Youth Voice Meets a Changemaker: Trudy Ludwig on Shaping a Kinder World
Join youth leader Ava Jane in this empowering episode of the Spark to Empower podcast as she interviews acclaimed children’s author Trudy Ludwig. Discover how Trudy’s award-winning books are helping kids build empathy, confidence, and social-emotional skills — one story at a time.
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Trudy Ludwig, an acclaimed speaker and award-winning author of numerous children’s books that help readers connect and engage with others in more caring ways.
Trudy has authored books to build children’s social-emotional learning skills to create more inclusive and compassionate environments for children.
Her books are often found to be cornerstone pieces in the classroom, schools, and within communities. The books lead to powerful discussions around important topics that build empathy & kindness, allow students to learn about bullying and inclusion, to grow in their confidence & self- esteem, learn tools to navigate friendships & conflict resolution, and powerful examples that also encourage social responsibility.
Trudy has collaborated with leading experts and organizations including Sesame Workshop, the International Bullying Prevention Association, Committee for Children, and ConnectSafely.org to help kids connect with their peers in kinder, more inclusive ways.
Trudy’s books have received numerous awards and citations
About the Guest
The Power of ONE
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Connie Maday: 0:12
Welcome to the Spark to Empower podcast. Thrilled to bring you this episode today. Not only does it showcase one of our favorite authors, but it also features Spark to Empower's dynamic youth leader, Ava Jane. You will get to experience her in action as she interviews our special guest for this episode. So sit back and prepare to be inspired and dare I say, filled with hope as we witness this empowering conversation. Joining us today for of the Spark to Empower podcast, Trudy Ludwig, an acclaimed speaker and award-winning author of numerous children's books that help readers connect and engage with others in more caring ways. As an educator and former teacher librarian myself, I can affirm the impact her books have on our youth. Trudy has authored books to build children's social emotional learning skills to create more inclusive and compassionate environments for children. Her books are often found to be cornerstone pieces in the classroom, schools, and within communities. The books lead to powerful discussions around important topics that build empathy and kindness, allow students to learn about bullying and inclusion, to grow in their confidence and self-esteem, learn tools to navigate friendships and conflict resolution, and showcase powerful examples that also encourage social responsibility. Trudy has collaborated with leading experts and organizations, including Sesame Workshop, the International Bullying Prevention Association, Committee for Children, and ConnectSafely.org to help kids connect with their peers in kinder, more inclusive ways. Trudy's books have received numerous awards and citations. She's truly making a difference in the lives of our youth, one book at a time. turning it over to Ava Jane to get the conversation going. Thank you, Ava Jane.
Ava Jane: 2:12
Thank you, Connie. And thank you, Trudy. I am so excited. Well, okay. Well, thanks again for being here, Trudy. It is such a pleasure. My first question is, you know, here at Spark to Empower, we talk a lot about our why. So I was wondering what sparked you to become an author? What was your why?
Trudy Ludwig: 2:31
Well, I tell kids, and I'm going to tell you as an adult, that it's really important, a young adult, it's really important to remember what you love to do as a kid. Chances are you're going to do a variation of that when you're older. That's what I forgot. When I was little, I would write birthday stories as gifts to my family members because I didn't have money about four or five years ago, well into my children's writing career, my sister found those birthday stories that I had written to my father when I was nine years old. And I even did a little illustrations. And so remember that joy that you have. I've always loved children's stories. I've read children's books to my kids all the time. I look forward to it as much as they did. I love storytelling. My background is in writing, professional writing and marketing. and advertising. So it's about, you know, putting images with headlines and such. And many years ago, my daughter was having friendship issues that started in kindergarten and it imploded in her first week of second grade. And it brought back memories of me when I was a kid and also as a how sometimes your friends can be your frenemies and what makes a friend a healthy friend. So at the time, Rachel Simmons, this is a long story, but I'm trying to capture it for you. Perfect. At the time, Rachel Simmons was the New York Times bestselling author of Odd Girl Out. This was, I don't know, 2002. And she came to Portland, Oregon, where I live. I heard her speak. And it was really focusing on and the friendship relationship issues they had with, you know, girls threesomes, you know, with triangles. There's always one that's left out. And I remember a father saying, you know, what do you do when your son is having these issues and they're seven years old? And literally, I heard crickets in the audience. There wasn't an answer. And I thought, I'm going to write a book. Maybe if we can address these friendship issues earlier, then it won't be as big of a problem by middle school and high school. And I wanted to write a story. So I I just started writing my first book. And it's not my daughter's story. It's every kid's story. I write fiction. Most of my books are fiction except for one. So I wanted to help kids understand what makes a friendship healthy. And then happy endings are letting go of unhealthy relationships.
Ava Jane: 5:11
Yeah, that kind of leads perfectly on to my next question. In your books, you tackle... As you just said, a lot of issues like bullying, exclusion, friendships. Why do you think, you kind of already mentioned that, but if you go a little more in depth on why these are so important for our youth to learn about and understand.
Trudy Ludwig: 5:26
Okay, so I think youth today are exposed to much more of the adult world than when I was a kid. And that has to do with social media. You can have exclusion and intentional exclusion and unintentional exclusion seen or play out with social media, with photos that are posted on Instagram of friends gathering and you were thought you were part of that friendship group. People's lives appearing a lot better than they really are. So you feel like you don't have as perfect a life as other people have. And I think kids are a lot more sophisticated than when I was a kid. Because of that exposure. Also, you're being subject to a lot of changes happening in the world. And it's coming into your social media feed. It's coming on to TV. You know, you've got economic recessions. You're seeing wars in Ukraine. You're seeing, you know, school shootings. And that's overwhelming for kids. So if I can start at a very base level is how do we treat each other on an interpersonal level? situation on a microscopic level. And when we set the groundwork for how we treat each other on a microscopic level, then it can grow into a macroscopic level. This is the way we want to model how we present ourselves in the world and how we want to influence our peers in the world.
Ava Jane: 7:00
Yeah, that's incredible. And you know, in your book, Too Perfect, you addressed a lot of those perfectionism, you know, desires. How do you think, what are some tools you would give to some kids on, are struggling to not confine to these perfectionism standards that they're seeing in the digital world?
Trudy Ludwig: 7:18
Well, the first thing I would say to them that perfectionism is a myth. There's no such thing as being perfect. Instead of trying to be the best, I think it's important to try your best. That's a real big difference of pursuing excellence and not perfection. Also, people that try excellence to deal with perfectionism are highly critical of themselves. And when you're highly self-critical, you tend to be also critical of others. So I'm asking kids and adults who have this struggle is to be kinder to themselves. When you're kinder to yourself, you have more compassion with other people. The other thing is not to focus on the outcome, but to focus on the process. I would actually encourage kids to do things for the fun of it that they're not good at. Just to have fun doing things. And that the world doesn't end if they don't get an A. The world doesn't end if it's not a perfect picture. But, you know... A story that I'm working on right now, it's actually for younger kids. I'm doing a children's book series called the Caring Classroom series. And in it, the first book, the intro of the classroom with the teacher is about perfectionism. And what I had shared in the line of the story is art doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. Neither do we. We can be beautiful in our imperfections. In fact, our imperfections are really what makes us unique and special. And I want to focus on that so that kids don't have to feel that they have to be perfect to gain adults' approval and love. It's more what are their traits rather than what are their external rewards, such as grades or AP classes, IB classes, whatever you have. It's more, what are you doing? What are you doing out there to make this world a better place, right? How are you trying to show up? My mom had a wonderful saying she would share with me. She said, it's important for us as human beings to leave the world in a better place than when we first arrived. In our own way, right? We're not going to be able to change the whole big issue, but we have influence. We have control on how we react to what's happening to us, on how we think about it, how we respond to it, and we can influence our peers around us. And that circle of influence can get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So that even though we can't control all these big pictures of what's going on in our crazy world with the crazy politics, there are good people out there all over the country that are doing wonderful things, but that doesn't sell news. Fear sells news. And I want to stress that there's so much good. There's so many good people out there that are doing great work. And that's the grassroots that I'm approaching and appealing to.
Ava Jane: 10:26
As a young girl myself, I see the perfectionism from social media. And in school, you're just constantly striving to keep up and be this perfect, confined to this social box. And I think your work is going to go so far because even with the young girls I work with, it's really hard. And I think your books are addressing those issues in such a nurturing and acceptable way. So I really appreciate everything you're doing.
Trudy Ludwig: 10:51
Well, thank you. I also wanted to show that You know, some adults are there to help you and some adults not intentionally may be hurting you because of what their expectations are and how they grew up. Because we all come in this world and grow up with emotional baggage. And what we forget to do is check to see if that baggage, what's in that baggage still fits us. Yeah, is it still ours? It's okay to discard it. And it's okay to challenge other adults who are, aren't bringing out the best in you, right? And I think we need to have compassion because we're all struggling with our own demons. And that's the thing is, you know, they're not essentially evil, but they have their own demons for whatever way. And I wanted to show in that story, Too Perfect, that yes, that child who was struggling from perfectionism had a lot of pressure put on her at home and sometimes adults aren't aware that they're putting that pressure on kids so you may want to find another role model another adult model it's not to say you don't love that adult model but you pick and choose what you're going to learn from. And that's why I think it's really important for kids like you and me to have multi-generational friends and multi-generational relationships like you have with your mentor and teacher here, former teacher, is to know that there are other ways of being and that there are other ways of doing. And you get to try those on. That's your job is to try them on and figure out what resonates with you, with your moral compass.
Ava Jane: 12:29
Yeah. Amazing. And on that topic of, you know, adults and our mentors in our life, how do you think parents should go about, you know, your books spark a lot of tougher conversations. How do you think that adults can effectively discuss these bullying, exclusion, so on and so forth in a way that's, you know, effective and doesn't make the kids uncomfortable?
Trudy Ludwig: 12:50
Well, that's one of the reasons why I do write my stories, Ava Jean, because books are a wonderful supplemental tool, not only for the teachers and librarians, but also for parents to have some serious conversations in a safe social setting. If I were to ask you, I mean, pretend I'm your parent, could easily be your parent. And I could say, so did anybody bully you at school today? What are you going to say? You know, you don't want to bring it up, right? Exactly. If I talk to you and share, I've got a great story. What do you think of that story? Has that ever happened to you or just someone you know? Having conversations where they're not hot button before their big issues is a really powerful thing. And books, neuroscientists have discovered at Carnegie Mellon University, Cambridge University, Emory University, they have already discovered that books actually build empathy in a child's developing brain. Because there's a lot of plasticity in your brain up until the age of 20, mid-20s and early 30s. And for boys, it can be 30s. But there's a lot of plasticity there. And so you are like a sponge and books are a wonderful supplemental tool to help you problem solve and see because they're a way of I love what Dr. Rudine Sims-Bishop, she's a professor emeritus at Ohio State University. She did this groundbreaking article about talking about diverse literature and that there are windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Have you ever heard of that? I have, yes. Yes. You see yourselves in the characters in the stories. You get to enter their world and imagine what it's like to be there. And you get to just see how other people behave. And that's the whole root of empathy. And when you feel empathy, the next step, empathy is that feeling, compassion. Kindness is actually empathy in action. Yes. I love that. Social justice is community action, community efforts and kindness and being stewards for other people and for our land and for our climate. So that's where I think books are wonderful for parents to have that as a springboard for whatever they're discussing.
Ava Jane: 15:18
Absolutely. And I just want to say your passion is so contagious. I love this conversation. Furthermore, you know, talking about action, what advice would you give to young readers to help them see that even the smallest actions can have such a giant impact?
Trudy Ludwig: 15:34
Well, that's one of the reasons what you brought up is why I wrote The Power of One. And because sometimes you feel like, You hear people say, you know, in the elections or at school, or they see something and they're one of many bystanders that see something happen and they know it's not okay, but nobody else is doing anything that saw it happen. So it normalizes that experience, right? What can one person do, right? But one person, that's the starting point for every major change that has ever happened in the world throughout history, good and bad, right? So They get following. So what we need to do is model. And that's where we have our sphere of influence is how do we model how we respond to what we see happening? And is it okay or is it not okay? How do we acknowledge other people's acts of kindness? Because science proves it's addicting. You actually release these, you know, hormones that actually make you feel good. It's like running a marathon, right? The more you do it, the more addicted you become. You want to keep performing those random acts of kindness. And that's what I think I wanted to show is how it was just one person in a crowd and how that had this ripple effect with the other community. And then also to show kids make mistakes. Not everyone that does something bad is a bully, right? Kids' jobs are to make mistakes. Our job as adults are to turn those mistakes into teachable moments. What have you learned from that? How could you have handled that with no one getting hurt, right? And I didn't want to demonize the boy that was hurtful to the girl. And I showed how he really felt bad. But here's the other thing that I wanted to show. Apologies. Are they sincere? Are they from the heart? Kids are taught to be an automatic pilot to say they're sorry when they don't mean it. Sorry. Or they are forced because they got caught. And what this research shows is an insincere apology is worse than no apology at all. It's heavy stuff. Think about it. It's worse. So I wanted to show in that story how one person who made a mistake can redeem themselves in the story. How can they make up for that hurt? And he did it in his own way, giving her a flower, letting her know, giving her space and time to process her hurt feelings because that needs healing. And then he wanted to help more by contributing to the community that they were working with. That is powerful. And that was one person.
Ava Jane: 18:31
Amazing. And, you know, we talked a lot about a lot of world of negativity and criticism and how it can be so loud, especially on young ears. How can kids stay focused on these ideas of kindness and compassion and empathy, even when it's not what's cool or popular at the time? How do you approach that?
Trudy Ludwig: 18:50
Well, I try to do when I go to schools, I try to do a reality check because there are experts that are actually doing anonymous surveys like Dr. Justin Patchen and Dr. Samir Hinduja. They're co-directors of the Cyberbullying Research Institute. And they've been conducting, for example, studies since 2012 annually of middle school and high school students to find out where kids are at. And what we're still finding is the majority of kids are still being cool and kind. It's okay to be kind. Now, you don't get that message the way media portrays it because they highlight those kids that are doing hurtful things. And we make that automatic, assumptive leap that because it's so devastating what kids are doing to each other, it must be rampant. That's not the case. Again, fear sells. So what I would tell those kids is Take a break from social media. What you see is not the reality. Is it true information? Who are those positive role models that you can find to help build you up? It's okay to take a break. Even for adults, I tell them this. Look for things that bring you joy because joy is a form of activism. You don't think it is. But as one of the historian's professors at Boston College had said, she studied history and politics. She said, authoritarianism cannot spread when people experience joy. So it's really important to tune off and tune inwardly, find out what gives you joy and meaning and connection with community is so crucial because that's how authoritarianism happens is when people feel helpless and useless and paralyzed. But when we feel joy in activism, we show up.
Ava Jane: 20:54
Trudy, I must ask, do you have like a mentor or someone in your life that has helped you develop these mindsets that are so empowering?
Trudy Ludwig: 21:01
I have numerous mentors in my life. My mother has been an amazing mentor. She went, I'm the youngest of five kids. She went to college when I went to college.
Ava Jane: 21:13
Oh my gosh.
Trudy Ludwig: 21:15
And then she got, by the time I got my bachelor's, I don't have a master's, by the time I got my bachelor's degree, she had the equivalent of two masters. She had a master's in marriage and family therapy and in art therapy. It's incredible. And she worked up until she died, 87. She had a private practice for over 30 years. So I'm telling you this is, you can change your careers as you go. I didn't start becoming a children's author until... my mid-40s. So you can recreate yourself. Don't feel like what you're doing now is what you have to be doing forever. And even if you have a bad experience, that leads you, as I always tell my own kids, you learn a lot in what you want in life by knowing what you don't want.
Ava Jane: 22:05
Yeah.
Connie Maday: 22:05
Yeah.
Trudy Ludwig: 22:05
It's really important. It's not that those are negative. It's how you can choose to play a victim or you can choose to play a person. You're the narrative of your own story, right? You're the narrator. So you can play your role as a character that's, this is happening to me, rather than saying, what can I do to change this? This isn't working for me. Let's try something else.
Ava Jane: 22:31
Yeah, defining those external factors so you can really focus on becoming your great self.
Trudy Ludwig: 22:37
Right. I will tell you, there was one other person when I started my writing career. Yes. Was... He was a founding member of the International Bullying Prevention Association. Okay. His name is Stan Davis. And he was an elementary school counselor for 35 years.
Ava Jane: 22:53
Wow.
Trudy Ludwig: 22:54
And I first heard him when I went to all the conferences and also presented at the conferences. And when I first heard him talk, I broke down in tears after he talked because he spoke from the heart. He cared about kids. He cared about connections. And so... Early in my career, I really sent all my stories for him to vet after he found my first story already published and I didn't know about him. And he loved it so much. And he challenged my thoughts. He challenged my ideas, which really helped me to be better in how I was writing and how I was talking with other adults.
Ava Jane: 23:36
Yeah. How do you recommend that kids find their passion? Should they just try lots of things? Or what do you think is the best avenue for kids to go down so they can hone in on their passion like you found yours?
Trudy Ludwig: 23:47
If they have an interest, I would have them look, as long as these passions and interests aren't self-harming or harming others, this is the time where you should be a kid and explore. You're going to be an adult for most of your life. It's a very small time. As my neighbor would say, being a child is like the tip of your fingernail, and the rest of that nail is all your adulthood that's spending, right? So what I would do is just Try things. You don't have to be the best at it. That's about the growth mindset, too, which I really encourage. It was Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset is not to label yourself as I'm bad at this or I'm really good at this, but I don't want to push my comfort level because I don't want people to see that I make mistakes. I think it's fun to make mistakes and laugh at yourself and have fun. A humor about yourself. I think that's really important. So try things and then find out, do you like it? Nah, I don't like it. Like I try downhill skiing, raving about it. And I'm like, I don't like it. I don't like falling. I don't like going fast. But I like cross country skiing because I feel like I have more control. Same thing. I like art, but I'm not that very good at it. But I like to write. sometimes i'm good at it sometimes i'm not but i like losing you know when you're having fun and you're doing something when you get in the zone exactly lose track of time that's when you know you're doing something you really enjoy yeah
Ava Jane: 25:22
absolutely i love that and looking back on your career as a writer and such an incredible advocate for the youth what's one thing you've learned along the way that kind of surprised you like that wasn't what you expected at all
Trudy Ludwig: 25:36
That's a good question. I have to think about that. I was surprised how much I learned from kids. I learned a lot from kids. And they are, can be your harshest critics. So that and dogs, they let you know who they like and who they don't like, you know, pets. So I will share a little story that I love this advice that I got from a sixth grader. I was in Michigan. This was many years ago, because I do parent talks to help parents help their kids. And I also do teacher PDs, professional developments. So this is a story that I love to share. I was in Michigan. It was a Title I school. A lot of kids were high needs, you know, free and reduced lunch plans that were going on with these kids. And the school counselor there, who is a social worker, actually, social worker, asked me to join for lunch her friendship group. She had girls in the friendship, have friendship issues. You know, it was a K through six, but it was for upper grades for friendship group. And this one girl, she said, has a mom, single parent. She's the only child. Her mom is best friends with this other mom. And that mom had a daughter she couldn't stand because that girl was her relational aggressor. And whenever the parents, the moms would go off, this girl just drove her crazy. And so one day, she told her mom what this girl had said or done to her. And I said, wow, so... When you were sharing that with your mom, were you asking her to help you solve the problem or were you venting? And she put a little hand on her hip, very sassy-like and said, like, I was just venting. And I had this amazing aha moment that parents tend to jump and intervene when they're not asked to intervene. The kid's just venting. And when you're venting, You just want to get it off your chest. But what can happen is when parents see a problem, they want to roll up their sleeves and solve the problem, which could make your problem worse. Right. So I think it's really important when a kid shares with you, and I tell this with parents and teachers, ask them, are you venting or do you want me to help you solve the problem? Because then you're helicopter parenting. That child's not learning how to be their own advocate. You've got to give kids the opportunity to be their own advocate. That's how they learn. And if they have a problem, then I would say, who at school do you feel safe with that you could talk to? So I'm empowering you to take the lead rather than me doing all the lead, right? Exactly.
Ava Jane: 28:39
Give them the tools.
Trudy Ludwig: 28:40
Yes, yes. So I thought that was very clever of this girl to sit there and have this distinction as an elementary student about venting. Versus I want you to come in and fix this for me. And parents in our generation and younger have the need to want to fix things, which can make things worse. And then they get involved and to keep their own emotional baggage in check. If this is triggering something your mom went through or my mom went through when they were younger, they're going to fix it because by golly, they don't want it to happen to you. Right? Yes. But people can be cruel sometimes. And we can't bubble wrap our kids. I'm not saying to bubble wrap, but what I want to do is build emotional resilience. And honestly, what I do, you're going to be surprised at this, Ava Jean, but when I go to schools, I invite kids to insult me. Oh my gosh. I have them insult me in front of the other kids in assemblies. And I give them, for younger kids, six tools, for older kids, eight tools, two more. To show how I can respond without being hurtful back. Because bullying is a learned behavior. No kid is born mean. No kid is born a racist. We all learn it. We learn it at home or school or neighborhood. So I'm trying to give them a skill set that parents may not know or teachers may not know. Here's some starter tools for you. There are other ways of responding than being cruel. because we don't want that cycle to end up where we have more mass shootings or kids aren't feeling that they're connecting. And also to see that that person is not pushing your buttons, because that's what they're trying to do is get a reaction.
Ava Jane: 30:22
Exactly. Do you mind some of those tools?
Trudy Ludwig: 30:25
Oh, yeah. So some of the tools, and I explained to them, if the tools work, don't keep using those tools. You may have to switch. Sometimes you have to use a combination of tools. Again, these are starter tools. I will share some basic ones. And the first one for very little kids is one of having boundaries. Just say stop. Don't say it like, oh, stop. It's how you show it. Look them in the eye. It's okay to be mad. It's not okay to be mean, but it's okay to be mad. Show that you mean it and say stop. And I tell the kids, as you get older, that tool may be less effective. But the important thing about that tool is If they stop, then you know they're just wearing what I call their mean hat. Mean is not bullying. If they stop and apologize that it wasn't their intent to hurt you, then you know they're wearing their rude hat. But if they don't stop, that's when you know they're wearing the bully hat. So it helps me to understand rude, mean, and bullying, because not all hurtful behavior is bullying. So that's an important tool. Stop. Another one is distract the kid by... Changing the subject. That's a really beautiful heart locket. Where'd you get it? Did you get it for your birthday? You know, we love talking about ourselves. Kids love talking about themselves. We adults love talking about ourselves. You know, ask us questions, distract, change the subject. Another tool, I don't know if I'm going to go through all of them, but another tool is, you know, you're old, right? I get that a lot with my role play. And I say, why do you think them all? Because you have wrinkles. Why do you think old people get wrinkles? Because they're out in the sun a lot. Why do you think old people like sitting out in the sun? I just keep asking why. Is there steam? So this one is why, why, why. And I have little physical tools to show. So I make them repeat it. So they're constantly repeating these tools. Another one that is really a fun one that kids like of all the tools is... the act silly and goofy tool. So if somebody says you're old, I'm like shaking, I'm doing all these weird moments, you know, and I'm doing like this. And, and the kids start laughing and half the boys that I do this tool with, they end up walking back down in their seats because they don't know what to do with me. But that tool, what they found in the youth voice project that a lot of high school guys use to get out of sticky situations. Oh, wow. Really safe. It's not safe to directly confront because you may, get targeted even more, right? Right, yeah. But if you do something silly, it's really hard for a kid to be mean when they're laughing and smiling. They don't expect it because they're trying to push a button. Exactly, yeah. Absolutely and goofy. And the kids love that tool. And so again, if it doesn't work, I'll switch another tool. I have the teachers make tool belt tools for the classroom to remind the kids to use them and add more tool belt tools. These are just starter tools. But that there are other ways of responding than just ignore it. The ignore tool never worked for me. It made my problem worse. And what kids are telling us in third grade and up, it does the same. Some kids still do that and they like it. And I'm saying, hey, all the power to you. But I want to give you more choices than ignore it. They don't know there are more choices. And that adult doesn't check in because we adults are really good at giving you advice. What we're really not good at is checking in to find out if our advice is actually working for you. Right? Yeah. So I want to give them other tools so that they're not flailing in the wind.
Ava Jane: 34:02
I love that. All right. Well, I have kind of done my last two questions here, but we've kind of already touched on this a bit more. But I guess like if you could do it in like one sentence, you know, what's the most important thing you want your readers to take away from your work?
Trudy Ludwig: 34:16
Hurtful behavior is a choice. You can choose to be kind or you can choose to be cruel. Choose kind.
Ava Jane: 34:25
So powerful. And finally, Trudy, this has been such a pleasure. For young people who want to make a difference, where would you tell them how to start?
Trudy Ludwig: 34:35
Well, start in their own community. Start in their house with their siblings. Bullying happens also within siblings. Be an upstander. You don't have to directly confront somebody when you see something being hurtful. What we learned from high school students in this Youth Voice Project is Kids are being picked on. The first choice is not for you as a bystander to directly confront because they don't want to risk your safety. The first top answer was comfort me. Let me know I don't deserve it. You don't have to do it during. You could do it after. Text me, post something, DM me, say to me in person. The second top answer was include me. Include me in your group gamer activities. Intentional exclusion is bullying. And the third, report. I lose my voice when I get picked on and I may not have an adult in my life I feel safe going to, but you as a bystander can be an upstander and pay attention to all the other people that have witnessed it because then you can be their ally to report to someone growing up you feel safe with and say, something's going down. That person needs help because that kid who's doing the bullying also needs help so that they can thrive in life.
Ava Jane: 35:50
Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. Trudy. This was so inspiring. I know as a young girl, like learning all these tools when I was in elementary school would be so impactful. And I know that you're making the most incredible difference in all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is the truest pleasure ever.
Trudy Ludwig: 36:05
Well, so you're the pro social leader and, um, that's why I have faith. And that's what gives me hope is, um, I feel like you all are witnessing all the wrong things that are going on with the adults in the world. I know you can do better. I know you can be better. It's not going to happen. Change takes time.
Ava Jane: 36:25
Yes.
Trudy Ludwig: 36:26
And throughout history, it's always gone like bloop or like this. This is just humanity. It's not the apocalyptic end of the world. Do know this. We're counting on you. Get your voice heard. And be, as Mahatma Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. I have faith in you.
Ava Jane: 36:48
I have faith in my generation, too. I think we're going to pull through. I think we got this.
Trudy Ludwig: 36:51
Yes, I think so, too.
Ava Jane: 36:53
Yes.
Trudy Ludwig: 36:53
Thank you for interviewing me.
Ava Jane: 36:54
What an inspiring podcast. Wow. Thank you so much, Trudy. And thank you, listeners, for joining us. To find out more about the new exciting things happening at Spark to Empower, please visit sparktoempower.com. Remember, be kind, be bold, be you. Until next time, I'm Ava Jane.
Connie Maday: 37:12
And I'm Connie Maday. Make it a great day, everyday.
