What if the classroom was the teacher? In this episode, Instructor Mike dives into the Reggio Emilia philosophy—a powerful, child-centered approach born in postwar Italy. Learn how Reggio uses project-based learning, beautiful environments, and the “hundred languages of children” to foster thinking, creativity, and real developmental growth. Whether you’re an educator, director, or a parent choosing the right fit, this episode reveals why Reggio is more than a buzzword—it’s a blueprint for lifelong learning.

What if the “help” your child is getting is actually fueling a billion-dollar industry?

In this eye-opening episode, Instructor Mike breaks down the historical pipeline that turned Black children—especially boys—into currency for a sprawling diagnostic system. From the original intent of special education to today’s explosion of behavioral labels, pharmaceuticals, education tech, and consulting firms, we trace the shift from disability support to behavioral profit.

Learn how federal legislation like IDEA unintentionally incentivized misdiagnosis, how school budgets now depend on special ed classifications, and why Black parents must learn the system before the system learns their child.

🔎 Topics include:

• The 1975 legal spark that opened the floodgates

• How ADHD became the gateway diagnosis

• Why school “support” often equals surveillance

• The billion-dollar business of behavior

• What happens when Black children are no longer misread?

This episode isn’t just informative—it’s a warning. Because once your child is on the diagnostic train… it’s hard to get them off.

Not all childcare is created equal. In this episode, Instructor Mike breaks down the different types of childcare centers—from daycares and ECE centers to Montessori, Reggio-inspired programs, and family child care homes. You’ll learn how to evaluate what’s best for your child’s development, not just your schedule. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or future center director, this episode offers the clarity you need to make informed, professional decisions about early care and education.

In this powerful episode of Family Matters with Instructor Mike, we dig deep into the forgotten history of child development and expose how today’s educational system quietly rewrote your child’s learning path—without your input, your consent, or your understanding.

Instructor Mike breaks down the original three domains of development—physical, cognitive, and language—and explains how the quiet addition of social-emotional and adaptive/self-help domains created a gateway to an overgrown diagnostic industry. You’ll learn how funding laws, educational policy, and well-meaning professionals helped turn observation into surveillance, and how children—especially Black children—became the currency of a billion-dollar system built on labeling instead of liberating.

This episode answers:

• What were the original domains of child development—and why were they enough?

• Why did new domains get added, and what laws made that happen?

• How did early childhood education shift from teaching to tracking?

• Why does today’s emotional curriculum hurt more than it helps?

• What can you do as a parent, teacher, or leader to shift the system from inside or outside?

If you’ve ever felt like today’s early childhood approach is more about documentation than development—this episode will confirm your instincts and give you a blueprint to resist with purpose.

In this critical episode of Foundations First, Instructor Mike delivers a bold and necessary message: love is not enough. Children deserve qualified adults—not just well-meaning ones. From emotional intelligence to developmental science, this episode outlines the training, mindset, and self-awareness that every adult needs to responsibly lead, guide, and grow with young children.

You’ll learn:

• Why good intentions can still produce developmental harm

• What real ECE certification should include (beyond checkbox training)

• How to hold yourself—and others—to a standard that reflects what children actually need

• Where to find training that strengthens your skills, not just your résumé

Drawing on adult learning theory and emotional intelligence frameworks, this episode challenges the idea that being a parent or caregiver automatically qualifies someone to lead children well. It’s not about perfection—it’s about preparation.

Because the most dangerous lie we tell ourselves is

“I’m doing fine because I care.”

But in early childhood, care without competence is still a risk.

In this episode of Family Matters with Instructor Mike, we confront the pressure to apologize for things we were never taught—and unpack the cultural chains that keep us stuck in guilt, performance, and fake inclusion. From performative healing to emotionally manipulative group dynamics, Instructor Mike dives into the developmental science behind why people say “sorry” without skills, and how to stop apologizing unless you have a real plan going forward.

Learn how to:

• Identify when guilt is misplaced and accountability is misdirected

• Replace hollow apologies with real, learned strategies

• Handle moments where you know better but don’t yet have the tools to do better

• Respond to culture, family, or community trying to guilt you back into stagnation

Featuring real-life apology scripts and grounded in psychology, education, and lived experience, this episode is a call to action for those who are learning out loud—and refusing to perform healing they haven’t been trained to execute.

Because family matters. Growth matters. And being under-trained isn’t your fault—but staying that way is your choice.

In this episode, Instructor Mike unpacks one of the most overlooked—and misunderstood—lessons in child development: the critical difference between what a child feels and how they feel about it.

With only 1% of the English language dedicated to emotion words, why do we front-load that 1% into young children’s vocabulary while ignoring the 99% that teaches function, sensation, and reason?

This episode explores how emotional labeling without sensory training leads to misdiagnosis, performative distress, and a generation of children unable to describe what’s actually happening in their bodies or minds.

Learn how to teach kids to describe before they define, to observe before they interpret, and why phrases like “I feel disrespected” might actually be learned miscommunication—not truth.

Whether you’re a parent, educator, or someone healing your own emotional miseducation, this episode will give you practical tools to shift from emotional reaction to developmental precision.

🔧 Featuring sensory strategies, Vygotsky insights, and a cultural critique of emotional programming in early education.

What happens when your child isn’t just a student, a patient, or a passerby—but the customer?

In Part 5 of the Service Switching series, Instructor Mike dives into the often-overlooked skill of self-advocacy—the power to speak up, clarify needs, and challenge unfair treatment without collapsing into entitlement or rage.

This episode teaches you:

• The developmental science behind self-advocacy vs. entitlement

• How to coach your child to name problems without emotional outbursts

• The role of tone, timing, and calm in getting what you need from adults in power

• How to practice scripts that work in schools, clinics, and even police encounters

Whether your child is ordering food, questioning a grade, or needing help in a crisis—this episode equips families to raise communicators, not complainers. Because in a system-driven world, knowing how to ask matters just as much as what you ask for.

“You’re not raising a customer. You’re raising a self-advocate.”