Dr. Sandy Gluckman on "Reversing Children's Behavior and Mood Problems by Treating Root Causes."

Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, episode #95 with Learning, Mood, Behavior, Author, Educator and Speaker Dr. Sandy Gluckman. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.  Dr. Sandy Gluckman describes her quest as saving the next generation from a growing explosion of learning, behavior and mood problems.  Her work is rooted in the science that shows that children will thrive when parents thrive.  Dr. Sandy empowers parents to raise healthy, resilient, confident children primed for success, by showing them how to first heal themselves.  Dr Gluckman is sought after for her expertise on a range of children’s challenges such as Anxiety, Defiance, Emotional Resilience, Self-Worth, Screen Addiction, Stress as a Survival Mechanism and the Sensitive Child.  Rather than offering quick-fix, superficial solutions to these complex issues, Dr Sandy uses science to teach parents how to create the kind of parent-child neurochemistry that prevents and heals these problems. Welcome Dr. Gluckman! Thank you so much for being available to speak with me today. I have to say, that when I was reading your book, Parents Take Charge[i], and saw the acknowledgements, I can see how you fit in perfectly with the content we have been focused here on this podcast, especially with our most recent jump that focuses on health and mental wellbeing. If we are not healthy physically and emotionally, how on the earth can we expect ourselves to perform at high levels, and we definitely can’t expect it of our children, right? I can see that many who have inspired your work, we have been focused on for the past year and a half on this podcast, with Dr. Dan Siegel a year ago this week, Dr. Amen with his daughter Chloe Amen’s interview[ii] on Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades, and then inspiring the brain scan content,[iii] Stephen Porges with his Polyvagal Theory[iv], and most recently with our focus on health and the brain with Dr. Mark Hymen, and his recent program, Alzheimer’s The Science of Prevention that really did inspire our health and wellness episodes.[v] Your life’s work is a perfect match for us, and I am so grateful to have this chance to speak with you. Today, our topic with you is Reversing Children’s Behavior and Mood Problems by Treating the Root Causes and before I even get to your questions, I have to put my background in context for you, since your work, and this podcast will probably make some things come full circle for me, as well for those listening who might work with or know children with behavior or mood problems. Back in the late 1990s, I was a teacher in Toronto, and I worked with behavioral students. It was my first teaching assignment right out of teacher’s college, and I had no training at all on how to deal with difficult students, and also had hardly any strategies for managing my own stress. I have had author and educational neuroscience leader, Dr. Lori Desaultels[vi] on twice to this podcast,  and her work, along with Michael McKnight, focuses on how the students’ behavior usually is a reaction to the teacher or parent’s state of mind.  I now know stress reducing strategies that help me on a daily basis, but I wish I knew them when I first started my career. Q1: Can you take me back to the beginning of your professional career, with students in their last year of high school in South Africa, and what made you begin to wonder “why did some students have a robust, healthy and feisty spirit, while others did not?”  How did this question inspire you to further your studies and obtain a PhD in clinical psychology, and dive deep into how different people respond to stress? Q2: In your book, Parents Take Charge, you introduce a new way of healing children’s learning, behavior and mood problems, with the story of an 11-year old named David, who was having some challenges with learning at school, was diagnosed with a bunch of different disorders like ADHD, OCD, and depression, an