Testimonials

June 2017

“The skills and concepts that Grandma Boom (Janai Mestrovich) presents to my class support my own teaching
and professional development as these are necessary for my own self-care in such a demanding
career. I am gaining new insight and ideas to foster the emotional regulation, self-awareness and
social connections of young children. These issues are typically lacking in education curriculum.”

~Marla Dentino, Preschool Instructor, Jackson County Oregon Child Development Coalition


April 2017

Janai, I was just thinking of You and how You have helped Me change My outlook on lIfe. Words cannot describe how Grateful I am that our paths crossed. Peace and Blessings always. ~ DQ


March 2017

“Janai: Today a student of mine with disabilities who experiences daily challenges with emotional and behavioral regulation was disturbing the peace once again, and another student reminded him to, “Breathe, think, and make a good choice.” Hearing this from his peer helped him to discontinue the negative behavior. We are very excited this has happened! Thank you for all that you do for these high-needs kiddos. Gratefully,” (teacher’s name confidential)

Note: these children are 3-5 yrs. old!!! “Breathe, Think and Make a Good Choice” is a jingle we sing, march and drum to!! Whole body learning/experience teaches one to know for oneself!


 

February 2017

We have been singing your calming song all week. It is so important to self correct and my kids are so fortunate to have you in my class every week. It has helped with all subject matter.

“I could feel what we did in my heart.” A precious quote from a young child who was in a class I worked with Empowering Superkids with self-help skills. I am training them to listen to inner signals and take the reins of self-awareness to gain self-control. It is the children who fuel my passion for the vision. They are the keys to the future for a healthy planet. #earthisheaven@67

Cheryl Colligan Markiewicz


 

February 2017

Kindergarten girl: “My mom screams at my grandma every day. Now I sing the Calm Song to help her stop screaming but she still screams. But I stay calm when she is doing that.”

Kindergarten boy: “My cat scratched a big scratch on my arm that hurt. Instead of doing something to my cat I sang the Calm Song to him.”

Kindergarten girl: “When my mom wakes me up in the morning and I am tired, I used to hit her. Now I started singing the Calm Song instead.”


 

August 2016

“Janai Mestrovich (aka Grandma Boom) has worked with our 2, 3, 4 & 5 year old children for several years. She teaches age-appropriate lessons to our children about how to recognize and work through their feelings in a healthy manner. Janai leads our children through music, movement, dramatic play, song, dance, drumming, and more. We have seen first-hand the way Janai’s lessons make a difference in the way our children behave, think, act, and feel. Our children look forward to her monthly visits. Children often ask us “Is Grandma Boom coming today?” We are incredibly grateful to Janai for offering such valuable information and life lessons to our children. We need more people like Janai in our world!”

Jaime Snider, Director
Sarah Corson Child Care & Learning Center


 

August 2016

“Your work has been life saving. With the mindfulness and techniques, I now have a library that is like

Pokeman card game and can pull out what I need. I feel great!”

~DQ, Father, Husband, Fireman


 

June 2016

God. Janai, wow. How do I even start? You are a teacher in the most beautiful and spiritual sense of the word. You. Are. Good. If I had not met you, I imagine I would be in a bad place. I wouldn’t know how to breathe. How to talk to people without letting them have power over my emotions. You taught me how to fight nightmares. How to love who I am. How to believe that I can make the world I live in so much better. You were an absolute turning point in my life, a fork in the road for where I could have gone. I think that your ability to listen, to understand, to feel the very roots of other beings and feel them so completely, absolutely helped me learn how to be a better person. Helped me become who I am today.

~Miss Cassie Ruud, newspaper columnist, Oregon


 

July 2015

A daycare Director contacted me wanting to share what a child said about my presentation this week on cooperation and noodle drumming.

“I wanted to tell you what a sweet girl said about your visit to our Center: “Grandma Boom gave all of us a piece of her heart. See? It’s even heart-shaped.” LOVE!!!

She must have been referring to a rainbow heart sticker I gave the children to put on their hearts or wherever they felt good when they cooperate. Filled my heart – true intrinsic reward for my work!

September 2013

I’m enjoying all your Superpower Kids videos! I’m subbing and once in awhile I work with Kindergarten and primary grades. You’re an outstanding storyteller:) I’ll let other teachers know about your Superkid Power book and videos. Kids more than ever need positive role models in their lives.

~Mary Kay Zawatzki, retired from KCK Board of Ed after 33 years of teaching


 

July 2013

When I was a child, I had a happy life in general; I have a good family, as well as I lived in a wonderful community. I was the only child in my family, all the adults spoiled me a lot, I never needed to worry about what to eat or what to wear, because my family could always meet my various requirements. However, being a center of my whole family also brought me huge stress, I carried so many expectations, I often had a felling that I was the only hope of my family, I had to be successful. On one hand, all my family was trying everything to make me happy, such as I had a baby-sitter to take care of every aspect of my life. On another hand, I was trying so hard to meet my family’s expectations. Sometimes, I thought I was trying to fulfill my parents’ dreams but not mine, when that happened, I felt I lost myself.

I am not a particular case in China; under “One Child Policy”, I am just one in millions. There are huge problems have been caused by this policy. As the only child in the family, millions of children have become the princes and princess in their families, and have been too much spoiled. Parents have already taken care of every aspect of their children’s lives; children have lost the problem solving ability, and communication ability. When the spoiled princes and princess have entered pre-schools or schools, you can image the situation would be even worse. Children became very self-centered and selfish, they have already lost the ability of how to communicate, or collaborate with others. In addition, China doesn’t have interesting 3-D learning strategy. Kids are facing huge stress of standards testing movement, or the ranking. People judge their kids’ success by the test scores, plus the high expectations from the family, you can see how much burden for a kid to carry in China. Those stresses on children can produce many problems, and substance abuse can be the most significant and dangerous one of them. As what I said before, because the parents are taking over everything, kids have lost the ability of taking care of themselves, parents as their external resource, kids no longer know how to find internal resource as their support. Once kids lose external support, and do not have the ability to use internal resources to solve problem, therefore, kids may more likely to find substance to comfort themselves. In addition, when kids face to great pressure of school tests and family’s expectations, kids might use substance to help them escape the reality.

Now we may see, how important the abilities of “find internal resource”, “problem solving”, “communication skill” and “relaxing skill” are. I would like to teach kids those abilities by applying 3-D leaning strategy.

With your teaching methods, Janai, kids will learn they are no longer powerless, they have powerful internal resources, when something happened, they will no longer be frustrated, they know how to relax. They also know how to communicate with others, and how to solve the problem. This ideal model can solve huge problems that caused by the “One Child Policy” in China, it can help millions Chinese kids to have a happy life. And that is also my ideal formula, even I am no longer a kid, however, if I can always have the abilities of “find internal resource”, “problem solving”, “communication skill” and “relaxing skill”, it could also really helpful. For me, sometimes I also have the problem of self-doubting, and have a little depression and anxiety. Hence, I do need to learn how to “find internal resource”. It is important to talk to my self with positive words like we have learned in your class. Even as an adult, sometimes when something happens, I also forget to do rational thinking first, it is so important for me to remember to take a deep breath first and thinking before I act.

As I said before, being a child who grew up under the “Only Child Policy”. My classmates, my friends and I had a lot of problems. We had been spoiled, and lost our self-awareness, we did know how to solve problems when we no longer have external supports. We were self-centered, and we did not know how to communicate with others, as well as when we were facing to stresses, we did not have the skill to relax ourselves even simply as taking a deep breath. If we had someone to teach us those strategies before, our lives could be much happier. Even for the whole country, if we had this kind of education, it could definitely solve many social problems, like substance abuse of young people.

I am majoring education; I think this class gives me a lot inspiration. It is always a considerable issue for us to think about how to help our kids to build a good personality, and healthy inside. And this class taught me a lot of strategies about those. Also, the most charming part for me is the 3-D learning, it helps the kids to develop a habit to explore and discover knowledge by themselves, and they can experience things while they are learning, in the process, they could also learn how to be creative and thinking critically, those are very significant abilities to help our kids be healthy and successful.

~Pengyu “Perry” Gao


 

June 2013

Janai – I don’t normally do this but I really feel compelled to let you know that these past 4 days have been so inspiring for me. I truly feel lifted and empowered to empower children. Never have I experienced a class with such life, character and hands on learning. I appreciated your approach, dedication, motivation and your enthusiasm more than anything. It truly is something that will be with me from now on and I hope I can pass your sense of spirit to others I come into contact with. I can only imagine how great it must be for your grandchildren to have you as a grandmother. You actually remind me of my own grandmother so it made me feel good to come to class every day. I have taken many child psychology courses and I swear to you, I am taking more information home with me in the 4 days with you than all of my other classes combined simply because you are so hands on and we learned things that we can actually use- it wasn’t just knowledge, it was skills and tools that we now know how to live with on a daily basis and that is just priceless. I have to be honest and say that on the first day I was not absolutely sure that this class was going to be for me. I was raised in a very western traditional way where we do not talk about our feelings, emotions and our home was not a place for spirituality. So I have never been exposed to such things and I felt somewhat out of my comfort zone in the beginning. But Janai it did not take me long at all. I was on board right away and became so in tune with myself, something I had never thought could happen and it felt wonderful. I am so thrilled to bring these lessons to the children I work with. I am confident in myself to do more with the kids I work with now because of your class. I really think you are doing a great thing here and I sincerely hope you continue doing what you are doing for many years. Thank you for being you and thank you for sharing with us this week. Have a fabulous summer! Take care 🙂

~Jacqualyn R. Gillen, Graduate student, University of Oregon


 

Older Testimonials

Oregon Rural Magazine claims Janai Lowenstein has “Passion to Make a Difference.”

“Janai Lowenstein’s presentation is one of the highest rated by students we have ever had.” ~ Director, University of Oregon, Substance Abuse Prevention Program

“I decided to say “NO” to negative peer pressure to beat up a boy that my friends and I didn’t like. When I said, “NO” to the other boys, they decided not to beat up the kid either. I felt good about my choice.” ~Third grade boy learning Ms. Lowenstein’s program

“Janai’s work made a profound impact.” ~Principal Elementary School

“Learning these skills helped my kindergarten son, a potential bully, change into a person with a lot of feelings for others.~Mother, 6 yr. old son

Every child in every country should have the right to learn Janai’s program. Every child needs the skills and approach Janai gives to prevent violence and unnecessary stress to promote healthy living.” ~United Nations Member

“You are to be commended on the successful and needed work you are doing for children and families to prevent violence in a solid foundation of self-help skills.” ~Congressman David Wu

“We have less family stress and more fun together since we learned these prevention skills. We needed SOMETHING that worked and was easy to apply.” ~Mother, wife

“Thanks for the great training ideas, Ms. Lowenstein. Head Start optimally utilizes these skills within the staff ranks and with the children. We have less stress!~Director, Head Start

“In twenty years of service to the State of Oregon, I have never witnessed workshop participants being so enlivened after lunch when they usually nap. Janai was extremely engaging with a cornucopia of easy-to-use skills with children and continually enlivening and fun.” ~Manager, Family and Children Services Training Division

“Our kids love listening to Janai’s CD’s Her voice is soothing and inviting. The messages are just what our kids need to have reinforced and it’s nice to have someone else helping us out!~Professional Working Mom and Dad

“The group of children at day care watching Janai’s RAINBOW MAGIC DVD were completely absorbed. They want to watch it over and over. We have noticed them using terms and skills to help themselves immediately.~Owner, day care facility

“We are living a better life because our daughter learned self-help skills from Janai’s program and taught them to us.” ~ Father of kindergartener

“I don’t know what would have happened if we had not come to Janai to change our bad habits. We will be thankful forever to have this fresh start and skills to last a lifetime.~Working Single Mom

“We are happier and healthier using our skills to have better exchanges in the mornings instead of biting each others’ heads off. Thanks, Janai, for your practical suggestions and materials that work. ~Single Dad

“Ms. Lowenstein works with the hardest cases with the greatest results.” ~Director, Counseling Agency

“I didn’t think there was much to the idea of Janai Lowenstein’s self-help skills for kids until my own child’s behavior improved so much. It has helped our whole family.” ~Professional Working Parent