Can you talk about how young people almost silently absorb our stress and anxiety by osmosis, and what we can do as parents to minimize that?

Oh, gosh, Sallyanne, honestly, it is ... [laughs] It's not what we say, it's how we show up.

And you're exactly right.

Emotions are contagious, and particularly stress and anxiety because when we're very stressed and anxious, as is inevitable when you're going through this, you know, really significant change, it, it's often in our body language and our facial expressions, the non-verbals, that can give it away.

And, and we know it too, don't we? When we are in the company of a friend who hasn't shared that they're very stressed or anxious, but you can tell.

A- and we, we learn to pick up on the, the prosody of the voice.

You know, when a person is more relaxed, then their, their voice is sort of more melodic.

What I wanna close out with is for someone, a parent who's listening, who's right in the middle of it, in the thick of the messy, hard part of separation, divorce, what's the single thing, the one thing you'd really want them to take away from our conversation?

is where I can put my attention.

Something else that is so powerful and all of these that I am sharing today, I use and teach my eye rolling teenagers, accept and acknowledge what's happening.

Now that sounds like just put up with it, which is not that at all.

It's about an acceptance of, oh, I'm feeling a bit anxious at the moment and that's okay.

When we fight with anxiety and we really struggle with it and we just try to wish it away or push it away or distract ourselves or medicate ourselves, I'm talking self-medicate, I'm talking drinking drugs, those sorts of things, or busy our way through it, we're fighting with it.

When we can say, ah, this is anxiety.

Hello, anxiety.

Are we more resilient than we think we

So Dr. Jodie, was there a particular thing that you've noticed in leaders or was it s- was there something else that you became aware of that made you feel something needed to change that's informed your work?

Yeah, definitely.

Um, when I started my work, I was really focused on student anxiety, and that's still a, a, a core part of my work.

And it became clear quickly that without capacity, um, you know, we're not, we are biologically equipped to cope with stress, just not chronic stress.

And as I would speak to leaders who would be bringing me in to speak to their staff, as I would speak to the staff about what challenges that they're facing, I realized that without wellbeing, without, uh, flourishing mental health and wellbeing, um, it's really hard to ask staff to be able to support young people who are anxious in the class in the way that they need to because showing the way you show up, um, even though we can, we can put on that n- neutral face or that pleasant face, which I've said in my home before sometimes, you know, with the kids, [chuckles] like, "Okay, there's something going on.

Just kind of like pretend that you're coping with this." But through our body language as educators, through our posture, through our tone of voice, through the prosody in our voice, through just the eye contact and the way we greet and connect with students, all of that, as we know, has a powerful impact on learning outcomes.

Um, teachers that are liked and that students connect with are more effective.

So how do you see this play out in day-to-day leadership and teaching?