jonathan Strecker

If everything in your child’s world keeps getting easier, why do they seem more stressed, more isolated, and less confident? That question drives my conversation with Dr. Jonathan Strecker, head of school and author of *Emergence: How Modern Convenience is Dumbing Down Our Children and What Parents and Schools Can Do About It*. We get into the uncomfortable truth that growth usually comes from friction and practice, not from instant fixes, constant entertainment, or outsourcing hard thinking. 

We break down his “five intelligences” lens for whole-child development: intellectual, social, emotional, ethical, and physical intelligence. That framework changes how we respond when a child is struggling in school, because the issue often isn’t the worksheet, it’s the missing foundation. We also talk about why many kids feel anxious and disconnected, how trust and social skills get eroded, and what schools can do beyond test score pressure to raise healthier humans. 

Then we go straight at AI in education. We’re not doing panic or hype, we’re doing guidance. John shares a practical three-step way to use AI as a tool for learning rather than a shortcut that replaces it, along with why boredom can be the doorway to imagination and metacognition. We also touch on autonomy at home, values-based boundaries, and how online community can become a real lifeline for kids who struggle to build in-person friendships. 

If you care about parenting, child development, ADHD learning differences, and the future of education in an AI world, you’ll take something useful from this. Subscribe, share this with a parent or teacher, and leave a review with one idea you’re going to try this week. What’s one “convenience” you’re ready to challenge?

Transcript

Welcome, Summit, And Accessibility

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hi, and welcome to the SJ Child show today. I'm really looking forward to this conversation today. And I I should have asked prior or previously to getting on, Dr. Jonathan. Is it Strecker?

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Strecker, yes. Just John is fine.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Just John. No, kidding. But we'll just call you John, not just John the whole time. My husband would do that. He would he'd say John for the rest of your life. Oh, we have a cat that is that's funny too, named Lou. And at the very beginning, he would tease my daughter like Lou Ann, Louise, just Lou. And so, like the long time he said, Lou, come here, just Lou. Oh, what a character. Well, I am excited to have this conversation with you today. Previous to you coming on, you probably don't even know. I am having a summit this coming weekend and the following weekend. It's called the 1 in 31 Connection Autism Summit, 86 speakers, 20 live panels, and some pre-recorded videos and a really special non-speaker pre-recorded session VIP Spotlight from Elizabeth Bonker, who is so, so honored to have her story along with all of the rest of ours. So it's gonna be an incredible July 31st, August 1st, August 7th, and 8th. So those of you who are listening, probably the first week of August when this may come out, so you know to go and check on my YouTube channel so that you can just click on that live tab. And the summit is free and accessible to everyone. There's registration if you like to get updates, and if you don't, then just show up and watch it. Uh my husband brought that to my attention. I said, I'm building all of this technology. And I said, look at this, look at this. I built this whole registration thing, and I was so excited. And he said, No, no, no, no, no, no. I said, I don't want, I don't have an email address, I don't want to register, I just want to show up and watch it. And I said, Okay, that's a good point. Point be made. So I made sure that it's just accessible, which is just my favorite thing about kind of making technology these days is is making it accessible for those who who haven't had the opportunities. So yay, that's where we're gonna start.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Good, very inclusive. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yes, thank you so much. Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us an introduction, and we can get started into this conversation.

John’s Story From ADHD To Doctorate

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Oh, great. My name is uh John Stracker, head of school at a private school in western Pennsylvania, and it's an independent school, so it's private, but it there's no religious affiliation to it. It's called Valley School of Ligonier. I'm an author, I've just written a new book called Emergence, How Modern Convenience is Dumbing Down Our Children and What Parents and Schools Can Do About It. I'm a YouTuber. I just started that in August, and I have I think over 150,000 subscribers at this point. And I've been doing a lot of columnist work where I have a couple of local papers in my area that I do a weekly column called Weekly Words of Wisdom. And I also do national level, the Epoch Times and CEO World, and just some other things that have come up recently.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Incredible. Oh my goodness. I am really excited to uh to know more about that. What is the book called? Emergence. That's what it was. I'm just gonna uh type it up here really fast. It looks really interesting. I'm excited to learn more about it. And you said you were also doing you just loaded me up with all of those things.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Yeah. Well I do YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

YouTube, that's what I wanted. What's your YouTube channel?

SPEAKER_02 4:05

It's just Dr. Jonathan Strucker.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Wonderful. Oh, that's easy enough. Follow his name on YouTube, please. Yeah, oh, that's amazing. Wow, and that's a lot of. I mean, you thank you for following my show. You can see I only have like 350 followers on subscribers on YouTube, but you know, small steps. No, just joking. And you know, other places that's where I'm growing in other places right now. So I think we all have kind of our space that we're filling. And tell us about kind of why you got started on this journey, and then we'll kind of dive into more of the school and the book and the and the YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Absolutely. So when I was in school, this was before the days of recognizing student difficulties or student disabilities. I think there's no doubt in my mind I had ADD. Um, I don't think I had the H. Teachers never complained about me being hyperactive, but I just I didn't concentrate. I graduated high school with a 2.2 GPA. I took two years out of high school to follow my father into factory work and the mundanity of it, I just I couldn't do it myself. So I squeezed back into Ohio State. And probably the most influential moment is I had to take a psychology course that I'd never experienced before. And it talked about how one how your emotions connect to your learning profile and the way you need to think about your own learning. Well, that led me to neuroscience. So I didn't automatically start an education. And then neuroscience, when I once I understood how the brain bettered itself, I started to adapt and started learning in a different way completely, less focused on the linear way school typically teaches, and more through a lens of complexity. So I talk a lot about ADHD on my YouTube channel. I have a couple of videos on there because an ADHD mind, not mine in particular, but ADHD minds tend to look at the world through a very complex lens. They see multiple events happening simultaneously, and they're trying to put them together. Where schools tend to focus on if you're building Legos, they want you to file one step at a time, one Lego after another, and then you can show that you've learned the material. And so sometimes ADHD minds feel defeated. Well, once I've learned that there's a different way to process information, I started to change my own thinking process. I had a couple of amazing teachers along the way. And that led me to doing extremely well in college, working on my MBA, then getting my doctorate, and then just continuing to better myself through authorship and doing videos and having conversations. But the one thing I can say is if you're ever feeling lost, take some classes or do a little bit of research in neuroscience. Because I think once you understand how the brain functions, it changes everything about one's learning profile.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Wow. I love that. I've always been fascinated about neuroscience, and I don't even know where that began, to tell you the truth. And I'm not in educated school that didn't go past high school myself and went to a little bit of trade school, and that's it. But I've always been, especially, I remember being pregnant with my son and just almost hyperfixating my ADHD about how I was going to teach him as an early learner. How quickly would he learn? How would I teach him? And I ended up, I don't know if you remember this. I and I think you might because I think it was in kind of that region of the United States, but I had purchased the Your Baby Can Read program. I bought that and I put DJ in front of these TV and these flashcards. He was only a month old. So that reading, and then the next level of writing when he was two, it changed everything for us. It opened up a communication source that he could have he may never have had available to him. So, but I always thought I always wonder, you know, like, why am I so obsessed with this early childhood learning? I was a preschool teacher at one point, so maybe it had to do with that. Just uh see when you see a child grasp something, get something, you know, empower themselves, it's so rewarding. And and it's not even for you, you know. Like, I don't know what kind of reward I would need from that, but yeah, it's still just so fulfilling just to know that, like, I don't know, to see it, I guess, happening, the enlightenment.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Yeah, all teachers get into the profession for the same reason public, private. We love children, and we want to see other people become successful. There's not much more altruistic than that. Uh, every parent faces it, they want to see their child do well. I have a slightly different way of looking at it. I think our school has a very different way of approaching it. We don't look at it as just an intellectual endeavor. We see it as certainly intellect is part of it. We want them to do well in reading and writing and math, also being able to communicate and learn through science, but their social intelligence is equally important. So is their emotional intelligence, so

Five Intelligences For Whole-Child Schooling

SPEAKER_02 10:20

is their ethical intelligence, and so is their physical intelligence. And through those five intelligences, when you start looking at children, it really changes how you begin to approach them. So, one thing that we often face is let's say a child's not doing well in math. I was a math teacher. The natural reaction is to say, well, let's give them more math. But if if you don't take a step back to say, well, do they have friends that they play with? Is it a social problem? How do they think about math? Is it traumatic that they would when every time they walk in? Is it an emotional fight, flight, or freeze scenario? Have they been using AI to do their homework? So it's an ethical issue. Or is there something physical that is something happening in the brain that is not keeping them from learning how to do these things? Well, when you start approaching it in this more holistic way, you quickly recognize where the problems are, you address them more quickly. And the one thing I'm so proud of with our teachers at my school is that our children are scoring off the charts on the intellectual domains, but equally, the children can speak well. They can be in front of audiences. By the time they're in eighth grade, they're up in front of the entire school giving speeches. Emotionally, they're used to those things that make other people nervous. I mean, something I do is the kindergartners lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. It couldn't be more cute, right? We stand, you know, I pledge allegiance. And I'm just up there, just loving every moment. But they're up there with the microphone in front of 300 people, totally demystifying. I'm standing up in front of people with a mic in my hand. And so quickly they just become very used to being up in front of people, either performing musically, showing off their art, showing off something they're successful for intellectually. And this holistic domain is really great for parents and schools.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

How do we copy and paste this school into everywhere, please? And thank you. Is there like how would I even say is there a packeted systematical approach you can share with others that they can embrace to bring that same environment to their schools?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Well, what I talk about in my book, and I'm not here to promote my book, more just to have a conversation. But part of my dissertation, I went back and I looked at what is happening to students starting in about the 1990s. Intellect has started to stagnate and decline for the first time in human history. We're more antisocial than we've ever been. Emotionally, we're more anxious and depressed than we've ever been, especially children. Ethically, we have the lowest levels of trust, especially in some of our most important institutions: politics and news and adults to children. Trust has been eroded. And even physically, one in five children now are facing obesity in a country that really shouldn't be facing this problem. So as a result, that's why I've looked at, okay, if we know all the five intelligences are in decline in our country, the United States, what is it that schools and parents can do about it? And that's where I talk about these five intelligences and what parents and schools and how we should react. And so I think that's a good place to start. But I also think being on YouTube and looking up videos around these things, visiting your YouTube channel to say what is it that the experts are discussing and how do I take that information and apply it to my particular life with my particular child who comes with their own strengths and their own challenges simultaneously.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

That is so true. You know, I I there was like a little bit of a what was gonna say time where I didn't

Modern Convenience And Kids In Decline

SPEAKER_01 14:40

find YouTube as valuable as I do today. And my husband was always on it, he was always watching YouTube video, watch a YouTube video, you need to learn that, watch a YouTube video. And I was always like, uh, you know, I'll just read it. I need to read my words on Google, right? I was so just like stuck in this in this perspective. But once I started, like you, and it probably a lot to do with that learning piece, once I found that value in so many things being available to be taught in a way that actually might be better for me in by auditory and by being able to see it happening and kind of you know, tech things and things like that, being able to do it myself. So yeah, I really see the value in that now. And I now I'm doing the same thing, mom. If you need to help with your sewing machine, just get on YouTube and ask him about your sewing machine. And kind of she's like, whoa, really? So it's just great.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Yeah, my recent deep dive on YouTube has been AI, because AI is, I think many people think of it as just like another app or an update on a phone or a computer. It's not, it's yeah, something much more significant. So I've been spending a lot of time researching what is happening in the AI world. And what I'm worried about is humans always learn through our friction. So when a child has a difficult friendship, that's where they do their learning. If they experience boredom, well, that boredom translates to imagination, and imagination translates to metacognition, which is the highest form of thinking. And they think about who am I as a person? Who do I want to be my friend? How do I want to handle difficult situations? But we sometimes forget that. If a child says they're bored, we a lot of times we'll hand them something to do rather than just letting them sit in that uncomfortable, awkward spot to let their let their brain manifest something on its own. Or they'll get frustrated at a restaurant. And I've seen this countless times where a child will become upset and the parents immediately hand them a phone because they're embarrassed. But what you're doing is you're cutting off a child's ability to manage their emotions in the minute. And parents have gotten more emotional as part of this. Where if I would have gotten emotional as a child, my father would have looked over and said, Do we need to go out to the car? And that didn't mean anything like I was going to get spanked or anything. It just means I was going to get pulled out of the space and be away from everybody. And that was a consequence

AI, Friction, And Boredom Benefits

SPEAKER_02 17:30

enough. But we don't do that anymore. We we protect children, we save them, and they need support. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying let them languish or be in these horrible situations, but a little bit of frustration, a little bit of discomfort, that's where all the learning takes place. So I just think with AI coming, we have to remember that, not to focus too much on the ease.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yeah. I personally love AI. I use it every single day. And so I'm deeply entrenched in building what I think is necessary for the world to become easier for, especially people like my son who don't have access to maybe their ID when they need it, and they don't know who they can't say who they are, they can't give those types of important relays of information. So I think that now we're in a very lucky time where we can harness those powers of those things and really use it for good. And that's what you know, we all hope that it will be used for. We know the truth otherwise, but that's okay. We talk about good stuff on this show. Just kidding. Um hide from the bad. No, I'm just joking. I think that me personally, I've been using just like you know, Chad GPT for several different things across my life for probably the last year. My family does not feel the same way when I first told them that I was. They were just like, no, no, that's you know, stay away. And I just uh kind of made the joke to them don't be afraid of AI, be afraid of the people who know how to use it.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

So who know how to use it well.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

If you know how to use it well, no, but I think that you know, there's this if we don't understand it, I love that you're researching it because if we don't understand it, how will we guide, how will we provide any kind of assistance or support for these generations who are way younger than than us and are still going to that are growing up in this era. They don't have the option of not looking at it. It's there, it's in their lives daily. They need to know how to use it. They know they need us to know how to understand kind of the parameters of use and how to teach them how to do it properly. That's tricky. That is, I think, where us in our generation or you know, generations above are really they we need to come to the plate. We need to step up and really like offer assistance rather than say you guys figure it out and come show us how to do it later, you know. And when you're crashing and burning.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Well, if we don't fill in the gap and we don't give them the information, they'll use it probably as a way of convenience. And that's not the way to use it. Now, because of my position, everybody thinks I'm anti-AI. And I'm like, no, no, no. I am just pro-human development. Yeah, I said AI has its place, and I said typically I like to think of it in three stages. So if I'm writing an essay or writing a book, I first want to do the say a chapter by myself. I want to write it out, I want to go through the struggle, I want to think through things. If you just put in, say, hey, I want to write a chapter on social intelligence, spit one out for me, I've had no struggle. I didn't do anything, I haven't gotten any stronger. So it's important you do the first step. The second step, you put it into AI, but you don't just say, just finish it so I can submit it for homework or submit it for my book. You say, please give me suggestions of how I can improve this chapter to make it more meaningful. And please use neuroscience and social science and psychology. And it will go in and it will give you this incredible amount of vast resource advice that will change your thinking, make you stronger. Then finally, you have to go review what it's given you to improve. That's how the brain. Takes in information, applies it, retains it, and uses it long term. For children who have disabilities, well, it can fill in those gaps even more. And that's the beauty of it. It's it's I'm not afraid of the AI apocalypse, like some are talking about. But what I am afraid of is that children, if they're not taught how to use it, will just use it how I describe it, which is just do it. I'll turn in the homework, I will learn nothing, and they will slowly decay into well, the opposite of intelligence. And I would

Three-Step Method For Using AI

SPEAKER_02 22:40

I would hate to think that would be the case. They have all the potential in the world, but I've seen the impact over the last say 20 years of children becoming more antisocial and less intellectual. And I'm hoping we can turn the tide on that.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah, I really hope we can too. And I think that there's a kind of a level or air of connection, maybe that wasn't always available, that is now being more and more invited and more and more talked about, welcomed into the whole scenario. Whether that's the love dogs, by the way. Anyways, he's I got two in here.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I'm hoping they don't get in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

A couple of eagles going to bring back my house.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

I love that. But the the you know, the chance for them to learn from being able to create connections with their parents, with their friends, with their teachers in a way that I think was not invited to the table in previous times. And I'm I'm hoping that that might be where we see change happening overall, is that if if we can keep making these connections and understanding these levels of uh relationships, really, when it comes down to it, ultimately it's our human kind of goal is to have that. I think it not only helps us understand other people, but understand ourselves when we make connections with others. So maybe that would be the the binder. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah, the teaching profession has changed drastically. Like I said, I didn't originally start in education, I started in neuroscience, which is the more physical side of our intelligence, psychology, which is the emotional side, sociology. I've since picked up philosophy, which is ethics. And you begin to start putting all these pieces together. And my teachers, they're the ones who are asking to go to these learning in the brain conferences, these neuroscience. They want to know just as much. They want to know the psychology. The professional development is out there. Now, I know in the public sector, professional development is not always available like it is for us. We make a grand commitment to make sure teachers have what they need. But I never hear a teacher say, Well, I can't help them psychologically because I'm trained in history. Okay, right. All of them know that no, no, no, tier one level, things that we're going to expect, a child crying, a child upset, a child frustrated, you're more than equipped to help that child navigate that. If it gets out of tier one and into tier two, where it's a little more pervasive, well, then that's why we have a counselor or learning specialist or a nurse. There's those other experts there who can step in. And then if it even goes beyond that, well, there's professionals in the area, professional counselors, medical staff. There's people who can reach the child at the level they need it. But make no mistake, I'm not hiring a math teacher just to teach math. I'm hiring to help them raise

Teachers And Support Tiers

SPEAKER_02 26:10

children, healthy human beings, the right way. And if you go into it knowing that, it makes the whole process a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I mean, for being a private school, I you probably have a little bit more decisions, I suppose, on how you're going to move forward in accepting certain, you know, systems or programs that you'll, you know, install for them, as where a public school, you know, they might not get the funding or they may not have some of these other things. And so I'm so grateful that you guys have, you know, that ability to do that. And, you know, now with kind of the states having the the power of the what's going to be laid out, the only thing I know to be true is that it wasn't working. And what do we do with things that don't work? Well, we generally either throw them out or fix them. And that I think both need to happen in this case. And I and it it doesn't come without chaos, it doesn't come without a bit of uncomfortableness and a bit of restructuring. How do you think that it can possibly be attained, like some type of restructuring?

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Well, this isn't a teacher problem, and it's not an administrator problem. This is every teacher I've ever met loves children. Yeah, every administrator wants to help teachers teach children, but the system itself is what I think is broken, and it stems back to the nation at risk in 1983 and then no child left behind, which was altruistic in nature, but they did something that I wouldn't have advised and what I think needs to change. They said the only way we're going to evaluate schools is whether children can read and write and do math. But I can create wonderful math and reading students and writing students, but they may not be good people. They may not know how to make a friend, they may not know how to emotionally regulate themselves. And those things don't happen by accident. And I think we need to pull away from this idea that the only metric public schools are allowed to look at is reading, writing, and math. It's too myopic in my mind. It's too, it's a very narrow slice of intellectual intelligence. Now, my dissertation was on the impact of social, emotional, ethical, and physical benefits impacting intelligence. All of them proved a positive correlation. If you increase a child's social skills, their intellect goes up. If you increase their regulation, their intellect goes up. If the only thing we think we can do is when they can't read, is give them more reading, you may be missing what is truly the issue for the child. So it gets back to my earlier statement. We have to look at children holistically.

Fixing Education Beyond Test Scores

SPEAKER_04 29:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

I think it's going to take something at the governmental level to say, okay, it's not that we don't care about math reading and writing, but we're going to look at educating children very differently. And AI could be the catalyst. That's why I'm excited about AI. Yeah. I think AI can give us a better perspective on evaluating children in a very natural way, getting them outside more, letting them play more, just having them experience their own ideas, their own autonomy.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:55

But that's going to take a lot of work. But I don't think the structure is all that difficult. But it's like turning the Titanic. It's you know, it's a wide berth. It's a big system. Um but I don't think it's impossible. And my book is sort of my first salvo of trying to help the entire system. I'm not here to just make the children at my school better, even though that's my direct responsibility. The reason you and I are having this conversation is because I want to see every child find that success in life and really maximize their own potential, whatever that is.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

I couldn't agree more. I think that, you know, like I had said earlier, I don't know where that drive and that love of like children and early childhood learning in me came from, but it certainly drives me to not only find resources constantly, like this summer. Oh John, you'd be so proud of me. This summer I have found every free low-cost resource you can imagine for my teenagers. Free gym memberships, free movies at the park on whatever night, whatever, you know, free some like every Wednesday or whatever, free movie, free meals, free, you know, I'm just like finding all of these things. And boy, they're taking advantage of it. I'm so glad I want them to, because I think that finding resources like this, you know, in all of these experiences, they're meeting other kids that are are or like them, they're finding other ways to connect. They're, you know, it's really exciting when even when my daughter comes home, they there's a theme park that they got season passes to this year. And two or three times she's come home and said, Mom, I made a friend. I talked to this girl today when I was on this ride. And I mean, old her, she was quiet and introverted. And people would always say, Oh, what is she depressed? Is she no? She's observing, she's observing, she's taking it all in so she knows how to act best on it, you know, whatever. And but I think in also the independence of it all, she has gained a social aspect of wanting to say hi. I mean, she sees her mother doing it constantly. I'll chat up everybody at the grocery store. Can't get me out of there for an hour and a half.

Parenting For Connection And Social Growth

SPEAKER_01 32:35

But you know, those types of circumstances, they only oh, you muted yourself. I think it was a dog. But you know, ultimately the being able to embrace kind of like you said, the new generation's way of thinking, way of learning, their ability to I don't know if it's an ability, their I guess, state of having to take in information so quickly, and it's forced on them. I don't think that, like I said, I don't know if that's an ability or if it's just a state of being in the environment.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

I think it's all intelligences, and we've defined intelligence in a very narrow way in education. But when you really think about intelligence and how we embed information in our brains, the one thing that's going to separate us from AI is humans, when we take in information, we also think about how it impacts other people. We also think about what is the emotional consequence. We also think what is the ethical decision that is being wrought out, as well as the physical and the intellectual. And that's why it's more of the five series. So almost everything I do, I always think of it across those five domains. So when you say, yes, I took my daughter to go to the park and she visits, okay. I'm sure she's getting some emotional intelligence development, but social tends to be the primary in an environment. And that's perfect. I think sometimes we think, well, they're just over there talking to a friend, they're not doing anything. No, they're embedding their social intelligence into sort of the matrix of their learning network. And I can't tell you how important that is. I mean, I want you to think of a child. If we're able to teach them to be wise, socially connected so they have influence, emotionally regulated so that they're stoic and can have empathy, they're virtuous and they're physically healthy. I what a great start. I mean, that is a fantastic start. Everything else can be solved when you have those baselines, but all it takes is one.

SPEAKER_04 35:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

A child who's brilliant, emotionally competent, ethically sound, physically healthy, but won't talk to anyone. What are they going to miss out on life?

SPEAKER_04 35:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Like I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be introverted, but it has a consequence to it. So I like to think of it as well, that's just an intelligence. It's not comfortable for you, but I suggest you continue to work towards it like we all have to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Yeah, exactly. And I think when you grow kind of grasp or lean into learning and growing intelligence, growing your skills and your knowledge, you can just get so so many opportunities open up for you. So many, even this year, I my daughter is homeschooled. And I don't know, I think that she might want to change her mind about that this year, which is great because middle school, I'll tell you what, I middle school, like you most administrators and teachers would totally be mad at me because I worked so much with her in her emotional and understanding herself talking about how she felt at every given moment that she had that a feeling for us to okay, let's let's understand that. Let's, you know, that you're having a human experience, let's talk about that more. I like to remind her often that even though it's overwhelming and she's like, I'm the only one going through this, I say it's a human experience, these are human experiences. And I know that's you know, kids don't ever want to hear, like, oh, I went through that when I was a kid, they get tired of hearing those things. So I think that reminding them that, yeah, what you're going through is difficult, and it is it's a human experience that hearing that makes them not feel so alien or isolated or like that they're wrong for having these experiences that they're experiencing. But the now the conversations that her and I can have, she'll be going, she's gonna be a freshman this year. So if she wants to go into high school, I'm all like whatever she needs, I'll I'll do it. But the exciting part I was going to say that brought this whole thing up was we were talking about the educational marketplace. And most of the time in the past, I've picked out I, you know, what kind of classes would you like? I go on, I pick them all out. And I said, this year, how would you like to shop for your classes? Shop? What? You know, and divine. So now we're like right. And I think that the it these motivators, just these small little motivators to see how exciting, like I want to take anatomy, I want to take finance, I want to take, and I'm like, yes, thank you, you know, photography, all of these things, and yeah, it's it's exciting. It's exciting to I guess be in a place where I'm following her lead, you know, with parameters that I've given her. And it's

Autonomy, Community, And Pride

SPEAKER_01 38:28

exciting to see that.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Yeah, it's what I call the the box system in my book, where the box itself, think of it as a transparent box, and you drop a child in it, and then you close it up, and you can stretch it, make it bigger, give them more freedom, more autonomy, or squeeze it tighter. But the sides of the box are your values, either the school's values or the parents' values. And that's what protects a child. And once a child learns to navigate within the values you've given them, you open it up a little more. You open it up a little more. And then if they abuse the values, if they're trying to do too much, they could squeeze it down a little bit. But the goal is not to keep them under control. The goal is to open up the box and still have them maintain themselves within the value sets. So that's where like I always think of like a middle school dance. Okay, I'm gonna go drop this dance. But I think the children at this dance, are they prepared for the autonomy? Because I could squeeze it down, give them only classical music, make them put balloons between them when they dance. Or I could open it up and have free fall for any music, let them do anything they want. I don't care where they go. Well, one is total control, one is total chaos. We know neither one of those will work, right? But there's a median point in there where they can grow the way we want them to grow. And I think that's what you're doing. This is why when you said, do you want to shop for classes? That's the next best question is whatever we think we're doing to help our children, what is the next question we can ask that they can lead themselves there? And you just keep dropping breadcrumbs and they keep going. Sometimes they'll make a mistake. You talk about it, sometimes they do perfectly well. You're like, wow, you should be very proud of yourself. You did that all on your own. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Yeah, we're really big on recognition. My husband and I really like to tell, and and even our son, who is, you know, might be our you know, forever house kid, whatever you want to say, but there's this level of still self improvement, self excitement, like of being able to do things in an independent way. He just recently, maybe in the last four, maybe six months, was approved. He has like 13,000 subscribers on YouTube, but he has like six million views. He has a great amount of views, and he monetized. And I I think he's probably up to 450 bucks or something. I haven't even I well done, right? I opened an able account for him. I'm just gonna roll it in over there, but I don't I haven't even gone in or checked it or anything. It's and but what we learned in, you know, and at one he's been work doing this, building this channel for years and years, and and one thing that was, you know, I guess we had to kind of had pushback was that oh he shouldn't be in on this YouTube all the time. He shouldn't be, he shouldn't be in this on his videos, he shouldn't be making this things and and and all of this. But also what happened is that he is semi-verbal, so he doesn't he he doesn't have physical friends, he doesn't have a friend group, he doesn't go to a school, he finished school academically at the age of 12 and he is 16 now, and so he's worked on, he's done what he's loved coding, geography, language, loves to learn different languages. I think he is like a 240-something languages that that he knows. Wow, yeah, he has a 99% working memory, like he has a photographic memory, and and all of he's incredible, he's such an incredible person. But one thing we were always concerned with was that social part, like as a parent, you're almost heartbroken that your kid isn't capable, doesn't I say that, sorry, not capable, isn't it equipped to have this friend base, you know, and and be just in that type of uh situation. But when we found uh kind of the YouTube channel and we started watching and and you know, kind of just it's all very elementary preschool based kind of content. So it's it's it's very safe, you know, as far as that goes. But as we're watching it and seeing it, we start seeing this community tab, and we start seeing him communicating in this community in a way we've never ever experienced with him, uh in him responding back to people, like in ways you know, he's he doesn't uh the way he speaks to us is is very limited, and he doesn't like give us much, and then we see this whole Whole other side to him in this community. And so for us, it was like this is so we need to honor this. This is so good for him to have this ability to have this space to be safe and to feel like he has this community because he deserves one just as much as anyone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Yeah. It's you know, the when you think about this across different spectrums, there's those children who are facing significant intellectual disabilities. There's those that are facing social disabilities or disruptions emotional, where the trauma is there's some with physical disability. It's a different life, but it doesn't mean it's not a fulfilling life. And I think when you find different ways to interact, different ways to do things, you can continue to find a life that's worth living and enjoy it. And the question that I always promote is there's always a moment in a child's life where they go from wanting your pride, like, are you proud of me? to their own pride. And so I always like to ask parents, have you asked them if they're proud of themselves for what they're doing? So when they try something new, oh, how does that make you feel? Are you are you proud of yourself for trying this? And if they're like, oh, I don't really know, well, then maybe they still are in that phase where they need you. But if they're like, you know, yeah, yeah, I'm proud of putting myself out there, okay. Then it's time to make the switch. You can ask more questions, you can help them lead them down that path. But boy, we're all trying to figure out this life, and it's it's it's a noisy world out there. So anything you can do, you should be incredibly proud of what you've accomplished. Sounds amazing. And your son, holy cow, six million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

I know, right? I'm not even close to that. I'm not either, don't worry. I wish I could transpose some of my stuff onto his page some days, you know, like, hey, you took out this summit I'm having.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

No, no, you know, and you know, I really have to give my husband some credit and just really he from the very beginning, like we knew that DJ was somebody who was so incredible. There could be movies about him, there could be Netflix documentaries, there could be all of these things. But he never wanted our child to be the thing that you know that we put him out there because he had these amazing talents and amazing skills. Like, why should we and I don't I'm not saying this bad to anybody that does that. I sorry to say that, but I'm just proud of my husband for recognizing that, recognizing that we didn't need to kind of gain from what he had differently than we could and we could show off in the world kind of a thing, you know. But but it also it it also taught us so much, taught us more patience than we could ever have imagined, because dealing with a mind that's so complex, but aren't they all? I mean, what mind isn't so even ones that have challenges, even more complex. Why is it a challenge? Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Well, if we learn through our struggle and frustration, yes, that's sort of the precursor. Like I have yet to meet a person who is like, I'm so proud of myself for accomplishing this, and it was so easy for me. No, everybody who tells me they're proud of themselves, it's because they went through something really difficult, and that's where the meaning in life is, because it took time. I I one of my favorite stories is when I was graduated with my doctorate, I was friends on Facebook with my second grade teacher who I had two years with because I couldn't read in second grade. And she goes, Okay, John, what happened to you in this life? And I just laugh. I said, Well, of course, it's my second year with you, Mrs. Sardi. I you're such a great teacher. And while there was some truth to her helping me, it was equally my friend Bob, who we used to go to the library and he'd pick out a book because he was a great reader, and he'd go, John, I want you to pick out a book, and he would read it to me. That kept my interest in literature to then work towards reading. We got to find people who are going to help us through these difficult moments, lean on them, and then when we get to another level, we help them in return. I'm still best friends with Bob, my uh best friend since kindergarten. But the way I think of them is you know, you were an important piece of my growth profile growing up.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and that's so great that there are people who you can really count on for those things, and it is so important. And so wherever you are, hopefully you have that piece available to you.

Resources, Book Details, And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 49:25

So great to get to know you today, John. This has been such a wonderful conversation, and I really, really wish you the best of luck with the book. Emergence is the name of the book. Is it on Amazon? Can people go?

SPEAKER_02 49:40

It's on Amazon, Simon and Schuster. I'll just put it up one more time.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Oh, it's it's that doctor or sorry, Jonathanstrecker.com is where you can find all my videos. You can find my articles, uh, you can find my book.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

There we go. Did I do good spelling? All right. My secretarial skills are coming out.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

All those drop me a line if there's something that stuck with you or a question you have. We're all in this community of conversation. Happy to discuss it. Just shoot me an email and you can find me online just about anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

Perfect. Thank you so much for that. And I agree. If you have any questions and you want to get a hold of John to ask him, or please go follow his YouTube. Did I did you give me the YouTube channel? It's just your name. Is it your name? Yeah, it's just Dr.

SPEAKER_02 50:39

Jonathan Stracker. And you can find that on there as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:43

And YouTube. Did I whoops spell again? Yes. Good. There you go. Please go follow his YouTube. I'm going to right after this, I'll be jumping on to make sure I'm subscribed. So please join us. Thank you all for joining us today. And of course, if you have any questions, please reach out to me. Uh, you can find me on any of my uh social medias, SJ Childs, just Google me. And me and AI have become such good friends. I feed my profile to it all the time so that it knows exactly where to send people when they need to find me.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

Well, Sarah, have a great conference networking. I know you got a lot of week or a lot of uh uh conversations coming up. Enjoy that.

SPEAKER_01 51:28

A lot of conversations, yes. And you know, just so much access for everyone. And I hope that you know, anyone that that you feel that could learn from it or could have, you know, something from it, I'll send you all the information so you can send it with your community as well and share it rather. And yeah, that's wonderful. But this has been such a great time getting to know you. I really look forward to keeping in touch and look forward to seeing, you know, if if another book comes out or something else happens, let us know so we can we can stay on top of it.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

Yeah, I have uh another book coming out, but I always go back to fiction, so I do nonfiction fiction back and forth. So we will see. That one's probably a yeah. Okay, Sarah, it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Yeah, a lot of fun, great conversation. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Bye.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

In the heart of the city, she shining bright. Oh, yeah. Stories of love and courage all throughout the night. Voice resonate in the anxious trousing trap, answer, mother and vater break, very love it. Let's see what's in it, dear me.