Transcription of Kids #30
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio hour and podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland Maine and broadcasted on 13, 10:00 a.m. Portland, streaming live each week at 11:00 a.m. on www.wlobradio.com. Show summaries are available at doctorlisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors. Maine Magazine, Micklepage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage, Robin Hodgkin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Dr. John Herzog of orthopedic specialists in Falmouth Maine, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, BOOTH, UNE, The University of New England, and Akari.
Dr. Lisa: Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast show number 30, kids. This show is airing for the first time on April 8th 2012 on WLOB Radio, 1310AM Portland. Streaming wlobradio.com, of course you may also be listening via the Dr. Lisa Belisle podcast on iTunes and in fact we hope you are and we hope you’ve listened to the previous 29 shows. If you haven’t, please do so, become a subscriber and join us in our moving forward in the wellness world, in a very positive and happy way.
Today, kids we think is appropriate because of course it’s April. I’m sitting here with Genevieve Morgan, my cohost and wellness editor for Maine Magazine, hi Genevieve.
Genevieve: Hi Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: This is an exciting time of year for kids. How are your kids feeling about…?
Genevieve: They have some Spring fever. They certainly do.
Dr. Lisa: We had a run of nice weather and we’ve had some cold weather. Hopefully by the time people are listening to this we’ll be back into the nice weather again.
Genevieve: Well, and we just had parent teacher conferences, so they are also needing to buckle down on their homework before Spring break.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, right. That makes a lot of sense. We are going to speaking with Dr. Jeanette Andonian who is a coordinator of Masters in Social Work program at USM. Zoe Romano, a runner and blogger who raised funds for the Portland Boys and Girls Club and Tony Myatt, Patriots Day race for Boys and Girls Club coordinator. It’s hopefully amongst all of that information; you and I will both get some ideas about kids and parenting.
Genevieve: I think it’s true. It would be great and I think parenting is, it’s the most exciting bewildering and confusing and exceptional things that we can do as humans on the earth but it’s very challenging at times. I’m looking forward to hearing from our guests.
Dr. Lisa: Before you became a parent, did you anticipate that it would be as challenging and complex as you found it to be?
Genevieve: Never. I think anyone who’s ever gotten a dog knows that you start to take your dog for a walk and you think, “Oh my God, I’m getting so much benefit out of having a dog. I love my dog, it’s so beautiful but they’re so much work,” and it times up by 100 when you have children.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, plus you have to give birth to them. In many cases, not always but yes, it is a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to raise healthy and resilient kids. There are sort of different levels of parenting I think.
Genevieve: I think there is so much in our culture right now that feels very threatening at least to me as a parent between all of the screens and the bad nutrition and peers and drugs and all … it just feels like everything is fed up and trying to maintain your own balance as a parent and then create balance a balanced life for your kids. It’s very challenging. At least it is for me.
Dr. Lisa: How old are your kids, Genevieve, remind me.
Genevieve: 15 and 12.
Dr. Lisa: I have an 18 year old, a 16 year old and an 11 year old so we have somewhat different, sort of intersecting.
Genevieve: I keep looking to your 18 year old thinking, “She’s done it.”
Dr. Lisa: Well, and he is in Guatemala and volunteering for Safe Passage but you still are a parent, that’s the interesting thing for me, as you think, “Okay my kid graduates from high school, as I’ve graduated as a parent,” but you really haven’t. You’ve just sort of moved on to the next stage.
Genevieve: I don’t know this to be true but people say that you never stop being a parent even when you have 50 year old children.
Dr. Lisa: I suspect that’s actually so. You and I were both at Bowdoin at slightly different times but when you were at Bowdoin, did you put a lot of thought into what it would look like to balance being a working mother and being a parent?
Genevieve: No, you had nine younger siblings.
Dr. Lisa: I did.
Genevieve: I was the only girl in my family, well, I have four step-sisters but I did a lot of babysitting when I was younger and I loved little kids. You were probably babysitting your siblings all the time.
Dr. Lisa: I was and I did love them and I did love little kids. In fact I volunteered to become a Camp Counselor and things like that.
Genevieve: I always thought I would have children but I didn’t realize that you don’t get to go home. As a babysitter you get to go home. I remember going out with friends when I was living in San Francisco before I had children and they had children and thinking, “Oh my gosh, they spoil their children. I would never do that.” You have this whole holier-than-thou feeling about it and then you have your own children and you think, “Oh my gosh, now I finally get it.”
I think every stage of parenting, it happens. My brother has younger children and I think he thinks that I am the most relaxed unbelievably, allow my kids to do whatever they want, because my kids are about six, seven, eight years older. I let them walk to town by themselves and I let them do all these stuff, watch TV and I just think, “Juts you wait, wait till your kids are teenagers.” I think it’s all that, it’s all a learning process. What about you?
Dr. Lisa: I think I sort of dug my own grave a little bit so to speak. Although I do love my children, just want to put that in there but because I said, “You know what I am never having kids.” I think those are famous last words. I said that …
Genevieve: You said that at college?
Dr. Lisa: I am sure I said it earlier than that. I love …
Genevieve: Well, you did have nine siblings.
Dr. Lisa: I had all these siblings and they are really great people. I love them so much. I love my parents so much but there is just, you do, you parent at some level from very early on when you have these children coming up behind you. I said I would never have children and then I got pregnant my first year of medical school when I was 21. I had just gotten married. My husband at the time, he and I lived two states apart from each other. He was in Portland so yes, the miracle baby there and then you have this child.
The interesting thing for me was, I have never loved and I did love his dad but I’ve never loved anything so much as I loved this little tiny baby. I was so determined to be a doctor but I was so determined to be a good mother. That really was something I did not anticipate. I wanted to be a part of my kids’ lives from so early on and I also wanted to be a good doctor. For me that’s always been the interesting challenge, is to be able to balance all of these things.
To be an individual and to be a parent simultaneously and I think that will always be the case.
Genevieve: I think so and I think that challenge that you are feeling, a lot of people feel right now. How do you make money? How do you keep house? How do you make sure that your kids are involved in the right activities and have the right care and do well in school? It can feel very challenging and be actually stressful. I do think that the moments of joy that we have with our children and places where we can celebrate with them are great antidote to all that stress.
Dr. Lisa: I agree. This past weekend I was out looking at clothes with my daughters. We don’t shop a lot because we know I don’t really believe in spending tons and tons of money on things but it was just the love of design with my older daughter, my 16 year old. It was the love of being with her mother and her sister that came through with my 11 year old. It was that interesting time of connection and it’s that time that really reminds me why I’m a parent.
Why I keep showing up and sometimes doing things that are hard, really fostering this resilience in my own kids and knowing that sometimes the choices I make are going to make me somewhat unpopular as a mother and yeah they are the right ones to make.
Genevieve: I think that’s a good point. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be available.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, showing up is a big chunk of it, most of the time, yeah. Today, we are going to speak with Jeanette Andonian, Zoe Romano and Tony Myatt and they are all going to talk to us about resilience and kids and parenting in different ways. I think only Jeanette has children herself but I know that Zoe and Tony are going to talk about Boys and Girls club and how that is helpful from a parenting and kids standpoint. I think people are going to enjoy the show.
Genevieve: I hope so.
Dr. Lisa: The Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast features a segment we call wellness innovations, which is sponsored by the University of New England. This week’s wellness innovation was provided by the Economic and Social Research Council. Teenagers who turn their back on healthy lifestyle and turn to drink, cigarettes and junk food are significantly unhappier than their healthy appears. New research also shows that 12 to 13 is a catalyst age when young people turn away from the healthy habits of their younger years and start to get involved in risky behaviors.
Results of the study show the young people who never drink any alcohol were between four and six times as more likely to have higher levels of happiness than those who reported any alcohol consumption. Those who smoked were about five times less likely to have high happiness scores compared to those who never smoked. Higher consumption of food and vegetables and lower consumption of chips, sweets and fizzy drinks were both associated with high happiness and the more hours of sport youth participated in per week, the happier they were.
For more information on parenting as a wellness innovation, go to doctorlisa.org.
Speaker 1: This portion of the Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast has been brought to you by the University of New England, UNE an innovative health Sciences University grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number one educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about the University of New England at une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: Today we are very pleased to have in the studio with us Dr. Jeanette Andonian who is featured in the current issue of Maine Magazine. It’s the wellness issue and it’s pretty appropriate to Genevieve Morgan, my cohost and I that parenting be a part of wellness. Thank you for coming in.
Dr. Jeanette:You are very welcome.
Dr. Lisa: The article that was written was actually written by Genevieve Morgan. You’ve spent some time together.
Dr. Jeanette:Yes, we have.
Genevieve: It was an interesting topic because we discussed a main concept in child development and child rearing that’s been talked about quite a bit in research lately. What was it?
Dr. Jeanette:The topic is on resiliency and resiliency and I think I said to you during our interview that I think that resilience is probably one of the most important concepts in child rearing and in mental health today. That’s for many, many reasons. We now have a number of decades of research to support how we understand what comprises resilience and the other reason I think it’s an important concept is because it kind of cuts across. It informs mental health practice and as a professional that’s a very important thing.
As a teacher to teach my students about resiliency and social work is really important but it also informs parenting. I think it’s a very important and applicable concept.
Dr. Lisa: I know that we found this in health; in fact one of our early shows was with Julie Sullivan who is the director of Public Health for the city of Portland and we talked about adverse childhood events and the impact of “aces” they call them on children. What we do with our children and sometimes, “To our children,” it does have an impact.
Dr. Jeanette:It does have an impact. Adversity can mean a lot of things. When we think of the term adversity, in theories of resilience there are what we call risk factors and protective factors. Risk factors are the things that we think of. They might be adverse events. They might be characteristics of a person. They cut across the individual, the community to family and the community domain.
Genevieve: It can be different for everybody.
Dr. Jeanette:They can be and usually are different for everybody. Everybody has some risk factors in their lives.
Genevieve: What are the protective factors?
Dr. Jeanette:I think what we have to understand first or a little bit about the risk factors then the protective make sense. Some of the risk factors for instant for an individual might be, say you are … I’m going to talk about infancy. In infancy, a baby that’s born in poor health or has some kind of health challenges or has a difficult temperament. No, temperament is something that’s genetically, that’s part our genes.
Dr. Lisa: Or maybe a colicky baby, would that be?
Dr. Jeanette: A colicky baby, exactly. Those kinds of things and then as the child grows up maybe the child has poor social skills or has low self-esteem or has impulsivity. Those are some risk factors that reside within an individual. Family risk factors might be things like family conflict or families where there is poor supervision of kids or where parents aren’t involved in their kids ’activities or there is financial stress. There is poverty or job insecurity. Things like that are familial kinds of risk factors of parental substance abuse or mental illness, these are other ones.
Then community risk factors could be socio-economic disadvantage. Crime ridden neighborhoods, poor schools, just lack of opportunity for recreation, just lack of opportunity overall. Poor services et cetera. Those are just a sampling of what we consider to be risk factors. Understanding risk factors alone tells us very little because we think of what protective factors are. Protective factors are those things that buffer against those kinds of risks.
We know from a lot of the research that has been done, that longitudinal study is one study in particular that is widely cited and it’s the foundational and it was a study that was done by Emmy Warner who followed almost 700 individuals for 40 plus years over their whole lives looking at all kinds variables in their lives. What was learnt from that was that …
Genevieve: Is it across the country?
Dr. Jeanette:It was actually based in Hawaii. What’s interesting about the study too is that there was very little attrition in study. Over all of that time you’d think that you’d lose people along the way and she lost some people but it was actually a fairly good sample all the way along and being able to trace those people for all of that time. What came out of that … the interest was, okay … the question really was about why is it that some people when faced with adversity are able to rise above and move forward and succeed and others are more challenged. That’s an important question and …
Genevieve: Well, because it’s about … a lot of people think that you are characteristic cut and dried. You are born one way or another.
Dr. Jeanette:That’s right, but there are also protective factors that have been identified and are well known now. Just as they are risk factors in all of those different domains that I mentioned before the individual, the family, community and larger environment, they are the same kind of protective factors that exist in those same domains. We look for those things.
That’s why it’s inadequate just to say, “Wow, this person has all these risk factors and the cards are stacked against them. That is A not fair, B, not even accurate because we also have to look at protective factors which is essentially our buffering factors.
Dr. Lisa: You talked about this in the Maine Magazine article?
Dr. Jeanette:A little bit.
Dr. Lisa: What are those?
Dr. Jeanette:Those factors are … we can go back to early relationships. Certainly positive attachment, a secure attachment in the family is important within an individual. Even in a situation where you have a baby that has a colicky temperament like we mentioned before. It’s kind of difficult to manage as a baby and can really stress out the care givers. It becomes the task then to work with that baby and to find supports for yourself so that you can manage that baby to develop a secure attachment.
Dr. Lisa: When you are talking about attachment, that’s how the mom and the baby bond?
Dr. Jeanette:It’s a little bit beyond bonding. Bonding is more kind of the early imprinting that goes when right after baby is born. Attachment actually is a description of the qualities, the relationships that unfolds over time.
Dr. Lisa: It doesn’t have to be a parent. It can be a single care giver, one care giver.
Dr. Jeanette:A care giver. I’m going to use the term parent or mother generically because it might be a grandmother. It might be somebody else who is serving in that capacity with that particular child. An attachment relationships unfold s over time through experience and relations where I was talking with my students about this yesterday in class actually. We were talking about the reciprocal relationship. Attachment becomes really important, an attachment is important because it serves as the foundation for how that child comes to understand the world and the people in it and what gets internalized and what gets taken in from that experience?
That is a protective factor. Secure attachment is a protective factor. If a child is given opportunity and has good problems solving skills and has generally … as this child grows up it sets a purpose, has positive values and has a history of being able to engage in activities and succeed at them, so development of a sense of competence is important. Those are important kind of individual protective factors.
In the family certainly supportive family, caring family where there is relatively good harmony and everybody fights but nothing is ever perfect but that. Family harmony that provides secure stable environment for the child, kind of senses of responsibility within the family and for the child to be involved in that as well
Dr. Lisa: What does that mean? A sense of responsibility, is that doing tasks around the house or a sense of community or what does that mean?
Dr. Jeanette:It kind of means all of those things. I think that people have responsibility to each other in a family and if the family culture supports that kind of a stance and that … responsibility to each other and responsibility to do certain things.
Genevieve: Chores.
Dr. Jeanette:Chores. In order to run a family, things have to be done.
Dr. Lisa: Well, so I’m interested in this because my children do chores. I did chores when I was growing up. I don’t like beat them with a switch and make them sweep out the cold dust and the fire place or anything like that.
Dr. Jeanette:Right, you are not going to make your three year old do the dishes.
Dr. Lisa: No, it’s very age appropriate and yet I see … we went out to dinner one time at a person’s house and some stuff got on the floor and so I asked the kid, “Where is your vacuum cleaner?” and he looked at me, and this was a long time ago, so I’m not outing any …
Dr. Jeanette:It’s somebody else’s house, yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Somebody else’s house and he said, “I don’t know.” I had to stop and think, “the kid doesn’t know where the vacuum …” I said, “How about a broom?” He said, “I don’t know where that is either.”
Dr. Jeanette:Right.
Dr. Lisa: Talk to me about kind of the way that we’ve started to emphasize the importance of children as individuals versus children within a family structure. Is that something that you see happening within our society?
Dr. Jeanette:I think that there have been so many movements in parenting over the years. From the kind of helicopter parenting, protecting the child from chores or anything that’s going to get in the way or anything that’s sort of negative to create this positive experience.
Dr. Lisa: The free to be you and me thing.
Dr. Jeanette:Right. I see a shift back. This is isn’t backed up by any research but just in my opinion that it seems like the pendulum is swinging somewhere back into the middle where people understand that in order for kids to develop the capacities to move forward in their own lives, they need to have some sense of responsibility for themselves. They need to be given opportunities to develop those kinds of skills and competencies in order to move forward. We disable our children if we don’t.
Dr. Lisa: I think that’s really important point. I have a son who is 18, he is Guatemala volunteering for Safe Passage and what he found was he left and he was the captain of baseball team, captain of the soccer team. He was going to go to Bowdoin. His whole life in front of him but he was a superstar and when he got down there he worked like the rest of the world works and I don’t know if this is maybe part of my parenting fault, I don’t really know but I do think that we’ve raised … and this is not a bad thing perhaps. We’ve raised a generation of children who are used to being on display.
Who are used to being reviewed for their individuality. Again, not a bad thing but I just wonder how this is going play itself out.
Dr. Jeanette:I think to some extent what you are saying is true. I think that people are becoming more aware of the need for kids to take on other kinds of responsibilities. Maybe in situations where they are not going to shine, situations that are going to challenge them and they are going to come home and say, “Oh God, that was really awful day. Oh god, my boss yelled at me.” If they have a part-time job and how you help them to deal with that kind of degree of adverse situation and move forward with it and to cope with it.
Dr. Lisa: That speaks to your resiliency thing.
Dr. Jeanette:Resiliency is really about coping and adaptation. Coping really refers to the kinds of skills that we employ to navigate those complex situations like the one you are describing. He has to find master within himself. A way to cope with that situation that he’s never been in before. Then coping then turns into adaptation when those copping skills get internalized so that it gets generalized to another situation that he encounters in the future that he can draw from because he’s had that experience.
Those things are protective factors. Those kinds of coping abilities that set the stage for a future adaptation in other adverse situations.
Dr. Lisa: We almost need to be introducing or at least not protecting our children from all “evils”.
Dr. Jeanette:Absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: We need to be exposing them to various safe ways of practicing these coping skills so that they become resilient later on.
Dr. Jeanette:Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Well, and you have a very interesting take on discipline which I would like you to talk about because we’ve talked a lot about that and the word discipline. Tell the listeners your theories about that.
Dr. Jeanette:I always think that the difference … I harken back to this article I read years and years ago that was written by Bruno Bettleheim who distinguished between punishment and discipline and how punishment really comes from the outside and in that discipline is something from the inside out that’s generated from the inside out and that what he talked about in this article was that in order for a child to develop discipline, they have to be disciples, to follow. As a parent you need to be a disciple that that child can look up to and follow and take in the values that you uphold in your belief systems. It can seem kind of daunting.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a lot of pressure; you have to be a role model for your child.
Dr. Jeanette:You have to be a role model for your child. Punishment actually doesn’t really create a sense of discipline and sometimes kids need some consequence for something they’ve done and that might be experienced as a punishment, it’s not that you should never use that but that I think when Bettleheim was talking about that years ago. Of course he is a controversial character. We won’t even get into that but he did have some words of wisdom about some things that I think that we … he was talking a lot about the harsh punishments that people often employ.
That do not actually … what it just teaches the child is to avoid the punishment. To do whatever they can. It creates a rift in the relationship and the child won’t come to you with things … and I don’t know where it came from exactly but I have always had a sense that the world is not a fair place. I wasn’t treated unfairly as a child. Myself, I came from a middle class family but grew up in an immigrant family and understood the oppression that my Armenian relatives experienced.
My grandparents on both sides came here to the United States to flee the genocide that was perpetrated against the Armenians in the early part of the 19 hundreds and they came here to escape that. They lost a lot so there was a lot of loss and there was a lot of reconstruction of life here. Creation of community and I saw early on how powerful that sense of community was. I was very active in the Armenian community myself back the and to some extent as much as I can be now here in Maine, I’ve had a sense of the impact of social injustice on the lives of people across generations.
The kind of intergenerational patterns that emerge as a result of that kind of trauma. That doesn’t quite answer the question about why go into social work specifically but I always wanted to … always had this interest in the underdog.
Dr. Lisa: Sort of leveling the playing field a little bit.
Dr. Jeanette:Leveling the playing field and how things are not fair and how some of the smartest people I have ever met or people who didn’t have the advantages to succeed in the ways that people maybe who are lesser skilled even were able to do because they had means.
Dr. Lisa: Why did you choose to focus on parenting as part of your social work training? You have a doctorate in social work.
Dr. Jeanette:Yes, I do.
Dr. Lisa: You could have gone in any different direction. Why parenting?
Dr. Jeanette:My specialty hasn’t been parenting per say. It’s not really that parenting is my thing but I have been very interested in mental health practice with children in families. I have been in private practice and I have worked with kids and families and people throughout the whole lifecycle. Even adults who are presenting with issues that at their own adult developmental transitions which I have worked with people and kind of retrospectively as they are reviewing what happened to them as children.
I’ve always been interested in the genesis of human problems. Where do they come from? Answering the questions about why even though we can never know exactly why and I always say this to my students too that I teach a course at USM called critical thinking about human theories of human behavior. We cover a range of theories. I always tell them that. One of the things that you learn is that theories won’t have the answers for you but they will help you to ask questions and they will help you to understand what you don’t know and what we don’t know as a society. It humbles you to explore human problems and to try to understand why they came to be.
Genevieve: As you’ve told me before, all society begins in childhood.
Dr. Jeanette:Yeah. We all carry with us these templates from our childhood that are not fixed in stone, that’s the other thing I want to say here that just because somebody piles steeped in risk factors in your lives, it doesn’t mean that that’s their path that they are destined to always live in that situation because it’s really amazing what people can do. Just to kind of quote named Nan Henderson who is a social worker who has written a lot about resiliency. The title of one of her articles that she wrote about resiliency is “Hard-Wired to Bounce Back,” That we are hard-wired to bounce back.
Dr. Lisa: We did a show actually one of our first shows back in the fall was on breast cancer survivors and it was about resiliency and it was about this ability to bounce back and now I’m sitting here wondering, these are things that we are doing as adults but I’m really wondering how much of this kind of came back from what they were doing in their childhood. From what their parents were doing with them and how far that back went?
Dr. Jeanette:I think when people are thrown into a crisis like getting a breast cancer diagnosis or getting some sort of really bad news about something, that it’s really understandable that somebody in that situation might really crumble for a while. Because the coping mechanisms that they have developed to deal with their routine day to day lives don’t really work in the face of that kind of a crisis. There is a breaking down of coping and until … but what adaptation does if you’ve gone through difficulties in the past that you muster it/ People muster strength from way down in the wellsprings of their soul. They find it and they rise to it and they cope and adapt.
When I was working in New Orleans, I was a supervisor at a program for the healthcare for the homeless and I worked with the homeless population and everybody would just say to me, “That must be such a depressing job. How can you stand working around those people?” I thought, those people, it’s not an us and them. It was the most hopeful placed I ever worked because no matter how low, you see people at their worst at the homeless clinic.
They are at a really low point but many of those people were not always at that point and had full lives and are educated and had significant accomplishments in their lives but lost everything because of some tragedy or some other kind of circumstance that was not within their control. I saw tremendous resiliency even there.
Dr. Lisa: I’m wondering for our listeners if any of them out there are troubled or worried about their child right now. What are some things out there that they can do or outreaches or places they can go to talk to someone?
Dr. Jeanette:There are lots of places you can go and talk to somebody. I think the first thing that you do is you use your relationship with your … if you are worried about your child, you have worries about your child, don’t keep it to yourself, transparency is really important. Showing concern, using your relationship, your attachment with that child to talk with them, reach out to them and if you can’t resolve the problem with them there, definitely seek help.
There are lots of people out there in private practice. There are places like where there are outpatient clinics where you can bring your children and call to make an appointment. Places like Maine Medical Center or Community Counseling Center here in Portland when even if you don’t go to those places you might get a referral to somewhere. There are national associations of social workers on their website. They have a directory of licensed social workers who are in private practice all over the state.
Genevieve: Don’t do it alone.
Dr. Jeanette:Don’t do it alone. You don’t have to do it alone and that’s part of being a resilient family. I also want to say, that I think that sometimes if people happen to come from privileged, sometimes they think, “We don’t have any risk factors in this family but sometimes it’s just so not obvious or you might not be willing or able to look at what might be there because sometimes they get hidden by the privilege and it’s not always the case.
Certainly there are some risk factors that you won’t be facing like economic strife. There were other kinds of risk factors that might be involved.
Dr. Lisa: It’s all about showing up and paying attention and being willing to be open.
Dr. Jeanette:Being willing to be open.
Dr. Lisa: In the column that you and I created for this month’s wellness issue we go through different life stages and different parenting tips, so if any of the listeners out there was to read more about your philosophy and the concept of resilience and some of the tools that you use as a parent. They can read it in the magazine.
Dr. Jeanette:Yeah, there are some pointers there and you could write a dissertation on any one of them, it’s the truth so that … I think the overall message is to be paying attention. Build your relationship and not to be fooled by the fact that as your child develops they sometimes will push you away, seem like they don’t need you anymore. They need you more than ever through adolescence. Be paying attention to that.
There is a great quote that I came across too that was by Robert Louis Stevenson that I think sums up resilience and Emmy Werner actually has used this quote in the prefix of her book on her research. The quote is, “Life is not a matter of holding good cards but of playing a poor hand well.” That to me embodies a lot of what we mean by resiliency.
Dr. Lisa: Those are wise words indeed and we have been very pleased to have a chance to talk with you Dr. Jeanette Andonian from the University of Southern Maine. I know people are going to want to go to the Maine magazine website and read your article by Genevieve Morgan and also perhaps pick up a copy on their local newstand. Thanks for coming in.
Dr. Jeanette:Thank you for inviting me, it’s a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Our bodies are often the first indicators that something isn’t quite working. Are you having difficulties sleeping? Anxiety or chronic pain issues? Maybe you’ve had a job loss, divorce or recent empty nest. Dr. Lisa specializes in helping people through times of change and inspiring individuals to create joyful, sustainable lives. Visit doctorlisa.org for more information on her yammers Maine medical practice and schedule your office visit or phone consult today.
Dr. Lisa: We had the good fortune to speak with Jeanette Andonian from the University of Southern Maine about parenting and some of the things that foster resilience in children. We have with us today Zoe Ramona who I think is probably pretty good exemplar of resilience. Hi Zoe, good to see you.
Zoe: Good to see you too.
Dr. Lisa: We heard about Zoe because she is friends with Leanne here at Maine Magazine Maine home design. Leanne said, “I have this really … I hear you are going to do something about the Boys and Girls Club. I have this really inspiring friend and you should definitely meet her.” Southern University brought us all here in the same room and the more I read about you, the more inspired I actually am. I have also sitting next to me Genevieve Morgan.
Genevieve: Hi Zoe.
Zoe: Hi.
Dr. Lisa: Zoe, you graduated from Portland high school?
Zoe: I did.
Dr. Lisa: How long ago?
Zoe: In 2005.
Dr. Lisa: You are a relative youngster, Genevieve was pointing this out that it’s ironic that we are talking about kids and parenting and you don’t have any children yourself, I assume?
Zoe: No, I don’t.
Dr. Lisa: You do some tutoring?
Zoe: I do, yeah with a seven year old and a four year old.
Dr. Lisa: In Spanish?
Zoe: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: This is your professional life but tell us about the running that you do and why? I’’s a bit crazy, you ran from Huntington Beach to Charleston South Carolina, right?
Zoe: I did, yes.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a long race.
Zoe: It is, about 3000 miles.
Dr. Lisa: Why did you do that?
Zoe: I love running obviously. I didn’t always love running but I thought last year about a year and a half ago if I could just be outside all the time moving around. That would be an excellent lifestyle for me. I started dreaming about a run across the country and I want to do it to raise money for the Boys and Girls Club. It’s just an organization that’s really close to my heart. I just put that love of running with the love for the Boys and Girls Club together and I said, “I’m going to run across the country.”
I started telling all my friends about it. I knew once I voiced it I would have to do it so it didn’t let me go to my word. Actually one of my friends had a friend who had just completed a run across the country and he did it and loved it and survived. I thought, “This boy can do it, I can do it too.”
Dr. Lisa: How did you do it? I’m interested in the mechanics of all these. From what I understand, you began running around the Back Bay in Portland, three and a half miles. That is how you begun your running, a really long time ago?
Zoe: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a big difference between that and all of those thousands of miles. What are the mechanics of running that far?
Zoe: Training beforehand. There was definitely a love of running that grew between that first time around Back Bay and when I decided to do this run. I think some time in college, running just became a really good release for me, a really good just kind of private time running can almost a selfish endeavor I think to just get away from life and sort your thoughts out. I grew to love running in the in-between time.
I ran some marathons, I did some half marathons and I used to, while I was in college, every Saturday I would wake up around 10:00 and run all day till 4:00 in the afternoon and then hit up the dining hall and have a great feast. That was my idea of fun.
Dr. Lisa: I was a long distance runner on the side. I have to tell you, that’s what I do on Saturdays. And people think I’m crazy..
Zoe: There you go.
Dr. Lisa: Do people think you are crazy?
Zoe: They do. We are not though.
Dr. Lisa: Okay, that’s good. At least the two of us we can say that, “No, we are not crazy.”
Zoe: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: How does one go about running from Huntington Beach to Charleston South Carolina? I assumed you have a backpack. I can only imagine how one does this. You must have to stop at night, how do you do it?
Zoe: It would have been neat if I had just a backpack but I actually had a stroller, speaking of kids, I had a baby stroller. A lot of people thought I had a baby with me along in the run. I didn’t. There was just all my gear inside, extra pair of shoes, tent, food, safety gear, all that kind of stuff. I pushed the stroller and then at night about 25% of the time I would stay at hotels that would donate a night for free. Then the rest of the time I would stay with hosts that I found through the Boys and Girls Clubs in each city or through city halls, through churches and I think before I left I probably had 60% of my lodging planned for and prepared and taken care of.
My parents actually did a lot of the leg work for me back in Maine. While I was running they would call a head to the next town and they had a fax system to tell the police about what I was doing, to contact churches and city halls and find me hosts. My parents did, they definitely helped a lot.
Dr. Lisa: Were you ever afraid?
Zoe: That’s a good question. I think I was afraid just twice really. In the first week I had a truck following me for a while at night which was spooky and then I was afraid of dogs on and off but I carried treats and pepper spray, just in case.
Dr. Lisa: I like that. You got a carrot and a stick. If they are nice to you, they got one thing, if they are not so much, they get the next one.
Zoe: Exactly.
Dr. Lisa: What about your parents, were your parents afraid?
Zoe: They were very afraid, yes. My mum told me before I left to take a picture of her and her beautiful brown hair because when I returned she told me it would all be white or falling out. That didn’t happen but she was very worried for me.
I think my dad was just as worried but was more … he hid it well I guess you could say.
Dr. Lisa: You had this intention and you brought it in to the world and you manifested and you actually dedicated it to the Boys and Girls Club. What was it about the Boys and Girls Club that was so wedded in your heart?
Zoe: I actually never went as a kid. I was never a member but like I said earlier I went to Portland High School and the club was right across the street from high school. Like always I stayed late after school and do sports et cetera and I could see kids just look like they are having ball inside and I could see kids waiting for them to open their doors after school. I feel almost like I went to it because I grew up just listening to my dad tell me stories about his days at the club because he was a lifetime member when he was a kid. He was always there with his brothers.
I feel just through his stories that I almost went there. He told he learned to play foosball there, he learned to swim. It was just a really good environment to nature a creative spirit and to also help with homework or just with … you have a ton of issues when you are a kid. I think the Boys and Girls Club does a really good job of helping or addressing nearly all of those issues like being alone after school, needing homework help, peer pressure. Needing to find friends and an environment to explore, do I like cooking? Do I like sports? What do I like? I think that’s a really good job they do.
Speaker 1: We will return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsors. Akari, an urban sanctuary of beauty wellness and style. Located on Middle Street in Portland Maine’s Old Port. Follow them on Facebook and learn more about their new boutique and MediSpa at akaribeauty.com and by Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth Maine. Makers of Dr. John’s Brain-ola cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicspecialistsME.com.
Dr. Lisa: In addition to raising money for the Boys and Girls Club, were you able to raise awareness about their mission?
Zoe: I think definitely. Another part of what my parents said in terms of ground work, they would call newspapers and new stations in almost every city I ran through, so I was constantly meeting with journalists and news stations as well as any time there was club then I would do my best to stop at the club and talk to the kids. I think there was only two towns where just the timing didn’t work. Every other town or city that had a club, I would go and visit and that was like just a huge motivation to go and actually see the kids and hear them like ask, “What are you doing? You are crazy; you are running across the country. Can I do that?” Just to see in real life why I’m doing it and the kids would always want to run with me or play soccer and that was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.
Dr. Lisa: You blogged about this as you went along?
Zoe: I did, yes. Every night, from a cell phone.
Dr. Lisa: Wow, you were using your thumbs to blog?
Zoe: I was, yes.
Dr. Lisa: Is that blog still available for people to read?
Zoe: Yeah, it’s zoegoesrunning.wordpress.com.
Dr. Lisa: People can find out about your adventures with the dogs and the truck driver and the playing soccer with the kids?
Zoe: Yeah, can read all about it.
Genevieve: Zoe, you are 24 years old and you have an incredible sense of internal motivation. How did that come about for you?
Zoe: Definitely my parents just telling me every day, still tell me every day, “You can do anything you want. You can be whatever you want. You just go out and do it and let us know what we can do to help.” I guess I was smart enough to listen or just lucky enough to have that in my childhood, because we all can do whatever we want. Just go out and do it.
Dr. Lisa: I’m inspired sitting here listening to you Zoe. I don’t know if I’ll run across the country for my next run but what you’ve done is amazing. I hope people will go and read your blog. Tell us your blog again.
Zoe: It’s zoegoesrunning.wordpress.com.
Dr. Lisa: Good luck with making your decisions about Italy this summer.
Zoe: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Will you be running in the upcoming Boys and Girls Club race?
Zoe: I will, yes. My mum just reminded me about it actually, so yes I will and hopefully maybe get a PR, own Personal Record.
Dr. Lisa: That would be very good. We’ll be looking for your name. Everybody look for Zoe Romana. There is no pressure there at all though.
Zoe: Yeah, don’t say that.
Dr. Lisa: Thanks for coming in and talking to us today Zoe. We appreciate it.
Zoe: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa: As part of the Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast, we like to spend time with local organizations or individuals representing local organizations that are doing good for the community. That are helping people give back and as part of the theme of today’s show which is ‘Kids’ we are now in the studio with Tony Myatt from the Boys and Girls Club of Portland. It’s nice to see you.
Tony: Great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Tony, you are going to talk about this great race that I have ran at least twice before, it’s coming up very soon. Tell me about the 83rd Boys and Girls Club Patriots Day race.
Tony: Absolutely. It’s been going off from 83 years. It started off with the alumni association … actually no, it started off before that. It started off as just a little fun run that people did. There were only like 10 people that ran at the first year in 1930 and as a result they kept on having to be like it was the race to do for the race to do for the longest time until into the 1970s and ‘80s when the running boom took place. They had the race there and they didn’t even charge any money for it at all, then some local races started doing it and they started doing their own races and charging a little bit.
They decided it’d be a great way to do a fundraiser for the scholarships that they have given out every year since 1963. The Boys Girls Camp Alumni Association is the people that put this race on and they have been around since 1959, the association and as a result they’ve put on the race for the last however many years.
Dr. Lisa: I have sitting next to me Genevieve Morgan, my cohost and Genevieve I know does some running. Tell me what this race course looks like?
Tony: It’s straight right out on Cameroon Avenue right up the street from Boys and Girls Club. Right at the corner of Cumberland Ave to Pearl Street and basically from Cumberland Ave to Forest Ave all the way down Forest Ave to Baxter Boulevard. Goes all around Baxter Boulevard and goes briefly over Bates Street and turns right on to the Tukey’s bridge and stays right on the path on Tukey’s bridge and goes right up to Washington Avenue and then it turns right and finishes on Cumberland Avenue and it’s fairly flat the most part. There is a few hills stack in there some places but it’s a fairly good course. A lot of people like it and it’s the oldest race in Maine.
Dr. Lisa: I’m interested in this and I don’t know Genevieve when you are going to pipe in a minute. I think about the 1930s that’s like chariots of fire time I mean, did they even have official sneakers back then. I mean all these questions are …
Tony: Probably not.
Dr. Lisa: This is a very big thing, 83 years.
Tony: Probably not. Actually if you’ve seen tee-shirts in the past there’s actually been some people, there is pictures of a first Patriot Day race. Basically they are doing a floor start like they are going to scrum. Like they want to win the first corner of the track and it was something that was just a casual fun thing and now it’s grown quite a bit. The even hit its peak back in 1991 when it had over 1000 people register for it. Unfortunately through the years because more and more races have evolved, they haven’t quite reached that since.
I took over the race in 2010 and when I took over the race in 2010 I said, “I want to see a 1000 people at this race again.”
Dr. Lisa: Are you a runner?
Tony: I am a runner myself.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have to run it. Can you walk it?
Tony: You can absolutely, walkers are definitely welcome. We have a trail vehicle that’s following all the runners from behind and there is a police car that’s going to be leading it and people run it and walk it every year. It doesn’t matter what you do, run, walk or crawl.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out more about the Boys and Girls Club or the upcoming Patriots day race?
Tony: The Boys and Girls Club has a website for the Boys and Girls Club and so domain and that’s www.bgcmaine.org and you can register for the Patriots Day race on www.basedateevents.com and you can always stop in the Boys and Girls club for an application during club hours and you always have the opportunity to mail in an application or register online. Again the cost is only $15, it’s $20 race day and the first 500 people get a shirt and there is free pizza afterwards provided by Papa John’s and there is also the awards.
We’ve expanded our awards category new this year. We’ve expanded it to having club teams and corporate teams to help bring more participants to the race.
Dr. Lisa: It looks like there is also a pasta dinner.
Tony: Yes, past dinner, $7 all you can eat on Saturday, April 14th and the kids 12 and under are free so if you have kids you can make it a family event for a very reasonable price and we want to get more people to come to the pasta dinner because it is a great place for runners to socialize and talk to people and it’s a reasonable price that won’t break your budget.
Dr. Lisa: Sounds that you could have an entire weekend of fun for a very small amount of money.
Tony: You sure could and if you have any relatives or friends that are from out of state, the Clarion Airport hotel is on 1230 Congress Street is offering $79 per night for up to four people for a hotel room if you have friends and family that want to come up and stay.
Dr. Lisa: Very good. All right, we hope people will join you on Sunday April 15th at 12:00 o’clock.
Genevieve: And carbo-load at the past dinner before.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, exactly at the 83rd annual Patriots Day five miller which is supporting the Boys and Girls Club of Portland. Thanks so much for coming in and joining us.
Tony: My pleasure, thank you.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio hour and podcast show number 30, with the theme of kids. Airing first on April 8th 2012. We hope you have learned much from Dr. Jeanette Andonian coordinator of the Masters and Social work program at USM, Zoe Romano, runner and blogger who raised funds for the Portland Boys and Girls Club and Tony Myatt, director of the Patriots Day race for the Boys and Girls Club.
We hope that you will be inspired to think about perhaps the ways in which you are interacting with your own children or children that you might be pseudo parenting let’s say, and perhaps you’ll be inspired to go out and do a little running maybe even in honor of the Boys and Girls Club.
For more information on the show, go to doctorlisa.org to download this podcast or other podcasts like it, go to Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. Please also consider becoming a friend of ours or liking our Facebook page or contacting us to become a subscriber of our eNews. We do appreciate all of the helpful feedback we got from listeners such as yourselves. We know that this is an hour out of your day and we appreciate the time that you have taken to become a part of our community as we grow the hope of wellness and health in a much bigger way than perhaps as previously been thought of before.
This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors. Maine Magazine, Micklepage and Beth Franklin at RE/MAX Heritage, Robin Hodgkin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. Dr. John Herzog of orthopedic specialists in Falmouth Maine, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, BOOTH, UNE, The University of New England and Akari.
The Dr. Lisa Radio hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Christ Cast and Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John C McCain. Our assistant producer is Jane Paid. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today visit us at doctorlisa.org and tune in every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. for the Dr. Lisa Radio hour on WLOB Portland Maine, 1310AM Or streaming wlobradio.com.
Show summaries are available at doctorlisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.