Melissa Schulz - Yell Less, Smile More - Fill Your Tool Belt With Skills That Will Make The Legacy-making Process Easier

Living Your Legacy

In this episode of Living Your Legacy, host Michelle Slaney-Travato interviews Melissa Schulz, a board-certified behavior analyst and mother of three, about transforming parenting stress into calm, effective family dynamics. Schulz shares her professional journey from clinical

Key takeaways

• Melissa Schulz is a board-certified behavior analyst with a master's degree in counseling who transitioned from clinical ABA to private parent coaching after recognizing the limitations of medical insurance coverage for families.
• Schulz advocates for replacing emotional reactivity and anger with curiosity, encouraging parents to adopt a 'detective mindset' to understand the root causes of challenging behaviors rather than judging them.

Main topics

• Parenting challenging behaviors
• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and parent coaching

Notable quotes

"Kids are like beautiful custom furniture pieces that need all sorts of different tools."

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable frameworks for de-escalating daily parenting stress through

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) Has life ever given you the curveball that you weren't sure what to do with? You know, the kind where you think, someone should really do something about this. Have you ever thought, maybe that someone is me? And then found yourself on a grand adventure you never saw coming? Me too. As a special needs mom, I have been saddened by what's available to my son. But instead of wallowing in it, I decided to do something about it. Along the way, I'm meeting extraordinary people and having the most wonderful experiences I never thought I'd have. I'm so inspired by what's happening around me that I want to share it all with you. Living Your Legacy is a community where ordinary people who've been called to create something bigger than themselves can come together to be inspired, connect, learn, and live into the legacies they want to see in the world. I'm your host, Michelle Slaney-Travato, and this... is the Living Your Legacy podcast. Speaker 1 (1:05) Hello, everybody. Michelle Saini-Travato here. I want to take a moment to welcome you to another episode of the Living Your Legacy Show. On this show, we interview legacy makers, everyday ordinary people who are out creating extraordinary legacies that most of us would never know about because they're not super famous or notorious or in the media all the time. But they're out there changing the world, making it better one action, one movement, one contact at a time. And we interview the people, the professionals who support legacy makers, because the reality is none of us does it alone. And sometimes we need to get connected with the absolute right people who can help us to get to that next step that we need in order to achieve our legacy. Super important. Plus. We also provide ideas for potential legacies for yourself. If you're listening to this and thinking, I love all of it. I have no idea what my life could be like or what's in there for me or how I can go out and change the world. Well, we're going to give you lots of ideas on that today. And I love. When our guests encompass kind of all of those things, they're creating their own legacy in their own life, they're helping support other people, and they can provide us with inspiration to help us move on our own journey. Today's guest is one of those people. And I'm super excited to have her here because the reality is if you are a parent, you have stress. no way about that. Like you do. Having children is kind of stressful. It's also amazing, but it's stressful. There's so many more things to think about than just ourselves. You are balancing not only your own schedule and your own to-do list, but if you're like me, you're balancing everybody else's everything in the house too. You got the master calendar where you're putting everything in and it's like, Jenga, you're trying to figure out how to do it all without everything falling apart really quickly. And that can be amazing, but equally really stressful. It can be so hard. And if it continues to be stressful over and over, flashback to the pandemic, it can really cause you to be not your best self, not the parent that you hope that you could be, but the parent of like kid nightmare stuff. That marriage who is so stressed and so tense and testy and yelling at every kid, at each other, your spouse, your partner, whoever you have, right, in your life, at your mom, on the phone, whoever it is, right? Just so stressed that you just feel like you're living in a pressure cooker and you don't know how to relieve that pressure. Well, what if it just didn't have to be that way? What if you could learn some strategies and tools that could actually help you to take a breath, take a beat, and be able to enjoy your kids more, to enjoy the chaos? Maybe you could be the calm in the chaos that is your life so that you can not only help your children become the best adults they can be, which of course is always our goal, but also to be the best parent you can be so that when they think back on you, when they're in their 40s and 50s and 60s, when they talk about you with their spouse or their friends or their own children, they will talk about how amazing you were and all the awesome things you taught them and what a legacy that is to create. Because you can create systems that will continue for generations. How incredible is that? Well, why wouldn't you want that? And our guest today, she's going to talk about that with us. And I have had a previous conversation with her and found her inspiring. So I had to have her on the show. So I'd like to introduce you to my new friend, Melissa Schultz. Melissa is the mom of three. So if you have one child or two like me, three just seems like a lot. It can be like crazy. As a family, you're completely outnumbered. Adults are outnumbered in a situation of three children. So right there, she's got some skill to teach the rest of us. She also happens to have a master's degree in counseling. Melissa is a board certified behavior analyst, and we're going to talk about what that is. And she spent the last 20 plus years helping parents. effectively manage their child's challenging behaviors so that they can go back to enjoying their family time again. And who doesn't want that? Melissa, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here. Thank Speaker 2 (5:59) you so much. I'm so happy to be here. I just love just your mission of this podcast, living your legacy and just how. Just how inspiring this podcast is and how people are finding ways to really make the world a better place in their unique ways and their unique callings. So I am just so honored to be a guest on this Speaker 1 (6:17) podcast. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. I'm honored to have you here because honestly, I'm looking forward to gaining some benefit myself. So I don't go yell at people in my house today. So Melissa, I always start my show with our guests with this question. When you were in grade four and the teacher asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? What was it and did you do it? So my Speaker 2 (6:40) memory around this time of I remember being in my parents' kitchen and I was getting all the Tupperware out of a drawer and trying to like balance it on my arms and on my head. And I was telling my mom I want to be a waitress when Speaker 1 (6:52) I grew up Speaker 2 (6:52) because I wanted to balance all the things. So my mom was like, you don't want to be a waitress. Like you are probably not going to like that job. That might not be for you. But that was like my earliest thing. I thought that would be so fun to like balance all of the plates to bring to all the people. And when I did try to balance all the Tupperware, it all fell immediately. So maybe it's good that I did not pursue that Speaker 1 (7:13) career. Well, at least the Tupperware was empty. Yeah. It was empty. Speaker 2 (7:18) It Speaker 1 (7:18) could Speaker 2 (7:18) have been much worse. Speaker 1 (7:20) However, I would say that what you're doing now is helping other people balance the stuff that's in their lives. So maybe in a way you kind of did do it. Maybe, yeah. So if you didn't become a waitress, what was your journey to get where you are? Because obviously becoming someone who is a certified behavior analyst, I'm pretty sure most kids in grade four wouldn't even know what that is or that it exists. So definitely not on the top 100 list. Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:47) Most adults don't know what that is or that it is. They're like, you're a what? Like, don't worry. It's like, yeah. So I knew even kind of as a teen, I remember knowing that I really wanted to help like kids, like, especially like. I started out being really interested in helping at-risk youth. So when I turned 18, I got my first job working in group homes for kids that had been abused and taken out of their homes. Or I worked in a shelter for teen prostitutes. I worked in group homes for kids that had or teens that were struggling with drug dependency. So I kind of jumped into really intense Speaker 1 (8:22) environments with very intense Speaker 2 (8:24) behaviors and just loved Speaker 1 (8:27) being able to help. kids in those environments, Speaker 2 (8:31) but it really was all the very intense behavior. So I joke now with my clients. I'm like, there's nothing that you could tell me that I have not seen. I've seen much worse. Like there's no, I've seen it all. There's no, no judgment here. Um, so that's kind of where I started my career basically when I turned 18. And then, um, I had initially gone to college for computer science and I, um, It was in my first class and I was looking around and I was like, I don't think this is like where my people are. I don't think this is like going to be a great fit for me. And I switched to a psychology class and then loved it and then switched to psychology. And so that's what I majored in for undergrad. And then I was using that as I was kind of working in all these kind of home environments. And then it was like, wanted to check out the school system. I was like, okay, like the home can be really challenging, but like school is where kids can really like. maybe rise above some of their home circumstances, like make a difference there. So I switched to working for a school for kids with really challenging behaviors and decided to get my master's degree in school psychology. And so school psychologists are the people in the school districts that are doing all the testing on kids to see if they would qualify, benefit from special education services. And I really, and then also I started that program and then they said, Hey, there's this other thing. You could be a board certified behavior analyst. The program I was in. It was only a few more classes because it was pretty embedded in the school psych curriculum. And I, at that point, was just kind of an overachiever. I'm like, I've never heard of that. Like, why not? A few more classes. So I did both of them at the same time. And I realized in my third year, the last year of my master's program, that, you know, school psychology is a great profession, but there is a lot of repetition. You're like doing some testing with kids. You're writing up a report. You're reading your report. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And I learned about myself that I don't like doing the same thing a lot. I like to do different things. So with the behavior part of my education, I got to be the person in the schools that was like chasing the kid that was running across campus, like climbing the fence. Or I was helping support the kid that was like throwing their desk across the room. And I was like, OK, this I like. This is like always dynamic. We're always trying to figure out what's going on and how Speaker 1 (10:39) we can help support. these different unique kids with what's going on. Speaker 2 (10:43) So I ended up not even really using my school site credential that I got and just Speaker 1 (10:47) really focusing Speaker 2 (10:47) on just the behaviors. Like I'm so interested in why kids do what they do and how we can help them in ways that like are not just like guessing, but like based on research, based on what we know works with like that specific type of kid. Cause there are lots of different kids where their Speaker 1 (11:02) brains work Speaker 2 (11:03) differently, right? They're all unique, but also like we can know based on their profile, what's actually going to work for them. So. I did that for a while. I did that in homes. And then I decided to start my own business about 14 years ago, my first business. And it was an in-home behavioral health company in Northern California. And it started out with just me and my home office, like kind of on a whim, like. I'm just going to do this. And so I had my cap, like always kept breaking my printer when I was trying to work from home and start this business and grew it to having 75 employees and sending these employees out to homes all over to help kids. This business was through medical insurance so we could help kids with a diagnosis of autism. And it was wonderful. So much fun. I loved learning to grow the business. I loved being able to train hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of professionals that are now out, you Speaker 1 (11:55) know. Speaker 2 (11:55) living their legacy, doing similar things, helping kids. And I loved the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of families whose lives were changed because of these services. But then my journey had another little wrinkle because I found that because it was through medical insurance, there were a lot of limitations. So I could only help kids that had a diagnosis of autism, which is wonderful. I have lots of experience with that. But what I know and I'm passionate about is not just helping kids with. that one specific diagnosis. But what I know helps kids, all kids, right? I specialize in strong will, deeply feeling, and then all the different neurodivergencies, ADHD, autism, all of that I really like to work with. And then medical insurance also put a lot of limits on how much I could support the families. Speaker 1 (12:41) And Speaker 2 (12:41) that was where it just was really like, this is not what they need. There was just a gap. There was a gap between what medical insurance would provide and what the families actually needed to make. long lasting change to really enjoy their kids, to not feel stressed out all the time. Dad hoped that their lives could be different or kids' life could Speaker 1 (12:57) be different. Speaker 2 (12:58) So I started on the side, a side business on the side of my other business where I just did parent coaching where I just worked one-on-one with the parent. It wasn't their medical insurance or anything. And so I could just really focus on each individual parent and giving them all the support they need to really know how to help each of their unique children learn the skills they need. in the best possible way. And that, um, love that so much that I sold the other business. And I've been just doing this full time for Speaker 1 (13:29) a little over a year now. Speaker 2 (13:30) Um, and just, uh, yeah, love the changes I see in families, the impact that I'm having. You're really helping parents know just the best way to respond and connect with Speaker 1 (13:40) their kids. That's extraordinary. Um, and what a journey that you've had. I can't imagine at the age of 18, um, jumping into situations with kids in significant crisis with a lifetime of challenges of coping skills that may or may not have been the best coping skills. Right. They're not because they're kids just trying to make it through the day. Right. You know, kids with emotional armor four feet thick that you have to try to get through in order to get to the root of the problem. And that at 18, you would have a heart big enough to say, this is