Making Space for Intelligence to Show Up - Roxanne Daleo

0:00 It is. Let's say a child has a test or a paper that they have to write. Before they begin to write, I asked them to use their imagination to close their eyes and to not only see themselves completing the task successfully, but to also begin to compose what it is that they need the right, so that they can begin to really trust themselves and to trust into an inner intelligence. In this episode, I'm talking with Doctor Roxanne Delia, whose story invites us to rethink not just what intelligence is, but what it needs in order to show up.

0:45 In second grade, she was misdiagnosed with a learning disability. Years later, she graduated from Harvard with honors. What change was in her intelligence? It was a space she was given to access it. So today we're asking what happens to intelligence when the mind is overwhelmed? And how do we create the space for it to emerge?

1:08 Welcome to the show Mind Blend. I'm your host, Karen Chong, and I'll be diving into the minds of incredible people, each an expert in their very own way. Together, we'll uncover insights and share ideas so you can be inspired and empowered to navigate your own unique journey in life. Ready to get curious and discover what's possible? Let's blend. Hi Doctor Rosen, welcome to my blend. Karen, it's so nice to be here with. You thank you. So great to finally have this chance to talk to you about intelligence, children, parent, everything.

1:50 So before we dive into it, can you tell us a little bit about your journey, you know, between 2nd grade and now? Yeah, let me tell you about my journey. I think you'll appreciate. When I was young, I struggled to learn how to read and I was so anxious. I was very challenged at taking tests and when you have beginning of school year, IQ tests were normally taken, standardized IQ tests and every kid had to do this. And when the results came out, my parents were called into the principal's office and they told my my parents that I scored mentally retarded.

2:36 My mother said my daughter is not mentally retarded and you must have something wrong with your test. I would like to bring her to a specialist in New York City and test her myself and see what we can uncover. And thankfully, because my parents were very astute and caring and not easily swayed by authority figures, I learned a few things from their from them #1 my mother would say there's always an exception to every rule. And I think you're an exception. So let's find out more about how your brain works.

3:22 It it's not broken, it just works differently, Roxy. And we have to discover what we can do for you. Well with that kind of encouragement. And where I would say the most, the first step is for parents to be on the side of their children and not to automatically align with a teacher is a very important alliance because it does make a difference with the inner life of the child, which is key to self, not only self esteem, but to self, the self concept and self worth. Because anxiety can become a behavior that causes a kid to feel lesser than.

4:08 And that's what we really want to point out today is that once you're labeled, it's really hard to overcome that label unless you use a few strategies that I will share with your audience today. Long story short, I was told by the Doctor Who tested me that not only did I not was I not mentally retarded, I have to I actually were gifted in certain areas of intelligence and that I really struggled to learn how to read because I had a food called dyslexia and he would recommend reading specialist to help me tutor myself and to get to strengthen my ability to recognize letters and words.

4:55 I think the key for for me was that I actually had the ability to know that my creativity could come through in every way that I was doing my homework. And that once you make an association, because associations are conditioned responses of the mind. If a kid sits down in front of his homework and says, Oh my God, this is so hard, I'll never get out of here, then you're you as a parent or a teacher will have to find a way to reframe our association and to break that link that makes the association negative.

5:46 Yeah, yeah. What my mother used to do, because he was an artist and everything in my world growing up was about aesthetics and artistry and color. And she would not only help me to use construction paper and different ways to break down the task into smaller bite size bits, so accomplish the task, but she also intuitively knew create the association of the homework time with something comforting. So she would make pasta with butter and she would bring a little bowl of pasta with butter to me. Hey, Roxy, take a moment to relax, enjoy your little pastini, and then we can get into the math in that meeting and we'll do that together.

6:42 There are things that happen in the child's life that we may miss, and when you recognize that you have an opportunity to turn a child's attention away from the day, bring their attention inward to their inner world, their inner life, their inner conversation, you're actually building resilience and helping them to form a positive self concept. I'm so glad your mother didn't just automatically align. I think the word automatically is he here because you do have parents who just do not accept any comments about their children.

7:28 They're the best when they could do things differently. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's more to the story because the interesting thing is once I began to feel a little bit more accomplished and I could achieve a few small goals, it helped me to build my confidence to do other things. But my key take away for today is that parents and teachers have to have to really pay attention to where the arc of learning and where the innate gifts of your kid lies. And they are not always visible in the beginning when you're in grade school.

8:12 As I got older, I recognized that I had athletic ability, confidence from being on the field, being a high scorer in hockey and lacrosse, becoming the captain of the team and really excelling in athletics. That gave me the confidence to have ability in field work, in teaching. We were in teacher training at the time. As I grew into my college years, I actually used my confidence on the field for field work in teaching. So there are cases where you have transferable skills and that can also build an inner strength for a child as they get into adult years and into their career.

9:01 Once I graduated from college, my first job was to help children with chronic and terminally I'll hospitalizations. Allay their fears and their anxieties about being in a hospital. They didn't want to talk. They were very upset. Many of them were so anxious and afraid they wouldn't even look up. But when I got in the art cart, when I brought in the art and the materials that are a child's first language, ONS, paper, paints, clay, they could mold and shape their world using their own hands, their own imagination.

9:46 Being into a child's imagination was one of the first skills that I really honed because I felt that play was the child's natural medium for self-expression. And when you give them the tools for the trade, they are able to open up their own genius and begin to feel better from the inside out. So as I saw a progression in my own learning and teaching, it led me to go to Graduate School. And when I was there at Harvard Graduate School of Education, one of the teachers that I felt was really impactful was Doctor Howard Gardner, who wrote a book called Frames of Mind.

10:34 He was the first teacher that I investigated and researched thoroughly who basically created the theory of multiple intelligences. Let me explain that he proposed that intelligence is not a single fixed ability like we were tested. Reading and and English were your key academic markers for measuring intelligence. He did not believe that. He said that is not the way to bring out the potential in every child. Intelligence is not a single ability, but rather a collection of distinct types of intelligences, including linguistics, language, logical, mathematics, spatial, musical and bodily kinesthetics.

11:37 Now I had kinesthetics, I also had music. But every child has their own personal natural expression of intelligence and it comes through these various domains. I would say even with team, well let's say meetings, you want to bring out a team members assess as their strengths and their intelligences. And the only way you can do that is to do the first step, which is self-awareness, metacognition. Metacognition is knowing yourself, knowing yourself enough to know how you think, how you learn. In those early years when I was just a wee child, when my mom and dad would always come to support me, bolster me, there was always a conversation not about what was wrong with me, but rather let's look at this and see what your strengths are, What are that?

12:45 What is natural for you? I love fixing things when they were broken. My mom had such a a delight in bringing me plates that would break in our cups and the glue was on the table. She said. Roxy, you're very good at putting things together. Will this for me. I loved working with my hands. Here's what's missing with the digital world. Our kids are on screen time way too much. They don't have a chance to investigate what are their interests, what are their hobbies, what do they like to do? I remember when my sister had her first child and he got into Lagos like nobody's business.

13:29 And I think today, where are those wonderful manipulatives and the ways that we investigate children into learning about themselves and enjoying downtime without being on a screen. I think there's very important to remember. How do we integrate the power within and self-awareness if they don't have? Practice. Is, you know what I mean? It's like, is it practice that they follow you out into the garden and they make their own herb garden or they bring it and they they take care of it? There have to There has to be another way of looking at everyday life beyond the screen and the.

14:14 Virtual world when it comes to education for the majority of the education system, because there are private schools, elite schools and they do have a more well-rounded curriculum for the general majority of the education. They have set curriculums and they are definitely just fixated on those established criteria and like you were one of the unfortunate victims of the system like it. It will be really difficult for it to be implemented system wide, but how could we kind of rethink how we look at individual kits to help them bring it out?

14:54 I do want to leave with an optimistic aspect here because since Doctor Howard Gardner came out with his book and that was that was in the late 70s, he has definitely made an impact on the standard system. We we don't have the Mcats, which are the standardized tests in grade school as the only marker for intelligence. But I think it's up to teachers to continue with teacher development and to learn new ways of exposing kids in the classroom, their own imagination. And the ways that I make an impact is to go into a staff development training and to offer teachers very manageable, practical ways to bring art, for one thing, music and movement into the classroom.

15:59 And it's a simple reset, and it doesn't have to take a long time or a pause to really be meaningful, to begin to disrupt what the brain is anxious about and focused on, and to shift gears and to give them an opportunity. Even something as simple as inviting teachers to continue with recess outdoors can give the Audi mind spirit a chance to reset. And that's, that's the most important thing is to not go and be unconscious during the many hours of the day. I want to ask you to paint a picture like, no pun intended, paint a picture of how this looks like in a real classroom, like what you incorporate.

16:56 How it looks in a real classroom is that you have taken a moment to bring in not well. Every day is more black and white than color. And the minute you introduce color, and I mean color construction paper, color pencils, markers, paints, the minute you address that by opening up a table where kids can explore what are the art materials they want to try out for the next 20 minutes. That is the way I break into the the child's spirit, the inner life. Because what I do is a combination of, as I mentioned to you, I use relaxation or mind body techniques with art.

17:51 So the first step would be taking our attention away from screen time and reclaiming what it is that we are paying attention to. I break bell. I use a bell sound to cut through the atmosphere and to alert the children something new is about to happen. A moment where we ready our mind, clear the mind, harm the nervous system. This allows you to shift gears from anxiety, turning the volume down on the autonomic nervous system. And once you begin to elongate your breath, breathing in, filling up, breathing out, like blowing out a candle, that exhalation is the switch that turns the anxiety down on the autonomic nervous system.

18:47 Sometimes I use bubble blowing as an initiator because it's fun and it automatically gets them to blow out. We want the inhalation, but that exhalation is the trigger to shift gears and to get the body to understand time to get out of anxiety into relaxation. The next do is have them choose their art materials and realize that art is a language of symbols and colors. Everything is allowing them to tap into their unconscious and to drop into their intuition to find solutions, to become a meaning maker with their artwork and to have an acquaintance with their inner life.

19:37 This is key to wholeness and health in every age of life. Yeah, I was just thinking the technique works for adults too. Yeah, it's a great, great technique for, you know, snap development meetings if you want to really, you know, depart from your regular, I'd say route conversation and delivery. And important key points that you want to cover, when you color and you use a lot of white space either on a page or on the board, it helps the brain receive that in information and retain it. And I'm involved with a company right now called Abracademy and they are a learning experience design company.

20:26 And there's a lot of elements of play and a lot of similar elements that you mentioned, like how we like using colors, how we break away from the everyday. So like the equivalent of screen time. It could be the typical meeting, the typical way of just doing stand ups or anything like that. And it's it's doing magic. Yeah, or even something as simple as, you know, taking a huge bag of popsicles and then breaking out into teams and seeing, you know, what they build, what each team builds with the same material, and when it's in the period of time.

21:09 And it's a very interesting exercise because it's not only about collaboration and cooperation, but it's about using your imagination. So you mentioned relaxation and then letting them explore with colors. So that's the expressive art bit. Yeah, well, I use a lot of, I use a lot of music, rhyme, storytelling. I I would say it's important to mix up the form of art that you introduce and to have a chance for the brain to relax into a guided meditation or relaxation. Use rhythm and rhyme as a way to journey to a place that's really in your imagination, but it changes your Physiology.

22:09 So with this, how do you merge that with the academic? The typical subject English, math, history like the more academic classes. How can you incorporate the? Two, how you incorporate it is, let's say a child has a test or a paper that they have to write. Before they begin to write, I asked them to use their imagination to close their eyes and to not only see themselves completing the task successfully, but to also begin to compose what it is that they need the right, so that they can begin to really trust themselves and to trust into an inner intelligence, which we haven't gotten into yet.

23:01 And I'd like to share a teaching, what I got from one of my teachers, Jean Houston, who's been named a national treasure because of all human potential, she says. What is it that allows certain individuals to tap into their creative power, their intelligence, even their genius to do wonders in music, art, literature, science and healing, while others flounder in despair and confusion, cut off from their inner resources? What makes one individual take up a challenge at opportunity, facing the unknown, the spirit of adventure, while another sees difficulty as a reason to go numb, unconscious, giving up the one essential factor.

23:52 What each of these individuals has in common is that they are able to tap into and are familiar with inner visioning for self direction. They know and believe the ideas and images that come from within spark their inner energy to create, compose and recharge themselves with resourceful needs. Each of us has within us the most powerful electromagnetic device in the universe, and that is the human brain. And research now recognizes the virtual unlimited capacity called neuroplasticity of the brain.

24:38 And This is why we are now teaching it in schools. And we are learning that stress inhibits the potential for cognition, while relaxation opens not to the power within. And This is why I developed a series of guided imagery relaxation programs called Mind Works for Children and I use them in school and invite teachers to put them on. It only takes 10 minutes to create a break before they get into the test, before they have to write an English or math problem and to give body a chance to access that inner palm and intelligence.

25:32 More schools than you would believe are actually implementing these kinds of mini breaks and they're appreciating the importance of nature and going out into the yard for fresh air. I tell parents, you know, to reset and slow down. Create a pod when your kids come home, let them take off their shoes and socks and just grind themselves out in the yard. Walk but and then begin to take it a moment to do their homework. Give the brain a break from the wriggle into like poppies and pops of poppies. Yeah, yeah, because I was thinking, you mentioned anxious kids.

26:22 Kids themselves are probably not anxious. They're probably absorbing anxious energy from the people around them. Yeah, exactly. I love that question. And I have a a point that I want to make. Did you know that infants are born with only two fears? Fear of loud noises, fear of heights. The rest are learned, unless they're learned. If you as an adult don't pay attention to what it is that's happening within your body, in your nervous system, how are you to minister to your child? That's another reason why, say to parents, take back the afternoon before you begin the homework and all of what has to happen before bed.

27:15 Just sit with your kids. And as I said, go outside. Tell them of a story. Your story is the most potent medicine that you can give your kid. Do you remember a time when you were anxious, afraid, or scared? What did you do? Perhaps you ran as fast as you could, or maybe you just threw rocks into a river. What was it that you did when you were a kid that helped you to decompress, to release that stress and the the tension that you you held? If if you pay attention, you may find that there are Nuggets of wisdom that you hold that you can give your children.

28:00 Yeah, I have recently read a book is by Phillipa Perry. It's called the Book That You Wish Your Parent Bred. So in there she talked a lot about how how the parents treat their children. It's really just a reflection of how they were brought up. And then she tapped into a lot of these fear. So when you ask me, the natural fear that babies were born with, I thought it was a like one level up, like fear of abandonment. But those are also learned. Those are the feeling that they develop when they were abandoned.

28:34 You're talking about years that are the that are innate. Yeah, there are only two. And that's why you want to keep a nursery kind of peaceful and quiet when you want to avoid places where there are loud noises when children are just growing up. Because. They do acclimate to the commotion, and you don't want them to do that. You want them to appreciate stillness, which is almost gone in our world. But I have to say in speaking to the point that you just made about parents maybe not having the intelligence when they were growing up because nobody did it for them.

29:16 I can tell you a story about my mom who said her mother used to yell and scream all the time. And she said, when I have a family, I do not want to do that. She did. She created something called Loving time. There were three girls. I was the middle child. She would have us after school. And I remember this as young as kindergarten, four years old, three years old. And she would say, Roxy, come, come, come into the living room with me, sit right here on the couch. Or she'd sit me on her lap. She herself loved opera, so maybe it was Aida what was playing in a language I did not understand, but what I was picking up with my mother's vibration of complete contentment and peace.

30:08 She'd rubbed my back, brushed my hair, and we would listen together for, I don't know. Time stood still and it was her way of indoctrinating me to the quiet moment of real, true bonding and connection and reinsuring me of safety and security. She did that with each one of us. So my turn, women go. I would then go to my playroom or whatever and she'd take my next sister and this loving time was something that I'd share with my clients all the time and they are amazed at how powerful a medicine it can be.

30:52 It's just. Attention. Yeah, that is that moment you were describing. It was just beautiful. It's not something that I had growing up, but it was a completely different world too. She made it up. She, she made it up. And I think when when you are a parent who is conscious, you want to change things from the way you were brought up to find a better way. And that's what she did. And I just think I learned so much from the way my parents parented us. And it's one of the reasons why I'm such an effective person in helping others, because there were Nuggets of real treasure throughout my life that made a difference in who I am today.

31:43 Yeah, and because my mom also listens to this. So Mom, I'm not saying that I was ignored. That experience just shaped me into the person I am. Yeah. So I want to say because I'm sure they're parents, they just, they are frustrated with their kids. They think you're just not getting it. What's something that we can ask them to think of that can help them reframe their mindset? Well, reframe is a very, very powerful strategy and one one thing that I would say is easily missed is time travel technique.

32:28 I call it the time travel technique when you go back to a time when your child was not acting out, not crazy, not making you like want to kill them, but maybe they were like still under your wing and you were bathing them when they were an infant. And you would remember taking the towel and holding them and brushing and drying their hair and just the way the sun hid their hair, beautiful highlights. And you'd notice how absolutely blue their eyes were. And you want to, you want to take a kid back to its mind when that connection and that awareness of you really seeing them in a way where you're highlighting their innate, their, their qualities that they're born with that cannot go away.

33:26 You want to bring attention to certain qualities. You know, when I, when I notice, you know, putting on your shoes and slack, you always had strong legs and you could always run fast. And I remember that because now today when you're trying out for soccer, you're one of the fastest kids on the on the field. These are three things that no one can ever take away from you. The sun has your, your hair and highlights, the beautiful color, the color of your eyes and how strong your legs and arms are, right?

34:05 Whatever it is you want to bring attention to that. I even have parents take out photographs of when they were little so the kids can see when they're 10 years old, eleven years old, 12 years old, acting out and feeling like they have nothing to go for. But there's something within them that can never be taken away. And it's thing the foundation for the scaffolding of what else they will find within them that's more invisible. So now you go into traits and qualities and name them and stop action when your child is in the midst of, I don't know, bringing a, a tissue to grandma because she's, he's watched a movie and she's crying.

34:55 Oh my God, Johnny, I, I am so impressed that you were thoughtful enough to bring that tissue to and nobody asked you what the very thoughtful thing. How kind of you. If you, your parents don't name those traits, you will not get more of those traits. You must stop the the, the craziness of the day and create a pause. You unplug. It could be a breath, it could be just moving the body to pay attention to the fact that there is something worth not only affirming, affirming what you want them to know about themselves, but also to reframe.

35:44 If they are saying something using self talk about the holes that needs correction. And I do not hesitate to tell parents it's up to you to help them reframe what they say. And I was to say it because that's how I'd like to know not to do it. But I'd say to my mom, I'm so dumb. I'm so dumb. I just don't get it. I can't really. I'm so dumb. And you would give me a big hug or my dad equal attentive. You are not dumb Roxy, your brain is a beautiful brain that just works in a different way now. I would have never thought to say that to myself because I had that reinforced.

36:31 Yeah, that's that's what everyone told you. That's the, that's the newest, that's the new reframe. So let's switch gears and play something more creative, like change our setting a little. I'd like to play our rapid fire questions. So quick answer. What is one song that always lifts your mood when you need it? I would say it's not a song, it's it's really classical music, Mozart. OK, I'll take that one person you'd love to have dinner with and pick their brain. I think it would be Doctor Howard Gardner because he made such an impression on me, because intelligence was such a big sore spot for me.

37:25 I would love to find out more about his his ideas and future application. Why are we going to change the standardized test and either get rid of it or measure multiple intelligences and giving kids different ways to feel good about themselves? Yeah, that I can picture. That would have been a really productive dinner. So finish this sentence. Intelligence is really just. The way that you relate to the world and to yourself. Great. That's great answer. One thing about working with kids that always surprise you?

38:11 They're genius and they never cease to amaze me on the level of creativity. Yeah I agree with that. I still wonder mindset like everything is new to them and they're not fixated in just a box. Yeah. Last thing, what's bringing you joy right now? That's a wonderful question. I'm very happy to be able to put my teachings into a format that can reach more people. And because I love using the arts, I enjoy now making videos and using artistic ways to convey ideas, not just on paper, although I like to write blogs, but to put it into a colorful creative format that really can tell a story.

39:10 I'd love to 1. I think you'd enjoy it. Neat things like that, like during COVID, coloring books was huge and I think we need to do some more things. Right, right. Yeah, just doodling. Doodling is a brain changer. It helps you to get out of the doldrums and as I said, the more colors the better. The the wide range of color the better. Yeah, it will make our world beautiful. Literally. Renee got well. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me, Doctor Roxanne. Thank you so much, Karen.

39:54 Keep up the great work. I appreciate your reaching out and doing what you're doing. Same here. Appreciate the work that you're doing to our world, to our future generation. Thank you. All right, All right, bye.

40:11 Thanks for listening to this episode of Mind One. If you enjoy the conversation, don't forget to follow and share it with anyone who needs to hear it. And let's keep the conversation going. Connect with me on LinkedIn or leave me a comment. Until next time, stay curious, keep exploring, and let's continue to burn our minds and discover what's possible.