Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
[Music] and I am so happy that your relationship with your daughter has improved [Music] good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. This is Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman with another episode of Relationship Matters TV. I hope everyone is doing fine, doing well, having a beautiful day, morning, or evening. So now you know I’m going to get on my soapbox, which I do every episode, and I’ll be doing it as long as we have this pandemic. Why am I on my soapbox? Because I want to encourage everyone to get the vaccination. Now I know I have viewers who do not believe in getting any of the vaccines. I don’t know why. I hear all kinds of reasons: they’re putting a chip in us, they’re gonna be following us all around. Well, they follow you already if you have a cell phone and your cell phone is on, all kinds of conspiracy theories. But what we are seeing, we’re seeing so many of our children getting sick and some even dying. You don’t want your child, your grandchild, someone else’s child to be ill, and you don’t want to be the reason why. So get vaccinated. We can get over this pandemic if we all get vaccinated. I’ve had both of my shots. I’m waiting for the booster because I am a senior citizen, and whenever we can get the booster, I’m getting my booster because I don’t want to give it to anyone and I don’t want to get it. So that’s it for me and my soapbox. Now you know this show is all about all different kinds of relationships and the way we communicate with each other. Today I have someone special on, and she’s going to talk to us about teenagers and tweens. Her name is Deborah Ann Davis. Now I’m going to ask a question: do you find motherhood overwhelming? Deborah Ann knows exactly how that feels. When she found out she was going to be a mom, she was completely unprepared. So Deborah has spent, she spent the next decade or so worrying about messing up her daughter’s life. She had a daughter, and it wasn’t until her daughter finally reached middle school, that was the age that Deborah taught because she was a teacher, that she felt a little confidence about being a mom. So I want you to welcome Deborah Ann Davis, a parenting coach, and she’s going to talk to us about how to keep our teenage daughters from slamming their door. Hi Deborah.

Deborah Ann Davis
Hi, thank you for that lovely introduction.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, you’re quite welcome, you’re quite welcome. I really wanted to have you on. Now I don’t have a daughter, I have a son, but I have friends who either had teenage daughters, you know, because they’re a little older now, or they have granddaughters who are teens or tweens, and I used to teach high school. So anyway, definitely before, let’s let, I want you to tell me all about you. I want you to just give us more insight of who you are.

Deborah Ann Davis
I am a person who is always in some place where they don’t expect to be. So I did not expect to be an author, but here I am. I left high school going to college completely determined not to be a teacher or a social worker because that’s what my parents did, and it seemed to lack imagination. And then I left college as a teacher, and I stayed in teaching for 27 years because I loved it. I love teenagers. I love the way they’re brash one minute and then they’re like, “Oh no, I have a pimple,” the next minute. You know, I like it that they swagger and then they’re vulnerable. I just really like them, the whole process of becoming themselves, embracing teachable moments, and trying and trying and trying to understand their position in the world or in the school. So then I got sick. I got Lyme disease, which if you don’t have it in your part of the country or the world, that’s a tick-borne disease, and I never saw the tick, but I got Lyme disease, and it made me so ill I had to stop teaching for a while.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
And I was completely exhausted. It messed with my heart and messed with my brain for a little while, and I was on antibiotics basically from June to September, which anybody who’s been on antibiotics knows that that totally messes up your system. But during that time, I didn’t have the energy to watch a TV show, so I was listening to music, and to keep myself busy, I was making up stories in my head. And as I started to heal and get stronger, I started writing the stories, and by the time I went back to school, I was really into writing. So I said, well, I can only write on weekends, and I can only write during the summer because anybody’s a teacher knows that if you’re teaching, you really can’t do anything else. You have to do your lesson plans and focus on the kids and contact the parents, and so you know this. So at one point, I realized I actually had two manuscripts. So I said, I’m gonna leave teaching, and I’m going to become an author. And both of my manuscripts were fiction, YA fiction. My daughter said, she read one of the manuscripts, she goes, “Uh, mom, there’s no sex in here.” And in my head, I’m thinking, you know, she was like 18. In my head, I’m thinking if one of my students read something I wrote that had sex in it, I would be so broke about it, right? Fine, say that to her. I just said, “Well, no, I’m not really comfortable writing sex, so I’m just going to leave it the way it is.” She goes, “I’ll write it for you.” I was like, you know, thank you very much, but I really don’t want to see sex through my daughter’s eyes, but I appreciate the offer. That’s like, no, no, no. So my novels are very sweet. I don’t have sex in them.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
But the funny part is when my daughter read the final draft of the book, there was a scene where the boy was going to kiss the girl, and she’s like, “Ew, my mother wrote that.”

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, oh my goodness.

Deborah Ann Davis
What happened was when I left teaching to write, I missed teaching in the classroom like 10 minutes later. I missed it. I’ve been in the school all my life, if you can count kindergarten when I was five, you know, I’ve been in school all my life and always around hundreds and hundreds of people, and now it was me and my computer and my husband, and as entertaining as they are, it just wasn’t enough. So I said, well, let me go back to what I know, and I spent so many years working with parents and their kids to help them bridge that gap because you know when you see the parents, it’s usually because there’s a problem, right?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah.

Deborah Ann Davis
So they’re like banging heads. So you’ve got angry parents on this side of the table and sullen kids on that side of the table. So you can’t solve whatever issue brought them into the classroom that day unless you can actually get them to talk to each other. So that ended up being my superpower. So I smushed all that down into a weekend and did a mother-daughter retreat for, um, yeah.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, very cool.

Deborah Ann Davis
It was back in 2017, and it was everything I could possibly wanted. But in the process, I needed to create a curriculum for it, and I ended up turning that curriculum into this book. So now you can take the thing with you. It’s not a workshop. The book is a beginning, middle, and end about how to recognize what’s going on with you and your kids and how to approach your kids if things are already strained. I mean, I give little scripts that people can use to, in this situation, you can try saying this, that kind of stuff. And then now that things are working out, here are some things you can do together to generate more pleasant memories together and, you know, how to build trust and those kinds of things.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So, yeah, you know what, this is amazing because the things that you’re saying, it’s like, wait a minute, is she a clone of me? You taught 27 years, I taught 30 years.

Deborah Ann Davis
Wow.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And you gave a mother-daughter workshop. I also gave a mother-daughter workshop.

Deborah Ann Davis
High five.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And so I’m listening to you, and it’s like, oh, you know, and you, and like writing little curriculums and, and, and, you know, all of that. And, and like you said, when you, when the parent comes, when you have to see the parent, of course, there’s something wrong. But I want to ask, I want to say something. I asked your question, okay, how to keep your daughter from slamming the door. Now, when I was coming up, you couldn’t slam the door, you know, like I wish I would have slammed the door. That’s number one. And so it kind of intrigued me about how to keep your daughter from slamming the door. I can slam the door. As a matter of fact, if, uh, if I was allowed to close the door, I had to close it softly. Now that is if I was allowed to close the door. Most of the time is don’t close that door, you know? And, and when, after I read, uh, some excerpts from your book and there is a show host on national television, and I remember she was on and she was talking about her daughter and she talked about how her daughter, you know, would go in the room, teenager, slam the door. And so what she did, she took the door off the hinges and she got so much flack. Oh my gosh, people are so judging, you know, uh, because, oh my God, you know, she doesn’t have any privacy. And she said, she’s in my house, you know, and I am not gonna have her slamming the door. So now was your daughter, okay, people just so you know, when they see me jumping, there were two flies in here. I don’t know where they came from, but before the show, I was honeymoon. That’s how I sprayed. Then I saw another one and I just felt something. So if you see me do grab something and go, I’m spraying black. But anyway, uh, so was your daughter, uh, uh, the experiences with your daughter, is that kind of what helped you to write your book? So how was your daughter as a team?

Deborah Ann Davis
Well, my daughter, um, we had a very tight unit, the three of us when she was growing up, my husband, my daughter, myself, there was an awful lot of communication and conversation. And because of that, she didn’t reach the levels of frustration that would bring her there. As a matter of fact, when I was writing this book, she said, “Mom, you can’t write that book. I never slammed the door.” And I said, “Well, why do you think that is?” So the whole purpose of the book is to keep them from getting to that point emotionally.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
It’s not about the door slamming per se. It’s about how did they get to that point and how do we relieve them of that? Because there is so much going on in the teenage life that you, you know, you say to them, “Walk the dog,” and they blow up at you. You’ve got this walking volcano in your house and you’re like, “Where did that come from?” So all of that is what I defuse. That’s what I unpack and reverse engineer all that lingo to help you figure out what’s going on so that you can support your child and support yourself at the same time. Like what my daughter did do though, like she’d stomp off to her room and she closed the door and it’d make like a little bang noise and she’d pop it open and said, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.” And she’d close it again and make a noise that she’d open up go, “Oh, I didn’t mean to do that either.” But it, the thing is about slamming the door, it is a pressure release. Your child has built up and built up and built up all this anxiety and upset and frustration and there’s no release. There’s nowhere for them to go to go. And if you are part of that situation, if they’re say fighting with you, they have no one to talk to because you are their parent and you are the one who rescues them. But now they can’t be rescued by you because you’re the one that they’re banging their heads against. So there’s nothing for them to do. And that’s what they do is they, they release their energy. They stomp their feet, they yell, they scream into a pillow, they slam the door. All of those things are a big flag that says, “I can’t cope, please help me.” And we have to remember that those teenage tantrums are not things that are happening to us, the parents. They are things happening to that child and they need you to rescue them because the child can’t tell. And I just yelled at my mom and I said, “I hate you.” And I stomped off and I slammed the door. Wait, is that a bridge I’ve burned? I can’t go back. Have I ruined my relationship with my mom completely? They can’t tell because they’re kids. They don’t have a developed prefrontal cord, I mean, frontal cortex. They don’t have a prefrontal lobe developed yet. They are working purely on reaction and risk-taking behavior and all those kinds of emotions that come out of it. And the bottom line is, and I can say that without any equivocation whatsoever, if they could do better at that moment, they would. They don’t want to be behind their door with you mad on one side and then mad on the other side and they haven’t solved their problem yet. They want their problem solved.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So let me ask you this, uh, uh, now that you’re talking about, uh, you know, what problem solving or if they have a problem and they want the problem solved, what happens, uh, when the child, the teenager trusts their friend’s advice more than their mom’s advice? Where does that come from?

Deborah Ann Davis
Well, then you have a whole bunch of undeveloped brains advising your child’s undeveloped brain. And the things that they say sound fine because their brains are undeveloped and they can’t tell. So, uh, they’re looking for an escape. They’re looking for a solution. They’re looking for someone who gets them. One of the things I did at my retreat was I had the parents and the children fill out learning style inventory. It’s kind of an odd thing about how the world doesn’t understand how important learning styles are when it’s been taught in schools for, you know, decades and decades. But learning styles are the way we take in information. It’s the way we process information and it’s the way we relate to the world. So when I had my, um, attendees take these learning style inventories, first they had to take it as themselves. The moms took it and the daughters took it and I wouldn’t let them share it. And then I had them take it a second time, but this time they had to pretend they were the other person. What happened was all the moms nailed the girls. They got them exactly the same as the girls had identified themselves. They understood their children, but all of the girls labeled the moms with their own personality. So for the families who didn’t have contentious relationships, turns out that they had the same learning style. And for everybody else who was banging heads, it was because their styles were different. Like for example, your kids out in the living room watching a TV show and you want them to take the garbage out. You are an auditory learner. You understand and learn things by listening. You’re the kind of person who can drive in the car listening to this kind of a podcast and get the information out of it. Your child is a visual learner. Your child is someone who takes notes or needs to watch and see what’s going on. So you say to your child, “Take the garbage out when you’re done.” And the child says, “Sure.” But five hours later, the garbage is not taken out. And then you blow up at the child because it’s, you know, the 7,000th time this has happened. And the child feels blindsided, like, “What is going on with my mother? Why is that happening?” But if you had just written a sticky note and put it on the table in front of them, said, “Garbage,” when the show was over, they would have seen the note, go, “Ah,” and gone and taken out the garbage. So a lot of the conflicts you have is because you’re approaching your child as if they are you. And in this weird year that we just had where parents were now responsible for their kids, they were trying to help their kids do school from home the way the parent would learn best. So if the, um, the business of looking at a teacher on the screen was working for your child, then everything was fine. But if it wasn’t working for your child and that method works fine for the parent, the parent would keep trying to get that method across. But there are so many ways that you can enhance education by making sure you are addressing their learning style. For example, you have an auditory learner and they have to write a report and they’re not into the writing and stuff. Then you have them write the report or they don’t want to do revisions. You have them read the report into a tape recorder and then listen to it and then they’ll hear what they want to change. If you have a kinesthetic learner, then you have them do something like put the report on cards and so they can read it and move it as they’re reading it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Let me ask you a question before you go any further. As a parent, how do you know whether or not your child is an auditory learner, um, kinesthetic learner? How do you know that? Most parents, I don’t think, really know.

Deborah Ann Davis
Well, what you can, I agree, and you’d be surprised how many people don’t know what kind of learner they are because I would have, I would have put myself in one category and I was completely in another. I mean, you, they overlap, everything overlaps because everything is connected, but you have a strong area that is defined.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
So you go and you take the, a learning style inventory. I, um, have one on my website. So if anybody sends me an email at info@deborahanndavis.com, I’ll send you the link to that and then you can take it because it gives the instructions of that whole procedure I did with the, um, retreat.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
You take the learning style inventory and if you’ve got a small child, the vocabulary would be too much for them. So you can take the learning style inventory for them because you know what their go-to thing is. And the inventory is like, I don’t know, 20 questions. Would you rather do this or would you rather do that? And then it tells you where you are. And then there’s tons of stuff on the internet that you can look up or you can get my book, but you can look up this stuff and you can say, I’m an auditory learner and I have a kinesthetic child. How do I help them? Or I have a, a visual child and they have an auditory teacher who doesn’t write anything down. They just lecture. Like when I was in college, we had these, I was at University of Massachusetts, had these huge auditoriums with a teacher down at the bottom that looked like they were this big. I never did well in those classes because I couldn’t really see what was going on.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So you’re a visual learner.

Deborah Ann Davis
I’m very visual, but I’m also kinesthetic, which is why I’m a science teacher because hands-on, touch, labs, outside, um, nature explorations. So, you know, that’s, I found my niche with that and I didn’t even know what my learning styles were at the time.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So knowing your teenagers or tweens learning style, is that going to keep them from slamming the door?

Deborah Ann Davis
Um, it will be paving the path towards that because you will now not bang your head in that arena.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
Playing heads in that arena. And when you say to them, and I, I advocate transparency, you say, and things aren’t going well, and instead of trying to muscle through it, say, I’m the parent, I’m supposed to know what I’m doing. I used to say to my daughter, well, this is the first time I’ve been the mother of an 11-year-old. This is the first time I’ve been the mother of a 15-year-old. I’ve taught 15-year-olds, but I’ve never parented a 15-year-old again. So, I mean, before. So I would just, I would just say, this is new for me and I’m learning as I go. And this works, but I didn’t really like the way that turned out. So I’m gonna go find something else because I think we can do better. It’s just being transparent. And it’s such an important thing to teach your kids because it means that mistakes are forgiven. They can be repaired. It doesn’t make you a bad person or an incompetent person or any of those negative things. It’s just a mistake.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, right.

Deborah Ann Davis
And so then that means your kid can make a mistake and you repair the damage, you make things better going forward, and you learn something every time you make a mistake. That’s the big learning curve that we do as we go through life. We make mistakes, we say, “Woo, not going to do that again,” and then we don’t do it again.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, that’s one thing I always thought about how we don’t, it’s like they say, flying the plane as you’re building it. You’re not taught how to be a parent.

Deborah Ann Davis
Exactly.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And if you have one child, I know someone told me once, well, you know, that first child, you know, you really don’t know what you’re doing, but that second or the third child, you know, you really kind of know a few things. But, uh, but usually if you have more than one child, that second child is different from that first child, and that third child is different from that second and that first child.

Deborah Ann Davis
Exactly.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, how to, how to be parents. So is there a difference in raising a boy and a girl? Is there a difference when you talk about, you know, um, raising them, you know, and, and the, uh, learning styles and all of that? Is there a difference?

Deborah Ann Davis
Um, there are many differences and there are many similarities. The things that I work with are relationship builders and con in a gap bridgers. So they go with anything. They go with parents and toddlers, they go with spouses, they go with fathers and sons and mothers and daughters. I mean, it goes because they’re just basic ways to interact with people. But I will say this, when you put a boy and a girl together in the room, the moment that brings them to that point is a totally different background. The girl comes to that room from a parenting stance where you need to take care of yourself, you need to make sure that no one takes advantage of you, right? And the boy comes to that place with you better respect, you better do whatever in the home, but the rest of the world is saying you better have swagger and you better have game and you better be able to have a bunch of honeys and all that, you know? I mean, they are given completely different messages. And now we’ve got a set of females who are being raised with kick butt and take name feminine heroines and all the movies and stuff. Such parents don’t know how to raise those children. So they’re, they’re gonna get out there expecting to be respected and [Music] valued, but the boys aren’t being raised to understand that. Now, having said that, I do want to make this point. There is so much ridiculous hype about how much sexual involvement is going on in the schools, and it is not a real thing. What happens is the media perpetuates it. People tell stories about it. The, um, some of the stories are their own, some are stories they make up, some of the stories are their friends or even from some show they saw. But everyone keeps talking about how, oh yeah, the kids are doing it like rabbits in school. And actually that’s, that’s just not true. And I’ve taught in urban and rural and low socioeconomic and, um, uh, fairly high socioeconomic or all schools, all different types. I’ve taught in the north, I’ve taught in the south. So I’ve been around hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids and they all had the same kind of results when they asked them. Because you see them as a science teacher, so I could ask anything when I was trying to show them how to collect data. So at the beginning of school, I’d give them one of those scantron sheets. So you fill in the little bubbles, which they don’t use those anymore because now everything’s online. But they would fill them in with pencil and no names. It only had like five questions where like, are you sexually active? And are you using drugs, using alcohol? You know, those kinds of questions, just yes or no. And then I would take the results from all of my classes and put them together. And then I would share the results with my classes the next day. And every single time, so I, I had mostly, um, 9th graders and 10th graders, but I also had 11th graders and 12th graders. So I separated them that way. So the ninth and the tenth graders, everybody’s thinking that, um, everybody’s having sex except them. So I would tell them it’s really like three or four percent of the, your grade is fooling around. And they’d all go, “Oh, wait, no way. That’s no, not happening. That’s not true. Everybody’s lying.” I said, “Why would anybody lie? Your name’s not on it. It’s written in pencil. You’re making little dots. There’s no way I can connect it to you. Did any of you lie?” And they’d all go, “No, no, we didn’t lie.” So I’d say, “All right, we’ll just do it again.” So we would take the little survey again. And the next day I’d bring back the results and they’d be the same. And they would not believe me. It didn’t matter that I showed into, showed it to him twice. They would not believe me. As far as they were concerned, everybody else was having sex except them. Then I had my upperclassmen, 11th and 12th graders, right? So if the ninth and tenth graders around three or four percent, the upperclassmen, and these are people graduating, right? They were like at nine percent having sex.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Nine percent.

Deborah Ann Davis
So then why either.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so, so why does the media perpetuate this? I mean, why is this perpetuating?

Deborah Ann Davis
Because it’s interesting.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
Don’t, don’t, don’t you remember those old, um, films with like, um, sweet, uh, 16 candles and, and, um, I can’t remember them, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and all those.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, yeah.

Deborah Ann Davis
We’re always having crazy parties and then getting drunk and, and doing something. And, and that’s what the story was about. And, um, everybody thought that’s what really was going on. And the parents were freaking out because they thought it was representative of what was going on in their kids’ school. And even in my house, when I would talk about this stuff in my house, my daughter would say, “Yeah, well, that’s your schools. My schools aren’t like that. My school is, you know.” And I’d say to her, “Who can you name? Who do you know for sure? You don’t know anybody for sure.” And because it, oh, and then the CDC, Center for Disease Control, teamed up with 17 Magazine and they did a similar poll nationwide. And their numbers were just a little bit higher than mine, like seven percent for the younger ones and 11 for the older ones.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Really? Nationally?

Deborah Ann Davis
Really.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Very interesting.

Deborah Ann Davis
And it turns out that the girls who do have sex, most of them are unhappy about it, like 85 percent of them are unhappy about it, wish they hadn’t. And all of them did it because they thought somebody else was, because everybody else was doing it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yes. And good luck parents sharing that with your kids because they’re not going to believe you, but say it to them anyway.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
They will hear you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
People wonder and they’ll question when those stories come across the cafeteria.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay. So Deborah, uh, I gotta take a quick break and, um, I have some questions, uh, some more questions for you. This is a very, very, uh, interesting, very interesting. Uh, you might, you should have been around probably when, um, I was raising my son, uh, when he was a teenager, you know, but I really hope that, um, there are a lot of moms out there and grandmas and aunts and, and, uh, who are really listening to this because we always talk about the teenage years and like, oh wow, he’s a teenager, she’s a teenager. But anyway, we will be right back. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi we are back with Deborah Ann Davis, parenting coach, and we’re talking about how to raise your teens and your tweens and some of the myths out there about our teens and tweens. And I know a lot of parents out there are very happy to hear those statistics. So now, um, I ask you about, you know, the difference between raising boys and girls. So tell me, what are some of the common mistakes parents make when raising a tween or a teen?

Deborah Ann Davis
The biggest one I think has to do with not understanding where their child is coming from, and that is the, um, learning styles inventory.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
Then what happens is if you can bridge that gap, then, and, and you say to them, we’re gonna try stuff that’s a little different because I think we can do better, they’ll be looking for that. Right now, if you’re banging heads right now, they don’t trust you, that they can’t tell what’s going to make you blow up and what’s not going to make you blow up because they’re trying to look at you through their kid lens and they can’t tell the difference. So for them, it’s this big crap shoot and you know, it’s like once burned, twice shy. No, twice, one fern, twice shy. Yes, that’s right. So now, um, what you’re doing is saying, I’m aware that things aren’t good and I think we can do better. So I’m going to try this other thing. So you try this other thing and you say, you know, I didn’t really like that. I’m going to look for something else. And then you try another thing and then you say, hey, you know what? I like that. How about you? Did you like the way that went? And you get their input. And then you say, so let’s you and me try to do this. And then all of a sudden you and your child are on the same side. So you say the next time you’ve got a problem, let’s you and me solve it together.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right.

Deborah Ann Davis
So now you’ve got a child who’s, um, the walking volcano. Okay. And then if you’re trying to, um, talk to an angry teenager, that’s like trying to teach a pig to sing. It doesn’t work when you end up annoying the pig. Right. So don’t even bother trying to have a logical conversation in the face of all that emotion. Those two things don’t go together. But when things are calm and neutral, then you have the conversations. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to try. So for those walking volcanoes, you say to them, when you blow up like that, I am fully aware that you have an issue and you need help with it and you need to solve something. But to be perfectly honest with you, when you’re yelling or waving your arms or whatever it is that they do, I get so distracted by that. I really can’t hear your message.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
So this is what we’re gonna do. This is called the step back and come back technique. When one of us blows up, we’re gonna step back, we’re gonna gather our wits, and then when we feel better, we’re gonna come back together and we’re gonna get on the same side and solve that problem because I just can’t hear you when you’re yelling. I can’t get your message. I just get emotional and, and it gets lost and then nothing gets solved. So let’s try this. Let’s see what happens.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay. All right. And so now do you, uh, uh, coach, uh, mothers and daughters? Do you, I know you said you had a retreat, but, um, as far as your book and curriculum are concerned, do you still work with mothers and daughters? And if you do, um, or, you know, a mothers and daughters who have taken your book, read it and use your curriculum, is it working?

Deborah Ann Davis
Yes, it is working.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
The thing is that you can, um, take the book and you can adjust it and use it according to your personal situation. There’s so many things in there that you can do that what you do is you pick some and you, you find the ones that resonate with you and then you use those. And if they work, you use them again. If they don’t, you get something else. So the, um, but I would still start across the board with learning style inventory or you could do a personality test, but your kids are in school, so you might as well do the learning style inventory because one, if they have a teacher was a different learning style than them, they will have, that’s, that’ll be the way they teach. Yeah. If your child has a different learning style than the teacher, they may not be able to recognize the lessons are being taught from the teacher and what the child’s trying to show them that they’ve learned. So there’s lots of strategies you can do for that. So if you take the learning styles inventory, then you can, um, if you’ve got an older kid, you can have them take the learning style inventory for their teacher and say, based on what you’ve seen, do you, what kind of learning style do you think they have? Do you think they’re more like you or do you think they’re more like me or do you think they’re more like your, your other parent? So that to me, that is huge. So you find out where you’re at so you can go forward and see your progress.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right.

Deborah Ann Davis
So you identify your learning styles, yours and your child’s. You look at the school and you see what the learning styles are for the school. If you end up having distance learning again, then you find the techniques that work for your child with the learning style. For example, if you’re a kinesthetic learner who can’t sit in front of the computer for hours, you get permission to videotape the lesson and then you do the, you make them sit there for 15 minute increments and then go do some push-ups, then come back. Right. I mean, there’s ways for you to enhance the learning even if it’s not the optimal style for them.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
Can you imagine how many conflicts will be reduced in your lives if you take care of that one aspect?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
It’s very, you know, that’s very interesting. I never thought of that. Um, I never thought about, uh, learning styles, the differences in the learning styles when it comes to raising your children.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yeah.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, and so, and I’m listening to you and I’m thinking, okay, um, as far as my son, although he, you know, I never had any issues with him, but then I started thinking, well, what is his learning style? You know, and, and, uh, as opposed to my learning style, you know, and like you say with, they, they can intertwine, um, because I’m a visual learner, but I’m also an auditory learner. I, you know, like to hear, but then I like to read it, you know, but like kinesthetic touching and, you know, that’s not, that’s not me. So I’m gonna have to find out just for my own edification, um, what his learning style is. I, I think this was something extremely interesting, extremely different. Um, so I have a question here from Sandy Barney Ennis and she says, are you making the child aware of their learning style?

Deborah Ann Davis
Absolutely, because that gives them power.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Ann Davis
See, the thing is you can’t say, well, this is what you’re good at. And, uh, if you end up with something else in the situation, then you’re not gonna do well. That’s not it. This is not an excuse to not do well. The thing is in school, you’re basically required to be able to handle all the learning styles. It’s when you leave school and you get a job that if you’ve got a job you love, then you’ve landed in a job that is in, in step with your learning style. If you’re in a job that you don’t love, it’s either because the environment’s not good, which is a separate issue, or you’re doing something that you may be good at, but it’s not your learning style. It’s not what makes you happy. But in school, you don’t have choice. You have to do gym, which is kinesthetic. You have to do home ex, home ec, which is kinesthetic. Of course, they don’t have home ec anymore, but you know.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Unfortunately.

Deborah Ann Davis
I know, seriously. And, and they, they’re making, they, they’re making laws that say that, um, gym is not required for graduation.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh my gosh, don’t even get me started in that direction.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yeah, wait, that’s another show.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Now let’s just tell our kids it’s not important if you move your body. No worries. The last time you have to move your body is eighth grade. Don’t worry about it for the rest of your life.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yeah, no, but anyway, but the point is school requires that you do all of the different styles. You have to go to assemblies where you listen. You have to listen to oral reports by the other kids. I mean, it’s required. So what you do is you say, well, if I’ve got a kinesthetic learner, how do I help them with auditory processes? And there’s stuff out there that tells you how to do that. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s out there.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That’s if you are a parent, uh, uh, since I’m an ex-educator, I’m not gonna go in into a classroom with 30 kids and trying to figure out who’s a different learner. Usually if you’re a special, I was a special ed teacher, so I had to find out. Oh, uh, we only have a few minutes left, but one thing that Sandy Barney Anders also says is that then they will be capable to recognize styles of their educators. So right, they’re able to address the issues between them.

Deborah Ann Davis
Right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Projects. You say what?

Deborah Ann Davis
We’ll also help with group projects. You know, you have the person’s kinesthetic, you’re going to put the project together. The person who’s visual, you’re going to go do the research. The person is auditory, you’re going to prepare the speech.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I can see where it really will help with your children because a lot of times, you know, a parents will give directions, you know, auditory directions and the kid is just still not doing it, you know? And so maybe with this kid, you need to take this and say, this is what I’m trying to show you. This is it right here. And then the kid says, oh, that’s what you mean, you know? So very, very interesting. Uh, Deborah, um, we gotta have you back. Uh, uh, it always seems the time goes by just so quickly, but I wanna put your, oh dear, I’m on another computer, people. Uh, so I want to put your information here. Um, so if, if people want to reach you, they can go to info@deborahanndavis.com. Info@deborahanndavis.com. And, and, and you know what, Deborah, we’re going to do something together because I would love that you are with the teenagers and then as that’s your niche and mine is the adults and, and that relationship. And when you talk about teenagers and, and, and really preparing teenagers to be adults and especially daughters, adult daughters, and you also have a Facebook group.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And that is w that’s facebook.com. That’s what is that?

Deborah Ann Davis
Mom Meetup.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Mom Meetup.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay. So easy to remember. Mom Meetup for confident girls. So I want all of you to join her Facebook group and get a lot of great information or go to info@deborahanndavis.com.

Deborah Ann Davis
I would also like to add that if you tell me that you came from this show, I have a free book for you called “How to Get Your Happy On.” And it’s a wonderful thing you can use with your kids.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, and we didn’t have time to go, but I know that you have a book called “How to Get Your Happy On.” So can I get my happy on even if my child is grown?

Deborah Ann Davis
Absolutely. That’s applicable to all.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I think we all want to know how to get our happy on, especially now.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yes, that’s why I wrote it. That’s where it’s free.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, wow. Well, thank you, Deborah, so much for, um, coming on, uh, the show. I’m glad we finally got, uh, together. Um, and I know you were having some issues with your mom and, and, uh, I, you know, a prayer is prayer works and of course.

Deborah Ann Davis
Yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Uh-huh. And, and we all praying for your mom. And, uh, so I, I really appreciate you coming and, uh, like I said, we are, we’re going to do some things together. So you take care and you have, uh, the rest of your day be a very blessed day.

Deborah Ann Davis
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right. Okay. Bye-bye. But this was great. A lot of great information, uh, especially for parents of tweens and teens. Wow. You know, I think she should have been around when, um, I was raising my son and, uh, even though there was no problems, but still in all, uh, it would have been great to know, uh, what his learning style was. So I guess he could say, “Mom, you already told me that you don’t need to tell me that anymore.” So, uh, this has been another great episode of Relationship Matters and, um, I appreciate all of you for coming and just say hello. I always see how many people are on, but you don’t say anything. I see the heart saying, I see the thumbs up, but sometimes just say, “Hey, how are you? I’m here. I’m enjoying the show.” I appreciate all of you coming as usual and, um, I want to see you again next week. Next week we have, uh, what is his name? His name is Michael Studly. He is a retired judge and he wrote this book all about his friends and, uh, teenage friends as a matter of fact, but he and they’re still friends today and the impact that they’ve had on his life all the way up to now that he’s retired. You know, relationships matter and they’re all kinds of relationships. So I want you to remember that. I want all of you to have a beautifully blessed rest of your day, morning, or evening. And once again, I’m going to say to you, get vaccinated. All right. Bye-bye. See you next week.