Ann: There was nothing that caused more conflict in our home for the first 10 years my son was in school – nothing. Of course, he has ADHD and other learning issues, so I guess that’s just part of the package. The stress and anxiety over daily homework was unbearable for him and for me. So many waisted afternoons with us both in an anxious knot – many days I just told him not to do it. It just wasn’t worth it.

But it’s not just the kids with learning differences that stress over homework. Many of our teens hate homework for a multitude of reasons – when you combine it with projects and tests to study for, it piles up and can be absolutely overwhelming – and for many it puts their mental health is at risk.

I’m Ann Coleman, and this week on Speaking of Teens, The Homework Wars. Is it all necessary? If so, how much is too much? And how can we help change things for our kids?

Christine Kaplan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Nevada who’s spent most of her career as a therapist. But decided to take a break to stay at home with her youngest. And as her daughter got older, she decided to volunteer in the school system and began teaching mindfulness to junior high and high school kids.

Hi Christine, Thanks so much for being here and talking to me about homework issues today. Being there with the kids, and seeing what they dealt with up close, you said to me earlier that you saw the same things popping up over and over.

Christine: And the themes that kept coming up for these kids were stress, procrastination, and feeling at the end of the year, like they could have done a lot better. And so I looked at the struggles these kids were having, some struggles my own kids had, my older kids when they were in high school. And I really wanted to provide some services and a program so that kids would not feel so frustrated.

Um, as kids are growing up in the school system, they get more and more work and we teach them what to study, but we don't teach them how to study. And some kids pick it up very easily. Some kids have parents at home that help out, but some kids, especially those with A D H D, really struggle with those executive functions.

And those are the things that are time management prioritization, how to organize your time and your space. So that kind of became my purpose is to help these teenagers figure out how to navigate school. Um, and not just the time management part, but also the emotional components that go along with it.

The stress, the anxiety, the depression, frustration. And pulling that together as well as supporting the parents so that every child as much as possible has the best chance of success.

So in the high school, what is it, what's the primary stressor that you see with your kids? I know you mostly work with kids with, ADHD, but um, I'm sure you can address this across the board. Since you've worked with other kids, what are the stressors that you see that they have related to school?

Christine: I would say one of the major stresses that kids are dealing with is the amount of homework. And it is an issue that is so multi-layered and multifaceted. Um, we have homework for various reasons. One, to review one so that kids can get some things done at home and the teacher doesn't have to cover all the material in class.

As kids get older, that amount of homework grows and grows and grows. And so for the child at home, the high schooler who now is getting into harder classes, they are managing school all day, then they may have some kind of activity, whether it's theater, debate, sports, babysitting, work, and then they still have homework.

And that might be three hours, it could be four hours. It all depends on the level of classes and also the teachers. Um, and I think that it's a problem with our educational system because the teachers are under such pressure to cover all of this material within a year. And depending on the level of class, especially AP classes, those teachers are under so much pressure, and I hear from kids all the time. An AP class will turn a nice, helpful teacher into a very stressed, cruel teacher, and none of them, no teacher goes into teaching to be cruel to kids. And they're not meaning to, but they are under so much pressure to cover a certain amount of material.

The only way they feel they can get it all done is to give kids more work at home. And that puts so much pressure on families because most families have two working parents and not everybody works nine to five. So you may have one parent at home, you have single fam, single parent families. And so what is the support like at home for a variety of kids?

We don't have a lot. Basic nuclear mom, dad, kids home every night, cooking dinner, the perfect homework situation is so rare, so right? Kids can't get the work done for either their time management or they just have too much. Then they go to school the next day and you know, have consequences with their teacher.

They have grades, then their parents get upset. They come home that night. The parents are upset with them for not getting their homework done, and it starts this family dynamic that is so stressful. . Yes. And it kind of erodes relationships.

Ann: Some surveys have shown that at least two-thirds of students in upper middle-class suburban areas say homework causes the most stress in their lives – even to the point of causing physical symptoms (and I doubt it’s any different in other neighborhoods) – as a matter of fact, it has to be much harder for kids who have jobs in the afternoon or are taking care of siblings, helping them with their homework. I’m sure some kids simply can’t do it.

And the research cites homework as a major source of stress and conflict between parents and kids and a cause of lower emotional wellbeing for both. But do I really need to tell you this? If you’re like most parents, homework hangs over your head like a big black cloud. I’d be willing to bet one of the first questions you have for your kids after they get home from school is “do you have homework?” or “how much homework do you have?”

I know, for me – I couldn’t rest until my son’s homework was done. It drove me crazy.

Ann: How many hours do you see, like average, and I know kids with ADHD, it does take them longer to do the homework, but on average, what are you seeing?

Christine: I would have to say that it really depends, um, on the student, the types of classes that they're taking and what their goals are. So if we look at kids who are wanting to go on with school, like junior college or college, I would say they're taking more honors classes, some AP classes, and those kids can have, which, sorry, does include a lot of A D H D kids and a lot of high anxiety kids.

Um, they're probably seeing at least three hours of homework and another four to five on the weekends just so they can catch up. And I think that, um, especially for AP classes, the amount of homework is excessive.

Ann: Okay. That's stunning to me. Four or five hours of homework on the weekends in addition to throughout the week.

Christine: Yes. And especially for ADHD kids, because what do they do? They put things off. And so they may just be staying afloat during the week and now it's catch up time, and a lot of times they're making up assignments, so they're getting less credit for the assignments that other kids may have gotten done earlier in the week.

Yeah. So, they're working a lot harder on the weekends, and they'll end up getting less credit for those same assignments.

Ann: In 2022 an article published by Stanford said that teens average about 3.1 hours of homework each night. Other studies have found the same. And, as a matter of fact, it appears the amount of homework now, is easily double what it was in the 90s.

Do you know we didn’t have the concept of homework in America under Horace Mann brought the idea from Europe to the states back in the 1800s.

And by 1900 an article called A National Crime at the Feet of American Parents was published in Ladies Home Journal. The article included statements from doctors and parents about how homework was detrimental to kid’s health. California even banned it at for kids under 15.

Since that year, homework has been a controversial issue in America. Interestingly, it appears our country’s opinion about the value of homework waxes and wains depending on the prevailing social perspective and national economy.

In 1930, just after the first child labor laws were passed in the US, the American Child Health Association declared homework as a type of child labor and wanted it gone – but what was really going on then was that parents were upset kids had so much homework that they couldn’t help on the farm and in the house – just another type of child labor.

But then after Sputnik was launched in 1957 the Cold War between the US and Russia intensified, and the competition ended up spilling over on our kids – this may have been the birth of the word “rigorous” as applied to education. And how did they guarantee rigor? By giving excessive homework.

Then again in 1986 The US Department of Education declared that homework was an effective strategy to boost the quality of education. This came just three years after the landmark report issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, titled, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.

This report was a huge deal – it made giant waves criticizing the US education system.

This is one of its best-known passages, "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and as a people." A wee bit dramatic but it sure got attention?!

It was all over the TV news, radio…President Reagan and the authors of the report traveled the country having public hearings.

And one of the issues this report cited was the fact that the amount of homework for high school seniors had decreased to less than an hour a night. Imagine the horror.

The report said that although grades had been on the rise, “achievement” had declined. How did they define achievement? By standardized test scores, of course.

So, one of the suggestions was – give them more homework for God’s sake!

The problem is – and I won’t go into all the details here – but the authors of the report essentially skewed the facts the way they wanted the American public to see it – they wanted the attention back on the education system and to do that – to get it away from the economy issues of the day - they had to be theatrical and, as one of the authors calls it, “apocalyptic”

Because, in reality, more students than ever were graduating from high school and attending college and top US students led the world in academic achievement. There was no apocalypse.

But the fear that our kids are somehow falling behind the world at large, has been perpetuated over the years by reformers, politicians, business leaders and others – we’re never going to be good enough – we are destined to be a country that pushes our kids to the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Ann: Do you ever talk to the, do you ever have any contact with the teachers themselves or administrators? Do you ever, have you ever talked to any of them about any of this stuff?

Christine: I was raised in a family of educators, . Oh, okay. We've had this conversation in my household from the time I was, you know, five years old. Oh, wow. And their education has changed so much. And I have lots of friends who are teachers and administrators. I hear their pressures as well. And they have kids with a variety of 5 0 4 s IEPs.

They've got kids who aren't sleeping well, who've got family problems, who have high anxiety, who have depression, and they're very concerned. They don't want to put all this pressure on kids At the same time, they need to keep their jobs. And so they have to make sure that the kids get this amount of information and cover all of the topics, meet the standards so that they can keep working to provide for their kids.

It, it's not, they don't have the autonomy to say, I'm going to teach US history in a way that is creative and fulfilling where most of the work can get done in class. And then some basic homework just to review or study for a test on the week, you know, on the weeknights. Um, they don't have that type of autonomy.

Ann: what are these requirements that, that teachers are, are in danger of losing their jobs if they don't fulfill? ,

Christine: it depends on the county and the state. Um, teachers are required to put together very detailed, not just lesson plans. Like, you know, when we were younger where the teacher had the lesson plan book and it was like, oh, I'm gonna teach you US history this way.

Um, teachers have to have these very detailed reports on different content areas, how they're going to adapt the material to different types of students, how they're going to cover it, in what amount of time, what measurements they're going to use. And so then they have to show mastery of their students, uh, you know, in these certain concepts. So, you know, in a way they're in the same position the kids are.

Ann: In 2002, President George W. Bush reauthorized The Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It was renamed No Child Left Behind, and it was meant to overhaul the educational requirements for schools – bringing in all these testing reforms and penalties for schools that didn’t meet their yearly progress goals. And what followed became known by many as “teaching to the test”.

Then in 2015, what people thought would be an answer to the problem, the Every Student Succeeds Act was signed into law by President Obama. It eliminated the federal penalties for schools that didn’t measure up on standardized tests but really failed to deliver a plan that was any better. Testing is still a thing – the states just have more discretion about when and how to deliver the tests.

And unfortunately, most teachers still find themselves in unenviable position of making absolutely sure they feed all the right information into their students. It does appear however, that many states have made changes in their standardized testing regulations and even more are considering reform. So, perhaps it won’t always be this way.

But most teens in this country are still sitting in school trying to pay attention for 7 hours with 20 minutes for lunch and 5 minutes to make it from class to class (and in some cases not even allowed to go to the restroom for fear of being penalized for it). Then they come home just to have an average of 3 hours more work to do, extra curriculars, chores, and forget hanging out with friends. The amount of work they have to do combined with all of their other obligations and social and relational issues, is just too much. Our teens are simply overwhelmed and it’s showing up as anxiety, depression and even physical ailments.

And if you ask the students whether all this homework helps them learn and whether teachers should continue to give out, you’ll likely get a mixed bag of answers. One student-run survey at Cherry Hill West High School in New Jersey found that almost 23% of students somewhat or strongly agreed that homework helps them learn. Of the students who took the survey, almost 64% of thing think they should keep getting homework sometimes but 27% said they shouldn’t get any.

One student said, “I think homework is beneficial for students but the amount of homework teachers give us each day is very overwhelming and puts a lot of stress on kids. I always have my work done but all of the homework I have really changes my emotions and it effects me.”

Another said, “you are at school for most of your day waking up before the sun and still after all of that they send you home each day with work you need to do before the next day. Does that really make sense?”

Probably not.

Ann: A lot of people these days are saying the amount of homework teens and tweens have these days is excessive? They say we need to lighten up, especially in the wake of COVID. What do you think?

Christine: I agree a hundred percent And what happens is, You know, those teachers are trying to teach these concepts to these brains in their class. These brains are so stressed and filled with all kinds of different feelings and emotions.

Christine: They're not understanding that material. And especially these kids having gone through the pandemic, they're all a little bit behind developmentally. And so, and they're also very behind socially because they lacked that sense of community that they normally have. So now what we know contributes to anxiety is a lack of purpose, a lack of community, a lack of feeling connected.

Christine: And those are all very big building blocks that we need to be able to give our teenagers. And so that's where. , if they're doing three hours of homework, they can't be out visiting grandma or helping the neighbor or just being with their friends. Right. Which contributes to the depression and anxiety.

Ann: Yeah, exactly. You know, I, um, I've always said, you know, what good is it to try to learn these things or to learn any of this stuff if you're so stressed out, depressed and anxious that you can't function as a human being? Because that's where my son was. He was not able to function. He was so stressed out.

Ann: Let’s look at the prevailing research on homework; it does appear that there’s a positive correlation between homework and grades achieved and standardized test performance. But these outcomes vary by grade. There’s a stronger correlation at the high school level than in middle school – and hardly any benefit shown at the elementary school level.

Meaning…homework is pointless for elementary school kids, a little less pointless for middle school kids and the most important for high school kids, IF you’re solely focused on grades and standardized test scores and less concerned about their mental health and overall happiness and being a well-rounded human.

But the National Parent-Teachers’ Association and the National Education Association also maintains this ridiculous standard for homework – basically, around 10 minutes for each grade level.

Back in 1996 they issued a guide saying in grades K-2 homework is most effective when it does not exceed 10-20 minutes each day for grades 3-6 they say they can handle a 30-60 minutes and in junior and senior high (grades 7-12) the amount of homework will vary by subject. But if you go by the 10-minute rule (and a lot of people carry this on out through 12th grade)– seniors should have no more than about 2 hours a night, juniors, 50 minutes and on down the line.

But many school districts have policies in place that give teachers cart blanch to give 30 minutes of homework a night in high school and more for honors or AP classes. If a kid is taking 5 classes, that’s 2.5 hours in regular classes not including honor or AP…and that’s IF the teachers only give 30 minutes each.

Some studies have said that homework for 7th – 9th grade appears to reach the point of diminishing returns at about an hour and a half, and it keeps going up for each grade up to about 2.5 hours for the upper grades after which it has no purpose. 2.5 hours a night!

The last time I could find a world ranking for education systems that mentioned homework was from 2014. The number one ranked system in the world – not the US, not England or Australia. South Korea. And South Korean students receive on average roughly 2.9 hours of homework a week. Finland, ranked number 5 at the time, gives around 2.8 hours of homework a week on average. The US ranked 17th with our whopping average of around 6.1 hours of homework a week; Australia, #15 with 6 hours average, the UK #6 with 4.9 hours average.

It doesn’t take a genius to see any correlations here? Fewer hours of homework seems to correlate to a higher quality of education system.

Ann: So, I understand teachers must teach certain concepts and they need to meet certain standards. But is nobody using a bit of common sense? Why can’t they see what’s happening here with our kids and lighten up just a bit?

Christine: I don't have an answer to that .

Ann: And I wonder if it's because maybe as parents we are not raising enough hell about it. Maybe as parents we need to step in front of the school boards or in front of the, at least in front of the principals and say, something's gotta give. You know, our kids are falling apart in front of our eyes and something's gotta give.

Ann: I mean, do you think that would help ?

Christine: Well, it's interesting in our community, um, there were a group of parents earlier this year who said, let's create an annual, but this'll be the first one, youth Mental Health Summit. And so it was more focused on teenagers, but also some of the younger kids as well. And they found a building that would hold about 25 people.

Christine: They had to keep moving it. and they ended up selling out. Wow. The tickets were free, but you had to get a ticket at 250 people. Oh. And these were, um, mental health administrators. These were school personnel, these were parents. And it was the most amazing experience to have all of these people in one room who care so much to try to come up with some ideas and solutions because when we have such a mental health crisis, that is an indicator.

Christine: It's a symptom of a big system that's broken. Right. It sure is. It's going to take that kind of community coming together. Exactly, because the schools can't do it alone. The therapists can't do it alone. Law enforcement can't do it alone. Probation, social services. It's that coming together where everybody can collaborate, problem solve, and really innovate to come up with solutions depending on the community.

Christine: But also, it would be great if we could find some models that work and then have other communities adopt those models.

Ann: Well, and there are those of us that have really big mouths and really big voices that, you know, tend to make more trouble than other people. And I think, you know, if you're a troublemaker and you're listening , it's time to make some trouble or time to at least step up and say something. And I don't think, I mean, my opinion is it's probably not to the teachers that we need to be talking. I don't know. It seems like it needs to be more of a top down solution because of the requirements that the teachers are under, because they, like you said, I mean, they're in fear of losing their jobs. They have to do the teaching, and if they don't, they'll get fired.

So it seems to me that it needs to come from the top down. I don't know if that's a Districtwide thing or a region, a state, maybe statewide. But you know, if you've got kids that are right now in fifth grade, you've got many more years of this to go and, it does not get any easier. It only gets harder.

And, you know, stepping up and trying to make something happen, don't wait and just say, oh, well somebody else will handle it. Now if you've got a kid with ADHD and you're like me, you probably have your hands full just trying to make sure that they get their homework done.

And you know, that, that's something that I was so guilty of is the first thing when my son walked in the door was, let's get that homework done because I dreaded it so much and I wanted to get it out of the way. Do you find that that's, um, a good idea, a bad idea?

It depends on the kid, you know, when they should do their homework, because I know as a mom, you know, we're worried about when it's gonna get done. Have you done it? Have you done it yet? Have you done? And the kid usually wants to wait until the last minute. How would you approach that with, with kids?

Christine: I think that, The hard thing that we run into as parents, especially moms, is we do pick up our kids after school or we come home from work and the first thing we want to know is about the homework.

And kids start putting their value and their worth tied into how they are performing at school. And so I think the first approach is to start working as a team with your child and asking them, getting curious when does it work best for you? When it's kind of like when they're toddlers, you know, do you wanna brush your teeth first or put your jammies on first? Like ultimately both things need to get done, but we give them some choice and some opportunity. There are some kids with A D H D who like coming home and getting their homework done because they're working with their medication. and that's driving their brain. Then they want some time off.

Other kids really need a break and then they'll do their homework. Um, that conversation though does need to happen with ADHD kids especially, because that's the hard thing is sitting down to do the homework and they do need that external accountability

Ann: Just getting started.

Christine: Yeah. If the agreement is homework is after dinner from seven to nine, how are we going to make sure that happens?

Ann: That was just always the argument every day at my house. Now with kids that don't have ADHD, um, who still have so much homework to do. You know, one of the big things that, that I've talked about in on Instagram and in the podcast is letting kids make mistakes. You know, let them fail every once in a while, as long as it's not dangerous, unhealthy, that kind of thing, illegal, unethical, um, or close doors that may be better left open for the future.

So, I did not know that when my son was in high school, so I was worried about every single day of homework and every little thing that he did. How, as a mom, how can we balance that and go, okay, maybe I should let them not turn in their homework every now and then and get the zeros.

I'm assuming a lot of people still give zeros for not turning in homework. How, how do you balance that instead of staying on top of them? Do we back off and where, where is the balance?

Christine: I think that is the golden question to parenting. You know, where is the balance between letting them fail, letting them make mistakes, and how far do you go?

That is going to be different for every parent. Different parents have different parenting styles. Different kids are so different with or without ADHD, and school systems are also different. So if you have a school that does give zeros, a couple missing assignments at the beginning of the term can really set off the whole semester.

And so the approach I like to offer up is to start out more supervised and then let the grades, let the performance dictate how much, you know, hovering or accountability the parent needs to do. And with kids that are self-sufficient. They will start getting their homework done, but they need help setting those patterns at first.

Christine: Yeah. Then they can kind of become more independent and independence is usually earned. So even for ADHD kids, they don't like to be hovered upon and that they need that. Yeah. So it's something that they can earn over time with certain grades, so many missing assignments or lack thereof.

Ann: Right. Is it better to let them fail in this way, like not turning homework maybe in the lower grades, like in middle school, and see the consequences of not turning in homework when it's really not adding up, on their GPA or anything like that. I always wondered about that. Maybe I should just let him not turn in the homework now and see how bad it is, but I worried that he wouldn't care, so I never did that.

Does that make any sense at all?

Christine: It really does. And when, if we can teach those lessons early on in elementary school and help children develop those independent skills earlier, how do you wanna set your schedule? Let's see how you can follow that. And what works for you.

If we start those conversations in second, third, fourth grade, we're really going to get an indication of where our children are. Some kids will take that and they'll be fine until maybe they hit a road bump sophomore, junior year. Other kids that can't do that at all, that's a pretty good indication that more intervention is going to be needed.

And so it's not a judgment on the child, but it's more diagnostic about the support system and support services that are going to be needed later.

Ann: Should there, would it help and should there be more standardization, like even just within a school or within a grade about who gives homework and how much and, and how much is given throughout the week?

Christine: Absolutely. I find that more. Um, and that is where the inequity is because the smaller private schools have a lot more leeway to have those conversations.

Christine: And so they'll say, you know, like, math tests can only be on Monday and history tests can only be on Tuesday, so that they are coordinating among each other so the kids don't have four tests to study for on a Wednesday night with other schools in school districts. Um, I don't know that there is that collaboration and that would be wonderful.

Christine: So yeah, every night there's a different subject for testing or a larger amount of homework. The other nights it's another class's turn. Yeah. So that kids can learn to manage their time and teachers know when they can give more homework. and when they need to cut back.

Ann: Well, and maybe that's where it needs to start. I mean, it sounds like that might be a good starting point for a school is to sit down and coordinate, you know, how much homework's gonna be given, what grades, what or what classes, and do the schedule. And you're right, private schools do seem to do that a little bit more. The school my son attended, they did the, at least the um, testing, no one was allowed to give, you know, I think tests on the same day or something like that.

But so in public schools it's just whatever the teacher decides, right? For the most part, I guess. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. So maybe that's where it should start, at least. Because if you don't have teachers giving quizzes on the same day, or, you know, you don't have two different teachers deciding there's gonna be a project due in the next five days.

Ann: I mean, that would certainly help. And it seems to me that that might be easier to get buy-in, um, than, you know, less homework or no homework. I mean, what do you think?

Christine: I think that would be, if there were conversations like that within schools, they could coordinate and talking about the busy work of homework.

So if you, if you're having subject matter or discipline matter, um, conversations, then you can kind of standardize, okay, all of us math teachers are only going to give this kind of math homework. And do we all agree to only do like every other problem? Yeah. Even through odds or whatever it is, and nobody will exceed more than 20 problems per night.

Then if you could have a meeting among all disciplines to come up with Yes. Like math tests. are only Monday nights. Yeah. Yeah. Tuesdays are another topic, and projects are given at least seven days so that the kids who do need to catch up on the weekend can.

Ann: Yes. That's so that's a great idea and I just don't understand why, because it's so common sense, I mean, it just makes sense why we don't do that. So, we need to be having these conversations with the schools, with the school districts, with the administrators, and I would think that a PTA group could, you know, I don't know if you have to petition the parents, get signatures, go in and talk to someone.

I mean, that's what PTAs are for. I think partly at least. So, you know, let's start the conversation. Let's start having these meetings and getting together with other people in the community and actually trying to make a move to help our kids. I think it's the, the very, you know, it seems to me low hanging fruit for, you know, helping our kids get through the anxiety, the depression, the stress that they're going through, homework and schoolwork, studying is very low hanging fruit. It, it's a good place to start at least. Christine, do they still have study halls at school? Do we still have like an hour during the day or 30 or 40 minutes to do homework or is that gone?

Christine: You know, that depends on the schools, how many periods they have. And then it's very student dependent. Um, I have found with the kids I work with and my own children, we learned pretty early on. That's key because they can, kids are at school, they're going to focus, they'll still get distracted with their phones, but there are a lot less distractions. And those study hall classes, when w well run, kids can get a lot of work done. Those are fantastic.

Ann: What are you going to do to bring about change in your kid’s school district? I’ll have some resources for you in the show notes but let me make a few suggestions; first, find other moms who feel the same way about the homework issue. Share the podcast and see who you can get to rally with you. Form a committee – you don’t have to be in the parent association – form your own association if you need to. Find out what the current homework policy is for the district. Get on their website, make phone calls. Determine if the current policy is agreeable and if it’s being followed. If it’s not agreeable, decide how it should be changed. Send out a survey to other parents to get input or answer questions.

Then decide if you want a zero-homework policy for elementary school and a certain time limit for middle and high school. Or do you want a zero-homework policy K-12? Do you want teachers to coordinate homework so there’s never more than a certain amount each night? Do you want them to coordinate tests and projects? Do you want a moratorium on weekend and holiday homework? Look at every angle and decide what’s best for the kids and put pen to paper and then start trying to make it happen.

If you can find a mom who’s an attorney, a lobbyist, a PR person, a business leader, a community activist, and see if they’ll get behind your cause. Ask them to use their voice, their platform, their ability to get in front of people, to make them listen. If nothing else, get them to help you make a plan for doing that. Change like this may not happen if you don’t take on the cause. Be a change maker.

I have to get better at ending the conversation with a guest! My wrap up is sorely lacking! Christine and I kept talking…we talked for 2 hours! And there was simply no perfect ending…until I finally had to stop to go pee! So – I’m ending here and I’ve posted the rest of our very candid conversation on the website – on the show notes page at neurogility.com/44 (you’ll see a link to it where you’re listening now - if you’re listening on the website you’ll see it right there.)

I hope you got something out of this episode – if you did, consider giving the show a rating on Apple or Spotify – but most importantly, share it with someone that might need to hear it.

You’re doing a great job mama – keep it up. Until next time, have a great week!