I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called “Don’t Pick up the phone”. I was absolutely dumbstruck. The story begins with an incident that happened in 2004 at a McDonald’s restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky during the dinner rush hour. As the narrator is introducing the story, we see footage from a CCTV camera inside the McDonald’s manager’s office.

The assistant manager, Donna Summers, picks up the phone and the caller identifies himself as a police officer in town, and tells her that he’s in touch with the McDonald’s manager and corporate headquarters and that there was a young lady working at the restaurant that night whom a customer is accusing of stealing money from her purse. The officer described the employee – petite with brown hair - Summers says, I know who you’re talking about. So, the caller instructed her to bring the employee into the office.

We see Summers leave the office and come back to the phone with 18-year-old Louise Ogborn standing there with her. Louise was confused and upset that someone had accused of her of stealing anything because she knew she had not. The caller then told Summers we can either come arrest her right now or if you want to help us out (we’re a little shorthanded today and it might be a while) you can just go ahead and conduct a strip search for us and see if she has the stolen money on her.

I’m Ann Coleman, and this week on Speaking of Teens; Why we should change the conversation about respect for authority.

The police officer told Summers to have Louise empty her pockets, and hand over her car keys and cell phone. Summers complied – and although Louise is confused and upset, she complies with Summers.

The next thing we see is a black garbage bag being placed over the window to the manager’s office to conceal what’s going on inside from the rest of the employees. At that point the caller instructs Summers to have Louise undress. Despite Louise’s protests that she was innocent and had not stolen anything, she complies with Summer’s instructions.

Summers, still holding the phone to her ear, has Louise take off one piece of clothing after another until she’s standing there in the office with nothing but her bra and panties, visibly upset.

Then, upon instructions from the caller, she has her strip completely naked. In the video you can see her standing there – an 18-year-old, frightened, embarrassed, who knew she’d done nothing wrong.

Then, per the caller’s instructions, Summers bags up Louise’s clothes, phone, car keys, and removes it of the office. This 18-year-old kid is now trapped naked in the McDonald’s. She’s a prisoner. On the video you can see how upset she is, wiping away tears, her hand on her chest as she cries. Summers gives her a little apron to cover up with and we see her putting an arm around Louise to comfort her, while holding the phone to her ear with the other hand.

Summers, by now is complaining to the caller that she’s very busy – it’s dinner time at the McDonald’s and this has been going on for over an hour. So, the caller asks her if there’s a man in her life that she trusts to come in and take over to just watch Louise until they can get someone over there from the police department. She says, well, yes, my fiancé, Walter. The caller tells her to bring him in. Now, Walter’s not even a McDonald’s employee.

And from here things just go totally off the rails. Walter arrives and Summers hands him the phone, leaving the office thinking he’s just going to be watching Louise until the cops arrive. But the caller continues giving instructions – now to Walter (a little league coach, a Church goer, a respectable community member). He tells Walter to have Louise drop the apron, do jumping jacks, then have her run in place, have her shake up and down to see if any money falls out. And Walter complies. This is about 2 hours into this ordeal with her naked in this office with no way to leave.

The caller tells Walter to make her stand in a chair to look at her, have her bend over his knee to spank her (off and on for about 20 minutes) – she’s terrified, crying…Then he tells Walter to have Louise kiss him to see if she’s been drinking, and finally, he instructs Walter to have Louise perform oral sex on him. Walter complies. After that’s over he suddenly wakes up and realizes he’s totally screwed up and he just bolts out of the restaurant.

When Walter leaves, Summers gets back on the phone, having no idea what just happened and the caller tells Summers, to find someone else to take Walter’s place so she goes and grabs the McDonald’s custodian, an older man, who gets on the phone with the caller and almost immediately calls BS on it and says no way – he tells Summers – this isn’t a real cop - all of a sudden Summers wakes up and realizes they’ve all been duped by this caller. That they’ve been played.

The investigator narrating the story here wisely says “just because somebody tells you to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it!”

Two years after the incident, when Louise’s lawsuit against McDonald’s came to trial, the jury awarded her $6.1 million in damages. McDonald’s had actually been put on notice that this caller had been doing this all over the country but failed to warn their employees.

Watching this documentary really made me stop and think about what we teach our kids and adolescents about being obedient and respecting authority.

Let’s explore for a minute what happened here from a social science perspective. What happened between this caller, the assistant manager, Donna Summers, and then her fiancé, Walter. Why were they so quick to believe the caller and to comply with his instructions? Have you ever heard of Yale University psychologist, Stanley Milgram? He conducted, what’s now famously known as the “Milgram experiments” at Yale back in 1961.

Milgram was interested in the Nazi war criminals’ defense claims – that they tortured and brutally killed people simply because they were following orders. They were just being obedient and respecting authority. So, Milgram wanted to see if this was a phenomenon particular to the Germans or if US citizens would behave the same way. He devised an experiment where he recruited men from the area to participate in a study they thought was about learning.

In the most famous of the experiments the participants were told they would be the “teacher” and another participant would be the “learner”. The teacher would follow instructions from the person in charge of the experiment – the “experimenter”  – just a psychology student in a lab coat using a very specific script to prod the teacher to do what they wanted him to do. Then there was a “learner”, in another room, also someone in on the experiment with a script to follow.

The teacher was given a list of questions to rattle off to the learner, who he was told was in the next room with electrodes hooked up to him – the teacher was to push a button to that would send a specific jolt of electricity to the learner when the learner got an answer wrong. The teacher was told this electric shock would go all the way up to 400 volts (enough to kill a man) and that he was to increase the shock by a certain amount each time the learner got a question wrong.

Now, the learner was, again, in on the experiment and was told when to get an answer wrong and what to say and how to act when the teacher pushed the button (that was actually not sending an electric shock to the learner). So, there were lots of wrong answers, lots of fake electric shocks, lots of wailing and moaning and the experimenter telling the teacher that he must continue with the experiment. The experimenter actually had a script to use as the teacher would protest (you know, I think that’s enough, or I think this is hurting the guy, etc.). At first protest, the experimenter would say, “please continue”, next time, he’d say, “the experiment requires that you continue”, the next time he’s say, “It is essential that you continue”...more protests, “You have no other choice; you must go on.”

Now, there’s obviously a ton of controversy about the ethics of these experiments – no one could get away with doing this today, and Milgram made a documentary about it back in the 60s claiming that around 63-65% of the teachers continued with the experiment all the way up to when they thought they were applying 300 volts of electricity to the learner.

In fact, there were actually many other conditions carried out within this set of 23 different experiments. One had the teacher and learner in the same room with each other, another had the experimenter telling the teacher to stop, another had two experimenters, giving the teacher conflicting orders. Over all when you take all of the data, a recent study puts it at about 43% of teachers who complied with orders - leaving the majority that did not comply. But 43% is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

The fellows who did this more recent study and looked at all of Milgram’s data point out that (quote) “Ironically, because they were isolated in an experimental laboratory, Milgram’s subjects lacked the advantage available to others in the world outside when they are being coerced and pressured to obey. In the face of bullying, the best strategy is to find allies, form alliances, and stick together.”

Well, yes – great idea fellas. But let’s look at what happened at McDonald’s and what happens in many cases where someone’s following orders to the detriment of themselves or someone else…they are alone, in isolation, away from other people with who they could form an alliance.

Summers, alone as the assistant manager at the restaurant, listens to someone who says he’s an authority on the other end of the phone. Walter does the same. Only the janitor spots the problem here. 43% of people? Maybe.

It’s called authority bias – it’s one of those tricky little cognitive biases. We obey people we perceive to be in authority over us – even when we feel it’s wrong and even when we know we wouldn’t get in trouble for not following along (but even more so if we think we will)

There’ve been hidden camera shows and pranks of all sorts that have shown people are completely willing to comply with authority figures and do really stupid things. One stunt from years back (before 9-11) involved a guy in a TSA uniform at an airport who was easily able to get people to lie down on a conveyer belt to go through the little thing like your purse goes through.

This is what happened at McDonald’s. We have Summers and Walter (effectively, the teachers) following some very serious orders from a voice on the phone (just like the experimenter) because they believe he is an authority figure – a cop.

 

But then we have the 18-year-old Louise (like the learner in Milgram’s experiment – but not in on the gag – she’s really being “shocked”) -she’s also following orders, to her own detriment. Why?

When Louise was on the stand during the trial with McDonald’s, she said “I grew up in a military home – highly disciplined. I was taught when my dad or my mom told me to do something, that I absolutely did it. When any other adult told me to do something, I absolutely did it – no arguments.”

Now, obviously, her parents didn’t mean for her to blindly follow orders to undress in a back office of McDonald’s, bend over and perform oral sex on a stranger. And you’d think this is an isolated case – this is crazy – this girl was brow beaten by her parents – she didn’t have any grit or gumption or whatever it takes to stand up for yourself.

But you know this isn’t isolated. It does happen. Every day, all day long. To young kids, to teenagers and even to adults. We’re taught to be obedient from a young age – it’s just part of life. We teach our kids to be obedient to us, their teachers, their coaches, any adult in power.

Listen to a script from a video on YouTube from I believe the principal of an elementary school: “Today I want to talk to you about respecting authority. Why is it important? The first thing we have to ask ourself is who is an Authority? Who is an authority figure? An authority figure is someone who inspires or demands obedience. You should obey them. You should listen to them when they tell you what to do. Now some of those people are your parents, teachers and any adult at our elementary school or any school, doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, (these are all people who are in positions of authority and they demand respect (I think she means command respect?) Why is it important to respect authority? We respect authority because people in positions of authority are in positions of trust. They care about you. They’re looking out for your wellbeing. What if we don’t respect authority? Unfortunately, a lot of bad things can happen if we don’t respect authority. One of those bad things is if you don’t listen to your parents you end up being one of those citizens that doesn’t listen to anybody, you’re not respectful to anybody, and that would include your teachers and if your not respectful to your teachers you’re not going to learn and if you don’t learn you’re probably not going to be very successful in life. So, you need to respect your parents and your teachers. We also need to respect the laws and the police officers who help make and enforce the laws – it keeps us safer. Respecting authority means a safer world for you and me. At our school we respect adults who are in a position of trust.

So, there’s so much for me to dissect there – but mainly, just because someone is in a “position of trust” (aka, a position of power and authority) like a teacher, coach, or police officer, does not mean they care about our kids or are looking out for their wellbeing. And I think it’s a dangerous message without qualifiers.

We’ve taught our kids to listen to, respect and be obedient to us and other authority figures - adults. We’ve told them that we and these other adults know what’s best for them, we’re looking out for their best interest, and we know better than they do – period – end of story – don’t talk back and don’t question and don’t use that tone young man!

I think part of the problem is that we’re confusing terminology. Respect has different meanings and obedience is something altogether different. Having respect for someone is not a behavioral trait. It’s an internal feeling. If you respect someone, you feel a high regard for them, you hold them in high esteem because of how they behave – how they treat you or other people and hold themselves out in the world.

That type of respect is not earned simply by virtue of being in a position of trust or authority – by being someone’s parent or being their teacher or being a cop, a coach, a priest, a doctor. Just because someone is in a position of authority does not mean we have to respect them. No one can be forced to respect someone.

However, treating someone with respect has come to mean something else. It is about outward behavior. Being respectful towards an authority figure simply means being civil, courteous, polite even. Behaving towards someone in a dignified manner. The way I see it, you can treat someone with respect without having an ounce of respect for them. And that’s fine.

But what many people really mean when they say to “treat someone in authority with respect” is to do what that person tells you to do – be obedient to or compliant with that person. Do what they say, when they say it, without question, (back talk, arguments)…this is what that principal meant in her video. If you aren’t obedient, you’ll turn out to be a loser in life. Respect equals obedience.

I ran across a bible study online for teen girls about authority figures and there was a suggested prayer included: “Pray with the girls to have a heart of submission to those in leadership over them and to ultimately submit their actions of honor unto the Lord so they will be blessed!”

I have a big problem with this. Okay – I don’t have a problem with it in theory, but I have a problem with it if left unqualified and unchallenged. There are adults in leadership that teens should not submit to. Messages like this make it so easy for people in religious institutions to take advantage of young people. I have no issue with religious institutions in general but teaching blind submission is just plain dangerous and should be taken completely off the table.

Over and over and over again, Adults at Christian schools, Church Camps, Megachurches are found to have been emotionally, physically or sexually abusive to kids and teens in some way. Pedophiles and sexual predators have been a protected class in the Church for a long, long time – every denomination. Time after time allegations swept under the rug so abusers can keep on abusing. Never mind those who were abused.

But it’s certainly not just adults in religious institutions that abuse their positions of power. Just a few examples of many types of abuse of power over adolescents; Scott Shaw, the former director of sports medicine at San Jose State in California, Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach, Dr. Larry Nassar, team doctor for US gymnastics team, coaches and owners in the National women’s soccer league, Junior ROTC instructors (retired officers in the military), boy scout leaders, teachers in every state in the US, and adults in every position of trust imaginable all across the globe.

Adults in power throw around this word respect to maintain order AND to abuse their position of power and “trust”. I heard Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabees on the podcast, The Good Life Project – an episode from back in 2019. She said the same thing about schools – it’s why so many kids hate going to school. So many adults in one place using this term “respect” to force compliance, punish, and treat the kids with disrespect and humiliate them (and I’m not saying all schools or all adults at all schools - but this goes on regularly). Coaches screaming in a player’s face, teachers giving humiliating nicknames to students, administrators who blatantly have it out for a particular kid.

Again, respect is not about being obedient or subservient. As a matter of fact, I can have respect for someone and still question their actions, their behavior, their orders. Questioning is not being “disrespectful”. You can question, even argue with someone politely and with dignity. And on the other hand, I can feel pressured to comply with or obey someone for whom I have no respect whatsoever or someone who even frightens me.

Both kids and adults need to get this message right. Get the terminology right. We cannot give our kids these confusing messages about respect and obedience and expect to keep them safe from those in power who wish to exploit it. We have to empower kids and teens to speak up, speak their truth, and be brave.

I read an essay preparing for this episode – it was written by a woman recalling a conversation with her grandfather that literally may have saved her life. Her grandpa had been the sheriff of a small down back in the 40s and had known some bad cops. He told her very seriously,

“Honey, I want you to understand something, if you ever get pulled over by a police officer and he asks you to do something that doesn’t sound right to you, he isn’t a real officer, Don’t do what he says.” He went on to add, “Once you can drive if you get pulled over and the officer asks you to get out of the car, don’t do it.” He even instructed her to only roll her window down about 5 inches for any officer who walked up to her car.

Years later, when she was in college, she was pulled over by a highway patrolman, on a secluded offramp near a bridge. He got out of his car and came up to her window – she rolled it down about 5 inches. He told her to turn off the engine and she complied. As she’s asking him what she did wrong, he starts blasting her with all sorts of personal questions, still not telling her she did anything wrong.

Then he told her to step out of the car. She sat and thought about it, terrified. She heard her grandpa telling her – Don’t do it. The officer put one hand on the top of her window trying to push it down and the other on the car door, rattling it and trying to get the door open.

She blurted out, “My grandfather was Sheriff and he told me a real officer would never ask me to get out of the car if I got pulled over.”

He backed off immediately, gave her a warning, told her to be safe, that there were a lot of bad people out there and let he go.

When she told people what happened, everyone thought she was exaggerating and imagining things. 20 years later, she was watching a true crime documentary, City Confidential – I’ve seen it. It was about a young women in California that had been murdered by the same bridge where she’d been stopped by the officer, then they showed the cop’s picture – it was the same officer who stopped her. He’s been in prison now for years.

How many teenagers would have refused to roll down their window, refused to have gotten out of the car?

Why do kids and teens stay quiet when adults mistreat and even abuse them? Because we tell them to respect their elders, to obey, to comply, not to make trouble. They’re afraid of getting in trouble, of making things worse, of no one believing them, of their parents being embarrassed or angry. So, they go along until years later when they finally find the courage to come forward.

I think it’s long past time that we stop teaching kids to blindly respect authority, to be obedient and compliant. They need a voice now rather than later. They need to be able to say how they feel, make their feelings known, without fear that they won’t be believed, or they’ll get in trouble. They have a basic human right to be heard on everything – not just what we choose. It’s not fair to take this away from them. It’s not fair to cripple them in this way, to make them vulnerable to power-hungry, abusive, manipulative adults, who have no right to their respect or obedience.

How do we teach them this? By teaching them to actively question us – our authority. What better training ground than at home? Remember that one of the main ways our kids feel secure attachment to us and feel autonomous is by being able to state their opinions freely, without fear of reprisal or us holding it against them, what they say hurting our feelings or damaging the relationship. This is called relatedness and it’s super important in maintaining a strong connection with teens. We teach them how to disagree respectfully, state their case, make their argument, negotiate, speak up and not to ever be afraid that we’ll shut them down. Everyone has a right to their opinion – even kids. And just because they disagree with us, doesn’t mean they’re wrong because we’re not always right.

My first-grade teacher told my mother, in a very uncomplimentary way, “Ann has an opinion about everything.” To which my mother replied, “Well, I certainly hope so.” We can’t expect kids to not have opinions, to not be able to speak up to other authority figures if we don’t let them speak up to us. I’m talking about intelligent discourse. We can teach that. We can teach them to be respectful by being respectful to them. We earn their respect by giving them the opportunity to speak their mind freely, without fear of reprisal or being shut down or mocked. They respect us by speaking to us with deference, courtesy – not by keeping their mouths shut out of fear or obedience.

Although my son and I had some doosie arguments and yelling matches back when he and I both were struggling, we’ve also had many, many lively but civil debates both before and after that time in our lives. We’re both natural arguers. We’ve negotiated lots of issues, agreed to disagree on many and he’s never felt stifled or unable to speak his mind freely (if he did, I’d hate to see him when he didn’t!)

And I’ve never had to worry about some adult pulling something over on him – I know damn well he would have spoken up – he has spoken up. But he’s also always been extremely pleasant and courteous to all adults in charge – even under not so pleasant circumstances (he was always complimented on that). So, allowing him to argue his point, give his opinion, say what’s on his mind freely at home with us, did not mean he was out “being an asshole to adults right and left”.

Adults in positions of power, authority, trust, are just people. Our kids are people too – they’re just younger people. They need to understand this – that they have as much right to speak their mind as someone 30 years older. They can be taught to do it in the right way. We have to teach them to trust themselves, we have to allow them to use their voice with us so they will with others if it becomes necessary - to be civil and decent and behave in a dignified manner, without compliance.

I just read an article written by a preschool teacher about how he teaches the 2-year-olds in his class to question his authority. He says on the first day of school he greets the kids by holding up a plastic pig and saying, “the pig says, ‘Mooo.’” Of course, most of them yell out – no, the cow says mooo or the pig says oink. He does this a lot in his class – he’ll sing the alphabet song wrong or say things he knows they will understand are completely incorrect. He does this to teach them to call him out when he says something they know doesn’t match up with their own truth.

As the kids get more used to this, he ups the ante by arguing with them when they push back, “I’ve seen a pig mooo” or “I’m the grown up and you’re the kid and I’m telling you, pigs say mooo.” His students give it right back to him – refusing to budge from what they know to be true.

He says, “I want them to know that not only is it their right, but their responsibility to say something when what they hear doesn’t match what they already know. I want the children I teach to grow up to be citizens who are not only able to identify BS when they detect it, but to speak up about it.”

I think this is brilliant and a great way to think about discourse with our older kids. To challenge them now and then on what they think they know – to help them test their ability to stand their ground.

Ira Challeff is an author and international speaker on the application of something called intelligent disobedience. The concept of intelligent disobedience comes from the world of guide dog training. See, guide dogs are trained first in how to be obedient, how to successfully obey commands. And during their second phase of training, they’re taught how to intelligently disobey a command.

They must be trained to recognize when their owner has commanded them to do something that is inappropriate, unadvisable, or downright dangerous and they have to figure out a way to achieve the owner’s goal in a safer way. Let’s say a blind person tells the dog to guide them across the street because they hear no cars coming, but in fact, a quiet little electric car is whizzing down the street; the dog will refuse to move.

Having worked in the corporate leadership world, Chaleff recognized that far too often, when people in positions of power go unchallenged, things can get out of hand.

And it’s not just in corporations where unchallenged authority can lead to negative outcomes. Think of the scandals, frauds and crimes against humanity that might have been avoided had someone – a respectful, obedient follower – had the skills, the courage, to challenge someone in power.

So, Chaleff defines intelligent disobedience as not following instructions when, intentionally or unintentionally, the results are likely to be harmful. Pretty simple, right?

Bringing it back to our teens, let’s say a swim coach tells the team to stay in the pool for practice after everyone’s heard thunder and seen the lightening. You want your kid to feel absolutely confident in getting out of that pool knowing a) it’s the right thing to do to keep themselves safe and b) that you will back them up for doing so – they will have no fear of getting in trouble from you for doing the right thing (and that you’ll take care of that coach).

We don’t do it on purpose but as parents, we’ve unintentionally set our kids up to be taken advantage of by authority figures. From the time they’re little we teach them that what we say, goes. I said, No, don’t ask again. What did I say? Don’t talk back to me. Don’t use that tone. I don’t want to hear that again.

They’re given heaping doses of the same medicine at school, religious institutions, team sports. Do as you are instructed, exactly as you are instructed, do not ask questions, do not talk back, do not “disrespect”. This line of teaching – obey us, obey your teachers, obey your coaches, your priests, your camp counselor, the police…it’s actually quite dangerous…without more teaching. Teaching kids discernment – giving them permission to use their BS detector – empowering them to use their voice – making sure they know we’ll be there to back them up when they do – that could save them.

We can teach our kids that in most cases, those in authority do have their best interests at heart (or at least they have the best interest of the whole at heart – the school or the organization). And that for the most part, authority figures, their instructions, procedures, should be followed because it makes sense – it keeps things flowing, it gets things done properly and on time, it keeps us organized and even safe.

But, as Chaleff says, we need to teach our kids that questioning and even disobeying authority is perfectly acceptable under certain circumstances. Teach them they should question authority when they don’t understand something – when they need clarification or even when they think they may have a better way of doing something. They can question courteously – in a dignified manner.

And then obviously, he says we teach them to disobey if obeying would (or could) hurt them or someone else or violate their personal rights. I think we can be even less specific because maybe they don’t know if it would “hurt” them or maybe “personal rights” is beyond them at the moment. But what you can say is, if you feel it’s wrong, if it doesn’t feel right, if your radar goes up, if you’re really doubtful, err on the side of caution. Use your own judgment of what’s right and wrong to decide.

But here’s the other part of it; if we’re going to tell our kids to use their voice – to speak up, defend themselves, we’ve got to be there to back them up, to believe what they tell us. And of course, I’m not just talking about sexual abuse, but I’ll use it as an example here.

When Larry Nassar was victimizing hundreds of young female gymnasts, several of those girls told their parents, who promptly dismissed their claims because they refused to believe that such a wonderful man could do something like that – their daughter was surely mistaken. Obviously, they feel enormous guilt and pain over this now.

I’ll let you in on a secret – people who harm our kids don’t go around advertising it on their T-shirt. As a matter of fact, they are super good at abusing kids because they have the wool so tightly pulled over the parents’ eyes. And guess what, people who want to abuse children work or volunteer with children, so they can be near them, so they can look like the good guys, so they can pull the wool over our eyes and abuse our kids right in front of our face.

The fact that someone looks like a fine upstanding citizen that helps kids, means absolutely less than nothing in reality. It doesn’t mean everyone who works with kids means to abuse them, obviously. But those who want to abuse them are certainly going to work with or near them. They’re right there in plain sight and being so good in front of you that you’ll never want to believe your kid. And your kid knows it. Which is another reason kids don’t speak up. The priest who comes to dinner at the family home and the parents fawn all over him – that kid knows what he’s up against in trying to tell the parents. The soccer coach who makes remarks about whether a female player “shaves down there” – the parents love him – talk about him all the time, other players and faculty love him. Who’s going to believe your daughter?

So, kids are not only taught to obey, to do what they’re told - but if they try to speak up and speak the truth, often they’re not even believed – or at least they’re afraid they won’t be believed. There’s also the fear of getting in trouble themselves, of reprisal – from the adult, from parents, from other kids. They might be afraid of getting kicked off a sports team, losing a scholarship, not going to a competition. They may be confused and think they caused whatever has happened – that they’re responsible. They feel guilt or shame over it and don’t want to think about it.

It’s time to change the way we teach our kids about respect and obedience. We must show our kids through our words and actions that we welcome all of their opinions, we value all of their ideas, we want them to be comfortable disagreeing with us, debating us in a dignified and polite manner.

And we must make them understand that just because an adult tells them to do something, does not mean they have to do it. We must teach them to trust themselves, to speak up, to respectfully refuse compliance.

And finally, we have to ensure that our kids know that we will always listen to them and believe them and will support them if they ever need to speak up against an adult.

And if you disagree with me – I’d love to hear from you – you can reach me at acoleman@neurogility.com

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Thank you for spending this time with me.

Have a fabulous week and I’ll talk to you again next week!