John R. Miles

Because I have two kids and one boy, one girl.

They're both now adults.

But what was alarming to me is that when they both hit middle school, this whole tribal instinct was really a big thing for each of them.

My son experienced it when we when we lived in Austin, Texas, and my daughter experienced it when I lived in Tampa, Florida.

So it doesn't depend.

Geography didn't matter.

My son was having a lot of pushback from his his peer group members.

because he joined band in a high school or in a middle school community in Austin that was very pro-sports leaning.

Not to say he wasn't a great athlete, because he was.

He just had a passion in a different area.

And so a lot of his friends would bully him.

And in the same way, I found my daughter experiencing this

as well.

And hers was more social bullying through apps than it was in-person bullying.

But what I found is that in both cases, we had to kind of open their minds to realize that the people who were saying these things to them were hurting themselves and they were lashing out

because of their own insecurities, not because of what either one of them were doing.

And so for me, it became a discussion that we were trying to get them to stay true for who they were, for their value system that we had worked so hard as parents to try to instill in them and to be themselves and not feel like they had to wear a mask because someone was telling them

not to feel accepted as, as they are.

And I don't know if that resonates, but that's as a parent, what I was trying to do.

So let's now talk about how we are trying to expand this circle through Pods Fight Poverty.