The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Waiting for Mister Rogers: Teaching with Attachment, Attunement, and Intention by Wysteria Edwards BA Ed.M

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Waiting for Mister Rogers: Teaching with Attachment, Attunement, and Intention by Wysteria Edwards BA Ed.M https://amzn.to/40zjxLB Wysteriaedwards.com Every day children enter classrooms crying out for love and relief. Waiting for Mister Rogers reveals a Kindergarten teacher's journey to find answers for the broken children entering her classroom—and the wounds in her own heart—through the personal notes, speeches, and writings of Fred Rogers. Many moments of adversity, violence, and suffering can be traced back to broken attachments in childhood. These early attachment wounds follow children into adulthood, often damaging their interpersonal relationships. Where the world offers shallow and complex solutions, the gentle work of Mister Rogers models simple and deep ways to heal insecure attachment. Waiting for Mister Rogers, answers questions of personal development and connection for anyone seeking support, such as: What do children need to be securely attached? How can teachers heal their wounds to be fully present, intentional, and effective with their students? Could student be triggering a teacher’s childhood trauma? Can teachers go deeper while doing less? It's time to remember childhood, return to the Neighborhood and teach with attachment, attunement, and intention. Mister Rogers was right all along! Show Notes About The Guest(s): Wysteria Edwards is an educator and author who has dedicated her career to transforming the lives of children through attachment repair. She is the visionary behind Simple and Deep, a company that empowers women to understand and heal from insecure attachment. Wysteria's latest book, "Waiting for Mr. Rogers: Teaching with Attachment Attunement and Attention," explores the profound impact of Mr. Rogers' teachings on children's emotional well-being. Summary: Wysteria Edwards discusses the power of Mr. Rogers' teachings and how they can be applied to improve our lives and the lives of children. She shares her personal journey of healing from insecure attachment and how it led her to discover the transformative impact of Fred Rogers' work. Wysteria explains attachment styles and how they shape our relationships and behaviors. She highlights the importance of attunement and attention in creating a safe and nurturing environment for children. Wysteria emphasizes the need for self-reflection and healing to break the cycle of trauma and create healthier relationships. Key Takeaways: Attachment styles formed in childhood influence how we relate to others throughout our lives. Mr. Rogers' teachings emphasize eye contact, attunement, and emotional expression for secure attachments. Insecure attachment can lead to behavioral addictions and relationship challenges. Healing from insecure attachment requires self-reflection, seeking support, and rewriting our own stories. Love and authenticity are keys to creating secure attachments and fostering emotional well-being. Quotes: "Attachment is our first heartbreak. If we didn't have a broken connection with others and how we love and receive love, a lot of things would be solved." - Wysteria Edwards "Children are always communicating. The function of behavior is love. Children just want to be loved." - Wysteria Edwards "All stories need to be named, pondered, articulated, and then we bless them through rewriting them." - Wysteria Edwards

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There she is. The opera singer makes it official. It's never the Christmas show anymore until the fat lady sings, as they like to say, from the opera stage. I always have this vision of her when we came up with the idea for it. I had this vision of that Hanna-Barbera. I think it's from the Bunny show. I forget what it's you know do you ever see the fat lady and she had the horns from the opera and she had the steel uh suit on that's what i always picture when i when i we came up with the idea for that and i'm like maybe maybe she had like a little like the little

animation of her pop-up from bugs bunny she looked like you when she comes down from the sky pretty much yeah yep yep yep when the fat lady sings maybe there should be like a picture of me and i'm wearing her outfit from the comic that's what i mean and i have the horn i don't know that might scare people uh so folks we have a wonderful show with us today we're gonna be talking about uh something that's dear to my heart from my childhood growing up uh and i think you're gonna enjoy it too uh we're going to be talking a little bit about mr rogers not a little bit a lot of it and we're going to find out uh some of the things that he made people's lives better and uh well you can use from him and learn from him still this day

on how to make your life better uh in the meantime please go to all the things and support the show uh we certainly appreciate referring the show to your family friends and relatives give them the chris voss show glow because the chris voss show glow just makes everybody seem almost so wonderful when i meet people that listen to the show i'm like holy crap you have the chris voss show glow and then no we just visited chernobyl last year uh anyway guys go to goodreads.com for Just Chris Voss. YouTube.com for Just Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com for Just Chris Voss. Go to the LinkedIn newsletter as well. The 130,000 group is on LinkedIn as well.

And now new on the lineup, you can go to our Facebook group for the Chris Voss show. And they have the new Facebook chat. Some people find it annoying. we find it wonderful because people just talk about the Chris Voss show. We kick them out. Go to chrisfossfacebook.com to get the link to that Facebook group. So you can enjoy that. And you can just enjoy the show wherever you want, even on TikTok at Chris Voss one.

She's the author who's joining us today of the latest book that just came out September 26, 2023. It's called Waiting for Mr. Rogers, Teaching with Attachment, Attunement, and Attention. Wisteria Edwards joins us on the show, and she's a teacher, an educator, so we're excited to have her. She's a B-A-E-D-M, which I don't think the E-D, I think you have to say the ED and then the M part. Otherwise, we think she goes to raves a lot. She is changing the way that we live with attachment, attunement, and attention. She's a respected kindergarten teacher in eastern Washington who has perfected the art

of creating a classroom filled with care, hope, and healing. Her passion for teaching has even led her to gain access to Mr. Rogers' personal papers to write the groundbreaking book, Waiting for Mr. Rogers. Repair to be amazed as her unwavering dedication to attachment repair transforms educational practices and reshapes our perspectives on adversity and developmental trauma. She's the visionary behind The Simple and Deep, a company that empowers women to comprehend insecure attachment through engaging stories and intentional living. Welcome to the show, Wisteria. How are you?

I am doing well, Chris. I'm so happy to be here with you. I love people that can actually banter with the good ones so yes let's do this i have some wit or stupidity i'm not sure which it is but uh you know what it's all relative right as long as we can laugh at ourselves i think that we can go we can do a lot in life right it doesn't have to be so serious all the time i've seen myself naked in the mirror there's lots to laugh at at. So give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the internet? Well, it's pretty simple.

My name is not phonetic. So Wisteria would normally be W-I, but it's W-Y as in yo-yo, S-T-E-R-I-A Edwards dot com. So they can find anything and everything about what I do as well as my LLC that is called Simple and Deep, like you said, that helps women and lots of people, actually. Men have really benefited from the message, too, of what is insecure attachment? Where does it come from? And then looking at our own stories of harm and heartache and seeing how those are actually the catalyst towards all the things that we do, but especially how we interact with our children, regardless if they're mine in a classroom or they're my own children. We actually what we don't heal gets revealed in all of our relationships, but especially interpersonal relationships are where we actually get flared with the good stuff.

Right. Like all of a sudden our mother shows up or our dad shows up and we're like, whoa, I promised myself I would never do that. And then we're like, why did that happen? So that is kind of a little bit of what I do already, but then it kind of goes into what Fred did as well. So yeah, that's kind of a little bit of a nutshell in that. There you go. Well, this is bad news for me. If you heal women's ability to have insecure attachments, you ruin my whole dating pool. So give us a 30,000 overview of the book Waiting for Mr. Rogers. Well, Waiting for Mr. Rogers is really the culmination of five years of work. I grew up as an only child. I had a parent set that stayed together.

They decided to be miserable for 18 years on my account. I don't know if that was helpful. But I had two parents. But I ended up with what they call complex PTSD. And a lot of us don't think of PTSD as being something other than, you know, people living through trauma as far as war or some type of global tragedy, loss, 9-11, that sort of thing. But when we're looking at things called developmental trauma, it's a thousand paper cuts of emotional hurts, right? So developmental trauma is not getting enough of the good things that we needed. And so as I looked at my own story,

I started to wonder why is it that I have this great marriage, these beautiful children and the job that I loved and I was sabotaging my life with lots of little behavior addictions. So people can do that through sex. They can do it through gambling. They can do it through overspending, binging, eating too much, not taking care of taking care of ourselves. Right. But that is really a symptom. Yeah. You just described Fridays around here. Right. Okay. Good. So we're all, we're all together. We're all in the same place. I just actually did this work with a bunch of early childhood educators and I started talking and all of a sudden it was like a ping pong ball. They'd start balling and I'm like, was it me? And they hadn't even seen Fred yet but the thing is is that

we all have an attachment style and so how we relate to the world was set in part by our what happened when we were born and how our mother cared for us right so and we go oh but my mom did the best job she knew how to do but But if our mother had insecure attachment, she can only pass that along. And so those same relational skills, we either got what we needed, or we didn't get what we needed. And so I had what they called anxious attachment. So there's four types. And they started doing this research at the late 60s. Well, that is about the same time that a young father who decided he wanted to study. He was he was he was passionate about television. He was passionate about child development and he was passionate about religion. Fred Rogers became he entered the idea of what is a child's inner world.

And this is when Benjamin Spock was around, Eric Erickson, like the biggest people that we can see as the leading authorities at the beginning of when we started thinking about Montessori's and preschools and like what's really going on inside the inside of a child. I don't know if you saw that a lot of people

were passing around this video of Fred Rogers testifying in the Senate. Have you ever seen that? I think I saw that from the, was that in the documentary? I think it was too. But the thing is, yes, it is. But he went before the Senate to tell them why they needed to fund public education and our public, excuse me, public television, not public education.

That's like such a thing that always comes out of my mouth. Kind of the same thing. But yeah, but basically he was trying to explain and he read some of his lyrics to what do you do with the mad that you feel? So as I was going through my own journey of trying to heal this insecure attachment that I had, that I had this deep fear that people

were always going to leave or abandon me. I ended up encountering a little boy who was the biggest mess of my entire career. And I, yeah, one of my own students, I had left extreme poverty, 100% poverty, and I moved to like 70% poverty, which doesn't seem like a huge, big leap. But like, all of a sudden, there were moms, soccer moms, and min minivans and like PTOs. And I was like, I had no, I felt like I went to another planet. So all of a sudden this little blonde haired blue eyed boy entered my classroom and he was such a freaking mess. He was exactly what most children are coming into our classrooms with now. He came in with what we call adverse childhood experiences. And our

children are living with things that we call ACEs. And they are a predisposition towards possibly having other things happen in life later, like obesity, death, obviously heart disease, all of these different things that they were seeing in people as they started to look back on people's childhoods, they saw that they had these little tick marks so like divorce if your family if someone had been incarcerated if you had watched people fighting in front of you if there was mental illness in your household so things that we all even children growing up in the 70s and 80s this was brand new to Fred when he started doing the program where all of a sudden he had to talk about something like divorce. Right.

Because all of a sudden the nuclear family started to fall apart. Right. And we started to have more divorce. We started to have blended families. We started to have all these things that had never really existed until that point in such a large scale. So all of these things, though, create wounds in children, regardless if we try our best or not. We're not equipped to handle it. No, no. And what happens is if we don't have that secure foundation as an infant, it follows us through life.

And it actually is mirrored in the people that we try to date, in the people that we want to relate to. And also I saw that as children were coming into our classrooms, I was seeing teachers that were emotionally bleeding out on kids. So for instance, they'd be like, oh, I can't freaking stand Chris Voss. That kid is always in my business. He's always up in my face. And you're like, why is it that certain children would bother me versus other ones? Why could I pour my life into someone, this child, but this child drives me freaking crazy and I can't stand them? Why is that?

It's not just a temperament. It was actually triggering your insecure attachment. So I kind of was on this journey myself. And then this little boy came in. And at the beginning of every school year, they do this presentation for teachers where they're like, these are adverse childhood experiences. Have a good year. You're like, you have no idea.

Nine out of 10 kids are going to have them. Have fun with that. Have fun with that. Then they always say, take it out of your toolbox. We come with all this crap. Is that the Have fun with that. And then they always say, take it out of your toolbox. Like we come with like, you know, all this crap. Is that the vodka? Exactly. And there's a reason vodka is clear.

And I'm not endorsing that, but I often think it. But the thing is, we are, we're coming up with, the kids are just coming in with so much crap now. And so I've been around colleagues who have had to evacuate their classrooms because kids are throwing the biggest tantrums ever. They were dealing with parents who are screaming at us through different social media apps or whatever, instead of just coming in and having a conversation with us. We are all responsible for our children in America. But what happens is we are broken children in adult bodies. We never handled our own shit, right? Brene Brown says that. Stop working your shit out on other people, okay? So what happens is I started to just kind of investigate this and realized that this little boy had what we call disorganized attachment.

But Fred Rogers was at the beginning of when they first discovered attachment styles so if we think back to watching mr rogers neighborhood there are hallmarks of what a secure attached person does for a child one of them is you look into the when he looks into the camera what is the biggest thing eye contact think about how everybody has these in their hands right like we are never looking at the people we're talking to or we're never in the same room that we're in yeah so like so have you ever gone out to dinner and seen a family sitting down? They're not talking to each other. They're all looking at their phones. Yes.

So Fred used to say that the best part of television was that you could actually turn it off. He didn't like TV. He didn't like it. He was like, I know that I'm on TV, but he liked the fact that we could either either pause it or we could turn it off. So he definitely would not be endorsing all of our Netflix binging. I'm just going to be honest about that. But we're letting Fred down. We are letting him down. But the thing is, is that he showed us, he showed us and he was right all along, but he didn't have a way of proving it with the brain. He was using this really advanced child, child theory, developmental

theory and applying it to the program. So he was showing us what attunement looks like. So a lot of people say, well, what is attunement? So attunement is really allowing ourselves to enter an emotional experience with someone else and not feel it for them, but be willing to say, I'm right here and I'm available. So you have a child that's derailing and freaking out and losing their crap. It's not going to help them because what we know about the brain to go into a situation, or how about a colleague that's just losing their crap, their math, right? And then you have that one person that's like, oh, and they kind of keep coming back behind them.

They won't leave them alone. And people are like, just leave them, Let them like, let them chill out. Right. But it's because we have our own stress responses that are built into us from children or from childhood because it kept us safe. It kept us alive. So if we needed to be the fixer in our family, we try to be the fixer everywhere we go. If we avoided our dad who was going to be drunk or angry, then we weren't going to come up to our spouse or our significant partner and say to them, this really hurt me when you did X, Y, Z, because what are we going to know in our body that that is not welcome?

So what happens is we as we study our own story, we can recognize patterns and themes in our life that led us to, let me guess, this is my question, like led us to where I need to finish that thought, led us to who we are now and what we might struggle with. So this is my question for you, sir. Did you ever get in trouble for either being one, a class clown or two talking too much. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

And you know what I, I got in trouble for, I know it's going to be, I know. Right. So what did I get in trouble for? I was too loud. I was too bossy.

I was too bold about what I thought. And I stood in the corner for talking. Well, guess what? Now I get paid to talk. So, ha. But we also shame children because they have these incredible gifts. But our gifts don't come from just an honest, beautiful place oftentimes. They come from places of pain. And so our superpower really lies

in our places where we've probably had a lot of shame, a lot of sadness, a lot of ridicule or blaming or being told that we're not enough. And that is actually what I've learned the most is that those moments where I learned to be ostracized or not be able to know what it's like to be selected or to be chosen or enough have equipped me to come alongside children now who feel that and owner that chaos and to say to myself, now I'm going to rewrite my own story by choosing to engage it at this level with a child so that they are no longer harmed from that. Does that make sense? So like, so Fred Rogers did the same thing. Fred Rogers grew up with a hypochondriac mother. Okay. So he grew up in the 20s late 20s early 30s the depression didn't even

phase them like they didn't heart they were so rich when the Lindbergh baby went missing they thought he was on a list okay he went to he went to school in a limousine and he was a fat kid so he was constantly ridiculed not only for being the rich kid that the whole town knew like basically they were the family that oversaw the whole town knew, like, basically, they were the family that oversaw the whole town, right? Wow. Then he had a chauffeur, for goodness sakes. And then his mom didn't let him play with anybody because she was afraid he was going to die or he had allergies, right? So, like, that kind of gives you an idea of what Fred Rogers grew up with.

So he grew up also with avoidant attachment, which is one of the characteristics, a child that has a really hard time expressing feelings. So what did Fred Rogers emphasize the most on his program? Being able to feel. Yeah. That wasn't a question. You did watch it. I remember. I mean,

I watched that. I think I've seen every episode a million times. But so that's the thing is if he wouldn't have really looked into who he was and what harmed him as a child, he hated. One of the things that made him the most pissed off was when people told children not to cry.

I can't imagine. Mr. He was, he was pissed. He did. He got a message. I just can't imagine. He was so nice.

Yeah. Right. But one of the other thing that really pissed him off was one time a bag of mail was thrown away. And he answered, get this, Chris, he answered every single letter he ever received by hand. So we don't have those. Absolutely. Another thing you've talked about the Morgan Neville documentary, which is Won't You Be My Neighbor? And it completely showcases the intense tensionality of Fred Rogers. But the other thing I would suggest is my friend Maxwell King wrote this incredible book called The Good Neighbor, The Life and Work of Fred Rogers.

And he used 10 years to in the archive, which is what we call that. Now they call it the Fred Rogers Institute, but it's where they house all of the artifacts. Fred Rogers' last dream was that he would be able to be a professor at this tiny little college st vincent college and can you imagine having him as your professor like that'd be kind of amazing but he looks like a professor with the whole sweater thing right and he when he when he retired in 2001 he was he was thinking he was going to do that and then he also had trauma associated with hospitals and doctors and guess what he didn't do? He never went to the doctor because he avoided it.

Because we avoid things that are kind of uncomfortable or painful or scary. I can't blame him, actually. No, exactly. And he had a tummy ache for like three years and didn't take care of it. And everybody was like, have you taken care of that? He's like, no. He died of stomach cancer. What happens when we do not take care of that? He's like, no, he died of stomach cancer. What happens when we

do not take care of our emotions? They make us sick. If we swallow, so we know now from classic examples of trauma that if we do not take care of something, it stays in our body and it poisons us. Resentment poisons us, right? You see people that like, I don't know if I'm sure most of us have seen one person is so hateful and bitter and nasty. And it's like, they just never die because they're just like so poisoned by it. And it's the good ones. It seems like that we lose along the way, right? This is why I stay so hateful, bitter, and angry all the time. It's working forever, man. Right. Yeah. Evil is is forever i learned that a long time ago so i'm how is it possible that i'm gonna be 200 at the pace i'm going right i know there's days where i

probably am gonna we're gonna have like little cabanas next to each other but that's the thing is that whatever we don't heal gets revealed in our behavior in our resentments and all of those kind of things so this little boy came into my classroom, just full of rage. He was so angry. He had witnessed domestic violence. And his mom said, well, he only saw that when he was two, but he, your body remembers it. So trauma stored in your nervous system. So think about if you're walking through an airport and you smell a cologne or you smell a perfume, or you hear a song. That's your nervous system telling you a quest or telling you information. So he literally took this little girl that he adored, Annabelle, and he pushed her up against a brick wall at recess and said, if I can't have you,

no one can. Holy crap. Right. And is that what the father was saying to the mother? Yes. Yes. So he replicated the whole thing he replicated it and he and he had that is why we see now that people are passing things on we're seeing alcoholism passing from generation to generation it's because if we don't heal it we pass that crap we pass all of it we pass and we could say oh i'm not going to be like my dad and all of a sudden we lose our job and all these things happen and we're in a bar making it numb right and it's like why i told

myself i would never do this but it's very familiar to our nervous system so that's what i'm talking about is the things that children come to us with they have swallowed from their environments and they are being reinforced through different things that are happening but also trauma is not like we said the things that we didn't get but it's we didn't get enough of that person coming alongside us taking off their shoes think about fred rogers was always changing his shoes so he was modeling that even though it's here right now, it's not going to stay forever. And then the people that love you always come back. And when grownups leave us in kindergarten, we always say, why do grownups come back?

I didn't, I wasn't there today. And I said, will I be back on Monday? And they said, yes. And I said, well, how do you know? And they said, because you love us and you want to be here. He says, grownups come back because they love you and they want to. So when I started to use Mr. Rogers was because I didn't know how to help this little boy. I was like, I have no idea. They're like, okay, here's your ACEs preview. He's got nine out of the 11. Now what? And he's like,

he's like a little mini rapper, Eminem. Like he's sagging his jeans and he's walking around chest bump and everybody and karate chopping people and screaming. I don't care at me and everybody around him. And I was like, yeah. And I'm,

I'm people that are teaching. Now we'll tell you, this is very, very common. And what happens is this stops all instruction because now I'm stressed. I'm totally dysregulated as a teacher. And guess what? Children in my orbit, in my classroom are now going to respond to how I feel.

Have you ever been having a shitty day and then everyone around you starts to have one too? Yeah. That's pretty much every day. Yeah. Okay. Well, so maybe let's turn it on the other way like let's spin it and say when you're having a good day yeah maybe that would be different for you if you're always having a shitty day now what are these good days you speak of the good days yeah exactly but i know this and i but i'm also now becoming aware that my nervous system, how I feel, how I respond to the world is going to deeply affect children. I knew that, well, first of all, I didn't know why I'd become a teacher. Like a lot of people would say, why did you become a teacher?

And I'd be like, I have no freaking clue. And everybody else had that like really cool story of like, Ms. Smith came to my bar mitzvah and she brought me a gerbil. And everybody else had that like really cool story of like, Miss Smith came to my bar mitzvah and she brought me a gerbil. And like they have all these great stories of like how they felt loved. And I was like, I didn't have any of those. And I thought, when did that happen? So I started to study my story. And I started to think back to stories that really just kind of,

as I thought about my own journey, like if you made a timeline, what stories stick out to you from that year of your life, like your nine-year-old year, okay? And so one of the stories as I was going through my own therapy was the story of my third grade teacher. And I didn't know why, it just wouldn't kind of process so i started to look closer at it because we study everything think about this if you want to be um if you want to learn a new sport or a new hobby what do you do you start researching it and learning as much as you can about a podcasting whatever it might be i'm going to learn as much as i can about a new car i'm going to purchase we never look at our story we are a story we're not just in a story we are one we are full of characters and settings

and plot twists and tragedy is what moves our story forward because when things are kind of normal and going okay it's what do we really talk about we talk about really high highs and really low lows right it's like the rising action and the falling action you know those things we were supposed to know when we were in high school and we're like, but it's the idea that like, that is what moves our story forward. The villains, the people that steal love from us

or betray us or when we receive love are those high highs and low lows. So I started thinking about this story and realized that I didn't have a lot of context because children, if we don't have context, we make it up. So we if we don't know why mom and dad were fighting, children just assume it's about them because we're egotistical. But children are egotistical. So everything's about them.

Right. So if I'm having a bad day, I've had a little girl in my classroom that would always say, are you mad at me? Dude, there's like 26 people in this room. Why would it just be you? But to her, it must be her that did it because children absorb it and they swallow it. So in this story, I remembered that we were making this really stupid craft. I don't know if you made these where they had the little brad fasteners and everything was jointed in the 80s. Boothpicks and stuff or something? It's like they're like the little brad fasteners, like the gold fasteners that you like spread the back out. And like then it makes it. Yeah, and they fold out like this.

They have a Y thing. Middle finger to those. I never use them. This is why. Trauma. So anyways, this lady loved these stupid crafts. And we had to do everything that was jointed that year. And I was like, I hated her.

Because I had had a brain injury the year before. And in the 80s, we didn't call it that. We called it like a mental block. Or I was slower. But I hit my head in a car accident. I hit my head on a dashboard. And after that, my computation went down the tubes. Also, my fine motor., my computation went down the right, like the tubes, also my fine

motor. So my handwriting went to crap. But anyways, all of a sudden I was, I went from being average, normal, loved by my second grade teacher to ostracized by this woman. And she had kind of picked out certain children that she would pick on. She was just a bully. Yes. And a lot of us have these stories. A lot of us have these moments of pain, but we dismiss them because we're like, well, I'm going to, I'm going to compare it to Chris's story. Like it's not as bad as what Chris went through. So then we just dismiss it, but it was painful. So I often say to the women that I work with, if it happened, it freaking mattered. Like if it still comes up,

it mattered. Like that thing that that person told you years ago that you just can never forget that hurt you. Like, and it's okay to say that it hurt me. Right. So this woman was ostracizing me again. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do her craft. I threw it to the back of the desk and somehow she saw me do it or someone ratted me out or something. It was like the eye of Mordor like was on me. And I just remember the feeling. I don't remember the word she used, but I remember how it felt. So thinking about when you were cut from a team or someone didn't include you you or you heard really bad news, you probably won't remember the exact words, but you'll remember how it felt in your body. And that stays with us.

So I remember being hot. And then I remember feeling like I was going to cry. And I was like, I remember thinking as a child, if I let her make me cry, then it's going to be over. And all of a sudden it welled up in me because i knew that if my principal who i loved would come in and see that he would she would be held accountable but she never got caught doing it because bullies do it behind people's back oh yeah they always know when people are watching they're like and she was a true narcissist and so she only did this when no one was looking because we were children we couldn't we were defenseless right Right. So, um, I said, I hate you. They do. And they, and unfortunately they never retire. It's the good ones that leave because

they get so tired of watching people be crappy and also being micromanaged. That's a whole new subject in itself. But the idea is this woman, I finally burped out this whole, I hate you, which came out of, and I said, and, but then I said to her, you are not allowed to treat me like this. Boundaries. As a child. There you go. I knew it. I knew it.

I knew it. I knew it. And she was stunned. And all the kids, like the resale bell rang. They all just jetted because they're like, she's going to fricking die. Right. Wistie's going to die. So we're going to leave. We're not

going to witness her execution. And this woman was silenced. But she was like, put your head down. But I remember looking at her through my fingers. She couldn't say a word. She was probably so enraged that you stood up to her. But also, like, she was silenced.

Well, guess what? That was the moment I became a teacher. I was nine. But if I wouldn't have looked at my own story, I would not know my why. Well, guess what? I've always had to do with my big,

bold mouth, stand up against bullies. The other thing I've always had to do is stand up for children that other people deem as worthless or too much. So now do you see the theme? So now this little boy comes into my classroom and he is that kid. He's the one that they go, oh, guess who's in the office again? No. And they're like, oh, and he's a fifth grader now, but he's still a jerk. He is not one of those kids that you're like, oh, cuddle, cuddle. He's still angry.

But the thing is, is that love changes people. Authentic choice. Love is not a feeling. It's a choice, right? So I turned on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood because I was like, I have no idea what to do with him. And there's so many shallow and complex programs that are like, learn how to define this X, Y, Z. And then like to give kids a bunch of alphabet letters after their name of some chronic thing they have. But really it's, they're broken. Just hopefully get through the day or make sure everybody lives. And it's like this hamster wheel that teachers are on

where we kind of love them at the end, but we're like, what, what did that get me? And then I realized too, that teaching is like being a foster parent for an entire year of 20 to 29 children. And a foster parent learns a little bit of this horrible story that they've had. But think about the fact that we have to learn all their stories. We have to learn how they all work together.

We have to teach them how to like, not kill each other how to be kind how to oh wait by the way wistie make sure they also know how to learn to read on top of that but but nothing nothing too major make sure they can read like the only thing they need okay but i'm on it right yeah so then i have this kid tanking in front of me and i am triggered and i'm thinking I told my counselor, I was like, I don't even know what to do with him.

So I said, I'm going to start showing Mr. Rogers. And so I had to go on YouTube, look for the crayon factory. Cause I remembered we went to the crayon factory and that was cool. And I put it on and I prayed to the living, holy God that it would work.

Like I was like, please God, like I don't have anything left. And here I was a seasoned 15 year teacher. Wow. I should have known better. Like, why is this kid taught in extreme poverty? Like I was the token white girl where I taught, right? Like I didn't even speak Spanish. And I was like, I knew how to like do certain things. And I left because I was so tired. But this kid was going to take me out. So we put it on.

Not we. I put it on and prayed that it would work. Well, guess what? All of them bowed into it. Really? Yeah. Mr. Rogers saved the day. He did.

He showed up like he always told us he would, right? I'll be back when the day is new and I'll have more ideas for you. And you'll have things you want day is new and I'll have more ideas for you. And you'll have things you want to talk about and I will too. So all of a sudden, love showed up. My mentor asked me when I told her I was going to do this, she's a retired teacher and she said, okay, well, here's the deal. If you're going to do it, I want you to be all in. And I said, okay, whatever. I was just so desperate. So she said, I want you to pull up a chair and I want you to not multitask, which is very hard for a teacher. Like we're always thinking about the next thing.

She goes, put your phone away and let love show up. And I said, I'll do it. So I pulled up one of their chairs and I modeled for them and things just started to happen. And what's so beautiful about it was not only Fred's faith surrounded that show, but he was applying what we now know as neuroscience, neuroplasticity, the way our brain can actually be rewired and molded through experience. All of a sudden, the children in my care started to gain creativity. They're not creative anymore. They don't know how to sit in a chair. They don't know how to use a color crayon. I'm not kidding. They think everything is a smartphone. They can't come up with anything to play outside except pretending they're in a video game. I'm not kidding. It's bad. So they didn't know that a paper plate could be a steering wheel to a car.

They didn't know you could make a pop, a puppet out of a sock. They didn't know. So then all of a sudden I thought, oh man, they're going to be bored. Cause like it's outdated, right?

Like it's the seventies. Like look at their clothes. They were a little bit restless at the beginning, you know? And then I just realized that Fred had put in transitions to show the difference between reality and make-believe. So all of a sudden, all the questions that I had started to get answered. Like, what do you do when children have really big questions? Like, why did that happen? You just tell them the truth.

Wow. So all of a sudden, you know, like things like fast forward when I didn't have this little boy anymore. But when we had COVID, I'd say, well, you know, COVID is an adult problem. And you have wise adults in your life that will help you. They'll show up for you and they will take care of you. You do not have to solve adult problems because many children were raised to be parentified, which is they have to be mommy's little helper or they have to be mommy's surrogate spouse where she tells all her secrets,

which is what happened with me. And so all of a sudden it twisted what is love and what is intensity, right? And so it sets us up later for addiction because we get this hit of dopamine from it. But then the parent is also hot and cold. So you have these things that happen in our households that train our brain to feel a certain thing or do a certain thing. So it was just powerful because all of a sudden,

Fred started saying these things that made sense. Or like, we'd be talking about dominoes and we'd go visit uh handyman negri's music shop and there is 2 000 dominoes and i'm like what like i mean it was just like every day something would be so massive or i was sitting in this little chair and i felt like i was three uh-huh time i was a teacher and like so the inside of me is pleading like please god mr rogers please tell me what to do for these little boys i had several that were bad that year I was a teacher. And like, so the inside of me is pleading like, please God, Mr. Rogers, please tell me what to do for these little boys. I had several that were bad that year,

but like this one blue eyes, I called him in the book is he was really hard. And so I would put him in front of me every day and I would just touch his head because we don't touch children anymore because man is a pedophile. As far as we don't have children anymore because every man is a pedophile as far as we're concerned. We don't have our neighbors that we know. We don't know. And I grew up with several elderly people who really knew me, who I knew were my safe place.

And children don't have that. So oftentimes when they come to school, we have to be that. We have to be a hospital for emotional children. And we aren't a good doctor when we're already sick emotionally and so that was it it was like and there were times where i failed him totally failed and i'd have to learn to just repair it and say i failed let's do it again and so he started to change and miracles started to happen with his brain. And so then I learned about the archive and got permission to go and research.

So I sat for an entire week in the archive of Mr. Rogers. Yeah. Yeah. So I went, I went back to Latrobe, Pennsylvania where he, where he grew up, which is right outside Pittsburgh.

And yeah. And it reminded me a lot of my hometown in Spokane, Washington. And which is now famous for gonzaga not zaga everyone says it wrong but uh the basketball team but anyways um but it's it's an old mining like old uh steel town you know um and i grew up with as a brick mason's daughter you know so i was i was used to things being dirty, things being, you know, just there was a lot of parallels to that. And so that with his with his special like his papers. Right. So, like, I had his handwriting in front of me and it's like all warped because he went swimming every morning at the Y. So, like, it was warped from being in his briefcase and his little doodles on the side and and seeing his dreams and his hopes and his aspirations. And like everything Fred Rogers portrayed to us

was absolutely authentic. But let me just stop here. And he was not in the military. He was never a sniper. That's another one that goes around about him. He was never fully tattooed. People think that too. They thought he was a Marine.

And yeah, like they thought thought he was hiding tattoos. So we're just going to go on the record like none of that was true. I don't worry about anybody being that. I can't imagine. If he took his sweater off and he had arm sleeves. I know, right? Like tats. But really, he was completely himself.

He said, I never thought that I had to put on a funny hat or do a funny dance to connect with a child. I just showed up authentically as myself. And he said, the greatest gift we can give the world is our honest self. So all of a sudden I just started healing. I had always collected Wizard of Oz. Like my whole classroom was Wizard of Oz

and all the kids I'd ever taught knew that Mrs. Edwards loved it. It was obnoxious, Chris. I had a yellow brick road and I had fake legs that came out of things. They had ruby slippers on them. It was so intense. It was obnoxious. We got robbed once when I was first

married. They went into that room with all my collection. I think they were like, what is this? We should probably just leave everything here and go like they had no idea like yeah right like we we get really weird with collections but i realized as i as i healed i didn't need that stuff anymore yeah and i realized it was a security blanket for me oh wow as a child like and i never would have thought about that i i realized that i was a complete scrooge mcduck with band-aids and i didn't know why i'd be like like you don't need one just go to the end

of the line right and i was like why am i so pissy about band-aids like what it's just a freaking band-aid but i did not want to give them out one i was annoyed that they asked two i was i was annoyed because then they would lift it and i'm like i just gave that to you stop pulling it up again oh yeah fred started telling us about body integrity and that you know you're the same under your band-aid as you are above it like and and you're gonna it's gonna be okay and people that love you are gonna take care of you and all of a sudden i was like oh and then i realized as I got curious about my own reactions to things, because when we have really like extreme reactions to things, it's an old wound. So think about when people get mad, it's because they're acting like children. Have you ever seen

what people do when they're mad? They slam doors and they throw tantrums. And, you know, like we end up in lawsuits as adults. But like kids, like they're screaming, laying down on the ground. But we kind of do that too, don't we? I do that. I lay on the floor and scream. I hold my breath until I pass out, until I get what I want. And how does that work for you?

I'm sure that everyone's gone. I know. I don't know. I'm always like, oh. And I do that with kids. Like, oh, yeah, I don't think that worked. No, sorry. So this little boy keeps crying in my classroom.

And I finally just started to say, well, I think I'm over it. I think we're over it. I think it's over. I think we need to just like, I think we need to grow on the inside. I think it's time to take that big step. And he was like, oh, okay. And it was like, I go, so what do we know like am i gonna keep you safe yeah okay because i go this might be kind of like getting to the point where it might be

getting kind of manipulative buddy like are you doing this to make sure somebody comes yeah and he was like yeah like oh you're trying to get mommy to come and get you and he goes yeah oh and i go well why do you want mommy to come and get you. And he goes, yeah. Oh, wow. And I go, well, why do you want mommy to come get you? And he goes, I just want to be at home. And I said, well, here's the deal. Now that we started kindergarten, that's like your job. Like you're here to learn.

And mommy's doing student teaching right now. And she really doesn't need her little boy making things harder just because he wants one thing and she needs to do another. And so guess what? Then all of a sudden we get to the week about work. And Prince Tuesday is having an issue because King Friday and Queen Sarah have to go somewhere and he doesn't want them to go to do work. And Fred talks about, you know, mommies and daddies still miss us when they're at work.

And sometimes we have to do things that they don't enjoy, but they always come back for us. So it's like just telling kids, like, I know it sucks. I know it sucks, but guess what? I'm here and we're going to get through it together. And what's really cool is at the end of the day, now we do our feelings and the kids are like, I'm happy today because Will didn't cry.

And like, he's like, and he's so, but it's so powerful when one of them says says that you're like, that's cute. Oh, that's so cute. But then when 20 of them choose to say it, we get to talk about one feeling. That's an impact. All of a sudden he goes out and he tells his mom, I was so brave. And Fred talks about, we grow on the outside, but we also grow on the inside. So when children make a choice where I'm like, wow, that was so kind. Like it wasn't just about you. It's about someone else.

And you cared about how they were feeling. That to me shows that it's working. So, you know, the same thing happened with this little boy. It just, he tested it, you know, in the book, there's times where he would be like, Mr. Rogers is for babies. And I'd be like, and I'd go back to my counselor and she'd be like, he doesn't have to like it because children have no control. They need to know that they have something that's theirs. Their voice has been taken. So I needed to give him permission. I just had to give him permission to say, you know what, you have permission to feel whatever you feel. As long as it's not hurting anybody.

Like I would love it if you came and watched Mr. Rogers with us, but, but you don't have to like it and you don't have to want to do it. I'll be over here. If you need me, let me know what you need. Like take your time. Well, two seconds later, he's, you know, sitting beside me and he's like, this is when King Friday did this. Like he was totally into it, Well, two seconds later, he's sitting beside me and he's like, this is when King Friday did this.

Like he was totally into it, but he needed to know that I would still love him even if it wasn't perfect, if it wasn't what I wanted. Right. So children. This is really brilliant stuff. This is really brilliant stuff. But the thing is, it's simple and it's deep. Right. Like we have to get away from thinking that everything about children is complex.

Children are always communicating to us and people. Okay, let's look at it. My mentor told me once, she said, people are mean because they're afraid of something. I mean, that's powerful stuff. Think about war and conflict. Think about hate. Why are we afraid of people? Well, they're different because we are afraid maybe they're going to take our property. They're going to take our jobs. They're going to take our livelihood. They're going to take our dignity. They're going to take the attention. They're going to take a position we want. They're going to get ahead of us. Like, so we're afraid of something. We're afraid of being embarrassed.

We're afraid of being seen. So we get mean because it's easier, right? But it's the same for the children. Children are always communicating. And the people are like, let's talk about the function of behavior. And I'm like, no, no. The function of behavior is love. like no no the function of behavior is love children just want to be loved and and but if we have made them afraid of it they're going to push against it but they still want it fred said the insides of children have never changed it's only the world

around them that has there you go so as we come to the end of our hour with Syria, this is awesome. I'm so excited that you got access to his archives. And I think you've gotten to know some of the characters from the show, right? Yes. Yes. David Newell is an extremely good friend of mine, Mr. McFeely. And this is really, really fun. Yes.

Yeah. Speedy delivery. And like I said before, we came on the air. Joe Negri is close to Speedy delivery. And I, like I said before we, we came on the air. Joe Negri is close to 100 years old. Handyman Negri. Yeah. We just lost Joanne Rogers in the last couple of years,

his widow. But David Newell is so precious to me because every year. So I am so proud of this. We have not missed the neighborhood. One day in the last five years, we have watched it every single day. Yes. Every single day in order 180 days every year. And that is in a freaking pandemic, my friend. So I watched it two times because we had hybrid, A group, B group, but we never missed it because I've decided that it's a non-negotiable. Why? Because it's enough.

I don't want a crappy, you know, separate program with a dumb teddy bear that talks to kids. I just need Fred. I don't need a cartoon dressed like Fred. I need Fred. Yeah. Okay. Then I let Fred do it. And he partners with me. So, but yeah, David Newell will actually,

I sent him a text message when we get to 100 days of school because we get to 100 days of the neighborhood. And so he says, speedy delivery to my neighborhood friends. You know, thank you for spending so many days in our neighborhood. And I've been able to hear his stories of his genuine friendship with Fred Rogers. And when I found Fred's trauma, I actually went out and asked him, he was at the archive that day and he's, he's cleaning out his garage. He's got all

this crap in his garage. So, um, I said, is it okay for me to talk about Mr. Rogers having trauma? Because it seemed kind of like bizarre to think that, like to talk about Mr. Rogers and trauma. And he said, no, no, no, no, no. He said, Fred struggled with that his entire life. Wow. He had deep, deep guilt over his child when his youngest son was in a, where he had to have a hernia operation when he was 24 months. And they came and grabbed him out of Fred's hands

and put him in one of those bassinet, like wheelie cart things that kids, like the crib that rolled. And it took like almost two hours to sedate him. like wheelie cart things that kids like the, the crib that rolled. And, um, it took like two, almost two hours to sedate him. He came out and he was like, so, uh,

klutzy and like, and he was having all these major, major accidents. And they actually said, maybe he's psychotic. And Fred was like, what? Like,

but it completely screwed up his brain, the trauma of that experience. And Fred always trying to come to terms with it because he felt as a father that he had failed his son. And that is also the trauma that kept him out of hospitals. So do you see how if we don't engage our heartache and forgive ourselves or really ask ourselves why? So this is the thing about stories. I want to leave you with this. All stories, and this is from a brilliant mind, Dan Allen Durbin.

He said all stories need to be named. They need to be pondered. They need to be articulated. And then we bless them through rewriting them. So when we articulate and say, that was abuse. Now we might say, my mom is dead. Okay. But you know who needs to hear it?

Your soul. So this little boy who I wrote my book about, his father has recently reabandoned him and says he wants nothing to do with him, which is literally breaking my whole heart. But when he came to tell me, I said, I want you to look me in the eyes and I want you to say out loud, my dad is being a fool. And he said, my dad is being a fool. And he said, my dad's being a fool. And I said, he is because someday he is going to regret this because you are so incredible. And I said, but I need you to promise me one thing B. And he said, what's that?

And I said, and he came in from recess to tell me this. Like, I mean, what fifth grade boy comes in sweaty from basketball to go see his kindergarten teacher, but he's in that much pain, right? And I said, so I want you to promise me the one thing that you can do from this, which is the end of that, right? Blessing our story. I said, someday I want you to promise me if you have a son that you will never do this to him.

And he said, oh my, I would never do it. And I said, that is when you're going to rewrite the story. There you go. Rewrite the story. Have the empowerment. So give us your final thoughts as we go out and where people can find out more about what you do, how to work with you, how to onboard with you. So this is the book. It's full of these beautiful, I know you said you're going to put it up there.

Well, it's kind of foggy. Anyways, it's blue. It has this beautiful picture of Fred from Lynn Johnson collection. She spent time with him for several years. But what I want people to know is that it can all heal. Like I went from insecure attachment to secure attachment. And how we do that is we find guided people that are secure and we work with them because we actually borrow security from other people so we can have insecure attachment from with one person and be secure with our spouse right so but when we're under stress we're going to regress so the best thing we can do is look for ways to engage our story uh with trusted people whether

it's a therapist a counselor, whatever it might be. So they can find me again at wisteriaedwards.com, W-Y-S-T-E-R-I-A.com. And I have a 60 second quiz that's free on there. You can take it, find out what your attachment style is, and then it gives them a customized report of what that is and how they can go on from there. And then I have a podcast that I talk about all of these things on because life is messy. I mean, you don't ever just like get over it, right? Like the next time someone pisses you off, you're like back to being insecure. Like, but it's about we can actually know, okay, that's my trauma. Like, and we have to come to terms with the child we were.

So it's about, you know, getting a picture out of yourself and deciding that you're going to truly love that child because you do. Not because someone told you that that child should earn or have or be, but because of who you are. Right? So the book is for sale anywhere that you can buy a book. And I would just hope, it's not just for teachers, Chris. It's for any- It's for everybody. Yes. For any human being,

because we all, that's the beauty of it. Attachment is our first heartbreak. Think about this, all poverty, all adversity, all death, violence, destruction, it all leads back to insecure attachment. If we didn't have a broken connection with others and how we love and receive

love or keep love, I think a lot of things would be solved. So it has to start with us. This is how we heal it. It's not complicated. Yeah. Maybe we could solve the whole world's problems. Yeah, honestly. And you know, and that's the thing. Well, and honestly it's, it's on prime, you know, and if and if people buy a subscription, like for five bucks a month for PBS Kids, you can get all of them for, you know, and I watch them in order. Yeah. I wish I'd had it during COVID. Oh, my God.

You guys, and it's amazing, too, because we've had studies now where Fred's, Fred's cadence actually brings that. So even how fast we speak to children, all of that. So that is my hope for people is that they would just find peace because that's what Fred said, you know, peace, peace, peace. You know, we all need peace. Like we're craving it. We're, we're crying out for it. Right. And when we talk about how we feel at the end of the day, if children say I'm green and we say, well, what what does calm really feel like and we say calm is what it feels like when we spend time with him when we

spend time in the neighborhood with him so that is that's what my hope for everybody is with the book is just give it to people use it mark it up make it yours you know because i feel like he just left things and i just went back and found what he was. He was right the whole time, you guys. He never, and we mocked him. A lot of people mocked him and they thought he was too simple. He was right the whole time. Now they've just proven it with the brain.

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. I didn't even know much of what he did was so intentional until I saw the documentary. And I'm sure it will be in your book. Yeah. I just thought, hey, it's just some guy on TV and somehow he just hit the perfect formula. He just got lucky.

I didn't realize how intentional it was. Well, an implicit memory is before we can actually make memories, we swallow it in our nervous system. So that's why people will cry. I've had more grown men cry when I talk about Mr. Rogers than i've ever seen ball like in bars like we'll be out to dinner with one of my husband's friends and his best friend is bawling as we're talking about mr rogers and there is no shame when a man cries over mr rogers like and what's you know what also mr rogers is the great equalizer because if you are people are pissed off on social media if you put a picture of Fred in there, they shut up.

Like, yeah, it's crazy. Like he just equalizes. Yeah. Right. Chris Voss. Oh no, he looks like Fred Rogers, but it's the idea. Like what can we learn from that? Like we need, we, and people are like, we need Mr. Rogers.

No, he left it for us. We know what it was. We just have to choose to do it. That's all it is. And it's hard, but it's worth it. And it changes people. Love comes back when we truly do it with authenticity and intentional. Well, there you go. It's been fun to have you on the show. And hopefully we've taught a lot of great people that can go to your website and they can take the test and all that good stuff. You need go take it yourself sir and don't go trying to take it to get something that you think you know like don't don't be shady when you take it i came

up with this i came up with this already right well but also when you do take the test i want people to know please think about your mother and people might i heard everyone audibly grown which always happens when I say that. But it's really important because she was the first person to set your nervous system, right? Like if you were not adopted, you lived within her body. So that was the heartbeat that you attuned to. And also why your mother can derail you faster than anybody else at a holiday event. Okay?

So I'm not, I'm not kidding. So don't think about your spouse because I had a colleague that did it where she thought of her, of her boyfriend. She got secure attachment, but she thought of her mother and she was disorganized.

So that tells you something. Please think about your mother when you take the quiz, at least because that's so important. And then, yeah, and we just get better at masking it, but we go from the idea

of how we started as children. That's really what you're thinking of., and we just get better at masking it, but we go from the idea of how we started as children. That's really what you're thinking of. And then we just get better at avoiding it or pretending it's not there. So thank you for the opportunity and all the good work that you do, getting people- Thank you for the good work that you do.

Jeez, you've helped maybe bring peace to the world for your book. And what a great story and a great man he was. Thank you, Wisteristeria for coming on. We really appreciate it. Give us the.com one more time so people can have it. WisteriaEdwards.com, W-Y-S-T-E-R-I-A.com. And all of my socials are there.

The podcast is there, link up to that. Please share it. There's a lot more about being locked in a story and all of those things. And then just please reach out to me. My website has the email there and that sort of thing. I'd love to hear. And if you do read the book,

please leave a review because I want people to know authentically what you thought or what you felt like you grew from with it. Because I just want people to have it. I really think that Fred would want people to know that, that life has gotten way too complex. Yeah, it has. And we need to go back to the simpler basics and we all need love.

Everybody needs love. Wasn't that a song with the Beatles? Something like that. Something like that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much as well. Uh, thanks for tuning in,

uh, as always for the show, to your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com for chest, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com for chest,

Chris Foss, subscribe, LinkedIn group, uh, the newsletter, uh, go relatives. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfoss, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrissfoss. Subscribe to the LinkedIn group, the newsletter. Go to chrissfoss1 on TikTok, YouTube, chrissfoss, YouTube, 4chesschrissfoss. And then, of course, the new show, chat on Facebook at

chrissfossfacebook.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.