S8 E7: Healing Trauma Through Play w/Steve Gross, MSW, Founder, The Life is Good Playmaker Project

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• EPISODE RESOURCES

  https://lifeisgood.com/pages/playmaker-project

  Steve Gross is the Founder and Chief Playmaker of The Life is Good Playmaker Project, dedicated to demonstrating how the power of play can build healing, life-changing relationships.

  When energy is low and teams feel disconnected, it affects more than just morale. Culture weakens, retention declines, and results suffer. However, play unlocks a spark – a spark filled with creativity, optimism, and authentic connection, which sets the foundation for high-performing, inspired teams.

  For over 30 years, Steve has pioneered and led movements for innovative, play-based, trauma interventions for communities around the world. His work has been celebrated by international trauma experts and was featured as an example of how play can be used in therapy in the longtime #1 New York Times Bestseller, The Body Keeps the Score.

• EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

  • Playfulness may be considered ‘pointless’ in a culture of optimization and efficiency in this digital age. However, playfulness is especially valuable. 

  • Think of a genuine belly laugh you’ve had with someone. Was it with someone in person with someone with whom you felt genuine trust, love, and connection that happened in an authentic, present-focused, and spontaneous way? How meaningful was that experience to you?

  • Joy, connection, engagement, and empowerment are considered by Steve as powerful ways of helping individuals heal from trauma and also exist within organizations and teams.

  • Steve shares a negative childhood experience that shaped his drive and motivation to commit his career toward helping children to thrive.

  • As a summer job early in life he found himself thriving as a camp counselor that led him to feel like he was a good fit for helping youth.

  • Steve shares a story of his father who left an MIT professorship to work at a local community college because he really wanted to make a positive impact on people’s lives in a more genuine way. His father often said that the way to create longlasting joy in life is to help someone else’s life along the way in our own journey. He moved away from his initial career path in finance because he did not find meaning in it.

  • Steve initially tried to create a nonprofit to help the homeless, at which point he was told he needed to have distinct competency to make a meaningful impact on the problem he wanted to tackle. He volunteered to run play groups for homeless pre-schoolers and quickly realized his distinct competency is helping kids to feel safe, joy, adored, and capable, which he was very talented at doing through play - the language of children.

  • Feeling what we call ‘negative emotions’ can be a gift if we can do so in a therapeutic way. Steve shares how his own despair while being bullied as a kid led him to develop empathy, coupled with his father’s message of helping others as a way to find meaning in life. Steve shares how he gets so much out of his career, which leads him to not get depleted. 

  • It’s not the what you do - it can be any profession or career - it’s about the why in terms of how you help others and bring out the best in others to make a difference.

  • Steve realized how important it is to allow those in the community to play the central role in supporting the youth in the community. He moved from working with children in trauma-based therapy groups to working with their teachers so he can have a larger scale impact. He feels somewhat more removed from the initial population of the youth in need; however, he feels that he is still in the profession of building relationships and empowering the teachers just as he did so with the youth with whom he worked. 

  • Steve explained how even the teachers who are teaching youth have their own traumas that get in the way of engaging in a playful spirit while they are teaching. He finds that adults and teachers can know what to do; however, emotion and experience can overshadow logic in terms of how they engage with children. 

  • Going through trauma and being affected by life can lead to putting walls up and being self-protective, which can impede a playful nature, which can in turn lead to healing and relationship building. 

  • Steve shares the importance of adults being good role-models and creating environments for reparations and forgiveness to reduce the shame spirals that can become self-destructive, given kids make so many mistakes. 

  • Steve aims to help the teachers with whom he works to re-discover their playful nature to bring that into the classroom. 

  • Alexis shares the quote by Michaelengelo that his sculptures were never ‘created’ but rather he revealed what was already inside the block of marble.

  • Steve recalls when he worked at the renowned Trauma Center in the Boston area where his colleague pointed out how he was doing “brilliant trauma work” in his play group. It was explained as a ‘corrective experience’ for trauma - as trauma creates an emotion of despair, feeling forsaken and alone, feeling helpless and not having a voice; while his groups were giving children the chance to experience joy, unified and connected with others, and providing choice and empowerment. It was also explained how trauma leads individuals to be stuck in the past and worried about the future, while play and joy brings people into the present.

  • Steve shares how the idea of bringing peace, love, and joy to trauma therapy, some people do not see it as ‘scientific’. However, the ability for someone to feel love, and to feel more in their body, and to feel connected and cared for is incredibly powerful. Gerald points out that trauma happens in the context of relationships and therefore healing happens in relationships. 

  • Some in the field suggest the therapeutic relationship does not matter as much as the quality of the treatment. While it is true that a patient may really like their therapist despite being guided in a poor or non-therapeutic way, which may not be at all helpful, it is also true that having a basic level of trust is so important for therapeutic healing. Steve shares how he is passionate about building life-changing relationships with children and that play is simply a medium in the service of healing. The Playmakers is not simply about fostering play for plays sake; it defines it as freely and joyfully engaging and connecting and exploring with the world around you. Being open, curious, and free to connect. 

  • Even with joy, there can be plenty of pain. It’s not simply only feeling joy. 

  • Gerald shares the parallel of how exercise is scientifically proven as important to health yet many people do not exercise. Gerald shares how it’s not an either-or argument about whether or not play is therapeutically meaningful; it’s a both-and in that play is and can be therapeutically meaningful just as other therapeutic approaches can be, as well. Steve shares how there are reasons people still do not exercise and also do not incorporate playfulness into their day to day experiences for the same types of reasons, like not believing in themselves and judging themselves. It is so important to have people like Steve to create and environment where exercise and play more connecting, engaging, and welcoming. 

  • There are so many people who simply cannot find other people to do joyful activities with. Chronic loneliness is very bad for mental and physical health. It seems more challenging for individuals to develop new friendships. This can be so painful for children where friends are so meaningful and important. Some suggest that the digital world has led relationships to feel ‘frictionless’ where kids struggle to deal with the friction and messiness of play and developing relationships.

  • Steve shares how laughter ‘doesn’t have a foreign accent’ in the sense that everyone around the world laughs in the same way, making it universal. He shares how he heard how laughter is something we choose to do with someone on some level, meaning that laughter is a signal to someone else that we are safe to connect with. He wonders if this gets lost in translation when it’s virtual.

  • Steve shares his experience trying to play video games and recognizing that there is not a real physical outlet to the highly mentally stimulating experience of playing the video game on the screen. It’s as if there is nowhere for the high levels of energy to go when sitting down playing a virtual experience. 

  • Steve shares how so much on digital communication gets misinterpreted and leads to such conflict and lack of connection where an in person conversation in a welcoming and open way can smooth things out in a much easier way to reduce misunderstandings and foster collaboration.

  • Kids getting bullied can experience it so much worse if it’s online as it stays there compared to in the past when bullying happened and the kid can move on from the experience without seeing it again.

  • Steve shares how adults could be modeling bullying behavior.

  • Steve shares how early educators may not be looked at with high regard despite the fact that they are in essence co-parenting other peoples’ children. This group has some of the most amount of burnout and it’s very difficult to make a living wage. Supporting these early educators can be a way of addressing the mental health crisis instead of waiting until the issues show up later.

  • Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are toxic to brain development early in life. These experiences range from being bullied, to living w/a parent who has drug/alcohol abuse or mental health issues, living in a violent community, etc. 

  • Having more ACE’s is correlated (related to) having mental and physical ailments later in life. Having a caring adult who can protect, support, guide, and help the child can buffer against this risk since the child will not have their own internal resources to deal with such stressors and traumas. 

  • Steve’s Playmakers organization seeks to help early educators to foster healing relationships with traumatized children by being trauma-informed (understanding how trauma impacts development), by being optimism-infused meaning that their own social-emotional well-being is modeled and transmitted to the child through their relationship (not just by ‘teaching’ it), and lastly that they can communicate with children through play and understand the nature of play. From their own research, this seems to help the teacher’s ability to build healing relationships with kids and have less conflict and more connection with their students. Teachers also seem to be more fulfilled and proud and less burnout. They also seem to feel they have more of the skills and knowledge to support traumatized kids.

  • Steve talks about his dad’s idea of the Golden Rule being expanded to not assuming that what others want is what you want. It’s having empathy to understand the other person and doing something for them based on understanding them. 

  • Play needs to be intentional with a purpose. 

  • Students who have or have had their curiosity fostered are more likely to be resilient in the classroom compared to feeling despaired, helpless, and hopeless.

  • Prioritizing the important things in life is what helps people to be consistent and find opportunities to create connection, joy, and curiosity; and be present and open enough to look for the opportunities. You don’t have to be an ‘expert’ in play to do this. It’s the intention and openness. Even if your plan to do something does not happen as you expected, the strategy could shift and change but the intention can remain the same; even if it requires you to come back to your intention when you drift away from it. It’s like the practice of mindfulness, as it’s impossible to always be in a mindful state of mind all the time; it requires us to practice coming back to that state of mind.

  • Steve references how Freud once said that nothing gives a child more pleasure than when an adult gives up oppressive control and superiority and treats them as equals. As an adult, you can simply follow the lead of the child in play rather than controlling it. This is called ‘child-directed play’ where you can let them lead. You can’t go wrong because the kids can come up with so many ideas simply on their own. Adults can sometimes make things too complicated or controlling. It’s okay to insert and take the lead from time to time but also it’s important to be mindful to join in the child’s world and join them in the play.

  • Kids may not even know why they like something in the instances when social media ‘tells them’ what to like. Asking them in a curious way invites them to self-reflect.

• TRANSCRIPTION

  Welcome back to the Reid Connected Podcast, co-hosted by myself, educational therapist Alexis Reid, and my brother, licensed psychologist Gerald Reid. We're providing you with expert and nuanced discussions on topics relevant to mental health education and sport and performance psychology.

  Gerald Reid  00:26

  Today, we'll be having a very meaningful discussion about the importance of embracing a playful mindset in the realm of healing from trauma, strengthening resilience, and cultivating thriving team cultures. Before we get to our guests, let's set the stage in today's age, where individuals, schools, teams, and organizations prioritize optimization and efficiency, as in be faster, be better, be smarter, especially in the age of AI. Why would we be highlighting a playful mindset? Isn't being playful a waste of time? Isn't it childish and immature? No, no, playfulness can mean so many things. Playfulness is valuable for so many reasons that we're going to get into today. Playfulness needs to be nurtured, cultivated, and invited. Let's take laughter as one aspect of playfulness. Laughter is medicine, some would say. Now, let's imagine a future where digital systems run everything. In some ways. We're already exposed to this. People communicate virtually through messaging, sharing videos, posts they've seen, commenting on videos and posts they've come across, making videos and posts for others to see. Being an avatar in video games, everything is digital, digital, digital, right? We're already connecting in this way. Is there playfulness in this digital environment? Sure, we may laugh once we see someone share a hilarious video sent to us. We may chuckle when we see a character acting on a screen in some funny way, but really think more deeply about what it means to be playful. Think about the purest, most genuine belly laughs that you have shared with another person, and I can't say 100% but I will bet that that experience happened with someone else in person, not on a screen. And furthermore, I bet that that experience of the purest belly laugh that you've ever had actually happened spontaneously. It wasn't scripted. The laughter did not come from quoting a movie scene, it did not come from quoting a TV show, it did not come from some silly social media reel. It was something that only was funny in the context of that given moment. It's probably something that other people would not even find funny, because it was just about that specific moment in that time, in that particular context, which made it funny to you and that other person. And looking back, you may even think that was so dumb, but in the moment you were so open with that person that it was just pure joy, pure connection, pure love. And when I say open, I don't mean substance-induced silliness, I mean in the most authentic of ways. You were simply fully present with another human being in a way that felt safe, trusting, connected, and full of possibilities, because there's no fear, there's no walls put up, there's no concern about harsh judgment. In many ways, it sounds like I'm equating a genuine belly laugh to unconditional love. Maybe unconditional love is the catalyst for something like a genuine belly laugh and playfulness to arise in the first place. Maybe these are just examples of what happens when we feel connected to other human beings, and I'm sure others have suggested this, and Steve, as we will talk today, I'm sure is going to have a lot of thoughts on this.

  Alexis Reid  03:32

  As our guests will share today, kids have a type of openness, kindness, an eyes wide open mentality, simply because it's in their nature, before they become affected by life and put up their walls, those in the positive psychology world suggest that when our hearts are open in the positivity to life, such playfulness it creates an upward spiral whereby we can think more flexibly, solve problems more creatively, and have ideas come to us more readily.

  Gerald Reid  03:59

  Now, I want to be clear, as a therapist, we deal with human suffering, and I'm not suggesting that always, always, always being playful, open, and positive, and never allowing for negative emotions and having boundaries is adaptive and healthy. We need to be able to experience negative emotions and have boundaries. For instance, achievement is always going to require strain, discipline, and hard work, grieving is always going to require us to feel sadness and retreat for some time. Resolving conflict requires us to accept discomfort in the reality of relationship ruptures. Of course, this is all true, but we aim to provide nuance in our discussion on this podcast. So, please don't take it to the extreme. What we're talking about is the wisdom of life suggests that we need to feel and work through all experiences of life, all emotions, positive emotions and playfulness included. So today we're going to focus specifically on the deep value of playfulness, not only for kids and individuals who are healing from trauma, but also for groups of people in teams in order to co. Adhesively flow form and thrive together. So, let's introduce our very, very special guest today. We

  Alexis Reid  05:07

  are so excited to have Steve Gross, founder and chief playmaker of the Life is Good Playmaker Project. Steve applies the lessons learned during his 30 plus years of international trauma response work to help organizations strengthen resilience and cultivate thriving teams and cultures, his goal is to inspire others to embrace a more playful mindset, one that elevates joy, connection, engagement, and empowerment in the workplace. He reminds leaders that these are not only the four key ingredients of play, but also the four most powerful levers for building stronger, healthier organizations, especially in times of uncertainty and challenge. A clinical social worker by training, Steve has dedicated his career to teaching others how to build healing, transformative relationships with children facing overwhelming adversity. 30k playmakers trained, Steve has earned global recognition for pioneering innovative play-based trauma interventions in countries such as Haiti, Ukraine, Rwanda, Turkey, Denmark, Japan, the United States, and more. His work is featured as an example of how play can help children heal from trauma in the longtime number one New York Times bestseller, one of my favorites, the body keeps the score. Steve, we are so stoked to have you here. That

  Steve Gross  06:25

  sounds impressive. You just made me sound like I almost got proud of myself.

  Alexis Reid  06:31

  It's a beautiful work of heart, we know. Thank you. So, we're glad to have you, excited

  Steve Gross  06:35

  to be here. You guys like create a very calming environment, like I feel like I might like doze off in a beautiful way, but yeah, no, it's a real honor, pleasure to be here.

  Alexis Reid  06:44

  Yeah, we're grateful to have you.

  Gerald Reid  06:46

  This is great, Steve. Steve, I know we originally planned how we're going to approach this, and we really want it to be free flowing. Yeah, you have so much experience, so much wisdom from what you've done, and we're so grateful that you do the work you do, because we need people like you to do it. How can you set the stage for how you got into this? You know, I know you want to, you don't want to talk too much about that, but yeah, no, just to, just to help people to understand who you are.

  Steve Gross  07:10

  Sure. So, well, I'll start with, wow, whenever I got so many like little angles, so you guys direct me, tell me if I start going off on a tangent, because you know, I'll give you a couple of, like, pivotal things that I think happened in my life that got me here. One of them was that, as a kid, I went to overnight camp. I got, you know, I went to overnight camp. I was a little too young, probably, to do it in hindsight, and it was really not a good experience for me, I was super homesick, I was, you know, kind of timid. I didn't have a lot of friends. I kind of got bullied because I was a lot younger than mostly kids at the camp, and at the end of the summer, and I remember like this empty feeling of just like I'm so lonely, like really palpable early childhood experience, eight years old, feeling like I don't think I can get through the day, and I remember back then in the, in the 70s, camps were a lot different than they are now, like it was like a Lord of the Flies mentality, it was a boys camp, boys and girls club, suck it up, don't be a baby kind of vibe, and so, like, I didn't really get a lot of love and guidance from the men who were there to take care of me. I think when I look back, and I wouldn't say I was abused, but there was like strange things, like if you're talking in your bunk, like, gross, grab your pillow, sleep outside, you know, we're like, hold up these work boots with your hands like this, and if they drop, we're gonna, like, you know, give you a rat tail with a wet towel, like, you know, the hanging wedgie. I'm not sure you know about the hanging wedgie. If you do, not just

  Alexis Reid  08:55

  fiction, it's not fiction, like they'll put a nail and lift you up by

  Steve Gross  08:58

  your underwear and hang you on there till your underwear breaks ridiculous,

  Steve Gross  09:02

  so it was like again back then it was like boys will be boys, this is the way you do it, but it was like I shudder to say when I think of the traumas that people go through, but there's no hierarchy of trauma, I know that I felt overwhelmed and lonely, and what was interesting at that time was when I came home, I told my parents I loved it, like

  Steve Gross  09:25

  I don't know why, maybe I was so happy to get home, like, oh, camp is great, and so great, you'll go for the whole summer next year, and I remember, like, midway through, just being like, I don't want to go, and it was interesting, because I had a brother at the time who was dealing with some mental health issues, and my parents were kind of perplexed, like, okay, Steve loved camp, now he doesn't want to go. What should we do? And they didn't trust their parental instincts, because they figured we should consult with someone, because they were struggling with my brother, and we don't know what's happening with Steve, so they consulted with a child psychologist who said, you know. Got to make him go, you got to make him see it through. If he doesn't, if he backs down and feels like he won't be able to do it, it's not going to be good. It went against their instincts, but they kind of kept forcing me to go, and maybe it was the right thing. Like, I don't know, I'm happy with how my life has turned out. So, who knows? You can't, you don't know what your experience would have been if one variable changes, but I know that it gave me this idea that if I'm ever in a position of power, I will never allow a child to feel the way I felt, like that was my thing, like I knew. I think that's where kind of empathy comes from. I knew how hard it was. It's like the first job I had was working with kids, you know. I started working at a summer camp. I started coaching youth sports, and, you know, I was good at it. Like, kids really wanted to be in my group, and my team loved me, and on my team, and, but I didn't think much of it. You know, it was one of those summer jobs, and you know, everyone kind of works with kids. I didn't really think much of it, but when I got.. and then, so that's kind of one story, and then I'll go to another one, and then I promise I'll tie them in together. I came from an amazing family, and my dad was an incredible humanitarian. He was a mathematician, and he taught at MIT, but he left MIT to teach at Bunker Hill Community College, like probably the only person in history who would leave a professorship at MIT to teach at Bunker Hill, because as he said it, he really just wanted to be rich and famous, but he defined rich and famous differently. Yeah, rich was about the difference you made in somebody's life. Wow, and famous was not being adored by people who don't know you, it was about being loved and appreciated by the people whose lives you've come into, and you've made a difference in, and he kind of had shared with me this idea that, like, the only real value, like he used to say, you know, we have no control over our birth, and we have no control over our death, it's just this journey, but we do all have a choice and some control over making somebody else's journey from birth to death better, because we were there to help along the way, and that that was the only way to find sustainable joy was like making a difference in somebody's life, and so, like, you know, when you're a kid, you kind of listen to your dad, you're like, whatever, Dad, whatever, Dad, and you know, I went to business school, and as I was getting ready to graduate, I realized, like, this is not going to fulfill me, like I was doing interviews with, like, Procter and Gamble, you know, you know, hey, there's, you know, all these businesses coming in for a job fair and marketing, and I was like, odd, I think this is going to make me feel empty, and I want to do something that's going to make a difference. And at around that time, I had heard this song by Phil Collins.

  Steve Gross  12:52

  I was watching this video, I was in like this melancholy place, I was dropping my girlfriend off at her first apartment, we were separating, we had been together at UMass, and I'm listening to that song by Phil Collins, like Another Day in Paradise, talking about homelessness, and I was like, I'm gonna do something about that, that's what I'm gonna do, that's the way I'm gonna make a difference in the world, I'm gonna help the homeless, and I had a friend who was like in the Marines, we decided we're gonna create this like van, and we drive around the streets of Boston, picking people off off the street, bringing them to shelters, giving them, you know, blankets and clothing. We called it survival patrol. And I remember the first line and the first grant I wrote said, "The hardest part about helping the homeless is every time you look for them, they're never home. That was my, like, little opening joke, which I should have realized I would never get a grant with that proposal, but I went to meet with someone about why I wanted to do this, and maybe they would fund it, and he looked at me, and he said, Well, let me ask you a question, What's your distinct competency? And I was like, what? Well, why would you be good at this? Like, like, it's great that you want to help, but like, what skills do you have that you're actually contributing something meaningful, because you know the Red Cross does this, Bridge Over Troubled Waters does this. Like, what do you bring into the party? Where's this first lesson? Like, it's great to want to help, but what are you going to do that's actually necessary and useful? And I remember being pretty discouraged when I walked out of there, like I don't think I have a distinct competency, like I don't know what that is, and I was working at the time at an after-school program, like a counseling program, and somebody, a woman named Ellen Basic from the Better Homes Fund, came in and said, "Hey, we're trying to start play groups for homeless preschoolers, and I'm like, "Homeless preschoolers, there's such a thing as homeless preschools? "Oh, yeah, that's the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, and it clicked. That's my distinct competence. That's how I help. So I volunteered to run these play groups for kids who were coming in from shelters all around Boston, and I just fell in love with the work, and I was like, ah. This is my distinct competency. How do I help a child feel seen, feel safe, feel adored, feel joyful, feel capable? And I can do that through play, which is really like the language of children. So I think the experience of like.. and it brings me back something. Can I call you Jerry? Do you prefer Gerald or Jerry? Jerry, you know that when you guys were talking about negative emotion, I kind of don't see emotions as being like positive or negative, like it's kind of like they're just emotions and we're gonna feel them, like what a great gift we can feel sorrow, you know. What a great gift we can feel anger if we actually know what to do with that anger in a constructive way. So, it was like this moment, these times of like really sadness and loneliness was actually very healthy for me, like it caused a lot of pain. It's still like, I mean, I still, I think it's still probably an issue, even in my life. Sometimes we just feel empty, and you wonder, where does that come from? But it made me softer, as Pemishhandran talks, but it softened me to other people's pain, and that experience, coupled by my dad's experience of saying, like, what's the purpose of life if you're not going to do something that makes the world a little bit better, and what was interesting was this was not about altruism, it was not about making a sacrifice, like I'm going to suck it up and make a sack, like, hey, if I found meaning in making tons and tons of money in finance, I would have done it, it was selfishly motivated, which is one of the reasons I think I still love the work after 30 years.

  Steve Gross  16:44

  The selfishness was saying I do this because it gives me a great sense of inspiration, meaning, purpose. I get more from the work than I give, and when you get more than you give, you never become depleted. And so those were the two things that just got me, like one life is about making a difference, and two, you find your way, no matter what it is. If you're a cook, you love to cook. Beautiful, use cooking to make a difference. If you love math, like my dad, use math to make a difference. It's not about the what you do, it's the why you do it, how you do it, and if you're doing it to make the world a little bit better, to make somebody's life a little sweeter, then you got to figure

  Alexis Reid  17:31

  it out. Well, that's our episode for today. I ran this so much, you got to like kick me, you're too far to kick me, but no, no, you know, I say that jokingly, and from a place of love, because it's, it's, it's just enhancing and emphasizing everything we talk about here on this podcast, and it's such, so beautiful to hear your story, and how you've amplified your experiences to be able to reach, teach, and support others. I think it's the most beautiful thing to do.

  Steve Gross  17:56

  Thank you. Well, you know, it's like I'm not really qualified to do anything else, and it was, it was interesting, because you know, at first I started out working with kids, so I'd be running play

  Speaker 2  18:04

  groups,

  Steve Gross  18:05

  and

  Alexis Reid  18:05

  it

  Steve Gross  18:05

  was awesome, and I loved it, and that was my distinct competency, but a number of things happened to get me to realize that if you really want to make a difference, you need to empower the local community, the people

  Alexis Reid  18:19

  who

  Steve Gross  18:19

  are really caring for children in that community, you have to allow them to play the central role and opportunity in healing kids. It's not about me going in, like it felt great, but how am I supporting the people in the community who are working with these kids every day? And so I had to make that strategic switch, like if I work with a child, I can help that child, but if I work with a preschool teacher, well, they're working with 20 kids every year, so it can be exponentially more, you know, more impactful. But then I had to learn a new skill set. Oh, now I'm not working with the kids, I'm working with their teachers, and what's funny now is even working on that skill set of now not just working with the teachers, but working with other guides and facilitators and trainers, so that they can work with the teachers, so you get a little bit more removed from the initial population, but it allows for greater impact, and you find out that you still, it's all just about building relationships. Working with teachers wasn't that much different than working with kids, very

  Alexis Reid  19:20

  similar, yeah. In my experience, yeah, it really wasn't much

  Steve Gross  19:24

  different at all,

  Alexis Reid  19:25

  yeah. And in fact, I think they appreciate the experience of play and tapping into their joy, because oftentimes, through the rigmarole of a year of a challenging segment of time in the classroom, especially with the challenges that arise in education, they lose track of their own joy for that to happen.

  Steve Gross  19:48

  Think about, like, you always talk about play, you know, play as a language of childhood, how kids communicate, it's how kids make sense of the world, and as adults, we once spoke it fluently. Play, it's kind of like if you moved here and you like you were a baby and you spoke Spanish, but you lived here for your whole life and you stopped speaking Spanish, you don't speak Spanish fluently anymore. Well, most of us stop speaking the language of play fluently, and so now we're interacting with kids and there's a disconnect because we think we might speak it, we know a few words, but we don't really speak it fluently, and then we lose - we potentially can lose that sense of playfulness. And what I had found, for a lot of early childhood educators, especially working with really marginalized kids, it wasn't that they lacked knowledge - they knew what to do. We all, I mean, as a parent, I know what to do most of the time when I don't do it, it's usually not because I didn't know that. Hey, yelling at my kid right now is not the, is the right thing to do. I knew it wasn't the right thing to do, but emotion or experience kind of shapes it all, shaped, you know, kind of it kind of overshadowed logic. And so, what I was finding with a lot of teachers early on was that their lack of playful engagement with kids was because many of them had not had a whole lot of experience being playful as kids, they had a lot of the same traumas the kids that they're working with, they had lost that sense of joy of connection of inspiration, and so the idea of the our when we started our workshops was, how do we awaken that in teachers? How do we play together? How do we get the feeling first in our own bodies without, like, this is what you do with kids? Hey, we're going to do this together. Create an environment where teachers feel comfortable playing and communicating and reminiscing, and then once they get the feeling, and you go, I feel that now. Let's figure out how we can get that to the kids. That was kind of like the aha moment. I think that's what made our work different. And I said to my team, like, let's not call these trainings the discoveries.

  Alexis Reid  22:00

  Love it, because

  Steve Gross  22:00

  a discovery is about uncovering something that's already been there.

  Alexis Reid  22:04

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  22:04

  you know, it's not something brand new, it's like you discover, you uncover it, and as kids are somewhere in there, there was that playful spirit. And so, how do we uncover it? How do we nurture it? And then, once we got that, then, like, it's then it gets easy to share

  Alexis Reid  22:21

  it. One of my favorite quotes that I've actually said on the podcast a few times is by Michelangelo, who used to say, "I never created any of my sculptures, I just revealed it from the block of marble. I brought it into, into focus differently. Absolutely, I think it's the same thing. It's so beautiful to think about,

  Gerald Reid  22:37

  you know, when we talk about the idea of trauma and, like, how it creates a survival instinct, you know, you talked about being, you know, survivalism, and, and how that, that in of itself could block that playfulness for the kids, and then you also said that could be coinciding with adults in their life becoming too intellectualized,

  Alexis Reid  22:58

  yeah,

  Gerald Reid  22:58

  and it's like a perfect storm of like lacking real connection when those two things happen together, and what's your experience with, you know, adults in the kids' life of kids with trauma? Where do you feel like there's, you know, almost fear in their own hearts of not knowing how to connect or not believing they can, and they have to kind of almost believe that that playfulness is going to work, or going to allow them to connect, because I feel like when adults just kind of feel like they don't have confidence in their ability to do something, they, they get too intellectualized, they control too much, and stuff like that. Well,

  Steve Gross  23:33

  I think it's so.. it's funny, like I had no idea I was doing trauma work, like when I talk about, like, you know, I spent a lot of years at the trauma center, and working with some amazing people, like when I talk about, like, you know, Bessel van der Kolk or Margaret Blaustein, or the amazing people that I worked with there, like they've forgotten more about trauma than I'll ever know, like that really, like I didn't even know I was doing trauma work. It was a gentleman by the name of Robert Macy who was observing what we were doing in the group, and he said, "Do you have any idea that you're doing brilliant trauma work? And I thought, "What are you talking about? He goes, "Well, this is what you create here: corrective experiences to trauma, because the central emotion in trauma is despair, and you're helping kids find this felt experience of joy. Trauma is about feeling forsaken and alone, and you're giving kids this opportunity to feel unified and connected with other people, trauma is about feeling helpless, not having a voice, and you're always emphasizing giving kids voice and choice, and trauma is usually about being somehow withdrawn and disengaged from reality because you're too caught up in the past and worried about the future, and you're pulling people into reality, so in the present, in the present, so I had no idea. I was kind of like, "Oh, that's cool that we're doing that. And so I came to the trauma center under that idea of like, he's this the play guy, and I remember, like, it was interesting because I would start doing trainings around trauma. I was doing a lot of stuff called I. Critical incident stress management work, and so I get to go around the country and around the world talking about trauma. When you do that, people think you're really smart because you're talking about something important, you're talking about trauma. But then, if I went in and was like, well, trauma is actually, you know, it's great to be trauma-informed, but to help to treat trauma, you have to really be joy, love, peace, informed, but when you try to talk about trauma, people think you're really smart. When you talk about peace, love, and joy, people think you smoke a lot of weed, like it's like this is soft stuff. Like, who is this? You know, this is just like this isn't real. And I think adults, we sometimes see that thing too, like we wanna, we maybe make it feel too complicated, you know. If you read Bruce Perry's book, The Boy Was Raised the Dog, and you start to look at, like, the complexity of the trauma, but when you start to look at the treatment modalities about helping someone feel engaged in their body, about helping someone to feel loved, to have someone to feel a sense of pleasure and purpose they're actually quite simple things, not necessarily easy to create, and so I think sometimes adults feel like, well, this can't really work. Yeah, like there's got to be something I need to do something else. Is there a medication, EMD? Like, what are some other complex treatments other than playing, and, and so you know, I think that there's a piece of that, which sometimes is like, sometimes it just seems really simple.

  Gerald Reid  26:32

  Well, trauma often happens in the context of relationships, and you're what you're saying is profound, just for the audience, like this is profound, because if trauma happens in relationships, that means healing comes from relationships. Oh, yeah,

  Steve Gross  26:45

  absolutely.

  Gerald Reid  26:45

  And you are describing perfectly a relationship. Anybody I've ever worked with, and I'm sure you feel the same way. People who have recovered, I don't even use the word recovered, just

  Alexis Reid  26:55

  healed,

  Gerald Reid  26:56

  healed, and became more of themselves in therapy. People I've worked with, it's a slow burn, takes time, but it's always in the context of them feeling safe and trusting in and love and joy in the relationship of therapy, always. Yeah, never, never without that.

  Steve Gross  27:12

  Well, it's funny because I remember hearing, like, you know, and I won't name names I don't like, but like I remember hearing a very prestigious psychologist saying like the therapeutic relationship doesn't even matter, like it's really about, like, it doesn't matter if you like your therapist or not, or whatever. If the treatment is good, the treatment is good, and you know, I try to, like, I'm opinionated, and I catch myself, like, oh, I have a strong opinion right now, but let me entertain that. So I think there's some truth, like you can love your therapist, but if they're not guiding you in the right way, it's really pretty, it's not going to help, unhelpful, 100% And there are times, like, where you don't necessarily need to love your therapist, but, but you need to have that basic trust.

  Gerald Reid  27:58

  Love can mean different things. Yeah,

  Steve Gross  28:00

  absolutely, and so, like, I think that you know, for me, we talk about, like, the playmaker, where people be like, 'Dude, oh, so you're really passionate about play, and I'm like, 'No, I'm passionate about building life-changing relationships with kids. Now, play is one of the best tools we have. I don't even know what the second-best tool is, so I love play in the service of healing of connecting and so like and also broadening what we talk about when we talk about play that play is not about a set of activities play

  Alexis Reid  28:33

  is

  Steve Gross  28:33

  really about if you think about in therapy I love to define as freely and joyfully engaging connecting exploring with the world around you.

  Gerald Reid  28:41

  Yeah, so

  Steve Gross  28:42

  when you are open, curious, freely, and by the way, joy doesn't always feel good,

  Gerald Reid  28:50

  scary sometimes. Yeah, I

  Steve Gross  28:51

  mean, joy is kind of like this, this enduring sense of maybe meaning and pleasure and purpose, but you're gonna feel plenty of pain. There can be joy while you're grieving.

  Alexis Reid  29:04

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  29:05

  and it doesn't feel good, but there's this meat, and so, like, when we're talking about, like, can you play at a funeral?

  Alexis Reid  29:14

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  29:14

  it was kind of like, well, if I actually am fully freely engaging, connecting, and exploring with the people, with my emotions, with those feelings. Then that is a form of exploration and play, and so that's what I've been kind of trying to, to you know, when I work with educators, like we don't got time for play, we got to do math, science, English. I'm like, cool, we'll play math, science, and English plays about what you do. It's the spirit and intentionality with which you do anything that you do. If you're teaching English and it's joyful and kids feel connected and they're engaged and they feel empowered, you're freaking playing.

  Gerald Reid  29:52

  Yes, so we're

  Steve Gross  29:54

  playing now.

  Alexis Reid  29:54

  I love it.

  Gerald Reid  29:55

  Creative energy. Yeah, and so

  Steve Gross  29:57

  like that little switch. Because play sounds soft, you know, when you know it can sound like you're not really doing much,

  Alexis Reid  30:08

  like I love that there's been a huge shift, right. My background in training is in developmental and educational psychology, so it's like I've been a huge proponent of positive youth development forever, and I love it so much, because all the things that you're talking about have such an evidence-based scientific backing, right? It's not just this like hippity dippity, let's do this stuff, because it feels good and it brings fun to the situation. It's like, no, there is like really grounded, rooted, beautiful science that also shows how these ephemeral experiences are supportive and preventative and healing on so many levels, and I love that so much that we're starting to see a little bit more now. We grew up with a mom who kind of thinks and raises us the same way you're describing your work, so we feel very blessed. Right, this is why we do the work we do. We want to be able to share it with more, because shouldn't just be if you have a great mom who gets it or a parent who gets it, that you have the opportunity to do this, similar to your experience. So we try to share it, but I love how you know all of the training that I've ever been a part of is now starting to come over and embrace the stuff that you can't always describe well, but you can feel it

  Gerald Reid  31:26

  absolutely well. Think about it this way, think about exercise. Okay, like exercise is science back the same way what we're talking about is research back, just for people to, if they're like doubters of this, and sometimes people will still not exercise. Yes, it's so true. It doesn't mean it's not helpful, and it doesn't mean that if you exercise, every part of your life will get better, or that you're going to completely, let's say, heal from your trauma. Like, play is not going to, it's not going to cure everything, it's not like, but it is, it's a foundation for so much goodness to come. It's so, like, as you're saying, like, it really frustrates me in our field when people argue about things, because I feel like it's not an either or, it's not this or that. It's like, it, if we look at things holistically, people wouldn't argue so much, they'd integrate

  Steve Gross  32:09

  absolutely well. And that's what you know, it's funny, because, like, the thing you mentioned about exercise, you know, my dad just had this joke, he said, like, you know, he was a little bit heavy, and the doctor was saying, "Hey, Herb, the best thing for you would be to exercise and lose 30 pounds, and my father said to the doctor, I don't deserve the best. What's the second best thing I can do? You know, because that he wasn't going to do that. So you're absolutely right. I mean, we know all the data, it's wild. Yeah, like, you know, like, hey, when you exercise, you have more energy, you sleep better, your metabolism is better, you lower your risk of heart disease, it boosts endorphins in your mood, like there's no one who's gonna say that you know a moderate amount of exercise is gonna make your life much better, but I forget the number, it's like less than 30% of the population exercise regularly. So, when we kind of look at these things and be like, okay. Well, you can't force people to do things, but can you create an environment where they're open to it? Why don't some people exercise? It's interesting. Well, some people maybe the same things that are getting in the way of kids. Like, I don't think I'm going to be able to do it. I don't think I'm going to measure up. I don't believe in myself. I don't have the discipline. Maybe the things that we tell ourselves, like when you were talking about yoga with me before we started, and I was like, I don't really like you, because, like, I don't do it well, I'm judging myself, and I don't do it well, so I don't do it well, and then I feel bad about myself, so I'm not going to do it, but it's like, how do we create the environments, and again, like, with play in this exercise, like, if you ask people, like, if I was an expert, if I was selling exercise, the questions I would ask, same thing I do with play. What are we going to do to make this more joyful for the specific person that we want to purchase this exercise? Because very joyful, it's not going to be sustained. What are we going to do that's going to make this connecting, so they feel connected to other people, and they connected to their teachers, and connected to the other people that they're working with. What are we going to do to make this interesting, engaging, and not boring? And then, what are we going to do to make it feel empowering, that people feel good about what they're capable of doing, that they feel competent and capable. A lot of folks who don't exercise, like, they don't find the joy in it, maybe they're not connected with people that are doing it, they don't feel competent in it, so we shy away from those things. Steve, I

  Gerald Reid  34:25

  was just meeting with someone, and I had him list everything he likes doing, and I'm like, you're such a well-rounded, kind-hearted individual. Like, I don't, I don't like talking about individual people I work with, but this is kind of just the encompasses a lot of experience for a lot of people,

  Alexis Reid  34:42

  yeah, for sure.

  Gerald Reid  34:42

  And it's the saddest part of just society now. Huge list on the whiteboard, all the things he likes to do, super well-rounded. His problem, like many people I work with, and all of us too, probably to some degree, he can't find people to deal with.

  Alexis Reid  34:56

  Oh, yeah, will only

  Gerald Reid  34:59

  all that be. Potential for joy, playfulness, right. And as you're saying, it's, it's exactly right. It's like there's so many things we can do as a society, we don't, because of those reasons that you said. We can't find ways to make it more engaging, more connecting, more part of relationships, more meaningful. And like, we need people like you to like just get in there and just make it happen. It was funny because I was

  Steve Gross  35:21

  actually working with, like, a gym one time, and we had done this. We created, like, a workout program, and it was just called Recess, and so it was like people would come and, like, play, like, recess-oriented games, but in a way, and the, you know, the exercise team and the personal trainers kind of made it so, okay, we're working out different groups and different activities, and you know, we just did a little.. I don't know how it took off. I kind of consulted on.. I don't know if it was, you know, a success or not. But again, like, how do we.. you know, loneliness is being considered a national health epidemic.

  Alexis Reid  35:56

  I was thinking that as you were speaking, and I was thinking, like, okay,

  Steve Gross  35:59

  wow.. like, when I first heard that, as like, you know, okay. Well, chronic loneliness. And then I saw the data, and the data was like, people who are chronically lonely have, like, almost a 30% greater chance of having heart disease, or a greater than 50% increase in the likelihood that they'll develop dementia. And I heard a stat that being chronically lonely is as bad for your health is smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and it's harder and harder to seems harder and harder to make friends and to have like social relationships where you do those things. It's funny because, like, my, I think men experience it even differently, like lately my wife's got this little group of friends, like she's been doing some stuff. Yeah, I'm gonna go up my friends, you know, like we're doing like a book club, and I'm just like, ah, okay. I think I just almost feel like, like I want to make some new friends too, like, but and then we're also like, we're tired, yeah. Like, so even like making new friends, it's kind of like it takes effort. You got us, you got to put yourself out there.

  Gerald Reid  37:07

  And back to being a kid, too. Imagine being a kid where friends are your entire world. Oh, exactly, your entire world. And like, people talk so much about now, like everything is virtual, and they call it like a frictionless relationship. Everything has no friction to it, and kids don't know how to, like, actually engage, like kids really don't know how to play anymore, almost. So, what you're saying is, like, so timely. Kids literally don't, they have a hard enough time chatting with each other, and just hanging out, let alone really being playful. It's so important, like, it's all connected, everything, and it's connected within the context of The Lancet having a research study saying the world mental health is the worst it's ever been.

  Steve Gross  37:49

  Yeah, the

  Gerald Reid  37:49

  world, not just in the states.

  Steve Gross  37:52

  Well, it's funny too, because like the difference between a virtual experience and a real experience, you know, you talked about like the difference between, you know, a belly laugh with friends and an LOL and a laughing emoji, which you

  Gerald Reid  38:08

  might not even be laughing when you're writing it. Yeah, I mean, and it's,

  Steve Gross  38:12

  you know, and really it's funny because I was thinking when you're talking about, like, laughter is a very interesting phenomenon because it doesn't have a foreign accent, so everybody in the world laughs the same exact way, and then in some of the research on laughter, it's like, well, it's mostly not an involuntary response to humor, like most of the time you laugh, you actually choose to laugh once in a while, and you know those ones where you have no choice, you're just like hysterical, and you can't stop, it's usually when you're not supposed to, but most of the time we laugh. We choose to laugh, and if it's not an involuntary response to humor, and then why do we laugh? And, and I'd heard someone say, because laughter sends a signal to other human beings that we're safe to connect with. Oh, I love that, and it was like, so when I start to think about how things get lost in translation when you try to do that virtually, and I have a kind of a silly example, but like, so my son is 15 and he's got an Xbox, and I'll, I try to play the Xbox, like there's some cool games, like NBA 2k like it's like playing a real basketball game, and I play this basketball game with my son, who destroys me relentlessly, like in every game. I have to beg him to be like, "Dude, let me be like the 86 Celtics, like the worst team currently in the NBA, and he relentlessly beats me, and I start to notice that while I'm playing these games, my temper is worse than it's ever been at anything. Like, I could be in the backyard playing any game, have no problem. I want to take that freaking control and ram it down his throat. Like, my wife's like, 'You shouldn't be playing these games. And my wife said, 'Why do you think that is? And I said. Yeah, I know why it is, because I'm having an experience virtually in my brain, all the same kind of things are happening as if I'm playing basketball, except there's no physiological outlet, you're having all like in a basketball game, you're diving, you're running, you're shooting, you're jumping here in your brain, you think you're doing all those things.

  Gerald Reid  40:24

  What a good point, but you're

  Steve Gross  40:25

  just sitting there with a little controller,

  Alexis Reid  40:27

  you don't act, and there's no

  Steve Gross  40:29

  place for that energy to go.

  Gerald Reid  40:31

  Wow, that's such a good point.

  Steve Gross  40:32

  And it's like that's the reason I threw a controller almost through the window. I'm almost 60. My son recently told him, like, 'Dad, grow up, but such a good point. Kids are having these virtual experiences, but they're not getting the same physiological experience, energetically and energetically, and the miscommunications that happen on a chat on Snap, it's the worst on a text. I mean, we do that now. I got an email from someone in my organization, and I couldn't sleep. It was like a little, you know, it wasn't a grit, like it was kind of like there was a little problem, and I get this email and I read it, and I'm like anger to write an email back, and then now I'm lucky, I'm a little wiser. I said, first of all, I'm not going to send this email. I'll take some time, and I'll write something, but I'll say I'm going to set up a time. Let's talk, get in an office together, we talk, say, 'Hey, what's up? Everything's smooth.

  Alexis Reid  41:44

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  41:44

  it, but somehow now we're going with the convenient forms of communication. I'll just text, I just email, I'll just do this thing, and we miss major parts of what allows humans to connect.

  Gerald Reid  42:00

  Yes,

  Steve Gross  42:01

  and we, I mean, I see it all the time, like we'll be in an office with lots of people, and sending around Slacks and emails, like, dude, what about sitting in a room together and figuring this out? Like, I'm not a good typer and communicator, going back and forth, like, I'll just pick up the phone and be like, hey, like, and I know the younger generation doesn't like, like, how dare you've actually said I heard a comedian saying, like, the phone, like, why do we call this thing a phone? That's like calling a Lexus convertible a cup holder. It's like the phone is just a seldom used app on your phone.

  Alexis Reid  42:39

  The

  Steve Gross  42:40

  communication I've seen it with my own daughter. We're having a great time. We're out on vacation, but she's on her phone and somebody texts or something, and she reads into it and doesn't like it, and all of a sudden her whole world is shot because of, like, someone doesn't like me. I was, I wasn't included, I wasn't here, and it's like this kind of like happens at a far greater extent when we're removing the physical experience of two people communicating.

  Alexis Reid  43:09

  It's so funny when you said that. I felt in my body like an experience I had as a teenager where there was like older girls who were unhappy with friends that we were hanging out with, and they used to be like really mean, and like come and come at me. And in those times where I felt the most uncomfortable during that time period, I actually formed bonds with people that have lasted my lifetime. I had conversations with my mom and my grandmother and family members who helped me get through it, like that one thing that felt uncomfortable, like you were describing your daughter experience through her phone, was something that actually shaped so much of my life, because I, it wasn't just on a phone, it was something that was happening in the physical space, and became, I always say, you know, there is no failure, there is no real mistake, it's always if we take the opportunity to learn from it, is what we end up doing with whatever doesn't go the way we expected or intended to be. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, we, these young people are having these missed opportunities to really grow their souls and grow the connections that they have when they're stuck on their digital technologies. Well,

  Steve Gross  44:21

  and then you know, like this thing, like, I thank God I didn't have a phone when I was a kid, right? Like, some of the things you say, or if you wrote them and they're out there, and they're out there forever, and you can't necessarily take them back because they're there, and this idea that, like, you know, if you were bullied a little bit at school, you got bullied during school, you got bullied when you saw people, but now you can just get bullied 24/7 And as adults, we're not great role models. And so you know, how do we create an environment again, like we start to look at a community environment where there's reparations where people can actually. To be forgiven, the

  Alexis Reid  45:01

  whole past two weeks, a lot of my clients have been experiencing these, these friction moments where they're having a hard time just even engaging and apologizing, or making up for something that maybe they didn't do that didn't meet their expectations they think they need to live up to their own shame, a lot of shame, right, lots of shame spirals that are coming up, and for the past two weeks, I can't tell you how many lessons around how to apologize and repair that we've gone through, and it's probably one of the most difficult things that people can experience, or even know that that's a possibility, and I'm bringing it back to what you shared about your experience at camp, right? Whatever the case might have been, whatever was right or wrong, we don't really like to talk in black and whites either, but whatever the experience was that you were able to go back to that camp and show up and see how your experience has shaped you and prepared you for what comes next, that gave you an opportunity to maybe even make a repair for yourself, like if I'm in this situation, what do I do with it? And I talk a lot about, especially with educators and parents, that you know the word trauma is thrown around a lot in social media, it's become a part of the colloquial conversations people have, and you know, I don't think anybody escapes life without experiencing trauma, uppercase T or lowercase t. I really think we need to change the narrative around, we're all going to have these moments of suffering, right? We can go into the Buddhist principles if we wanted to, but we're all going to have these, these grifts, this friction, this sometimes really harmful, hurtful experiences that we go through in life. I would rather us change the conversation and think about what do we do with that.

  Steve Gross  46:48

  Yeah,

  Alexis Reid  46:48

  and I love that that's been such a mission in your work, and I'd love for you to share a little bit more about the Playmakers itself, for people who aren't familiar with what it is, because that's essentially what you guys have been doing in your work.

  Steve Gross  47:00

  Yeah, so with the Playmaker Project, so really is about, I mean, very simple mission to ensure that all kids grew up feeling safe, loved, and joyful. I'm just trying to imagine how the world might be different if young children grew up in this environment where they felt protected, where they feel felt loved and adorable, and they felt a deep sense of joy, and so, how do we do that? Like, what's one way, you know, what's the contribution? And so our focus has been providing training resources and support to early childhood educators across the country who are working with our most vulnerable marginalized kids, and if you think about there's a couple things here. Number one, I mean, if you think about early childhood educators, they are working with kids zero to five, let's say zero to six. It is the most formative time in a child's development. Kids' brains develop more in the first five years of their life than they will in the next 99 if they live to be Andre.

  Alexis Reid  48:03

  Can we just emphasize that, because I don't think the public really understands that enough? Because even early childhood educators that I teach, sometimes they're blown away by that.

  Steve Gross  48:13

  Oh yeah, I mean, and it's really interesting, because like we treat these members of the workforce like they're glorified babysitters, yeah, as instead of educators. So, like, if someone says to that, like, "Hey, I'm a professor at Yale, well, it's like, "You're a professor, it's great, it's amazing, like you're doing some great work, and you're teaching people whose brains are pretty much developed, and you're giving some new ideas and concepts, and yet we would celebrate a very esteemed position, and you might make a decent salary if you're good at it. If you're a preschool teacher, and you are in essence co-parenting other people's children, yes,

  Gerald Reid  48:55

  yeah,

  Steve Gross  48:56

  yet you're treated.. it's one of the largest, you know, that group has some of the most amount of burnout. It's almost impossible to make a livable wage, and so we're seeing that, like, this is one group of people who, if you want to address the mental health crisis, well, if every child's early childhood experiences were rich in joy, connection, affirmation. You would see a dramatic decrease in rates of depression, anxiety, but we wait, we wait until it shows up later. And so you know our work has been, how do we best support early childhood educators who are working with kids who are quite vulnerable and are in what sometimes called aces inducing environments, environments where there's higher levels of abuse, neglect, household dysfunction. Can you explain

  Alexis Reid  49:53

  aces? Because I think it's such an important metric that nobody really knows. Sure,

  Steve Gross  49:58

  and the aces study, which was. Originally done, like in 1998 by the CDC. It just stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, and Adverse Childhood Experiences, being like, there's a number of them, let's say, a child who's neglected, a child who is abused, a child who's living at home with an untreated, mentally ill, unstable parent, a child who's living at home with drug-abusing parents, or living in communities with, you know, huge levels of violence, and that those adverse childhood experiences are toxic to brain development, especially if you don't have kind of a nurturing adult to help guide you through it, and so what the CDC showed was that the higher your level, the higher number of aces that a child has in childhood, the more vulnerable they are to heart disease, diabetes, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and at the most glaring, like kids with six or more aces, so like different, like maybe they were abused by one family member, but they also had a drug addicted parent, they also had, you know, six or more aces in childhood led to a 20 year decrease in life expectancy. Now, what's interesting is, is these are correlations and not causation. So, if you have aces, but you have adults in your life who have helped to protect and insulate you, so that that stress is not toxic to you, so if you think about, like, stress becomes toxic when you don't have the capacity to deal with the stressor, the resources and capacity, so you know if a child obviously doesn't have a lot of the internal resources to deal with a violent community, but if they have the external resources, an adult who can protect them and nurture them and help guide them through those experiences, and let them know that we're doing everything we can to take care of you, because we love you, and we're going to protect you. You know, it's the most important thing, is you being protected, and that giving kids those resources, well, that adverse childhood experience doesn't have the same long-term impact. So, the idea is these early childhood educators, how can we help them be able to form these healing, life-changing relationships with kids? Well, there's kind of three things we want them to get from the playmaker experience. Number one is that they're trauma-informed, they understand the impact of trauma on children's development. Number two is their optimism infused, which means their social and emotional well-being is so strong, because helping a child have a sense of joy and connection and inspiration, you can't teach children that, that's not taught, that's caught happy teachers, teachers who are healthy in a social and emotional way, are much more likely to help nurture a socially and emotionally well-adjusted child. So, number one, they're trauma-informed, number two, they're optimism-infused, and number three, is they're play fluent, that they can communicate with children through play, and what we've seen from the data that we've collected is that three things really happen when somebody is a playmaker. One is they improve their ability to build healing relationships with kids, so we looked at a teacher child relationship inventory scores, and teachers have less conflict and more connection. The second one is lower rates of burnout in teachers, that they feel more fulfilled, and they feel kind of like more proud of being an early childhood educator. And then the last one being that they feel that they have the skills and knowledge to address challenging behaviors in kids, and so that's, you know, this group of playmakers, we call them playmakers, because they come into a kid's life at a pivotal time in their life, and they make a life-changing difference, and they do so through play.

  Alexis Reid  53:52

  It's so beautiful. I, I'm just nodding and smiling and glowing, because this is the work. Yeah, you know, we want to think about how we prepare young people for the future. We start when they're young, and we start protecting and supporting the people who are guiding, nurturing, and teaching them.

  Steve Gross  54:11

  And it's not just this soft, nice liberal thing, it's a sweet thing to do, like the economic ramifications of giving kids nurturing healthy early childhood experiences. There's a, you know, every dollar invested in quality early childhood education yields a $10 return on investment, and so, like this, but it's a long term play.

  Alexis Reid  54:38

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  54:38

  and so I think we have to look at this field differently. When you see an early childhood educator, that person's got to be put on a pedestal,

  Alexis Reid  54:46

  celebrated. I mean, shoot, when

  Steve Gross  54:47

  people talk about my kids and they say, 'You've done a great job raising us. I didn't do it alone.

  Alexis Reid  54:51

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  54:52

  I mean, when I sent my kids to preschool, they changed, they learned things I didn't teach them.

  Alexis Reid  54:58

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  54:58

  and so those. Folks, man, they got to be honored, they got to be celebrated, they got to be supported. You know, we talk about, like, hey, supporting, you know, sometimes we'll talk, even, you know, you think about when people say, hey, how do we support our troops? How do we support our military? How do we support our police? How do we support the people that are, you know, heroes in the community? Well, we can't overlook early childhood educators who are taking care of our kids, so vulnerable, so we can go out and do what we got to do as adults.

  Alexis Reid  55:28

  That's right. That's right.

  Gerald Reid  55:30

  I mean, we live like over the past 20 years, when we think about mental health, even mental health has become like what is the silver bullet like, what's like, how are we going to fix this quickly? What's the medication that's going to cure this, right? Which, by the way, medication isn't cure, it may like help people become more stable to access things that'll help them to heal, but it doesn't actually heal a person, it's just kind of like maybe makes them more available to whatever they need to do for therapy, but as we know, like, we've been in the field long enough that, like, healing and growth and evolution, and, and feeling more grounded as a person, it just takes time, and in the age of, like, everything has to be fast and fixed, and, like, we're not fixing, and we're not doing this fast, everything you're talking about just takes time.

  Alexis Reid  56:20

  Yeah,

  Gerald Reid  56:20

  and it's all encompassing. It's not one thing. It's like it's all like part of it. We all have to be part of it. The end of the day, like you said, like we're helping our society be healthier. How can that not be inherently important in of itself?

  Steve Gross  56:35

  Yeah, it's fun. We have a term at PlayMakers. One of the things we invented this term, we call it oplaysises, and it's taking two words, oasis and play - oplaysis, which is a safe haven in play, which is about free and joyful exploration, and we use the term with early childhood educators to say your number one job is to create no places, and an all places is simply a safe, loving, joyful, and engaging environment, you do that like every child, the more oplaysises you have, if home is an oplaysis, and your school is an old places, and your sports programs, and your after-school programs are all places, you have a real good chance of growing up quite healthy, and for a lot of kids, they don't have an oplaysis at home, so How do you create this other idea of what, what an old places is. How do we create oplaysises at work? It was interesting. I was so thrilled. I got invited the other day to speak to be the opening keynote at a literacy conference.

  Alexis Reid  57:32

  Nice.

  Steve Gross  57:32

  I mean, literacy, like I haven't read more than three books for pleasure in my life, and you know, basically the bottom line that I kind of shared was like, hey, whatever the literacy curriculum is, if children in school feel empowered, feel engaged, feel joyful, and feel connected, they'll be far better learners than if they're not. 100% You think about all those things, they sometimes call them non-academic barriers to learning. If a kid feels hated and bullied, they can't effectively learn. If a child's coming into school feeling anxious, they can't effectively learn. And so these things that we think are like, if schools want to improve performance, we got to make academic material fun, joyful, connecting, empowering. I mean, it was interesting. Give you another example with my son. So, my son is dyslexic, and he was struggling with reading. He had a great teacher, and one of the things that the teacher would do is he knew my son loves sports, an avid sports fan. Like, hey, Ben, you hear about there's a trade rumor, some trade rumors going on with the socks here. Take a look at it, and would print out the article. I want you to read this and tell me what you think.

  Alexis Reid  58:52

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  58:53

  that was very different from, like, hey, you need to read more, here's some books that you got to read, and it was like, my son is a great reader.

  Alexis Reid  59:01

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  59:02

  he's learned. I mean, he knows so much about sports, and but it was because a teacher was like, How am I going to make this relevant to that student? How am I going to customize it for this student? And how am I going to know what lights this student up? And so, you know, the student, you know, they love sports, you know, they love this great. I'm going to use that love to strengthen our relationship and to help that person to learn, and that's kind of like the most beautiful thing that every teacher has to realize, that every child there is going to need their own version of an IEP, you know, like, how am I going to speak to this student, what you know, and, and that's all about, comes back to the thing, all about relationships,

  Alexis Reid  59:49

  it's so very my

  Steve Gross  59:50

  dad's favorite line, nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care, and so you know, you also say, as a teacher, he said the teacher's golden. Rules, very different than the golden rule.

  Alexis Reid  1:00:01

  Yeah, the

  Steve Gross  1:00:02

  golden rule was, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. My dad would point out that that's kind of selfish, because maybe they don't want what you want. Yeah, so his teacher's golden rule was do unto others as others would have chosen to have done unto them. And so, like, for instance, if I say do unto others and someone's sad, I'm gonna go, I want to give him a hug, because I want a hug. Yeah, maybe that person doesn't want a hug, right? So the idea is, how do you know enough about that person to actually begin to see what they want, not just assume that they're gonna want what you want, and that was his work. How do I know? How do I get to know each of my students,

  Gerald Reid  1:00:41

  the foundation of a relationship. Absolutely,

  Alexis Reid  1:00:44

  I can go down a whole rabbit hole, because a lot of my work is around universal design for learning, and it's like, how do we see that there's variability in learners and environments and contexts, and how do we proactively prepare for it? But, but what you're saying is really what I always emphasize is the foundation for it. You know, all the work I do with educators and parents alike. It's like, what's the answer? How are my kids can have better executive function skills and do better and feel better, and blah blah blah. And I always say that our real intervention is in our interactions, and it's not just for young people too. I just want to emphasize how important your message is about how we teach, how we support, how we see the educators in the room, especially early childhood educators, right? That our intervention to support them is in our interactions with them, the way we lift them up, the way we see them for who they are, and all that they do, and really value it,

  Steve Gross  1:01:40

  like, so there's a lot of well-meaning parents who want the kids to get this academic jump, and so if they go to the early childhood center, they're paying high tuition. Like, well, what did you guys learn today? They don't - I'm not sending them here just to play. And one of the teachers was so great, she says one of the parents came and said, well, did you do anything else other than play today? And she says, yeah, we actually did a lesson on absorption, and the lady was like, okay, she was assigned, she's like, well, that's awesome, thank you, and she leaves, and one of the teachers says, What do you mean, we did a lesson on absorption? She goes, don't you remember when Kylie spilled the apple juice, and all the kids watch it go up? That was our lesson on absorption, like, there are so many lessons, and I tell early childhood educators, you have play is important, but you have to understand why it's important. What are we learning through the play? Because it's not enough to say, 'Oh, we were just playing. You have to be intentional, and that's what the thing with playmakers - the play is intentional. Why are we doing it? And why are we doing it this way? And what are we trying to achieve this way, and the I, the fact, and I think everyone knows, like, I don't. If a child finishes preschool and they don't know their letters and they don't know how to read, but they come in there filled with joy and wonder, and they feel loved, and they're curious, I know they can catch up in a couple years. Totally true, but if they come into first grade and they're already anxious, feel isolated, feel down, feel, you know, forsaken, don't have belief in themselves. They lost their curiosity, they lost their spark. That's going to take a lot longer to regain, and so we have to do both. I'm not saying that literacy is not important, but it will never be important enough at the sacrifice of joy, connection, engagement, wonder. So, how do you do it in a way that sparks those things? And that's why these educators, you know, we need to honor them and celebrate them, because it is really hard to do. I mean, when Covid came, and I had to try to home school my kids, I transferred them to another home, I couldn't do it, so imagine having 20 in there.

  Alexis Reid  1:03:44

  Yeah,

  Steve Gross  1:03:45

  and we need to really respect that field, and we need to provide them with the support that they need in order to be able to do the work effectively, because it's hard work,

  Alexis Reid  1:03:55

  and the love, and the joy, absolutely, and the good vibes, and optimism, and energy that we try to bring, I love it

  Steve Gross  1:04:02

  totally,

  Gerald Reid  1:04:02

  Steve. I just want to kind of end on this, literally amazing

  Gerald Reid  1:04:12

  soul, Steve. What we're, what we're discussing is like, if you hold something in your mind, right, and every day you feel like this is important. I think you had said this in one of your talks. Keep the important thing important. What we're talking about is just prioritizing, Alexis. This is related to your executive function in training with kids. It's like if you prioritize something, you're gonna look for opportunities to make it happen. I think I'm a good therapist and a good professor, because I'm so present and I'm so prepared to help, but most importantly, like, while I'm helping in, like, the intellectual way, I am being present and waiting for those opportunities to connect and to be joyful and to find something. That's creative in the moment, but if I went into it thinking I have to be this perfect professor, I have to like be this like smart therapist, I will never look for those opportunities, and not only look for them, but allow them to be manifesting in the space that we have between each other, and so as you're talking, I hope that the audience realizes like you don't have to be like an expert in play to do this. You just have to open your heart to the idea that when it's there, like when I'm with people, my family, and, like, you know, we go to visit my mom. The best moments of visiting my mom is when I can just, like, take a moment and just make a joke. It is some of the most.. Alexis, we're talking about this in the car. They're like, what makes you most happy? I'm like, you know what? Just purely connecting with someone, where it's reciprocal, and you're just with each other, present is so powerful to have a moment like that with someone that you care about.

  Steve Gross  1:05:54

  It's funny that you wrote that quote up, like, you know, I would say, I think it was, I forget who said it, like, the important thing is to keep the important thing the important thing. Yeah, and so if you say, 'Hey, the important thing is about relationships, so I'm going to keep that the important thing. I'm not going to lose sight of that, but I would always couple that with a quote from Mike Tyson, which says, 'Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And so we have these plans of what's important, but then something in life punches us in the mouth, and we lose our way, our strategy shifts, or it changes, and so I think this idea of recognizing, like, we're gonna slip,

  Gerald Reid  1:06:25

  yeah,

  Steve Gross  1:06:26

  you know, it's like y'all about relationships, and then one day you choose somebody out, you know, you're like, oh, like you talk about yoga and mindfulness. Mindfulness is no one stays mindful all the time. Mindfulness is about knowing when you've drifted out of mindfulness, and then you return to it. That's

  Alexis Reid  1:06:39

  why we call it a practice, exactly, and that's what we call it a

  Steve Gross  1:06:42

  playmaker practice. Let me tell you, the simplest thing, like you don't have to be a play expert, the best play you can do, and like I, if you see a child playing, there's a quote by Freud that says, "Nothing gives a child more pleasure than when an adult gives up their oppressive control and plays with them as equals. If you're walking down, you see a kid on the floor rolling around with their trucks. All you got to do is get down and go, "Hey, can I play? I'm

  Steve Gross  1:07:08

  a grown-up, I don't really know. Can you teach me how to play? And follow along. If they're coloring, grab something and color next to them. Control it, let them lead it. We spend so much of our lives as adults trying to be interesting to kids, when kids really just want us to be interested in them.

  Alexis Reid  1:07:25

  Yes, let them

  Steve Gross  1:07:27

  lead, and then you can't go wrong. You don't have to come up with a million ideas. I love to do it with kids, like we got a parachute in three, but what do you guys want to do with this stuff? Yeah, it's like, well, we could take the balls just box. Let's do it.

  Speaker 2  1:07:39

  Hell yeah, great idea. Okay, cool. What else can we do?

  Steve Gross  1:07:44

  Just kind of like it's like that. It's not that complicated, yeah. But a lot of times we come up, like, what game can I create, and I want.. and then maybe after a little time, then maybe you go, hey, what if we tried this? You can insert a little bit, but like, I remember people saying, like, you know, I would love playing baseball and stuff, like, after school with just my friends, and then all of a sudden I go to Little League, and this coach is telling me what to do, and I didn't like it as much, and it was like, oh, the adults are ruining it, it was like they weren't adults, don't necessarily have to ruin things by their presence, if an adult came in was like, hey, can I play with you guys too, and they were just playing, and they weren't just giving us instructions, and they were playing and laughing and joking around, and I'd be like, oh, that was fun, like we like adults, and kids like adults to be there, but we don't have to come over and all of a sudden be the ringleader, right? Yeah, and so, like, if you want to just practice that playfulness, play fluency. Ask an expert, which is a kid. Hey, what are you doing? I'm playing a video game. Cool. Can you teach me how to play

  Alexis Reid  1:08:47

  my joke with the kids I work with? And these are like my most fun moments, is when I tell these little kids, and I used to do this in the classroom too. I would say, pretend I'm an alien that just came down from another planet, and I have no idea what you're doing. Can you describe it to me? Can you bring me into your world? And it is the most joyful thing to see them light up. And first of all, they just crack up. They're like, how are you an alien? I'm like, I don't know. Just go into your zone, and it becomes fun for you, because you get to bring that out of yourself too.

  Gerald Reid  1:09:18

  You know what's brilliant about that? That's that, that is a child version of therapy with adults, 100% because you're trying to enter that person's world in therapy, and you, this isn't, again, like for the listener, like this is not just pie in the sky ideas, this is like real, this like you said, play is the language of kids, if you want to enter someone's world, that's if you want to help anybody, you have to enter their world first.

  Steve Gross  1:09:41

  Yeah,

  Gerald Reid  1:09:42

  even people with schizophrenia and psychosis first enter their world. You can't help them without that. And this goes with any type of thing in therapy, with any adult, you have to enter their world. And what you're describing is you're doing it with kids in their own way. You can't enter a kid's world intellectually, because they don't have the intellectual capacity. City did that anyway,

  Steve Gross  1:10:02

  and you know, I think we sometimes do it with games we don't understand, like these kids are playing video games, like there's a reason they're playing, there's something there, like, dude, I want to know, why do you like this game? How do you play? Why do you choose this character? What are you doing here? What is great, like there, as opposed to always being the judge, it's kind of like when you think about, like, you know, adults, the cliche, like, are these kids listen to music, their music's terrible. Like, I feel like saying that to my kids sometimes. I'm gonna say, we had great music when I was a kid, you know. It's like, but I try to refrain from that sometimes, and I'm like, dude, what do you, what do you love about this artist? Yeah, what's your favorite song that they sing? Why, why? What do you like about it? Also,

  Gerald Reid  1:10:44

  like the fact that you're asking them is important, because they may not even be thinking about it these days, because everyone else is telling them what to like. Yeah, so you even asking that is profound for the kid, because then they're actually reflecting on why they actually like it. Yeah, and they're probably not doing that anyway. Yeah, social media is only like it. I don't know who you

  Steve Gross  1:11:01

  listening to? What do you like about it? Tell me about this song. Why I love it. I like the beat. Okay, cool. What do you like about the beat? And then they'll say, like, do you like it, Dad? And I'll be like, not really. Why? And I was like, I don't know. I like a little bit more melody. Yeah, like I'd like to see some instrument, like I don't know, I want like a hook. Yeah, like, and then, like, it's not.. it doesn't sound interesting to me, or I'll tell them all. It's not like I don't love the content, man. Like, I've heard enough about how great you are, and how you're better than everyone else. Like, I want to hear something that, like, inspires me a little bit more. Like, it's you know.. but, but again, we're engaging,

  Gerald Reid  1:11:36

  though. Yeah, judging.. you're engaging. I

  Steve Gross  1:11:38

  want to engage, and only if they ask me the question, as opposed to, like, this music sucks, you know, which I want to say, yeah, but you know, I mean, I think that that Dean Martin song, when it starts out, you're nobody till somebody loves you, I mean, it's just true, one of the most important, like, you really, some of the data shows one of the best predictors of how healthy somebody grows up is how much they perceive their mom adored them. I'll tell our preschool teachers, hey, man, the number one thing is that your job is to make sure that every kid in that class believes that you adore them, even the ones who don't present as very adorable. Those are the ones who need it the most. Absolutely, so I hope you guys find me adorable. We do. I feel adored here. So I know we probably went off two hours now, but thanks for inviting me. We

  Alexis Reid  1:12:30

  can go on forever, and you know, as we do here, thinking about what's next for you. Anything that people should check out,

  Steve Gross  1:12:38

  you know? I think if people I love for people to check out Life is Good Playmaker Project, just Google Life is Good Playmaker Project, learn more about what we're doing, and you know, I think we're doing some really cool, some beautiful work, and, but yeah, what's next for me? I'm gonna keep, you know, I'm just gonna keep trying to stay on the path, keep trying to learn and grow, and the one thing I'm really trying to focus on is creating as many of those micro moments of love as possible. You know, how do you show up for other people as your best version of yourself? How do you focus on every relationship that's in front of you? How to display kindness and care, because when you're doing those things, your life is just so much better. So, yeah, I'm gonna keep focusing on the important things, the important things that your people and connections.

  Alexis Reid  1:13:30

  Well, you're so blessed to hear those messages so early from your dad and from your family, and we feel similar in that same sense. So, we're grateful for you to amplify those messages and share them with the world through what you do every day, so thank you. So much

  Steve Gross  1:13:44

  pleasure is mine. Honor to meet you guys. 

  Gerald Reid

  Thank you, thank you Steve

  Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. we'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and look forward to future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.

S8 E7: Healing Trauma Through Play w/Steve Gross, MSW, Founder, The Life is Good Playmaker Project

In this episode, Alexis and Gerald speak with Steve Gross, MSW, founder of The Life is Good Playmaker Project to discuss the value of play as it pertains to creating a context for healing amongst children who have endured trauma and stressors in their life. Steve shares personal stories of his formative experiences that led him to a career focused on helping children heal and grow through positive experiences that elicit trust, care, and joy. We discuss a conceptual understanding of being trauma-informed and how play and genuine openness in a trusting relationship can be powerfully therapeutic. We acknowledge how easily adults and children can lose touch with their playful nature when experiencing the traumas and stressors of life that create a survival instinct and ultimately can contribute to disconnection and loneliness; and how to return to that playful nature with intention and prioritization. 

Summary:

• The psychological and relational value of playfulness

• The significance of relationships in healing trauma

• The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

• From being Trauma-informed to being Play/Healing Relationship-informed

• Regaining one’s playful nature and connection

Be curious. Be Open. Be well.

The Reid Connect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings, educational therapist, Alexis Reid, M.A. and licensed psychologist, Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by CyberSound Recording Studios, and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com

*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.