00:03.60

Sean Strathy

Greetings, and welcome to another exciting edition of the Tech in EdTech Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Strathy. Today, I'm joined by Jason Kahn, Founder and Chief Science Officer of Mightier. Welcome, Jason.

00:16.31

Jason Kahn

Hi, I'm excited to be here.

00:18.88

Sean Strathy

So before we jump in, just a quick teaser for our listeners that haven't heard of your company before. Mightier blends digital gaming with offscreen activities to teach coping skills through play. So, today we're going to be talking a lot about SEL and mental health. But before we do, Jason, can you share a little bit about your background and your journey in education so far?

00:40.52

Jason Kahn

Absolutely. So I'm a developmental psychologist. I really spent most of my academic career focusing on how kids learn and play, especially through, like what you think about is like middle childhood. So like 6 to 10, that age range and really started noticing. So my first job was at Boston Children's Hospital in the Department of Psychiatry and started realizing that if we started adding play to the tools, to the really strong tools that we had to help children, we could make a really big difference in how we reach, teach children, and what type of outcomes we saw.

01:16.31

Sean Strathy

Excellent. So you kind of touched upon a little bit of the origins there with Mightier. So Mightier was born out of Boston's Children's Hospital. What's the core mission behind the platform?

01:28.63

Jason Kahn

Yeah, so I would say there are a couple, to be honest. One of these is just a really strong belief about how we can teach children emotional regulation skills. So when you look at mental health, again, there is a lot of evidence and a lot of data behind the interventions that we see. But, sometimes it can feel like trying to teach a child how to ride a bike from a book, right?

So you think of this idea that like you come into an office once a week, you talk about things, you come up with some really good problem solving skills, maybe you build some strategies, but then you push a kid out into the real world, like you wouldn't take that approach to riding a bike, right? You tell a kid to get on a bike, tell a kid to play with the bike, maybe let the kid fall a few times, but really get like a sense of balance, a sense of play, a sense of power, and that vision that's really common, this idea that you can learn through exploration is this really common idea in child development.

And when it came to Mightier and the type of technology we build in Mightier, I really wanted to take those same ideas that we know about kid learning and bring them to mental health because I really knew, and our research would later show that this was the case, that these type of learning experiences can be so beneficial and so powerful for kids.

So that was one of the core ideas. The other core idea is that it's really hard for kids to get access to mental health care. So, we live in a world today where wait lists are often measured in months, especially when you need specialty care.

And it turns out, like as we went forward and started building Mightier, these types of digital interventions, these types of game-based interventions, they're really easy to get into people's hands. And so this question of why are kids waiting months and months and months to get care when we can just give it to them became more important to me.

And so we started building Mightier because we had a really good idea of how to treat kids and because we knew we could do it much faster than the current and the current approach.

03:39.40

Sean Strathy

And that barrier of entry, have to imagine, probably helps with, you know, earlier intervention, right? If I need to go reach out to a specialist, you know, and wait three months, I'm really probably waiting until the last moment to get there. So your solution can kind of help with that early early intervention, I imagine.

03:59.07

Jason Kahn

Oh yeah. I mean, we know very clearly that early intervention is so powerful for kids, right? Like, I don't know, like, again, think of another medical analogy, right? So, if you are, we all have kids, right? Like kid has a sore throat. You don't wait and wait and wait and wait to go so get a strep test.

If kid, I mean, even more serious, like kid breaks arm, you don't like wait, but because you know, like you want to get it taken care of, like the moment that it happens, the moment that it's there. That's how you get the best outcomes. And so being able to start building skills the second a kid needs it means that you're putting that kid on the right like the right track as fast as you possibly can. And that means they're getting the benefit of those skills all through their childhood, right then and there, and still building all of these virtuous skills that can then like then help them in their daily life.

04:55.68

Sean Strathy

That's awesome. I want to talk a little bit about the big picture here about the current world that we're living in. So, in many school districts, including my son's here in New Jersey, there's a growing push for SEL programs. Sometimes, they call them different things. I think SEL is the most common term. Sometimes they call them guidance and other other names. But from your perspective, what's driving this urgency today?

05:24.14

Jason Kahn

We have become very good at identifying mental health needs. And this is a really good thing, right? So we have more assessments in place. We have more screening in place. And we are identifying more needs. But as we identify this need, we don't necessarily have the tools that can help the kids and help kids in place, right? So we are, as we brought more and more resources to identify needs, we've started to realize like, hey, we're asking teachers to do it all. We're asking pediatricians to do it all. We're asking a bunch of people who just aren't necessarily like trained or equipped to do everything. And so it's a good thing, but we're sort of, we're starting from a place of being behind. And so I think we're reacting to that. We're reacting to that learning, and we're seeing, we're seeing this urgency play out. And then, of course, as we know perfectly well, I mean, yes, we are at this point, five years removed from the pandemic, but all these kids, like we have a lot of kids who grew up and missed a whole lot of social opportunity during the pandemic.

And those kids, that was a lot of opportunity to learn how to interact with friends, a lot of opportunity to learn how to interact with teachers, and those skills don't just magically appear and so you know this need we also like we're gonna be I mean for lack of a better word we're gonna be paying off this debt for a long time to come and these those kids have these needs.

07:29.17
Sean Strathy

You mentioned the pandemic, and yeah, we are five years removed, but I like that analogy of paying off the debt for a long time. I mean, looking at, you know, some of the data that I've seen around, you know, time that kids are spending hanging out with their peers, reaching certain social milestones, certain levels of independence. The data that I've seen around those metrics it's down, but it's been trending down since before the pandemic as well. I mean, I know that smartphones have an influence there. Are there any larger societal trends that you're seeing too, aside from just what's happening to the kids? Is this something that's happening to parents as well? Like what are what are your perspectives on those trends?

07:53.12

Jason Kahn

Yeah, I mean, I think I have very similar, and I want to be clear, like, I mean, for me, this is like the same, like data that you're seeing, like I kind of interpret in the same way, right? So, it is, as a parent, and like, i mean, I think both you and I can talk about this firsthand, right? So I have two kids.

08:12.17

Sean Strathy

Yeah.

08:12.37

Jason Kahn

I think when we were doing prep, like you said, so you have a kid too, right? So it's like, well, yeah.

08:15.86

Sean Strathy

I have two as well, but one is one's only five months. So he's not very social.

08:19.26

Jason Kahn

But no, exactly as parents, right? Like we're in this world where... I don't know like, it's harder and harder and harder to foster these types of connections. And I think, yes, the technology that kids have plays into it, but also the world that we live in for better or worse, plays a part of it. Like, I don't know, like and like I think it's hard, right? like I think that often, when grownups think about it, they try to put value judgments on it and say it was better before or in some way. like And I think that's hard to say.

But it is different, right? So, like i mean, when I grew up, I mean, it was suburban, but not rural. like you know going out, exploring the world, playing out like it’s just It was part of how we grew up.

And these days, like, I mean, even like very concretely working, like watching my kids grow up, the time they spend outdoors is very structured, like part of the sports team. And then their unstructured time is like they're with friends, like very much with friends, but with friends in a digital space, which is just so different.

09:32.88

Sean Strathy

Yeah. That's really interesting. I want to just move kind of back to a point that you made before about leaning on individuals whose role maybe it's not to handle these types of challenges. So can you talk a little bit about how schools are handling these challenges today? Like, think you mentioned a lot's falling on teachers, but are there other things that schools are doing to address these challenges?

10:04.44

Jason Kahn

I've been impressed with the desire and curiosity of the schools that I've been around. So I will say that I do think that there is, in general, like big picture, A lot going on and this interesting crucible of what can be done is going on in schools.

So I do give the, I give schools a lot of credit for that learning. a lot of training we've noticed, um, as among teachers and then among, you know what you would call a guidance department to try to bring in more resources.

A lot of like, again, like social-emotional curriculum has come into place, which I think is really important as well. So I've been, again, like have been impressed with both the recognition of the problem and then the ability to bring ideas into place that might be helpful and then add those resources in.
I will say on the other side, though, I think schools have been a little bit inflexible in necessarily pulling back on some of the academic requirements.

So, in a very good way, schools have been trying to close achievement gaps. The general structural answer to that has been more academic time, but there hasn't necessarily been an understanding of how that increase in academic time might be influencing kids' social development.

11:32.34

Sean Strathy

That's interesting. And I think this kind of brings me to my next point, cause yes, I think we are, so we have seen, especially over the last maybe six or seven years, mostly in the last five, social and emotional curriculum has exploded, right? I mean, we here at Magic have developed some, we have we have partners that develop them for, publishers, for example, who are selling into these markets, you know individual companies selling into these markets.

One of the things that I've noticed as a parent is that unless my child has an identified challenge that they are facing, they're really just, these curriculums are mostly inputs, meaning they're being taught, they have a special class once a week, but it's not something that is going into their transcript.

So I'm kind of curious about, you know, the data that schools could do a better job of collecting and what they might be able to do with that data so that they could share it with the parents so that everybody can kind of be on the same page.

12:44.57

Jason Kahn

That's a really good question. i feel like like there's an academic perspective that is very like intrusive in my thought process right now because there are such a wealth of scales that you can put in place. They are you know we're designing a study right now. We're using a child flourishing index. And you know that has a very fun set of three measures about that really fall into the category of what is the child's curiosity?

What is the child's ability to spend time on a task? And what is the child's ability to stay calm and in control? Those types of measures are, can be really powerful. And like that ability to get everyone on the same page of like, Hey, like socially, emotionally, like what do we really care about with the kid are important for everybody to be talking through.

Um, I think you're hitting another part of this though, which I mean, I'm curious, like, I mean, especially with your perspective, like schools, like a lot of the time we're talking about so I imagine most of the audience here, like familiar with like the tier one, tier two, tier three classification, but for a lot of these kids, it's tier one intervention, which is then like, yes, a teacher is implementing a curriculum for the whole class.

And that's really, It's really hard to be responsive, responsive to an individual in those cases. And I mean, even like to turn the you know turn it around a little bit, I'm curious if you've seen anything that has been impactful on the, how do we turn this around? like how do we be responsive to the needs of a kid in a tier-one setting, an individual kid?

14:29.34

Sean Strathy

I mean, I think maybe I think about it a little bit selfishly from my own perspective, right? I have one, I have one kid in the class. Uh, so if I see that, you know, my child is struggling with,  or, you know, not meeting the standards of, one of their academic lines, then that's something that I will supplement that home to kind of help address.

But I think like you, you just touched upon this child flourishing index, which kind of gets down to maybe part of the challenge is that there's in reading, writing, and arithmetic, there are standards, right? It might vary by state, but there are a set of standards that everybody agrees upon. By the end of this, we want children to be able to know or do x y, and z. I don't know that those standards-based outcomes are available for SEL across the board. if there's common metrics that everybody's, you know guiding towards.

15:28.12

Jason Kahn

You run into this, yeah, no I think your instinct is right because we run into this in our research lives all the time right that every time we are designing a study we are doing an intensive look through the literature to understand how these ideas are being measured and it's changing and it's changing fast and so like I said, we're putting together, I like that I like the flourishing measure for the study we're putting together right now.

If you're a school district and the state isn't giving you guidance, then you are kind of on your own, and you're not necessarily going to have the resources of a dedicated researcher who's always necessarily trying, like has like it's his job to be curious about this.

And then i think the other side of this is because our understanding of what SEL should look like changes so fast, I can't imagine, like, it just sounds very hard to keep up from like from a school perspective of we could write standards down today. And I mean, even at what, like 50 years old, this field is still a baby and that makes it really hard.

16:54.12

Sean Strathy

Yeah. what What changes have you seen recently? Can you give me some examples? I'm not familiar.

17:01.24

Jason Kahn

Oh yeah, I mean, I was surprised again, like on the realm of, like, how we think about, like how we think about kids in a, like, cause there's like a neurological basis to a lot of the understanding that we're trying to put together. And I think that the idea that we are able to describe, so like what a healthy kid looks like. Like, I think like that, we have a picture of this, but then how we do it.

17:34.64

Sean Strathy

What a physically healthy kid looks like.

17:36.01

Jason Kahn

Right, right, what a physically healthy kid, but what an emotionally healthy kid looks like, like we have changed the definition of ADHD over the past 20 years, right? So we used to talk about attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

17:49.16

Jason Kahn

Now we've combined it. So we have ADHD, and we have type, you know, we have inattentive type, hyperactive type, combined type. We have changed how we talk about emotional dysregulation in the past five years, right?

So we used to talk about emotional, like, oppositional defiant disorder. Now we've moved into more of a conversation about disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Even our core understanding of what irritability looks like on a neurological level has changed.

So we used to think about these things as like just highly externalizing disorders, but there's this cool research that has come through, and again, in the past 10 years, that has really forced us to look at the relationship between externalizing behaviors and internalizing behaviors.

So like externalizing behaviors, acting out, and internalizing activities, you think more like the anxious, shy kid who's like withdrawing from situations. And this is all really, really, really good stuff. Like amazing, like the fact that we are working and the fact that we're building these understanding is really important.

And that means that on a day-to-day level, right? Like, I mean, there are things you can do. Like we can get, like, as we talk, as we move to like how you can be effective and like, you can, we can build things. We can build interventions. Mightier is one of them.

It's still hard. It's still like if you are if you are one person and it is not your like you have been asked to take on reading and writing. And math. And also the kids emotional health. There is a lot going on and it's hard to keep up.

19:29.21

Sean Strathy

For sure. For sure. Let's shift gears a little bit to talking about designing tools for the space. So, how do you balance gamification with genuine therapeutic impact? 

19:51.92

Jason Kahn

Mm-hmm.

19:53.67

Sean Strathy

I think that that's an interesting space, right? Because I think although I think now games and gamification has really taken over the educational industry in more traditional curriculums. We see partners developing games for, you know, vocab games and math games are are fluent. I mean, there's a million applications out there that students use in order to practice in a gamified way. But how do you take your? How do you take that with the genuine therapeutic impact? Because it's a little bit different than, you know, practicing this and implementing the skills is almost a necessity for the the child's well-being and survival in a way and there in their immediate world, whereas maybe they don't see the impact of practicing math for you know until much later down the line.

20:48.68

Jason Kahn

Yeah, I love this conversation. And let me maybe start with a question for you. And I don't know, do you play games?

20:58.41

Sean Strathy

Nah, not a ton. I played more when I was younger, but I don't really play many games now.

21:01.73

Jason Kahn

Ok. Okay, think back to when you were younger. And I'm curious, leaving the educational part of this out, like did you do you have memories of a favorite game? 

21:11.99

Sean Strathy

Oh, of course. Madden, I played. NBA 2K, whatever I played. Those were like my go-to games.

21:20.08

Jason Kahn

Great. Okay.

21:21.14

Magic EdTech

Sega, if I go back.

21:22.06

Jason Kahn

Yes.

21:23.29

Magic EdTech

Sonic.

21:24.13

Jason Kahn

Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So these games, all of these games have, they all demanded mastery out of you, right? So you want to get great at Madden.

You have to learn plays. You have to like, there is a, there's a forget like, yes, there's a massive fine motor ask of you too, which great like you have to learn that from, to just control the thing.

You have to learn plays, you have to learn timings, you have to learn how to read a defense, you have to learn how to... like all of these things the game is asking you to learn and not necessarily telling you this is the right way to do it, but it's giving you this sense of feedback, this constant sense of feedback of how you're doing.

And I think a lot of times, educational developers forget what makes games feel powerful for kids, right? So when you're playing Madden, you are learning, and you are getting better, and you are watching yourself get better. And it is all driven by you, like that feedback loop, which is not necessarily explicit to you as the player, right? Like the game is not like, hey, I'm going to learn how to be a play-caller in football. It is... Let's play Madden. I mean, that's the game.

And like we could we could come up with a different design of that game where we throw flashcards at you and are like, name this formation. not as fun.

22:58.10

Sean Strathy

No.

23:00.90

Jason Kahn

So the idea that we've always had has been to make emotional learning deeply embedded in the gameplay itself.

And when we talk about something like Mightier, we know we start from this point. We know that emotional regulation is such a core part of growing up, right?

So we know this one skill, one skill, gonna predict whether a child is, you know, it's gonna predict their wealth, it's gonna predict their health, like, I don't, like, so much good stuff comes out of this.

If we take the approach of, we want you to practice deep breathing and we're gonna level up, level you up based on how much deep breathing we do, we know we're gonna lose kids. So instead, we do something backwards and we say, hey, your emotional regulation is now a controller in a game, like actually a set of games, there are 28 games in my gear, but in a game that looks like Mario or F-Zero, like F-Zero, I'm dating myself, but like a racing game.

You know this idea that like you are like supposed to stay in control because that's built into the game.

And when you don't build and get in control, then this funny thing happens: the game gets harder, which most adults are like, why would you torture a kid like that? But if you're a kid, from your perspective, it's like, supposed to stay in control. That's how I win the game. And so they're built. We don't sit there trying to tell a kid how to stay in control. We just try to reward them for staying in control by making them better at games. And I think like this idea that you can deeply build the learning to be just part of success in terms of like the game mechanics is key to who we are.

And like, I guess like, you know, I mean, and no one being long winded, but that learning, that loop, that coreness of making the learning playful is like such a key part of why I think Mightier has been so successful. And I think like big part of like what I like to see in other learning games.

25:12.29

Sean Strathy

No, that's this is that's like a really profound point that you're making right there, because I think that that does get lost in academic games a lot, because a lot of times, you know, I think games are developed. I know from experience working with partners, that's, you know, a lot of times we have a budget and we have to hit these standards and we have to prove that this game is going to help students test on, you know, how to mix chemicals and make a certain compound or whatever. And it's really just kind of, it's gamifying the drilling of it rather than promoting actual play.

25:51.64

Jason Kahn

Right.

25:56.43

Jason Kahn

And that, yeah. And I think it's important to separate the idea of gamifying versus play, right? So, we can build a point system around understanding how chemicals interact.

And that's that is going to motivate some people. So like definitely like can hit goals by doing that. But that is different from taking a to play with your example, right? Like any digital space, you can mix whatever chemicals you want and have whatever interactions you want and no one's going to get hurt. And it can be fun to see some good outcomes, some goal-driven outcomes. It can be fun to see some bad outcomes, too.

26:41.03

Sean Strathy

Yeah

26:41.05

Jason Kahn

Like, and that is a space, like if you're truly embracing play, That is a space that you let kids go into. Like, what happens when I mix these things together? And how can I do that in a safe way? How can I explore these ideas in a safe way? Because I can't actually poison a chemistry lab. That would be bad.

27:00.40

Sean Strathy

Right. No, that's great. Gamify versus play. I'm going to be using that moving forward. Play is more exploration. Gamify is more repetition practice type of approach to it.

27:20.53

Jason Kahn

Yeah.

27:22.44

Sean Strathy

On the design standpoint, so I think one of the complaints that teachers have, parents have, is that we have so many digital tools. As a parent, I have to log into, you kno,w the SIS, the LMS, Google Classroom, which might be separate, a separate tool for helping my kid with his homework. like there's so many different tools out there. And kids, you know screen time is obviously a challenge for a lot of parents as well. So how do you balance that challenge of screen time distraction and it being another on-screen activity with the goals that you're trying to help the student accomplish?

28:14.84

Jason Kahn

Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I think the...We are noticing that, and I think a lot of parents are noticing this too. So like like you said, we are moving more and more of our tools online and kids are becoming more and more online. And so what I think has been powerful is there's a colleague of mine at Boston Children's Hospital who gives really, i his advice to parents. I think is very sound, and I just echo all the time.

Everything you do with your child must be intentional, right? So like, if you are asking your child to use a video game for emotional regulation, like, right, like that thing, my dear, right, that thing should be built for emotional regulation. That time should accomplish that like that time is there.

If the goal of the time is pure entertainment, that's fine. Like, great. Like, but like, just make active choices rather than just be like, oh, my kid, like, how did my kids spend 12 hours on Fortnite yesterday, right? Like, I mean, like, there's a difference between, and like, your kid is allowed to, like, I mean, I feel that very strongly about this as a parent and as a developed, like, ah, in my role, your kid is allowed to have fun online. Like, that is where most kids are. That's where kids have fun. Like, by all means, like, that is a good thing. Like your kid is missing out on the world around them if they're not having fun online. It's just how do you balance that, right? Because like they should be having fun online and they should be spending time on you know with friends outside, and they should be hanging out with their family, and they should be doing their homework, and they should be, you know, I mean, our house, but instrument practice is part of it. And like, you know, like there's just a balance; it's a diet.

In fact, it's called the screen time diet, and it's Michael Rich is the way he talks about it. But how do you balance that diet? How do you make sure that diet is intentional? And how do you work with your kids so they understand those expectations that you have as a parent?

And I think like that's, I guess that is the like the one last note before I you know, move off completely from this is that if you are asking your child to learn emotional regulation online or learn math online or learn like, that's a different intentionality than go hang out with your friends online. So you can't expect your kid. It's very hard if you're a kid, if you put yourself on the other side to be like, wait, my only online time is the learning stuff. Like no matter how good the learning stuff is, like it's not meeting the need of how do I hang out with my friends? Like then it's not meeting that need.

And so I do think like from a parent's perspective, like, yeah, just making sure that like the parent-driven screen time doesn't... Again, what your answer for what this kid-driven or social screen time is is personal for everyone, but like making sure they're not like necessarily viewed as a zero-sum game. Otherwise, that leads to conflict.

31:42.28

Sean Strathy

I haven't heard of Screen Time Diet, but I'm definitely going to check that out. And I do understand what you're saying because I think about my own experience with screens. I'm on screens all the time. I'm on the screen. You know, I'm on my computer for work. I'm on my phone for work. Of course, like many adults, I can get sucked into social media and be scrolling on Instagram.

You know, I have a I mentioned I have a five month old son. So sometimes I'm up in the middle of the night with him and I take out my phone to look at it. And I've had to you know, there's a major difference in my own my own self-regulation between if I spend 20 minutes scrolling on Instagram versus if I spend 20 minutes on the same device, same screen, reading a book.

I'm like a completely different person. So the different parts of the diet, right?

32:35.08

Jason Kahn

Right. They're different parts of the diet. And I mean, again, like I, if you find value and you find joy in those 20 minutes of Instagram, that's great. Like, I mean, you should like spend those 20 minutes on Instagram. It's just, yeah, to your point, it's different. It's not meeting the same need as the 20 minutes of books. And I mean, if you think if you for yourself were like, hey, I'm going to give myself 20 minutes of screen time. And you just walked away after that, like, you couldn't meet both those needs. And your kid is the same, right?

33:07.14

Sean Strathy

Yeah.

33:08.24

Jason Kahn

Like, your kid is absolutely the same.

33:10.28

Sean Strathy

Yeah. Yeah. Um I want to pivot a little bit looking into the future. This conversation is fascinating. I think there's there's a lot going on right now. You know, like you said earlier, things are changing at a very rapid pace. But and looking into the future a little bit. What barriers do you see, um, you know, you needing to come as an, overcome as an organization or barriers that generally tech platforms in the SEL space need to overcome in the next couple of years?

33:46.56

Jason Kahn

Yeah, I think I have. I have two thoughts on this that are both... One is very internal to what our technology is, and then the other is very external to how the world works. And maybe I'll start there. We provide mental health care on a digital device, and we do not necessarily have policy around how this works. And so this idea of how you fund healthcare that is digitally delivered, what policy drives and reimburses that healthcare that is digitally delivered is really very much in its infancy. And I mean, again, to a lot of people's credit, like, We are starting to think about this, and there's still a lot of work to do. So, digital healthcare is not covered in all 50 states. We need it to be covered in all 50 states. The model under how that care delivery looks like, there are, you know, I think even like our CMS, the government, the organization that sets the codes, have two different approaches right now. The timing and risk profile under both of those approaches are very different. One of them is very much in the realm of like, these are social educational interventions that should be done with clinician supervision and very much rewards early intervention. And another one is very, like, very, very, very medical, which again, like my preferred approach, is that we treat these kids as we need clinician oversight.

Because again, like our alternative for them is wait lists. And I don't, I don't like that wait list. I don't like that approach. I don't like the wait list approach should be clear. So we have a lot of I mean, we do have a lot of policy work to do.

And that's before we even think about, like, the school setting where the, you know, just a completely different privacy regime is in place. So that's, you know, listeners this podcast, like the idea of FERPA is not going to be a weird acronym, but like, you know, I mean like harmonizing for us, especially like harmonizing the needs because sometimes we're consumer technology, sometimes COPA, sometimes we're health technology, which is pretty well understood. And then, we don't often, we don't often act as a school technology, but when we do, then that's a for but yeah FERPA comes into play.

So those are all needs. And again, people are working on them, but I think very short term. My hope is that we can get digital health covered in all 50 states, and excited that people are working on that.

And then, I will talk internally for Mightier and like what we hope to see for our users in the future.

I think being a parent of a kid with any sort of neurodevelopmental need can feel super lonely, right? So you get this space where, like, It feels, it's not true, but it feels like you're off on your own. It feels like all, you know, it feels like a bunch of kids are thriving in the way your kid is not. This isolation can be really hard. And I think that we are, i think one of the things that we at Mightier try to take very seriously, but I, you know, again, like I, I'm hoping that we can see more movement towards this in the community in general is treating the parent experience or the care you know the caregiver experience as as important as the child experience.

Because these are the people that are responsible for caring for the child. These are the people responsible for prioritizing how a kid spends their time. And we can't see the same improvement that we'd hoped for if we're only talking to the kid alone. So we need to make sure that we are bringing parents along in the journey and really caring for them and really bringing them together. And yeah, internally for us, that's I think that's one of our top problems and what we're hoping to work on in the future.

38:29.83

Sean Strathy

So I'm hearing a sense of community, but I can't i can't help but think about are you planning on developing, and maybe you can't share this information, but are you planning on developing a similar type of tool for parents? Because a parent needs to be able to regulate themselves emotionally in order to help their child regulate themselves emotionally.

38:51.08

Jason Kahn

Oh, I would say both, right? So we definitely, so, ‘My Dear’ right now is sweet spot is in the you know children 6 to 14. And we are working on aging that up as like a sort of forever challenge. Like, we'll never stop on that front. The other piece of that though, and I will say like, yes, like very much hinting towards community and parent support as a need, because I don't know. Like, I mean, I just, again, like, parents are never alone as they feel, but it can feel so lonely. Like the amount of times I've talked to a parent and they, you know, they echo this feeling.

It's, I don't know. I mean, it's something like, right? Like, I mean, even, even with my own kids, like, don't like to overshare their situations, but, like, as they face, you know, they face their challenges, and it's not necessarily easy to find, know, And me as like a child development expert with access to, like, the best of my, of Boston's mental health and academic community, it still feels isolating, right? Because the clinical needs are just part of their needs. Like they're still kids.

I'm still a parent. I still have, like, you know, I mean, there's just a lot more to it than just knowing all the dance numbers, all the dance moves of like, okay, do this for your kid, do this for your kid, do this for your kid. And so very much want to help continue to think about how we support parents.

40:21.03

Sean Strathy

Absolutely. Any, so we're pretty much here at time. This has been a great conversation.

40:26.82

Jason Kahn

Yeah.

40:27.90

Sean Strathy

Do you have any parting thoughts or advice for our listeners?

40:33.42

Jason Kahn

I always like to. I mean, I've sort of, we sort of hit it at the last question. I always like to remind parents that their instincts for their kids are right. And I think this applies to educators, too, right? Like, guys, no kid, like we are talking to a group of parents of people who know kids really well, who have the best interest for their kids in mind and like really just encouraging people to lean into their instincts, I think is just, I don't know. I always like to end there.

41:09.23

Sean Strathy

I love it.

41:10.15

Jason Kahn

Yeah.

41:11.34

Sean Strathy

As my wife likes to say, her instincts are always right.

41:15.40

Jason Kahn

All right.

41:17.88

Magic EdTech

She doesn't say anything about mine, but that's how it is. No, this was awesome. Jason, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. And it was it was a great use of our time and and we look forward to everybody enjoying it.

41:33.04

Jason Kahn

Thank you, Sean. It was great to talk with you.