In a kivy application I am using a button to change variables, how do I pass this to a function that will be ran as a thread?

Question

I have created a simple program that demonstrates my current dilemma. Whenever I press button 2 on the kivy GUI I would like to increment a variable. After this variable is incremented I would like to create a thread that runs separately to do something to the value of the variable. For this instance just adding a sleep of 5 seconds before printing it back will be fine. I have to use threading because any use of sleep or interrupts inside gui, stops it from working during that sleep or kills it completely.

You might need to install the kivy lib for the kivy application to work on windows

import threading
from kivy.config import Config
from kivy.app import App
from kivy.uix.boxlayout import BoxLayout
from kivy.clock import Clock
from kivy.lang import Builder
from kivy.properties import StringProperty
from datetime import datetime
#import adafruit_rfm9x
#from gpiozero import MotionSensor
#import sys
import time
#from gpiozero import MotionSensor
import subprocess

global buttonVal

# Setting up size of window for kivy app
Config.set('graphics', 'resizable', '0')
# fix the width of the window
Config.set('graphics', 'width', '800')
# fix the height of the window
Config.set('graphics', 'height', '480')

# Kivy app dependencies, buttons, labels, etc
Builder.load_string("""

<MySec>:
    orientation: 'vertical'
    size: root.width, root.height
    rotation: 90

    Label:
        text: 'Master Wall Mount'
        font_size: 45

    Button:
        id: kv_sec
        text: root.seconds_string
        font_size: 80

    Button:
        id: button2
        text: 'Button 2'
        on_press: root.button_toggle()

    Button:
        id: button3
        text: 'Button 3' 

""")

# function to turn on screen
def turn_on():
    CONTROL = "vcgencmd"
    CONTROL_UNBLANK = [CONTROL, "display_power", "1"]
    subprocess.call(CONTROL_UNBLANK)

# function to turn off screen
def turn_off():
    CONTROL = "vcgencmd"
    CONTROL_BLANK = [CONTROL, "display_power", "0"]
    subprocess.call(CONTROL_BLANK)

# function that will run as a thread to run the pir sensor infinitely to determine if motion is  present and proceed
# to adjust screen brightness.
def pirsensor():
    # Setting GPIO pin 4 as pir sensor
    pir = MotionSensor(4)
    # dhtDevice = adafruit_dht.DHT22(board.D23)

    while True:
        if pir.motion_detected:
            turn_on()
            print("Motion Detected!")
            time.sleep(120.0)
            print("Sleeping for 2 minutes")
        else:
            turn_off()
            print("No Motion Detected!")


def send_button_data():
    print(buttonVal)

# pirsenor thread using pirsensor function
t1 = threading.Thread(target=pirsensor)
t2 = threading.Thread(target=send_button_data())

class MySec(BoxLayout):
    seconds_string = StringProperty('')

    count = 0

    def button_toggle(self):
        self.count += 1
        print(self.count)
        buttonVal = self.count

class TestThreadApp(App):

    print("Running Thread for PIR Sensor")
    t1.start()
    print("Running Thread to display current button value" )        
    t2.start()

    def build(self):
        Clock.schedule_interval(lambda dt: self.update_time(), 1)
        return MySec()

    def update_time(self):
        self.root.seconds_string = datetime.now().strftime("%H:%M:%S")

TestThreadApp().run()