Gentle Parenting and Equity in Education with The Indomitable Black Man

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In this enlightening episode of Conscious Pathways, host Brittney Carey delves into the intersection of social justice and education, focusing on the profound impact of gentle parenting rooted in culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. Joining her is Gabriel Hannans, also known as the Indomitable Black Man, a passionate educator and the author of This is Parenting: Demystifying Parenthood.

Together, Brittney and Gabriel unpack the principles of gentle parenting and its transformative potential within early childhood education. They explore how gentle parenting fosters emotional intelligence, social resilience, and equitable learning environments for children. Gabriel shares invaluable insights from his experiences as a teacher and a devoted advocate for nurturing parenting practices.

🔗 Connect with Gabriel Hannans:

• Instagram
• Tiktok

📚 Recommended Reading:

• This is Parenting: Demystifying Parenthood by Gabriel Hannans
• All About Love by bell hooks
• World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements Book by John Hunter

📚 Affiliate links:

Support local independent bookstores with ⁠⁠Bookshop.org⁠⁠

Key Takeaways

• Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting; it involves setting boundaries and expectations for children.
• Gentle parenting focuses on teaching children to be well-rounded, respectful individuals through nonviolent approaches.
• Implementing gentle parenting in the classroom requires establishing authority, providing visual expectations, and using positive reinforcement.
• Consistency and follow-through are essential in implementing gentle parenting strategies. Creating a safe space for students is crucial in education.
• Treating children as humans and recognizing their emotions is essential.
• Discipline should be reframed as guidance and critical thinking.
• Gentle parenting teaches independence and life skills.
• Gentle parenting contributes to social justice and equity in education.
• Reimagining education as student-led learning is the way forward.

Transcript

Brittney (00:00.642)
Hello and welcome to Conscious Pathways. I am so excited to be joined by the indomitable black man, aka Gabe. Thank you so much for joining me.

The Indomitable Blackman (00:07.418)
Thank you so much for having me.

Brittney (00:12.142)
Yes, this is so exciting. I know we were chit chatting, but I’ve been following your social media for probably like a year or so now, and I always love your content, especially how you kind of break down different concepts, especially when it comes to gentle parenting. But I’m not even a parent and I’m just like, I love this content. I’m always sharing it with them. Yes, yes, always sharing it with like my, my.

The Indomitable Blackman (00:33.496)
Well, I’m glad that you enjoy it.

Brittney (00:40.91)
friends who are parents and like, look at this.

The Indomitable Blackman (00:43.868)
Sharing it to those people who are like, oh, I’m going to hit my kid. Oh, watch this guy real quick. Just check out this video I saw. Isn’t it interesting? Kind of thing. Yeah.

Brittney (00:53.39)
Yeah, yeah, that’s an interesting concept. What do you think about this? I love being petty. I think that is one of when people ask like, Oh, what’s your like human superpower? I’m like, being petty. I think I’m like level 10 petty. It’s just it’s great. All my professional emails. They’re just the essence of petty.

The Indomitable Blackman (00:56.086)
Mm -hmm. Best way to be petty.

The Indomitable Blackman (01:08.024)
We’re gonna get along just fine.

The Indomitable Blackman (01:16.184)
I love that. I love that so much.

The Indomitable Blackman (01:21.848)
Oh, perfect. That’s top tier.

Brittney (01:23.982)
guess, guess, chef’s guess to that. But before we dive into gentle parenting and all the great things that go into that, tell me a little bit about how you got your start in education, what inspired you to want to be an advocate in education for children and all of those good things.

The Indomitable Blackman (01:41.944)
So believe it or not, I never wanted to do education. I wanted to be a biomedical scientist. That was my major for the majority of my time in college. Biomedical sciences, I wanted to study oncology and infectious disease. And I was homeless at the time, as one does in their early mid -20s. And I decided to teach at my church’s private school, which I did.

and it was the most rewarding thing I had ever done. I’d always worked with kids. I’d always been really good, you know, with anybody’s kid. Babysit all the time. All of the family, friends, children would come hang out with me, mentoring little kids. But teaching, it really lit a spark that I didn’t know I had. My mom was a teacher. My sisters are both teachers. My dad wanted to be a teacher. Education runs in my blood, but that was not something I wanted to do.

Brittney (02:12.078)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (02:36.52)
until I started doing it and now I It’s hard to see my life without it. Can I do anything? Yes but what I want to do is work with children and helping them mold their mind and Really pull out all of their potential. That’s that’s really what I want

Brittney (02:42.678)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (02:49.074)
Mm.

Yes, yes, yes. And it’s surprisingly common to see people who fall into education who are just like, no, I don’t think I want to do that. Or that’s not my job. Or that seems hard. And then you somehow get into it and you’re like, yeah, this is what I was supposed to be doing. This was the path I’m supposed to be on. I also had big dreams of wanting to go in the medical field. I wanted to be an immunologist. I was like, I’m going to be a doctor, but for really young little babies. And

The Indomitable Blackman (03:08.128)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (03:13.1)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (03:19.168)
Oh.

Brittney (03:21.858)
that’s it, like nothing else. And then I started teaching and I was like, nah, this is it. This is where I need to be. You can’t, you can’t go anywhere. It’s just like, they get you and it’s just like, oh, there’s sweet little faces and then they’re just chaotic. And you’re like, yeah, I’m down for the chaos. Let’s go.

The Indomitable Blackman (03:28.222)
Yep, yep. They get you those kids. It’s those kids. The kids, they just hook you in and you can’t go nowhere. That’s what it is.

The Indomitable Blackman (03:40.672)
Mmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (03:45.912)
I’m here for it, yeah.

Brittney (03:48.43)
Yes, yes, yes. And so a lot of your content, you talk about this concept of gentle parenting. Can you explain a little bit of that to my audience about what gentle parenting is and kind of how does this differ from our kind of traditional models of discipline?

The Indomitable Blackman (04:05.336)
Yes. So gentle parenting is first. Let me establish this first. Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting. Gentle parenting is not permissive parenting. It is not letting your child get away with everything. It is not establishing boundaries or expectations. It’s the opposite of that. Kind of. There are four parenting styles that…

Brittney (04:22.03)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (04:26.232)
we talk about, there’s authoritarian, which is that old school traditional, you know, I’m a blush your head to the white me kind of parenting. There’s authoritative, which is gentle parenting. There’s permissive, and then there is neglectful. The one that I practice is gentle parenting or authoritative parenting, conscious parenting, respectful parenting, whatever you wanna call it. But it’s centered around teaching your children to be well -rounded, respectable, respectful.

Brittney (04:33.19)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (04:53.684)
individuals. So that means teaching them boundaries. That’s teaching them how to one, respect other people’s boundaries, but also how to establish their own, how to respond to expectations, how to communicate effectively, how to problem solve, how to work independently, how to establish priorities. It’s literally teaching your child by guiding them through nonviolent approaches, by modeling the behavior that you want to see into the correct

Behavior that they should be aligning themselves to and bringing out the the best of themselves So it’s going to look it looks completely different from what a lot of parents are used to it doesn’t look like the spanking It doesn’t like the yelling it doesn’t like the shaming of the guilt trip or the isolation as a punishment No punitive punishments. Really. It’s really more centered around Teaching them how to prioritize the things that they want to do

Brittney (05:28.13)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (05:50.262)
versus or the prioritizing the things that they need to do over the things that they want to do. It looks like training them on how to delay gratification for an activity that has to be done. It looks like teaching them how to emotionally regulate themselves by just showing them, by literally guiding them, by teaching them explicitly as opposed to just letting them try to figure it out or yelling at them until they figure it out or they grow out of the habit that they’re in. So that’s gentle parenting in a nutshell.

Brittney (06:22.766)
And I think that’s a lot of the reason why I feel like I connected with a lot of your content online is that you, you, like you just did, you break it down so well and it’s so accessible, but also, you know, it’s not like the super scientific language. It’s you’re breaking this down in a way that is very approachable for just a normal parent. A normal parent could just really access this information and, you know, just using terminology that I’m familiar with or I’ve heard and just all these different things. It’s very like,

culturally relevant to, you know, the average general human being, right? And I love that because, you know, shifting our parenting and shifting the way we approach children and the way we approach education, it can be really hard because it’s breaking down a lot of what we experienced in our childhood and what our parents experienced in their childhood. And it’s kind of breaking down these cycles and breaking down these barriers. And that’s not an easy feat. You know, we’re not.

The Indomitable Blackman (06:54.68)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (07:19.022)
We’re not saying that this is an easy thing that you can just do it overnight and just decide, okay, I’m now a new human, new person, new parent. I’m going to just do this now. It takes a lot of work and it takes a lot of like introspection and breaking down, you know, your thoughts on children, your thoughts on parenting, your thoughts on, you know, what respect looks like and all these different things. So it’s, it’s hard work. It’s really work, but it’s hard work.

The Indomitable Blackman (07:22.296)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (07:44.28)
Yeah. Yeah. And it also looks like healing your inner child. It’s healing yourself from the trauma that you’ve experienced and choosing not to pass down that generational trauma because that’s something that a lot of us are very familiar with. And it’s also recognizing that your parents did do the best they could with what they had, but it may not have been enough. And so that’s gentle parenting is a journey. It’s a marathon. It’s not.

Brittney (07:49.646)
Yes.

Brittney (07:57.078)
Mm -hmm.

Yep.

Brittney (08:05.452)
Mm -hmm. Yes. Yes.

The Indomitable Blackman (08:14.408)
Sprint and it takes a lot of patience a lot of inner work. It takes a lot of crying It takes a lot of soul -searching, but when I tell you it is worth it and you have lasting results. Oh my gosh

Brittney (08:15.916)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (08:21.718)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (08:26.476)
Mm -hmm. Yes, yes, those lasting results that you could see because you know that you are breaking those generational cycles and, you know, I personally don’t have children, but I have nieces and seeing the way that my brother and my sister -in -law are approaching their parenting, which was so different than the way me and my brother grew up and the way that my sister -in -law grew up, it’s just a whole different way and approach and it’s, you know, it’s hard. They struggle sometimes and like…

You know, it’s the easy way out is to smack them and hit them. And the easy way out is to isolate them. The easy way out is to do what we know. And so it takes a lot of hard work to shift that and to work on that healing yourself, healing that inner child, exactly what you mentioned, so that those cycles can be broken and that we can have a new generation of people and a new generation of adults that are leading with kindness and compassion and empathy and respect and have these really great qualities that…

The Indomitable Blackman (08:59.2)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (09:22.072)
Exactly.

Brittney (09:25.39)
we want to see from our society, but that starts early. That starts with how we’re treating these kids out here.

The Indomitable Blackman (09:33.45)
100 % 100 %

Brittney (09:35.414)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. And so when we’re particularly thinking about the early years, you know, early childhood, that’s, you know, my background is in early childhood, you know, and we look in those early elementary school years as well, you know, how would you say that gentle parenting really supports their emotional and their social development particularly?

The Indomitable Blackman (09:56.3)
Oh man. So, uh, my background is working in the field of applied behavioral analysis before people get crazy. Cause I know it has had a huge stigma. When I tell you, I did not practice abusive tactics and I did not practice any sort of like suppression of traits or any sort. Literally, I just focused on helping a child manage their aggressive behavior and teaching them how to do life skills, like dressing themselves, brushing their teeth.

Brittney (10:06.798)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (10:26.112)
Literally all I did. I promise I have to always get that disclaimer because ABA has had such a horrible abusive thing. But in in working with children of early education from two to about 10, right there, those children’s brains are growing so rapidly. They’re learning so much information. And a lot of times, if you are not aware of how the child learns, you will feel like.

Brittney (10:26.702)
Yes, yes, yes.

It has, yeah.

Brittney (10:47.308)
Mm -mm.

Brittney (10:53.292)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (10:55.576)
they’re doing something malicious or they’re doing something to, you’ll take it personally, right? And so with gentle parenting, you’re putting yourself in the child in a position where they are able to learn in a healthy way. They’re able to express the full range of emotions that they have, but also learn how to regulate them and not just allow them, give them the reign to,

Brittney (11:03.566)
Yes.

The Indomitable Blackman (11:24.696)
kind of figure it out, which they’re not necessarily gonna be able to do. Looking at it in comparison with either permissive parenting or authoritarian parenting, you have the permissive parent who just lets the kids do whatever. There’s no sense of regulation. There’s no sense of boundaries. They don’t know how to be in a society that, or rather, how can I, yeah, be put in a society where there are norms.

Brittney (11:28.494)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (11:51.704)
Right? So they’ll go to a store and act out because they don’t know any different and there are no boundaries to help, you know, teach them how to regulate it. So they grow up without having that, that understanding versus someone with authoritarian background where they’re hitting their kids and their kids can’t feel those emotions at all. And so although they have the emotion, they don’t know what to do with it. And it bottles up and it turns into more aggressive behavior, or it turns into some sort of emotional suppression, which is just as unhealthy. And it leads to problems later on in life.

Brittney (11:52.558)
Mm, yeah.

Brittney (11:58.828)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (12:07.502)
Mm.

Brittney (12:14.28)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (12:20.824)
versus authoritative parenting where you’re allowing the child to feel the emotions. You’re allowing the child to identify that emotion, but you’re also teaching that child how to self -regulate. You’re putting those boundaries in place, putting those expectations in place, but you’re also guiding them to understanding, hey, I know you’re having a big feeling right now. This is how we navigate through having that feeling so that you’re not hurting yourself. You’re not hurting other people. And you can allow those feelings to just pass without you doing something that’s going to jeopardize your safety.

Brittney (12:31.854)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (12:50.552)
somebody else’s safety or relationships. That’s the beauty of gentle parenting. But even past that, it teaches them problem solving. It teaches them how, okay, I’m in this situation, what’s another way I can navigate it? Hey, Billy, I understand that you’re upset. Is there another way you can talk to me with some sense so I can give you what you asking for? That redirection gets a kid to think about something critically to get what they want versus having a tantrum or…

Brittney (13:02.638)
Mm.

Brittney (13:14.286)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (13:20.544)
you know, coming to you like basically, um, kowtowing to you. Like, you know, it’s, it’s putting them in a place where they can stand up in their humanity and personhood approach you as somebody with respect and say, Hey, can I have such and such? Yes, of course you can. Thank you so much for asking me with respect. I respect you because you’re a human. You respect me because I’m a human. It’s setting a kid up for that. And so that is the beauty of gentle or authoritative parenting.

Brittney (13:32.046)
Yes.

Brittney (13:38.382)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (13:45.358)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (13:50.456)
versus all of the other parenting styles.

Brittney (13:55.086)
And there is, like you broke that down so well, because there is so much beauty in that. And, you know, especially in early childhood as, you know, our role as the adults, as the parent, as the teacher with young children is to really co -regulate with them as they’re learning these regulation skills, right? These things often don’t just come supernaturally. And if they do, you could have, you know, maladaptive, you know, coping regulation skills. Like, unless you’re taught…

The Indomitable Blackman (14:14.656)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (14:24.43)
healthy ways, unless you’re taught that, unless you’re seeing that, unless you’re experiencing those really healthy adaptive ways of regulating yourself, regulating your emotions, knowing that it’s okay to feel your emotions. It’s not a bad emotion. It’s not bad that you feel that, but let’s give you the skills to navigate through that, right? Because sometimes we see kids having a big emotion. And again, if we’re not working on our own internal work, healing our own internal child and working on our own self, right?

The Indomitable Blackman (14:40.312)
Hmm.

Brittney (14:52.014)
know, we see a child having a tantrum and then we make all of these kind of wild assumptions, right? Assumptions that other people probably aren’t really making, right? Thinking if your child’s having a hard time in a grocery store, they’re on the floor, they’re screaming, they’re crying, you don’t, you’re like, you’re overwhelmed now, right? And you’re thinking, well, everyone in the store thinks I’m a bad parent. Everyone in the store is thinking that I’m, right? And like, that’s probably not the case. If there’s other parents in the room, they’re probably like, man, they’ve never done that, man. Like…

The Indomitable Blackman (15:00.044)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (15:18.808)
Yeah, honestly.

Brittney (15:20.44)
kids are gonna kid, you know? And it’s, you know, breaking down and just understanding like, what does respect look like? What does this look like? And then also giving to children those regulation skills, co -regulating with them. But part of that means that you have to also be regulating yourself in those moments.

The Indomitable Blackman (15:35.778)
Mm -hmm 100 % and I think a lot of parents do not know how to do that and so they grow up and they are It’s the funniest thing I’ve had videos where a video I posted recently a little girl she’s overwhelmed by the fear of wanting to pop this balloon because she clearly doesn’t want to hear the noise or something like that and She freaks out and she throws this dart down and it takes off into the crowd And of course somebody could have gotten hurt, but the mom turns around and pops her

Brittney (15:40.168)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (15:55.054)
Mm, yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (16:05.912)
And everybody’s like, oh, well, that should have happened. You know, the girl was being a brat. The girl was being overwhelmed. But because you’re so used to this certain concept of kids being inherently bad, you cannot conceptualize what an healthy interaction with a child looks like because you’ve never seen it. You’ve never been taught how to self -regulate because your parents didn’t do it. They would hit you. Do you think the mom was self -regulating when the child just like when she when the child threw it? No, she got triggered.

Brittney (16:17.614)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (16:35.064)
and hit her child. That mom clearly does not have self -regulatory skills. What did it do? Did it change anything? No. Did it help stop the thing from going in the audience? No. And then her balloon flew away. So you did all of that to do what? Because you were just as emotional. Had you been in your prefrontal cortex in your logical mind, you wouldn’t have done that. You would have recognized she was overwhelmed and found somebody else to pop the balloon for you. But this is the world we’re living in.

Brittney (16:52.556)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (16:59.532)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (17:04.664)
where that concept does not, there’s no frame of reference.

Brittney (17:10.83)
there, there isn’t, right? And we often have these really unrealistic expectations, especially of very young children. And, you know, looking at, you know, young people through adolescence as well, I think we just have really unrealistic expectations of young people in general. And we expect them to be able to regulate themselves when we as adults have a hard time regulating ourselves sometimes. We are expecting them to, you know, be on their best behavior at all times. We’re expecting that we’re expecting the world of them.

And they have oftentimes very little wiggle room to make mistakes. They have very little wiggle room to be deeply flawed people that we all are, right? And when we look at ourselves as adults, a lot of adults struggle with regulation. A lot of adults struggle with, you know, when there’s a lot of sensory input happening right now, they struggle dealing with that. They struggle communicating about that. You know, they struggle regulating through all these different avenues of life. And so it’s really fascinating to see how…

The Indomitable Blackman (17:49.208)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (18:10.03)
we as adults can recognize that, oh yeah, we make mistakes for people, you know, it’s fine. But when children do it, it’s, oh, well, they’re being disrespectful and they should know better and all these different things. But oftentimes when we look at young children, they’ve been on this world for what, three, five, six years? You know? Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (18:18.838)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (18:28.056)
They’re still learning the language. I think that’s the craziest part. They’re still learning how to speak the language and process the language. And you’re getting mad at them because they’re not listening to you the first time you say something. They are still recognizing that the word you’re saying has a meaning and they’re trying to process that meaning. So you telling them, you know, go put that over there. They may not know where there is. They may not even know the word there. So it’s a lot of this.

Brittney (18:34.772)
Yes.

Brittney (18:39.564)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (18:45.366)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Brittney (18:53.39)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (18:57.652)
guesswork on a lot of parents’ parts and it’s they get upset and take it personally because they just genuinely don’t understand the process of a child despite the fact that we were all children at one point which is really weird to me.

Brittney (19:04.204)
Hmm.

Brittney (19:07.982)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. Yes. It was like so long ago that we kind of forget that like being a child and learning and it’s a whole process and our brains, our brains like take the longest to develop out of any other animal, right? Like our brains are in the state of kind of growing and developing and the neuroplasticity and all of that up until like the end of our adolescence, which is like your mid 20s, which is pretty wild. And, you know, when we think about it, it’s like, yes, let’s…

The Indomitable Blackman (19:26.552)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (19:36.96)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (19:41.42)
That’s why I think it’s so important about this like child development and learning child development, because when, you know, children are young, sometimes we throw a lot of words at them and expect them to understand exactly what you’re saying. We’re expecting them to be able to hear what we’re saying, process what we’re saying, understand what we’re saying, do what we’re saying immediately, right? And always listen the first time when, especially with the younger children that we get and they’re getting their language acquisition, sometimes we’re just throwing.

Sometimes it’s just as simple as like shortening how many words we’re throwing at them at any given time, right? Cause we think, oh, they’re, you know, they’re three, they should understand. They should actually be able to tell them to go put that away and then go do this and then go do that. But maybe you’re giving them too many directives in one time. Maybe we need to simplify that back to maybe we’re giving you one directive at a time, especially if we’re thinking about the sensory environment that the child might be in. You know, if you’re at a busy mall or a busy, um, you know, grocery store or.

The Indomitable Blackman (20:10.744)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (20:27.606)
Yeah.

Brittney (20:36.204)
even if you’re just in a classroom, there’s a lot of stuff happening around you at that one time. And so sometimes it’s even just as simple as just getting on their level, getting that eye contact, being like, hey, I see you, you see me, we see each other? Okay, cool. I need you to do X or do X. And then you get what you’re looking for out of that, but we just have to recognize the state that the child is in, right? Are they dysregulated? Are they overwhelmed? Are they in an emotional state where they can’t really…

The Indomitable Blackman (20:59.158)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (21:04.886)
process what’s happening right now. Are they in fight or flight right now? And as that adult, that’s our job to put on our little detective hat and figure that out. Figure out what state this child is in and how I can best be that supportive system to help you get to a state where you are regulated, where we can get to, we can do what we gotta do.

The Indomitable Blackman (21:20.504)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm. 100%. That’s the goal.

Brittney (21:25.58)
Mm -hmm. That’s the goal. That’s the goal. And it’s hard. Again, like I said, it’s not easy work. I’m not saying it flips a switch and then overnight you are now, you know, the gentle parent of the year. It’s going to take time. It’s a journey. You’ll get there. But it’s a worthy cause to want to engage in. So in your experience, how can educators implement these strategies of, you know,

The Indomitable Blackman (21:38.776)
Yeah.

Brittney (21:53.984)
authoritative or gentle parenting within their classroom to create the most supportive environment for their students.

The Indomitable Blackman (22:00.568)
That’s a great question. So I teach seventh grade. A lot of teachers, a lot of schools have been doing restorative practices and it’s really just been permissive. Parenting basically, there’s no real boundary setting, there’s no real expectation setting and there are no real consequences. Everybody understand gentle parenting has consequences. There are consequences, 100%. The consequences just look differently. But my…

Brittney (22:10.946)
Mm, yep.

Brittney (22:23.436)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (22:28.33)
seventh grade class is absolutely insane. My advanced students are insane, but I love every last one of them, even though they made me want to throw myself off a cliff. I tell my students all the time listening, y ‘all gonna make me jump off a cliff. Y ‘all tripping. I’m done. I’m done. I’ma quit. To the point where that’s kind of like one of my catchphrases. Oh yeah. They’ll draw pictures and it’ll have like the little speech bubble. Forget it, I’ma quit.

Brittney (22:48.014)
seventh grade man.

Brittney (22:57.07)
Heheheheh

The Indomitable Blackman (22:58.168)
But one thing I can definitely say, when you are trying to integrate those things in the class, you have to make the environment a place where they want to learn. So what that looks like. Before my students even come in, they’re lining up outside my door against the wall. Do not just walk into my class because you’re coming in with all of these different attitudes, with all of these different moves, all of these different.

Brittney (23:17.038)
Mm.

Brittney (23:22.478)
Yep.

The Indomitable Blackman (23:24.912)
behaviors that if you come into my class like that, it’s going to be impossible for me to bring you all in. So it’s establishing authority from the get -go. And this is not a control kind of thing, but it is a, hey, I know what’s best for you all. You’re not going to learn effectively if you all are all over the place. So everybody lined up against the wall, wait until you all are quiet, come in ready to learn. It’s having visual expectations. There’s this thing that we do in my county called champs. I think it’s kind of, but.

Brittney (23:37.228)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (23:46.792)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (23:54.648)
There are parts of it that are really good. Visual expectations of what I need are excellent because I can redirect you back to that board. This is what we’re doing. Having reinforcers, invaluable. I don’t go to work for free. I do not do anything for free. I’m a professional singer. I don’t sing for free. You’re not going to see me how I do it. Even at a funeral, you’re going to pay me. Why? Because I value myself. Children are much the same way. They learn.

Brittney (23:57.166)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (24:04.428)
Mm.

Brittney (24:08.974)
Mm. Yes.

Brittney (24:14.71)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (24:18.802)
Yes.

Brittney (24:23.118)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (24:24.088)
best when they’re being reinforced with some sort of feedback other than just a great job. Baby, if you got to get them some gummy bears, some sugar, not sugar -free gummy bears, don’t get sugar -free gummy bears, do not do it. Get them some regular sugar -free gummy bears.

Brittney (24:29.196)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (24:34.51)
Oh, no, that’s offensive. That’s a crime. That’s a crime.

The Indomitable Blackman (24:38.52)
And they gonna commit another crime in the bathroom, child. You wanna laugh? Watch some sugar -free gummy bear reviews. It’s hilarious. Little snacks that they like Takis, great, and then giving them a reward. They do. And I don’t know why, cause they’ll…

Brittney (24:52.814)
Oh, they love Takis. Even the elementary schools, even my preschoolers, they come in here with their little red fingers. I’m like, how are you?

The Indomitable Blackman (25:03.704)
Mmm those and the flaming hot Cheetos, but then their tongues can’t take it And so they want to ask to go out and get water every five seconds then when they drink the water Then they want to go use bathroom Stop eating if you know different burn them out but you have No, they got this show won’t they won’t You have reinforces that you give to them when they’re on task if they come in and they’re quiet Good job. Here’s a M &M

Brittney (25:07.852)
Oh yeah.

Brittney (25:15.022)
Yeah. They will not buy.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (25:32.152)
Good job, here’s some tackies. Good job, here’s some Ritz crack. The kids are worth a food and it’s not bribing them. It’s giving them dopamine that lets them know that’s the drug that’s almost associated with learning. Even survival, if you find a source of water and you’re thirsty, your brain is gonna release dopamine to remind your brain this place is where you got that water from. Keep doing that same thing again.

Brittney (25:32.398)
Mm.

Brittney (25:41.166)
Mm.

Brittney (25:45.614)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (25:51.564)
Mmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (25:56.216)
So if you’re giving them reinforces every time they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, they’re going to be happy doing what they’re doing. Trust me, it works, but you have to be consistent. Which brings me to the next part, consistency and consistency and consequences. If you say you’re gonna do something, do it. Don’t be like me where I say, I’m gonna write you up and I’ll write them up. Don’t say I’m gonna email your parents and you don’t email your parents. Go ahead and do it. Let them know, right? But it’s about having that follow through.

Brittney (25:56.942)
Mm.

Brittney (26:04.172)
Mm -hmm. Yes.

Brittney (26:11.982)
Mm.

Mm.

Brittney (26:20.876)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (26:24.696)
so that they understand that this behavior is not acceptable or this behavior is acceptable, right? So it’s really just thinking about all of those different ways that children learn, thinking about ways that you can reframe a concept. If a kid’s coming in with the attitude, I had some girls come in my class with the attitude this past week. I was having to deal with it. They were trying to catch an attitude with me and be disrespectful. I was like, hey, hey, hey, I understand you angry.

Brittney (26:31.404)
Yes.

Brittney (26:40.386)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (26:45.806)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (26:49.774)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (26:52.312)
I could have taken it personally. I didn’t. I said, look, I get it. You mad. Whatever you got going on, I feel you. That’s fine. Go take a walk and go deal with what you got to deal with. Then you can come back, but leave that out here because that’s not coming in here. And she left. Now she left angry. Cool. You’re not going to interrupt what I’m trying to do in this class period. There’s a safe space. If you want to go talk about it, we can talk about it. I’m not going to.

Brittney (27:00.942)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (27:16.652)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (27:18.264)
give that energy that doesn’t deserve it and I’m not going to write you up because you’re having a bad day. What you got going on baby? Go have that bad day. We can cut, the work will be here. You gonna make it up anyway. So go handle it and then we can go, you you know what I’m saying? It’s just really looking at children as if they are humans, treating a human the way you would want somebody to treat you. So that’s really, that’s how you integrate gentle parenting in there. It’s holding somebody accountable, but it’s also recognizing,

Brittney (27:28.748)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep.

Brittney (27:37.92)
Yes. Yes.

Brittney (27:45.326)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (27:47.48)
that kids are gonna make mistakes, it’s inevitable, because they’re kids. It’s just giving them the tools and the skills. Yeah, and that’s what they’re supposed to That’s why we’re out of school.

Brittney (27:50.094)
Yes. That’s their kids, they’re learning. Yes, yes. Exactly. We’re at a school to learn, we’re at a school to provide that support for learning and to just understand it’s, you know, behavior is always communication. So like you said, try to take it personally. They’re having a bad day, they’re having a bad day, right? We’ll regulate, we’ll get to a space where we’re ready to learn and listen, and then we’ll talk about, you’re like, hey, you know.

The Indomitable Blackman (28:07.062)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (28:16.974)
Let’s talk about some respectful language that we could use, right? You know, like once we’re in a regulated state, we can have those conversations, you know? But not taking that personally, usually no. Usually no. Like it could be a multitude of things. They might just be hungry, could have been a bad day at home, could be some other stuff, could be friends, you know, especially with that age that you’re dealing with. I don’t know how you do it. I’m too sensitive to work with middle schoolers.

The Indomitable Blackman (28:20.342)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (28:25.258)
Yep, because nine times out of ten, it has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with you. Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (28:43.448)
Jesus. Look, it one second they’re happy. The next second the whole world is falling apart. I had some kid I walked out of my classroom and he’s crying and he’s not even talking to me. And I was like, you good? And basically it was his girlfriend. And I was like, oh, and I offered him a hand hug. And he wound up just giving me a hug and crying. I’m my shirt and all that. I was like, oh, little kid. So yeah, no, it.

Brittney (28:48.43)
Hehehehe

Yeah.

Brittney (29:09.838)
You’re like, it’s okay, buddy. You can’t. Oh, yes. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah, you can’t take it personally. Exactly. Exactly. And with the age group I deal with, I’m usually, you know, anywhere between, you know, two to five and same thing. You know, they might not have the same like kind of hormonal shifts and changes, but they’re, they’re great. Their bodies are growing at such a, so, so fast, much faster than like they can really keep up with.

The Indomitable Blackman (29:11.896)
You can’t take it personal. They got so many emotions or hormones going on. They don’t know what’s going on. Yeah, they’re toddlers and big bodies.

The Indomitable Blackman (29:38.678)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (29:39.022)
You know, they’ve got just a lot of just big emotions that they go through and experience. And again, oftentimes these have nothing to do with you. It’s just a part of their development. Two year olds are going to have big emotions. They’re going to have big outbursts and it’s just developmentally a part. It’s normal. It’s developmentally very normal. And I think the more that we just kind of understand that some of these behaviors are normal, like it’s normal for, for, you know, middle schoolers and high schoolers to have.

big shifts in their mood throughout the day. It’s hormones. Again, very little things, little to do with you, right? It’s normal for two -year -olds to have big emotions and big tantrums, you know? It’s normal for third graders to also have these kind of big shifts in emotions, be really, really energetic and then be really, really mad. Like, those things are within a normal range. And it’s important for us to know that as we’re working with our students, as we’re working with children, or working with, you know, even our own children, is to just…

The Indomitable Blackman (30:12.792)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Brittney (30:39.026)
approach that with a level of compassion and understanding. But as you mentioned before, we have boundaries and we have, you know, a social code on how we treat each other and how we want to be treated and how we’re expecting to be treated back in, you know, and that’s really important too. So it’s a, that’s the kind of what that big defining difference between really that permissive parenting and that kind of authoritative is just, yeah, we have boundaries. We know exactly what to expect.

The Indomitable Blackman (30:51.862)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (31:06.188)
know, we’re using either visual cues, we’re using those reminders, we’re kind of reinforcing different behaviors, and there is structure to it. It’s a structured form of, you know, parenting and discipline and all of that, and it’s not just willy -nilly, it’s not just laissez -faire, do whatever you want, because that’s a whole other type of parenting that no one really wants. So yeah, yeah. And then kind of speaking of that, so I think when people hear the word discipline in general, they kind of…

The Indomitable Blackman (31:20.566)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (31:25.642)
At all. At all.

Brittney (31:36.014)
you have a strong emotion to it one way or another. How do you kind of define discipline or how do you look at discipline?

The Indomitable Blackman (31:46.006)
Discipline I look at it in its original term Discipline comes from the root word discrupulous which the root of that is disciple or Disciple well disciple I take martial arts and My sifu I’m a disciple of my sifu my sifu doesn’t just go around beating me I mean he hits me every now and again, but that’s because he’s showing me how to use my body physically to protect itself so

Brittney (32:12.834)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (32:14.648)
But it’s never out of a punishment. It’s never out of a, I’m here to harm you and through fear, you’re gonna learn to respect. It’s never that. It’s literally, I’m guiding you to understanding something. He changes how my brain thinks about a concept. He’ll show me like, hey, why is your hand like this? Because if it’s like this, think about if you turn this way or this way. And I’m like, that makes sense. What?

Brittney (32:29.824)
you

The Indomitable Blackman (32:41.912)
you’re doing the same thing with children. It’s literally guiding them to think about something deeper so that you can understand. It’s basically no different than pedagogy. Now, in the same way you use pedagogy, you also still have to have a consequence, because you want them to think about their actions in a different way. But it’s guiding them to understand it at their age level. So if a kid is doing something like lying,

Brittney (32:46.476)
Mm.

Brittney (33:03.31)
Mm.

Brittney (33:08.622)
Yes.

The Indomitable Blackman (33:10.968)
I’m not going to put him in the position to lie. I’m going to put him in the position to always tell the truth and receive the consequence as a result. Like if I come home and you know, a glass is broken. I’m not going to ask who broke the glass. There’s only me and you here. I know who broke the glass. I know you don’t have the fine motor control to hold the glass up. That’s fine. Let’s get the broom and sweep it up. Watch where you’re stepping. I’m not putting you in that position. I’m not going to ask who broke this glass. That’s dumb.

Brittney (33:15.31)
Mmm.

Brittney (33:20.812)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (33:29.228)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (33:33.422)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (33:39.286)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (33:40.28)
because I’m trying to guide you. When you know that I’m not, you don’t have to be afraid of lying to me, you’re never gonna really lie to me. Cause you know I’m not gonna harm you if you do.

Brittney (33:43.598)
Yes.

Brittney (33:51.126)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (33:52.44)
that incentivizes you to tell the truth. So with discipline in gentle parenting, it’s framing your child’s mind in such a way that they think critically about the choices that they make in order to make the best possible solution, to get the best possible solution that they can. That’s really what discipline is. It’s not spanking your kid. It’s not shaming your kid. Those tactics do not work that well, because eventually you’re going to hit your kid and they’re not going to feel.

Brittney (33:56.046)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (34:11.374)
Mm.

Brittney (34:15.79)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (34:20.056)
getting hit anymore or they’re going to build such a tolerance that they’re just going be like, oh, that’s all you’re going to do to me. I’m going to keep doing what I want anyway. It’s not shaming your kid because eventually your kid is not going to be ashamed or they’re going to be so shamed that they get numb to it. You can’t guilt him. The same thing. I don’t feel guilt a lot of times when I do something like, oh, OK, and continue living my life. But getting a kid to think critically about something, I guess the best example, my granddad caught me trying to take some cookies once and all he said was why.

Brittney (34:23.628)
Mm -hmm.

Yep.

Mm -hmm.

Brittney (34:38.22)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (34:43.214)
Mm.

Brittney (34:47.052)
Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (34:50.968)
I’ll give you anything you need if you ask. I don’t hold things back from you. And it changed my brain so much because I realized, why am I doing this? That’s discipline. It’s getting a kid to think differently and being consistent. That’s really all it is.

Brittney (34:52.11)
Mm.

Brittney (34:57.708)
Mm.

Brittney (35:01.262)
Yeah.

Brittney (35:06.606)
Mm.

Brittney (35:10.03)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, all of that. And usually when I do trainings on restorative justice or something, I usually will have a section that talks about discipline. And I say that same exact thing, basically, of like, let’s reframe what the emotional response that we get when we think about discipline, right? And usually when we think about discipline, we’re thinking about those really harsh forms of discipline, like those really harsh.

The Indomitable Blackman (35:29.27)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (35:35.886)
like the hitting and the isolation and the shame and like we have really strong emotions when attached to that, which it makes sense that we would do that, right? If that’s what we experienced, that makes sense that we would have strong emotions when it comes to that, right? Or we think that it’s, you know, this very strict, stringent thing when we reframe it into what you kind of break it down to what the word actually means and you reframe it and you look at what is, right? It’s about intentionality. What is my intention?

Is my intention that my child is afraid of me? Is my intention that they do, that they blindly follow every word that an authoritarian figure says to them and does not question this whatsoever? Does not question whether this is a right thing or a wrong thing to do? Is that my intention? Or is my intention to breathe, to have children who are critical thinkers, who are problem solvers, who are thinking critically about their actions and how their actions are impacting others? And then how through my intention,

The Indomitable Blackman (36:04.984)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (36:33.678)
am I teaching them to do that? Because if that’s my intention is to train them to do these things, then hitting them is not going to teach them critical thinking skills. That’s going to turn those off probably. And isolating them and shaming them, that’s going to turn those skills off. That’s the opposite of what I want them to be. And so when we think about discipline, it’s about that intentionality. What do I want out of this? And asking that question, what do I…

The Indomitable Blackman (36:44.792)
Yeah, exactly.

Brittney (37:03.596)
want. And everyone I was talking to, my sister -in was pregnant with my niece and I had, because I know that, you know, me and my brother were spanked growing up and, you know, I know she was probably spanked growing up. And so I just kind of posed it as a question of like, yeah, have you guys talked about discipline? Have you guys talked about what that’s going to look like in your household? And they hadn’t really talked about it. I was I don’t know. Like, you know, I was spanked and, you know, I think maybe we’ll do that. And that kind of let the spark to start thinking about, huh.

Do I want to do it that way? Is that what I want? What do I want from my children and do I want them to have the same that I had or do I want them to have more than what I had growing up? And you know, I could say now that they do not spank their children and it’s still hard. It’s not like, you know, they’re really great kids, but you know, they’re still kids. They’re still, you know, navigating their way. Yes, they’re still kids. Yes.

The Indomitable Blackman (37:54.55)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. But look at what you just said. They’re still kids. Kids are gonna do age -appropriate behavior. No matter what we do, they’re going to do kid things, because they’re kids. Why are we beating them for being who they are automatically? All we have to do is just guide them to where they need to be. We don’t have to force them. Just guide them. They’ll wanna go. They’ll wanna fit in with society.

Brittney (38:02.798)
Yes.

Brittney (38:06.518)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Yes.

Brittney (38:18.286)
Yeah, no. Just guide them. They will. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. They sure will. All you have to do is guide them. I love that. Just have that printed on a t -shirt. Just guide them. You’re fine. Just guide them. That’s it. Yes. So like the premise of this podcast is exploring the intersection of education and social justice.

The Indomitable Blackman (38:32.376)
Just gotta. That be all right. Mm -hmm.

Brittney (38:45.358)
How would you say that gentle parenting kind of contributes to the broader goals of social justice and equity really within education?

Brittney (38:55.406)
You

Brittney (39:16.29)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (39:19.88)
passive. Believe me, I know. But what can what benefits your child is to raise them with gentle parenting to where they know how to effectively communicate because can’t nobody take advantage of me if you are emotionally intelligent and can see BS coming from a mile away. Can I say BS? Am I good? Okay. If you can see BS coming from a mile away, if you can understand manipulation, if you don’t have a frame of reference for what it means to be abused, and you don’t tolerate it.

Brittney (39:22.956)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (39:32.076)
Mm.

Brittney (39:36.302)
Oh yeah, you’re good. You’re good.

Brittney (39:45.26)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (39:48.086)
That comes by teaching your children how to establish boundaries, expectations, and effectively communicate. You want to talk about making sure that your child is independent? Teaching your child to be independent, Montessori -style training. My mom taught me how to cook when I was four. I was in the kitchen cooking. I can make eggs, I can make sausage, I can make oatmeal, all of that. I was independent, but I know grown people I was in college with that couldn’t even cook, that barely knew how to wash their behinds good.

Brittney (39:52.814)
Mm. Yep. Yep.

Brittney (40:11.628)
Mm -hmm.

No.

The Indomitable Blackman (40:16.086)
Gentle parenting sets your child up for success. And if we had a generation of kids raised with that understanding, you would have a decrease in domestic violence. You would have a decrease in sexual assault. You would have a decrease in divorce rate. You would have a decrease in trauma -based pick something. There would be fewer wars because people know how to effectively communicate and problem solve. It would literally fix.

Brittney (40:19.566)
Mm.

Brittney (40:26.862)
Mm.

Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (40:45.18)
Generations, lineages, but we’ll pass down this trauma generationally because we want to pass it off on somebody else. Because this is how I was raised and I turned out OK. Do we want our kids to turn out OK? Do we want our kids to turn out great? Are we trying to stay at the bare minimum or are we trying to see how far they can go? Because I’ve seen gentle parenting work. My friend has two kids. One is in graduate school. The other one, he is on the spectrum and he is.

Honestly, still doing fine, but he’s severely on the spectrum. Bahome is chilling. She raised a college graduate by herself, who got all the way through an Ivy League school.

Brittney (41:19.82)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (41:26.006)
Never put a hands on her daughter. Never put her hands on her son. She doesn’t have a frame of reference for what it means to be manipulated or abused because she doesn’t tolerate it. As soon as she feels mistreated, baby, I’m on to the next. I wish I had that growing up so we can see that it works. We see scientifically it works. We have the data to support it. There’s no reason why we should be out here doing anything other than raising children.

Brittney (41:28.878)
Mmm.

Brittney (41:36.652)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Brittney (41:46.414)
Mm. We do.

The Indomitable Blackman (41:53.846)
with this because it literally reshapes society in the best way.

Brittney (41:59.822)
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. It, I… And I’ll do it again.

The Indomitable Blackman (42:02.422)
Thank you for attending my TED Talk.

The Indomitable Blackman (42:07.22)
Hahaha!

Brittney (42:09.902)
So I don’t even do the rest of the podcast. I’ll just put that on repeat. Just like, listen to this. No, but it’s, it’s what you said was just so impactful and so beautiful because yes, that that’s, that’s the direction we’re going into. And the research tells us this, right? We have, we, some people don’t want to listen, you know, they won’t, they won’t listen to me. They won’t listen to you, but they’ll, they’ll maybe look at some data, maybe, I don’t know. But the data that tells us like, oh yeah, spanking your children, this leads to.

The Indomitable Blackman (42:13.462)
Hahaha!

The Indomitable Blackman (42:34.974)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Brittney (42:39.862)
you know, these types of behaviors or like precocious puberty and all these different things that it leads to. And, you know, we’ve seen the impacts of gentle parenting. There was a really beautiful post by a young woman who had posted on TikTok and, you know, she was talking about her experience as, you know, an adult from being a gentle parented child and knowing how her parents love her and knowing how her parents support her and all of these different things, right? There’s…

The Indomitable Blackman (42:43.848)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (43:06.382)
One of my favorite bell hooks books is called All About Love. And I love this book. I think I shove it down. Most people still say me, I’m like, Hey, have you read this? But it’s called All About Love by bell hooks. And in her in the first, I think that was the first chapter. And it was one of those one of those things. I just had to keep rereading it and rereading that this paragraph, because it talked about it’s talking about love and it’s talking about how our concept and our thoughts about.

The Indomitable Blackman (43:14.228)
What’s it called again?

The Indomitable Blackman (43:18.366)
Mmm.

Brittney (43:36.206)
love, right? So it’s being able to, you know, people treat you in a loving way, right? And so if people are hitting you, they’re not treating you in a loving way. That’s not, that’s not love. That’s not how you show love for someone, right? And how you can have a childhood where you know that you were loved, but you were not treated in a loving way. And that, it kind of broke my brain a little bit because I was like, wait a minute. You know, like my inner child was like, see, like, and it just

The Indomitable Blackman (43:45.48)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (44:05.23)
It’s this love that you can feel and experience when you are treated with respect, when you are treated with kindness, right? And so, you know, hating someone is not a way of communicating, I love you, right? That’s not how we communicate love to people. It’s through our fists.

The Indomitable Blackman (44:10.806)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (44:19.446)
I think the best phrase I’ve heard recently, and I’ve been asking everybody this, would you, when I ask it to parents, I say, would you want your friends to be friends, would you want your child to be friends with someone who treats your child the way you treat your child? And then I also ask people, would you be friends with someone who treats you the way you treat you?

Brittney (44:44.94)
Mmm. Yes.

The Indomitable Blackman (44:46.326)
When I tell you the people, when they stop and they finally process what I say and they think about it, they slam on their brakes. Because would you, how do you treat yourself? How do you treat your child? And would you want your friends, would you want your child to be friends with somebody like you? That makes you sit and think. That hits you with your cognitive dissonance and you got to sit with that.

Brittney (44:52.494)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (45:08.91)
Mm -hmm. You do. Yeah. Because it’s a whole different question, right? Because, you know, I hear this all the time, it’s like, well, I’m not trying to be friends with my child. Like, my job is to be a parent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, okay, I get that. I get that. But also, the question here is, you know, would you want, if we’re thinking about the future of our children, we’re looking at, you know, the life that we want our children to live and the experiences that we want them to have.

The Indomitable Blackman (45:31.734)
you

Brittney (45:38.318)
Would you want them to be friends with you? Like someone like you, right? And the way that you treat them, do you want that? That is such a great question. Great question to reflect on. Because it’s, yeah, it’s so true because the way that we are treating children today is the way that they will expect to be treated later, right? And so as they’re adults, as they’re navigating their lives, and if we have shown them, you know, complete and utter disrespect, right?

The Indomitable Blackman (45:45.206)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Brittney (46:06.734)
And we’re showing them that I need you to treat me a certain way, but I’m not going to give you that same treatment in return. What have they learned there? What are they learning in those moments? And what are they taking with them into their adult lives? How are they then going to treat other people? And more importantly, how are they going to allow other people to treat them? And it’s something that I’ve had conversations with other parents as well. It’s like, you know, especially when it’s like fathers and daughters, I’m like, think of…

The Indomitable Blackman (46:15.698)
Yeah.

The Indomitable Blackman (46:21.142)
you

The Indomitable Blackman (46:25.73)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (46:35.63)
She’s gonna be an adult at some point and she’s gonna, you know, have romantic partners or she’s gonna have friends in her lives. Would you want them to yell at her? Would you want them to be aggressive with her? Would you want them to threaten her to get them to do what they want her to do? Is that what you want from her? No, sometimes it’s like, no, I don’t want that. You know? Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (46:54.006)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, 100%. And when you frame it like that, they’re forced to sit with how they’re treating their children. And now the next question is then, where can I learn to change? And that’s why I come in.

Brittney (47:08.526)
Yes. There we go. Okay, okay.

Yes. And on that subject, how do you reimagine education?

The Indomitable Blackman (47:27.702)
When I tell you the vision I still have is student led Ron Clark, I would say is one of the best examples of education done right. I’ve ever seen. But even in that, I still feel like it’s a little bit myopic. I really want a place where kids are learning for self, where they’re put in situations of almost impossibility. There’s a book which I have right here. It’s called the world peace game.

And it was created by this black guy who, he made this game and it is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Children are, they have to get world peace. There are these 50 scenarios, there are these different factions, these different layers of the earth, these different resources that they have to have. And these fourth graders have to figure out how to solve all 50 of these scenarios and get world peace.

Brittney (48:27.246)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (48:27.67)
And the book chronicles different stories that he’s noticed when he’s been facilitating this game. And these kids can do the most amazing things because their brains are still growing and developing. And it’s all student led. All he does is facilitate and watch and ask certain questions here and there and keep everybody, I guess, like a record keeper.

Brittney (48:30.894)
you

Brittney (48:41.218)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (48:53.224)
That’s education. When a kid doesn’t have to sit down behind a desk and listen to a lecture, but they’re up and they’re studying and learning and gathering all this information for themselves, and they’re solving these problems for themselves. The reason why education is not gonna work in America or any rote school is because the kids are being lectured to. They’re put in the most unnatural environment possible.

Brittney (49:01.494)
Mmm.

Brittney (49:09.932)
Mmm.

you

Brittney (49:22.238)
Mm.

The Indomitable Blackman (49:22.262)
to just have all this information regurgitated to them. And we only test them on their ability to regurgitate it back or try to synthesize some little bit of information. Even with scaffolding, even with our best methods of trying to teach these children, it does not work. It doesn’t work. Because it’s not putting them in a natural position. What we know about the brain and gentle parenting is that when kids feel safe, when all of their needs are met and they’re having fun, that’s when they learn the most.

When you put a kid in a place where they have to critically think about something, they don’t have time to feel emotionally one way or another. Their prefrontal cortex is absolutely activated and their limbic system is not. That’s where they’re learning. So if they’re having fun like in this game and we have managed to turn like a lesson about figurative language into something where they have to figure out what is figurative, how do they make different figurative terms, they get to play around.

Brittney (50:18.318)
you

The Indomitable Blackman (50:19.254)
where the learning happens. That’s how we re -imagine education. That’s what education will look like. Student -led learning, where an adult is just there to facilitate and ask certain questions to get you to think about something differently. We know it works. We’ve seen it works. Sitting down and just pen and paper all that, that’s not going to do it. It’s not going to do it. And unfortunately, I have to do that because I’m in a public school, but that’s not the destination. This is just the journey.

Brittney (50:40.546)
Mm -mm.

Brittney (50:44.402)
Mm -hmm.

Brittney (50:49.838)
Yes. Oh, I love that. It’s the journey. It’s getting there. But I couldn’t agree with that more. The more that we can get the learning in the actual hands of students, you know, it’s, we do this in, in a lot of early childhood settings is we do a lot of play -based learning and following the child’s lead and, you know, working within their interests and all these really great things. But obviously within the public K through 12 system, that stops, right? And so.

kind of catering to a whole, you know, different funder at that point. And, you know, we see a lot of this rote learning, a lot of this, okay, sit down. I am the all being, all seeing, knowing, being in the classroom now, I’m going to bestow upon knowledge with you. And, but like, again, where’s the intention there? What are we actually intending for these students to learn? Right? Are we actually gearing this towards their developmental stage and how they learn best and what they learn? Like, there’s so many different things that we can be asking and doing.

And I think, again, that’s why another question. I just love asking that question because I love seeing everyone’s ideas for what the future of education looks like. And I think it’s important that we keep we keep dreaming on that and we keep talking about it and we keep asking these kinds of questions because we’re going to get there. It’s going to happen. We got to keep dreaming big. You know, the bigger, the better, because education is something that is a worthy cause and it is something that we do need to and love to advocate for.

The Indomitable Blackman (52:02.816)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

The Indomitable Blackman (52:14.614)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brittney (52:18.894)
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. So where can my audience find you? Where can they go follow you or find what you’re working on?

The Indomitable Blackman (52:29.494)
Well, so for the next 165 days, you might be able to find me on TikTok under the indomitable black man, Instagram under the same name, YouTube under the same name. Just type in the indomitable black man, I’ma pop up.

Brittney (52:40.398)
Mm -hmm.

Perfect, perfect. And you have a book as well.

The Indomitable Blackman (52:49.846)
I do. My book is called This is Parenting. I have it right here because I just ordered it not too long ago. You can purchase it now. You can literally just type in This is Parenting. It’s going to be the first thing that comes up.

Brittney (52:54.574)
I love it, I love it.

Brittney (53:02.894)
love that. I just… It’s good to know. It’s good to know. There you go. Oh, there you go. There you are. Awesome. And I’ll link all of that in our show notes as well. So if you’re curious about the book or to follow on social media, you can do that there. I want to thank you so much for joining me. This is a really beautiful conversation. I learned so much. And…

The Indomitable Blackman (53:03.382)
beautiful. That’s also not me. A lot of people think it is, it’s not. These aren’t my children.

The Indomitable Blackman (53:11.03)
But that’s me. That’s me.

Brittney (53:31.662)
It was just a great conversation.

The Indomitable Blackman (53:34.326)
Thank you so much for having me on, I really appreciate it.

Brittney (53:37.806)
Of course, of course, keep spreading all this good information out there, keep talking the talk, and we’re making waves, we got this. Because we got it, we got it. Thank you.

The Indomitable Blackman (53:45.782)
We got this. It is. It is what it is. We got it. Thank you.