Introduction to Neurodevelopment and Prevention Strategies

Welcome back to the drug prevention power hour. I’m your host, Jake White from Vive 18. And today we have a repeat guest. Time number one was so valuable, was so fun with Dr. Crystal Collier that we had to get her back on the show. And if you need to go back, go to episode 34, oh 32, go to episode 32, check that out. It’ll get you even more pumped to talk to her today but it is Monday, we’re releasing this episode. It’s time to get ready for your week. And what better way to spend it with the author of the neuro whereabouts guide. I have it in my office. I use it all the time. And I know you’re gonna love this episode because we’re talking about on the developmental lifespan of an individual. How can we make appropriate prevention strategies for each stage? How cool is that? So Dr. Crystal, what’s up? Thanks for being on the show again.

Thanks Jake, it’s such an honor to be here. I am such a fangirl of your work, so I always feel excited to get invited to anything that you do. So thank you.

It’s mutual. It’s definitely mutual. Cool. Well, tell us before we get into the meat, if someone hasn’t watched episode 32 yet, give us your quick intro. And then I know you’re going to take us to school today. So we’ll dive into some, some learning.

Cool. Sure. So I study the brain and how it grows and develops and how risky behavior affect the brain at different ages. And so as a therapist, I see clients in private practice as a prevention researcher. I have a free online prevention program for schools, parents and students called KnowYourNeuro.org.

And I also do a lot of family of origin work in my therapy. And so the book that I use a lot to think about neurodevelopmentals, my book called Foo Mapping, The Family of Origin Mapping, which is really a workbook for people who want to understand how their brain was developed and shaped in three areas, thinking, feeling, and behavioral, and how some of those neuronal networks serve us well and some don’t today. And how can we rewire.

So the reason that development is so critical is because it’s really important to remember about neurons, neuronal networks and dendrites, those little squiggly things that reach out to other neurons making long chains of connections for our skills. And of course that wiring starts really young prior to birth and all the way up through. And then that wiring is really just about 100%, about 98 % wired by the time we’re 25. We keep learning and growing as we age, but not like we did during those first 25 years of life. So if you think about that wiring in your brain as scaffolds. And then we start with the first neurodevelopmental stage. So what we’re gonna do today is go over five neurodevelopmental sub stages within the two larger ones and how you can plan prevention for each one of those.

Wow. Okay. So by the end of the episode, we’ll understand these five stages, when they happen, and when we’re doing prevention, how to appropriately put each piece to make the most impact.

Perfect. Well said. Yes. Woo! Okay. my god. Okay, that sounds good. Okay.

My gosh. my gosh. How much do I have to pay you for this? This is, this is awesome. I’m going to get my notebook actually too. So hold on. Hold on.

Okay. We’re ready. Stage number one.

The Second Stage: Building Self-Efficacy (Ages 5-8)

So, well, first it’s important to note that there are two overarching stages. Birth to puberty, when we grow 200 billion neurons, and then from puberty, about 11-12 to 25-ish, 24 to 5 to 6, when we prune away half those cells, but we wire them, we grow dendrites like crazy, we end up with 100 billion neurons left over, but that are very well wired.

So those are the two major stages. Then let’s go a deep diver into the five sub stages. First sub stage number one is birth to age four. We grow new neurons like crazy during this stage. 90% of our neurons are grown by the time we hit age six. So as far as planning prevention, and so I know that sounds weird to think about, I don’t want my child to use drugs or alcohol when I’m just nursing them, but that is really when you’ve got to start prevention. And so what I want parents to think about and prepare those first four years of life are critical for attachment. The four attachment styles, secure, insecure, or ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized.

We know that about 65% of humans get to have a secure attachment style as they grow up and that was created by their parents. It has the best outcomes. They actually don’t engage in risky behavior like the other attachment styles do. So it’s important for moms and dads and caregivers to get their own work done, especially during these first four years, because if they’re struggling, they may not create a healthy, secure attachment.

Now, how do we attach? We attach through attunement and co-regulation. So we have these beautiful mirror neurons in our brain that light up when babies smile, we mimic when they grrr, like when they, you know, cringe up and, and they’re upset, we mimic those, we do the same thing. We can’t, we’re hardwired to do that. So here’s the beauty of healthy attachment, showing up consistently with warmth, love, connection, and care. That is how we create healthy attachment. And you do that by co-regulation. So really quick, baby dysregulates, something’s wrong. Mom, dad, caregiver mirror their feelings. They try to figure out how can I soothe you? I engage in an activity that’s soothing. Baby regulates and then mom or dad or caregiver regulate. That is called co-regulation. Even brain waves are synchronous when we’re interacting with our loved ones in such a way. That consistently done over time creates healthy, secure attachment. And that’s the first layer of scaffolding.

So are you, this is so interesting because when you first said, your baby’s in the womb or your baby’s being born and that’s when we’re starting prevention because their brain is developing and growing. And in my mind, this is totally wrong, but I’m like, I’m telling my baby about prevention or something. And you’re like, no, and that’s wrong about prevention. Prevention is all the things that we do to raise a healthy child, not talking to them about the negative things. So even as a professional, what’s funny is I get like the picture of the wrong way of doing prevention. And what you’re telling me is from like as a newborn, when they’re attaching, you being there, soothing them, teaching that or having co-regulation, this is all prevention. This is gonna be a healthy body that’s less prone to trauma and other things in the future.

You got it. So we have risk factors and protective factors. We’re talking about how do I engage in protective factors from the get-go. And kids who have secure attachments, they engage in a lot less high-risk behavior. So what can you do for your adult child at birth? We’ll focus on co-regulation, attuning, and building secure attachment. Babies can’t self-regulate. Like, we cannot self-regulate until we first co-regulate. But if you have parents who are on their phone all the time, they’re still facing, they’re not present, they’re depressed, they’re using substances, they’re engaging in whatever, then we create kids who can’t self-regulate because they didn’t get to co-regulate. And if you can’t self-regulate, you may grow up and engage in risky behavior to escape your feelings.

Wow. And what age group, what age range was that in that attachment co-regulation phase?

First two years of life, critical for attachment, but what we’re looking at is that birth to about age four. So before school, right? Before school. And that doesn’t mean that kids don’t go to preschool or interact, but really those first four years of life are building that healthy attachment between parent and care or child, caregiver and child.

Okay, cool. That is so interesting. All right, so that’s stage one and how it fits into prevention. What’s on stage two?

Okay, stage two, it’s such a can be very fun and painful stage because this is when we go to school age five to eight, usually our first full school days of activity. And this is when self-comparison starts. And so I get graded for the first time and my grade is lower than your grade. And I think what’s wrong with me? Why am I different? Right? This is when some negative cognitions, you know, start to come in because hopefully all of us go to school feeling really like wonderful, awesome kids because we’ve had parents that validated that for us, right? But what if we go to school and we haven’t had that, that first layer is a little unsteady and so we’re maybe insecure and then we go to school and we process these comparisons in a very different way. And so one of the most important thing to do here is to really create a healthy parenting style.

And so there are four parenting styles, Baum-Reyn’s parenting styles. What we have is authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful, or just not present. Which of course is the worst, but we know that very permissive parents, high on love, low on limits, they have kids who grow up with a certain set of problems.

Kids who are have authoritarian parents really high on limits, low on love. They have another certain set of problems. But kids who have a balance, their parent is really high on love, high on limits, and they are expected, respected, those kids turn out really the best and engage in less high risk behavior. So.

Because we create a healthy parenting style, what we want to start doing is building self-efficacy. So this is the next part of this stage. There is a difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy. Self-esteem is a feeling really. How worthy, special, wonderful, valuable do I feel? And that can come and go. We can wake up in the morning like really high self-esteem and something happens that like destroys that but by noon it’s back up again.

But self-efficacy is the feeling that we can have an effect on this world. And what we know is that when self-efficacy goes up, guess what? So does self-esteem. So even if self-esteem goes up and down, it goes up and down in proportion to efficacy. So, okay parents, how do we give our kids self-efficacy opportunities? Chores. We got to give our kids chores.

So here’s the mantra, if they can, they should. Repeat that after me. If they can, they should, right? So if they should, if they can wash their clothes, they should, right? Exactly, if they can make their sandwich, they should. If they can put their clothes away, they should. So that’s what we should use as a gauge for starting to give kids responsibility. And when kids do a good job, If they can, they should. Watch their clones then we can praise them and it builds self-efficacy. Now, the next thing that’s important during this phase is emotional literacy. So my children’s book, Neurofeels Feelings, just came out last November. Book three, yes, book three in my series. And so I teach kids how to be emotionally literate in that.

Congrats! kids book from I have two versions the K through two and the grades three through five. Emotional literacy is your ability to understand and manage emotions in a healthy positive way. And it’s a really simple three step process. One label your emotion. Two, what does this emotion mean? What do I need or want? And then three, clearly communicating your needs and want. Can you imagine if we all knew what we felt, knew how to respond and asked for what we needed?

We wouldn’t need to escape negative feelings so much, right? They just pass naturally.

Navigating the Tween Years: Social Dynamics (Ages 9-12)

So that’s the next thing. Also in this stage, it’s really important to set clear expectations about future behavior. things like manners, how they should act when they go out in public, when somebody comes over and they have a guest. We see a lot of kids that they just never come down and say hello. They don’t socialize because the parent doesn’t make them or request that of them they need to learn how to socialize. So setting clear expectations for those behaviors is really critical because if you don’t learn those things you lose those networks. So you want them to start learning them now, especially when they’re in school, and then you can build a family code, which is the last thing in this category. And a family code, I have this in the this tools section of my book. It’s literally a meeting that you have with your family where you say, here are our family values.

Here are the no’s, the things that we don’t do in our family. We don’t ever use drugs. We only use alcohol at age 21. We don’t engage in gambling or looking at bad pictures online. We treat others with kindness, compassion, and respect on and offline. And then you put that into a really cool poster, put it on the wall, and you’re going to use that in all the rest of the developmental phases. OK.

Ooh, okay, I’m gonna, I’m taking notes and I’m gonna do a recap. I have a question though. So the first one I called it attachment. What’s the second one? Is there a term or a phrase that you use to call this?

Yeah, like the theme for that phase. For this one, golly, I would say efficacy, building self-efficacy would be one of the most important things to do here. Because, you know, if you have self-efficacy, you have high self-esteem, and then no matter what happens when you’re compared to other people, you’re okay, right? You can make a lower grade or a higher grade and still like live and function in the world.

Right. And that’s going to translate to other people making certain decisions. You don’t feel like you have to do that to fit in or to find value or acceptance. You know who you are. And that’s because, so I’m going through my notes. You’re establishing your parent style. And I wrote down this. love what you said. Parenting style of high love and high limits. How awesome is that? Very clear to your child that you love them because you’re setting these limits as well. They’re developing stuff.

Self-efficacy, doing chores. If I can, I should. And then developing emotional literacy, clear expectations on behavior, and then that family code, which is super exciting. Then that’s developed efficacy from age five to about eight.

Totally about eight, right? So the family code, can start at six or seven and you of course, you’re gonna use the language appropriate for that age. And as your kids grow, you can change that code to add more things as they are developmentally getting more mature.

Ooh, that’s good. Alright, take us to number three.

The third stage is about age 9 to 12. We’re in the tween stage here. One of the big developmental things that’s happening is puberty, like the beginning onset of puberty. Also, this is the stage in life where peers are more important than they ever have been or will be in their entire lifetime. As adults, it’s all about quality instead of quantity.

But in this stage, right, which is about middle school, quantity is more important. So we want more friends, more validation, and there’s lots of drama, lots of mean girl stuff, lots of figuring out how to talk to each other in inappropriate and appropriate ways. It’s really funny because all of this drama is developmentally important. We first have to learn how to have social relationships in the wrong way and then we learn how to have them in the right way. And so a lot of, I hear a lot of adults judging, you’re like, my God, you’re rolling eyes. And this is really, we don’t want to shame them. These are the first major relationships they have. It’s meaningful for them in a way that is never ever gonna be again. So, and it’s also important to like Operation Parent had a really good author that specializes in middle school superpowers because she talks about how the majority of our friends turn over during this time. And it’s supposed to be that way. It’s rare that we develop lifelong friendships from kindergarten all the way through. That’s really rare. And so we want kids to learn how to find their tribe that is healthy, affirming, assertive people to hang out with.

And so this is when differentiation begins. This is the stage of development when they’re starting to push away from mom and dad and start to go explore in the world. And in the neuro whereabouts guide, I teach parents, okay, your child’s neuro whereabouts in this stage, they’re going to push away and it’s going to suck for you. They’re not going to want to hug you or kiss you in public and you need to grieve those things, but it’s normal and healthy for them to push. You want them to push. If they are clinging to you, then they may take a lot longer to launch or go make friends or socialize. It’s okay if they do, but make sure that you hold them accountable for going out into the world and volunteering and doing things. You can always say you have to be involved in one extracurricular every semester. That means spring, fall, and summer.

And if you don’t choose, I’ll choose for you kiddo. Yes, and when kids want to hang out with their peers way more than parents, that’s normal. Allow a lot of that to happen, but then have lots of little mini conversations. Tell me about that friend. How do you like that friend? Does that friend feel good for you? Are they your tribe or they not your tribe? And then what you want to do is make sure that they go to a school with positive school climate. Because if they have a school that is scary for them, that is non-fulfilling, that the school doesn’t do anything about bullies. Remember, bullying peaks in the seventh grade. It’s gonna happen because of low frontal lobe development. That’s when the frontal lobe just starts coming online. But if they go to a school that they don’t feel protected in, then I’ve had so many families change schools, and all for the better. So their kiddo could get an environment that really fit them and they felt comfortable.

And is that because if a student is bullied, like we can assume that a little bit might happen, but in a positive school climate, it will get resolved. And if it’s not, then that student’s gonna be in the fight and flight mode and they’re not gonna learn, they’re not gonna develop, they’re not gonna make friends. And so all that development is gonna be impacted too.

Absolutely, really well said. It affects neurodevelopment. Not just self-efficacy worth esteem, but it literally can shut down that brain if you’re in freeze mode all the time.

Wow. Okay. And you said, you said they’re going to push away and that’s okay. So we’re allowing socializing, but you’re taking advantage of these small moments, which in middle school, it’s that you’re like a taxi. So you’re driving around your kids everywhere. You take advantage of these moments. You set dinner times. And then you said another great thing, which is to make them be involved in something positive each semester, I like what you said, and summer is also a semester. So they’re always involved in something good.

Always, yes, because we have summer brain drain that doesn’t have to happen when we’re out of school if we get involved in summer activities and things that are really social, pro-social, habitat for humanity, mission trips, going on things like that. It’s really critical for our brain development. But the last two things in this category are positive norm building and refusal skills. And so here, what you want to be able to do is say our norm in our family, and refer back to the family code on the wall is that we have these values, we don’t do these behaviors. These are the norms and I want you to replicate that in your peer relationships and I’m going to hold you accountable for that. This may be the time where you have to veto certain friends, which is very painful for you and them. But if they’ve got a kiddo who’s engaging in a risky behavior and your kiddo just happens to be a follower, they’re going to follow that.

Their ego strength is building, which is normal but you don’t want to put them in a situation where their peer influence is negative. And so you want to make sure you start practicing refusal skills here, starting at eight, nine, 10. Like how would you say no to this? If somebody gave you their phone and said, hey, look at this picture. How are you going to say, no, I don’t look at those? Practice all that. And I have 18 high risk behaviors in my book. And so, and they’re, they, I graphed them in accordance of when they pop up.

So you know, okay, well, I don’t talk about this one yet, but I gotta talk about these. And so those are the ones that you can focus in on and start to praise them for good refusal skills building.

And I’m just gonna point out that this is the stage that they’re age 9 to 12 years old Which is I think like middle and upper elementary Meaning that if you’re doing social positive social norming and refusal skills in high school That’s a little late. We need to be starting earlier.

Yes, much earlier. We know that the average first exposure to porn is 9-10, 10 being the first search for pornography, video games, first person shooting, all of the things that they could be exposed to there. If they have cell phones, we want to delay cell phones, smartphones until high school and delay social media until age 16. Their brains cannot process this comparison information.

And their job is to get absorbed into friends. But if they get absorbed online, then they have brain rot, right? They’re not actually growing skills. They’re just growing long sets of neurons for watching what’s going on in the world instead of being able to react and deal with feelings.

And you told, I’m going to push back to people saying, if you haven’t listened to episode 32, go back there because Dr. Crystal shares the story exactly about this. And I guarantee you it’s, it’s worth a listen. And you’re going to see exactly the point that she just made. Um, and Dr. Crystal, what’s, uh, what’s number four about? What’s that stage?

Adolescence: Identity Building and Challenges (Ages 13-16)

Okay, number four, this is a fun but one of the most difficult times for caregivers, age 13 to 16. So this is right when we go eighth grade into high school. so freshman and sophomore year, this is a really, really tough time because we only have about 15 to 35, 45 % of frontal lobe that’s developed by then. And so here are the things that we can think about during prevention they’re going through is they’re trying to build their identity. And if they don’t get the beginning stages of identity, they start to have what’s called role confusion. They don’t know where they fit in. hear a lot of kids go along to get along. And so if they go into a party or a situation and they don’t have those refusal skills in their brain, if they have lower self-worth and somebody offers them something, they’re more likely to say yes to a risky behavior.

If they literally have higher self-esteem, they’ve practiced refusal skills, they know what their family code is, they’re gonna go into that party and have an 80 % chance of actually saying no. This is a huge increase, right? And so what we want is to really empower them before they’re in that situation with all the things that we talked about in the other stages. But we also have to remember that at that age, 13 to 16, their brain is so primed for novelty seeking.

They are more sensitive to spikes in dopamine from novelty. And the reason is because they have to build their identity. They need to go out in the world and try on all kinds of different behaviors and things. And that’s normal. So their brain compels them forward to do that. And we also see they get really angry, argumentative a lot. That’s also developmentally normal. Before they grow those executive functioning skills of emotion regulation, they’re going to push limits.

That means their abstract reasoning is coming online. They’re starting to think in different ways, hypotheticals. Well, what if I do that? What if I break the rules? what are all, you know, those are normal places to be. Another thing that we have to be aware of is that our bodies change. During this stage of development, girls on average gain 40 pounds. If you don’t know that’s coming and all of a sudden you’re body turns into an hourglass when it was a flat board, it’s going to freak you out. And other people, other kids are going to make fun or be attracted to that. And you know, we think at this age, my God, we haven’t even like dated yet. We need to like, what’s going on? But this is when kids will use really inappropriate sexual terms.

So we need to prepare kids for their body changing and how that may affect their body image that can really prevent eating disorders later on down the road if we do that. And then, so in this stage, what we wanna do is use all our parenting activities and tools that we used in the previous stage, family code, refusal skills. We have a secure attachment with our kid. We have love and limits. During this phase, we usually give a lot of consequences.

We need to ground them when they break the rules. We need to give them an activity to do to make a repair. We need to teach them how to apologize appropriately, repair relationships and hurt feelings. And so this is one of the toughest phases, I think, for parenting because you end up having to get involved in ways that you don’t really like to a lot. But man, your parent, sorry, if your kid hates you right now, probably means you’ve done a good job. Like you’re on the right track. And this too shall pass. Right. Yes.

That’s a good reminder is that even you’re doing these things right, even up to this point, their job is to test your limits. Your job is to hold them accountable to everything that you’ve built so far because their brain is telling them to push to. Yeah. man, I, I have not experienced this, but I can feel for the parents that go through this just like.

What you just said, this too shall pass. Like that’s your mantra, right? Like, okay, this is, then I pass. Okay.

Yeah, in two years, right?

But seatbelt in, it’s gonna last a little bit. And this is another important thing to do during this stage is to watch your ratio, positive to negatives. Because a lot of times we start lecturing, we start getting afraid of what might happen, and our kids don’t have enough frontal lobe to understand and predict that yet. They haven’t had those experiences and they don’t have the executive functioning skills yet. So being able to say to them, what if this happens? What will you do instead of don’t do this because this could happen? Really switch around your lecturing to question asking, Socratic questioning. And then when they give you answers that are good, praise them. A lot of times our praise reduces here and our criticism increases. And then kids just start to avoid us. But if you say, hey, your brain is developing, I’m supposed to be your frontal lobe until you grow one of your own.

And so you’ve got about 65% of your frontal lobe right now. So if this happens, what will you do? If that happens, what will you do? Instead of do A, B, C, let them start taking over. And remember what they can do, they should do. But during this time too, if kids get their driver’s license and get a vehicle, it’s very important that they lose that vehicle as a consequence if it’s appropriate, right? If they’re using substances, if they get in trouble for some sort of risky behavior. One of the things I struggle with as a therapist is parents are like, my God, then I have to take them to school again. Yes, you do. And that is critical for you to do. Sacrificing a month of taking them to school is such a beautiful consequence because you get to be with them. It may not be fun.

Right? it, right? There can be some repair and conversation that happens and they’re embarrassed. It’s a beautiful natural consequence. What I see though a lot is kids that they get to keep all their things and then they learn from their parent, my parent doesn’t really care to give me limits. And that’s not a message we want to send our teenagers.

Right. And they do get that message. Like if they’re running free, do whatever they want, that the message is clear. I run the show. I have no limits. And sadly, right, maybe they don’t care. And I’ve spoken with students asking them about limits and they do know, no, my parents are strict. They care. And even though they’re still angry, they still are upset about the decision. Like they know that you care and you love them. And then, I’ve got my notes for this one. I want to ask you before we go on to number five. For the first one, I have attachment. The second one, efficacy. The third one, I differentiation. Is that what you would call it? What would you call this fourth one?

Yes, love that. Perfect, perfect,

Identity building. Identity building, okay.

Cool. Awesome. then number five, what do we got there?

Emerging Adulthood: Autonomy and Responsibility (Ages 17-21) 

Oh, number five, age 17 to 21. And the theme for this one is really autonomy. It’s because at this age, right, they’re moving into adulthood. They really need to be taking care of themselves probably 85 to 95 % of the time. If they can, they should be doing all of these things, prepping for school, for college applications. This can be major power struggle time for parents because they want them to pre-prepare and do all these things. And kids are so lazy during this time and they’re waiting until they have to to get things done, right? But what’s happening during this time is they’re building independence and autonomy is that they’re also really focused on deeper intimacy. So this may be when we’re dating, wanting to date, or we’ve had a partner for a while.

Sexual issues will come up here, sexual health, creating a sexual identity is very important to start in the previous phase. And then this is when morality actually starts kicking in. So kids don’t make a lot of moral decisions when they’re younger. Their decisions are based upon self-interest and you know, will I get in trouble? Is this against the law? don’t and this is when we see during 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 kids start making decisions because it’s the right thing to do or they start making decisions based on social contract. So, you know, I’m going to be loving and kind to you. I expect that reciprocity in return. And so this is when they are also preparing or actually launching and so we see a lot of boomerang kids coming back from college. I’m seeing that a lot actually over the brick is kids who are using a lot of substances and maybe they’ve already launched and they started using substances in college and they waited for a long time, which is great. So they have more frontal lobe.

But what I’m seeing, especially with things like marijuana, is that they’re getting so addicted so fast because it’s become really an illicit substance. And so once they get hooked to that, or they start to use it for self-medication, sleep, or anxiety, they get dependent upon it, and then their grades drop. And so this is the time when we need to use that family code we created a long time ago and say to kids, we expect you to go to college and have fun and keep your brain safe.

We are not going to invest our hard saved college dollars unless you’re a good steward of them. And here’s how you should be. And so this is when I actually just negotiated with a family because this kid has got three semesters of failing grades and they’ve they put a lot of money down the toilet for his. So now he has to take out a student loan. And the deal is if he makes a three point two or above that loan gets paid off by the funds that they saved, but he has to earn it. And so that’s a beautiful thing, right? A really healthy consequence. And they also has to, he has to do drug testing in his city and there are labs everywhere that can send those forms. I think here it’s really important for parents to say, you know, we’re launching you, you have a great moral code, you have a good family code, you know what our expectations are, now go be you. That identity that you have created and take really good care of the brain because even this at 21 we still have four years of brain development to go. But we’re you know, we’re really putting the finishing touches on everything from from there. So is it this a really great way to think about the lifespan of what we could do to prevent risky behavior?

Yeah, this was great. And I think that last stage that you talked about autonomy is there’s so many bigger picture things that are driving them with like social contracts and taking care of themselves and finding intimacy and morality is, I don’t know, I think a time in life when you explore why you’re here and what you’re doing.

Yes that’s that age, you start asking and seeking those questions and answers. And it’s really, really exciting. So this has been awesome, Dr. Crystal. Good, good, good.

You know, I think about this development and I really wish that the federal government would adapt a developmental lifespan model. Like, can you imagine if the dollars were spent on creating from birth all the way to college age, you know, classes and webinars? Like, we see this in pieces everywhere.

But really teaching parents from the get-go. Here is your trajectory going forward and okay, now you’re in this age, here’s what you do. And being able to support schools and parent coalitions to give this information to kids with development, neurodevelopment in mind. That’s my kind of wish for the world.

Well that’s, I’m, I’m on board with that. When you need someone to back you up and present that I’ll be there. and my wish, my wish for anyone listening is if you love this episode, get Dr. Crystal’s book. It’s the Neuro Whereabouts Guide, because every time I talk to you, I am, I learned so many new things or I remember something you taught me last time and I’m like, that’s so good. That’s so helpful.

All right, let’s go to Congress, right?

And then I want to learn more and know how to apply it. And you have everything here in the book with like conversation starters. You have drawings, you have things you can go through with your kids. And so as an educator myself, I find it so helpful. Besides your book, you also have your website, knowyourneuro.org. Is there anything else that we should know about to contact you, get you to speak at our organizations or anything else?

Sure. So, you know, there’s the children’s book series too. There are three books in a series of 10. Neuro Sets Boundaries is about to come out in February. So that’ll be book four. And so the KnowYourNeuro.org, it has videos from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade, a parent page, school page, student page. So it is really all encompassing about how risky behavior affects our brain and how we can grow skills.

You’re welcome.

So if you want me to come to your school, to your coalition and train your parents or your clinical staff, I do that all the time and would be very happy. And then you can use the program for free in your environment. So please keep that in mind and I’d love to come. The last thing I wanna put an advertisement out there for is I’ve been working with a local nonprofit here in Houston called Smart Families. And a very generous donor has created this program that will pay for me to come to your school and teach you and your kids about the effects of technology, all the different things technology does to the brain in hopes that you’ll sign a pledge to delay. So elementary schools, middle schools, even high schools that want to tackle this.

They can get this whole program. It’s a three-year program. They get a certain budget to spend every year on community building events. And then you can afford to have Jake come to your school and do a whole building exercises for your students. And so please reach out to SmartFamilies.org if that’s interesting to you.

That’s cool. my gosh. So exciting. Yes. well, Dr. Crystal, thank you for being on the show for everyone listening. Thank you for making the drug prevention power hour a part of your week. As you know, every Monday release a new episode with amazing guests. And if you have somebody you want to be on the show and to learn from, please send us their information, make an introduction. We’d love to interview them. and then keep doing the great work that you’re doing.

You’re saving lives, you’re making a difference. We need you in this field. And so if we can be supportive to you to make your job easier or to help you go further and save more lives, please reach out. We’ll see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.