Progressive Parenting Project

Hey SweetSmarties, I'm excited for you to listen to my interview with Rebekah, who founded and directs the nonprofit I work for, Haven Academy of the Arts! I'm currently teaching my second season of Pretend & Play there, which is Social Emotional Learning through Performing Arts! We learn kindness, empathy, theory of mind, emotional intelligence, and many other important aspects of being a wonderful human being, while Acting, Singing, Dancing, and playing in myriad creative, fun, enriching ways!

During our conversation, we discuss the value of Arts Education, how beneficial it is to everyone, and how versatile those skills are, as well as the developmental and therapeutic dimensions that I've experienced as an actor and that I'm facilitating with my students now! We also talk about some assets I didn't even realize like how it helps us build resilience, persevere through challenges, and delay gratification, all of which strengthen us as people, and bolster our ability to accomplish a variety of goals!

She introduced me to Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, which she learned from Dr. Ross Greene's book The Explosive Child. We also speak about Angela Duckworth's work on Grit and of course Carol Dweck's work on Growth Mindset, which I discuss often, because of how profoundly it impacted me!

There's tons of gems in here, and I can't wait for you to hear all the beautiful moments we shared in this episode!

A couple things I'd like to explain to you: She asked me to remove one little part where I distinguish between my two classes, without naming anyone, but just stating which day I teach them and how many students are in each one, so I took out a few words between 1 hour and 3 minutes and 1 hour and 4 minutes. I tried to edit out those words as smoothly as possible, but if at one point you feel like there's something missing, that's why. lol The second thing is that a gentle alarm went off for one very brief moment to signify that she needed to leave in 5 minutes, and I couldn't remove it without taking out some words I wanted to leave in, so I just kept it. I don't mind at all, and I hope you don't either. That's also why we had to end so quickly afterwards, because she had to go. 😄

Alrighty, that's all I wanted to share with you, and I hope you love hearing our interaction! I enjoyed having it so much, and I'm super grateful to Rebekah for collaborating with me, and for my whole Haven family I get to work with every week! 🥰

Talk to you next time, my Loves! Oh my goodness, also, happy 3rd season! I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this is our season 3 premiere! Woohoo! I'm so proud and elated we made it this far, and I'm ecstatic for where we'll go the rest of this season, and beyond!! ✨

P.S. You can visit their website at havenartsacademy.org or explore them on Instagram @havenartsacademy. You can also check out their Facebook page or email [email protected] for more information! I hope you choose to enroll in a program or support them however you can, if they seem like a good fit for your family. If your child is 3-5 years old, they may be in one of my classes, so that would be amazing if we got to work together! 🌟

Okie dokie, bye until next episode! 💖

Hey SweetSmarties, I’m setting a new record this month and season: publishing 3 interviews with a combined 5 hours of audio during these last few (consecutive) days of the year! I hope you’ve been enjoying my Social Worker series so far, and that you love this Season 2, 2025 finale! There is still one more Social Worker interview to come in March, but this is the end of our December trio. :) This is my 20th interview over all, since I started over a year and a half ago! :D I’m so proud of everything, and have enjoyed these interviews immensely, so I hope you’ve benefited a ton from my work this year! <3

Jill has a background in Social Work, and now has a private therapy practice she founded about 9 months ago, this past March! This is such a thrilling time for her burgeoning business, and I’m so happy I get to help her grow it! It was such a pleasure and a privilege to interact with her, and listening to our conversation, you can get a glimpse into what a fantastic therapist she may be to you, if it seems like you’d fit well together. ✨ We talked about her varied background, and how we both contain multitudes, which I love! Internally diverse people are so intriguing and amazing to connect with, so this experience was incredible for me! Not only has she done so much, but she’s a wealth of resources with a tremendous capacity and dedication to help others. I really appreciate how much she cares and how brilliantly equipped she is to improve people’s lives!

We spoke about her current practice, and the many fascinating approaches she uses! I loved learning about them, and being sort of an example patient to both help me and show you how marvelous she is at her job (and just as a person)! I hope you decide to embark on this beautiful journey with us, and that you get so much out of our discussion! ❤️‍🔥 Talk to you next time; I wish you a fabulous end of 2025 and an extraordinary beginning of 2026, until season 3 premieres in a matter of weeks! 🫧

I interviewed a young, new social worker named Lydia Johnson, who just graduated from the University of San Diego in May 2025! She's only 22, and has already done so much varied, helpful work! I'm very impressed with her, and I imagine you will be too, after listening to our conversation. We spoke about everything she did throughout her schooling, and in the months since she began her current position as a case manager for Libertana, a home health care company. We also talked about some of my jobs, experiences, and philosophies, and had a wonderful time bonding, learning, and growing together during the nearly four hours we connected this night we met for our discussion! We recorded about an hour and a half of that time, and not only did I enjoy experiencing it, I'm excited for you to hear what we said! We had one major tech issue, which I worked really hard to resolve in post production, and I also mention it within the interview. Her microphone was off for the first 27 minutes of our recorded conversation, so I had to isolate the sound of her voice in the background of my microphone, and amplify it to try to match the volume of my voice as well as I could. You can tell it's a little wonky, but I'm very proud of my effort to solve the problem, and the results I was able to achieve with the tools I have. Anyway, I hope you love it, learn and benefit a ton, and I'll speak to you next time, SweetSmarties! <3 :)

SweetSmarties, I'm so excited for you to listen to my conversation with Lyn, the first social worker I interviewed in my series of four! We're kindred spirits in many ways, and it felt amazing to connect so deeply in profound areas of our lives! I enjoyed and appreciated our discussion immensely; I'm so grateful she reached out to me earlier this month. <3 We talked about her background and career trajectory, our shared gifted child experiences, perfectionism, desire to avoid conflict, and need to control, as well as the reasons for all that, and how it manifests in us. We also spoke about how we navigate challenging interactions, how she parents her children, how we were parented, and the specifics of her current job. Lastly, we discussed Hispanic culture, what it's like to feel different, as well as mixed and in between groups, and how her ideas of gender influenced her upbringing, followed by how she chooses to raise her children in light of what's important to her now. I took some risks this episode by sharing things I was a little hesitant to publish, but I'm hoping that my vulnerability helps those listening, because that's why I'm doing this. :) I have a lot to express to you as I end this season and year, so I'll return soon, my darlings! ✨ Bye until then! 🫧

Hey SweetSmarties, I hope you enjoy listening to my interview with Speech Language Pathologist Jessie Ginsburg! She focuses on connecting with her clients, regulating their nervous systems, and developing their sense of intrinsic motivation. :) She has a private practice called The Pediatric Therapy Playhouse, and an online organization called the NeuroAffirm Therapy Academy. She also wrote a book called Ready, Set, Connect - “a sensory-based approach to accelerate communication in autistic children.” We spoke about her background, her private practice, her therapy academy, and her book, as well as my personal experience with stuttering and its relationship to Acting. We talked about my Language Development studies, and my conference project from that class about using Acting as speech therapy to treat stuttering, which has been effective for many actors, such as Emily Blunt as one of my favorite examples. That led into our discussion of the neuroscience of verbal communication and our autonomic nervous system. All of this is very important to us and makes so much sense when you view these concepts through that paradigm. You can learn more about her and her amazing work at https://www.sensoryslp.com/. Thank you for being here, and I’ll talk to you next time! <3

Hey SweetSmarties, I hope you enjoy listening to my interview with Ashley, a Child Life Specialist, which is a job that I value really highly! You'll understand why when you hear our conversation about it, and I've even heavily considered doing this career myself! Happy Halloween, if you're listening to this on release day! This year, 2025, I'm Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus! I have to go enjoy the rest of this holiday now, so I'll talk to you next time! Oh, P.S., if the volume seems inconsistent, it's because my normalizing tool wasn't working, so I had to manually amplify all the previously quiet parts, which was so difficult, and took forever! I did my best like always, so I hope it doesn't diminish your experience too much. Alrighty, now I'm officially signing off for at least a little while! lol TTYL 💓

Hi SweetSmarties, this month I got to interview my local children's librarian! I've loved libraries and wanted to interview a librarian, specifically one focused on children's literacy, for a long time! Fun fact about me: I currently have 8 active library cards just for different districts around Southern California. 🤓

We talk about his background and path to this work, what he loves about his job, why he chose this, what it means to him, his approach to nurturing the wonderful children in our community as well as his own at home, and his perspective on other profound topics I'm excited for you to hear! I of course shared my own experiences and philosophies, including referencing a few past episodes, which was nice for me to be able to do. This is my 15th interview, and I'm hoping to do 30, so if I fulfill that plan, I'm halfway there now! 🎉

I hope you enjoy listening to us learn, share, and bond with each other! We'd had brief interactions since I first published this project, but this was our first long, deep conversation. I had a fantastic time, and I hope you benefit a lot from our discussion! 📚

I look forward to connecting further as we continue this journey together. 💖

Genuinely,

T.J. Campbell

Hi SweetSmarties! Here's the second part of my interview with Dr. Judy Y. Chu!

As you'll hear in the prologue I recorded for you, last episode we talked about my connection to her work, her background and path to it, her study observations regarding the gender socialization of a group of young boys from pre-Kindergarten to Kindergarten and then briefly in 1st and 3rd grade, and how human qualities are restrictively and inaccurately gendered, wishing they wouldn't be at all, and instead seen as available and potentially applicable to everyone, depending on what each individual discovers is true for them. :)

In this episode, we discuss practical ways to free yourself of these restrictions, or at least reduce the pressure you may feel to conform to societal norms, and then we talk about some of my Sarah Lawrence education, including one of my favorite conference projects I ever did. 🤓

I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation, and that you find the experience beneficial as always. 😇

Thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to speaking to you next time! 💖

Hi SweetSmarties, I'm so excited to share my interview with Dr. Judy Y. Chu! Her work is really important to me, and her book, When Boys Become Boys: Development, Relationships, & Masculinity is my favorite of all the literary sources I've read in my Progressive Parenting Project research. She was also in one of my favorite documentaries, The Mask You Live in, by the Representation Project. I rewatched it recently, 10 years after I first saw it, and I still found it very impactful, so I recommend you read Judy's book and watch that documentary, if you're interested in Gender Socialization, particularly how it begins in children and how certain aspects of it can be restrictive.

Our interview lasted over 2 hours, so I divided it into 2 parts, and recorded a little epilogue for you explaining that at the end of this episode. You'll probably notice Judy's and my audio sound really different, and that's because not only did we conduct our conversation remotely, but unfortunately her microphone on her wired ear phones rubbed against her hair and clothes the whole time, so I did my best to remove those rustling sounds. As a result, her voice sounds kind of far away, or like I recorded a phone call on speaker or something. I tried my best to normalize the volume, and align our voices, after editing our audio tracks separately, so I'm sorry if it doesn't sound ideal, but trust me, this is a lot better than it sounded originally. lol

Anyway, in this first part I speak about how significantly her work impacted me, she speaks about her background and path to this field, we talk about our interpretations of Progressive Parenting, her 2 year study from her book, specifically the changes she noticed in the young boys she interviewed in terms of their masculinity development between the ages of 4 and 5 (as well as briefly at 6 and 8), and how we believe many aspects of our humanity should not be gendered, like personality traits, behaviors, emotions, interests, activities, etc.

In the next part, we discuss how to navigate the world as it is, while still striving for improvement, my conference work from my Sociology of Education class, touching on the ideas of Pluralistic Ignorance and the Dyadic Power Thesis, and we end by expressing our appreciation for each other, and how much we enjoyed our interaction. :)

Lastly, my epilogue sounds the way it does, because I'm a little sick right now (8/20/25 when I recorded it and when I'm publishing this episode), so that explains the contrast between the way I am in the interview on 8/11/25. I hope you enjoy listening to this part of our discussion, and the next part I'll release on 8/28! Thank you! Talk to you then! :D

P.S. I remembered during the interview that the linguistic dichotomy I was referring to is Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism, and thought about mentioning it, but didn’t want to interrupt our flow, so I decided to just include it here. 😄

Hi everyone, I'm excited to introduce you to my friend Natsumi Koizumi, who will be at my event, Super Summer Sunday, on 7/27/25, if you'd like to meet her in person! She was a preschool and prekindergarten teacher for nearly 6 years, until the school closed, and she decided to create her own organization called Sumi Zumi Adventures! She offers nature-based sessions outdoors, including exploring plants and one of her favorite groups of animals, insects! She also reads books and does relevant activities with children at their homes. Her business is ever-evolving, as is mine, so I'm looking forward to discovering how we grow, and supporting each other along the way. Please check out her instagram account @sumizumiadventures or email her at [email protected], if you'd like to collaborate. Thanks for listening, I hope some of what we said resonated with you, and that you just enjoyed hearing our conversation. Talk to you next time, SweetSmarties! :) 💖