Angela Fraley - Meet your Loving Guidance Associate

0:06 My name is Angela Fraley. Doctor Bailey has often referred to me as the baby whisper, working with children at zero to five and seeing how incredibly fast that they learn and what we give them in just that short amount of time has such a huge impact on the rest of their life. I've been in early childhood for over 20 years and about half a that has been with Conscious Discipline. When I have early childhood teachers, you know a lot of the time zero to five teachers people say, "Oh you play all day. I'd love to have your job, it must be so easy.", and I tell them to say, no this is your new response, "No I'm a brain builder, what.", because it's huge, it's huge what we do. We are literally building brains in those first five years. Every child needs someone that thinks they're the best thing since sliced bread, that they are the top notch, that, no matter what they do, that we think that they're the best, and that we look at them and just go, "Oh, look at you, you can communicate with me without even saying a word. Just by standing there and, and connecting with me.", and when we can help the parents see that that's learning, what they're doing is literally wiring their brain as they're doing that it's building's foundation for all the other learning they're having their whole life, and that is a huge responsibility and it does a huge privilege that we have. I'm passionate about that and I would say that that's probably one of my strengths, I can go into a room, many times can walk in and you just see teachers like, "Uh, one more thing we gotta do.", and whatever they can leave the training, whether it be a one-day, a two-day, a three day, when they leave with more energy then they came with it's a gift for me because I've, I've given that to them.

1:48 I've had teachers say to me before, "We love the energy that you bring into the classroom. Love the energy that you bring into the trainings.", and the teachers are amazed, because a lot of time I do trainings "Ahh, that wouldn't work on my Billy, that wouldn't work on my, you know Sally.", and then they're just amazed that when, you know, I come in and it really does work, it's not a sprinkling of the magic dust. It's that I focus on what I bring into the room and if I bring in frustration, if I'm upset about something, even if it's something that happened at home, everyone feels that.

2:20 If we can't regulate our emotions, if we don't have access to where we can regulate our emotions, we have no chance of helping a child regulate their emotions. If we're modeling the wrong thing, well guess what, we can say how we want them to do it all we want but it's really they watch what we do and that's how they learn it. It's all about being willing to do things differently, because that's not our go to. Our go to is, "Well, I've done it that way for 15 years. I'm just gonna keep doing it that way.", but when you really think about it, you want to do things differently.

2:55 Initially, at the beginning of a training, there might not be a whole lot of sharing and talking, but by the end everybody's hugging each other and taking those pieces that they've learned in the training so far and giving them a try. I would say probably the most powerful moments that I've had, parents that I worked with that come in stressed they've had lots of things happen and I see that little glimmer of hope in their eye like, "You mean things can be different? My life can be less stressful? You can help me learn some things are going to help while my child is here, but while my child and I are out wherever?".

3:30 Just that little glimmer of hope, to me is the biggest thing, because that's what I'm looking for. When I see that it like we can accomplish anything because, they see it as possible.