Redefining Success: Parenting Children with Additional Needs with Ali Fanshawe

In this episode of "Work It Like a Mum," I'm joined by Ali Fanshawe, an adoptive mother of two kids with additional needs and a strong advocate for making work more accessible for parent carers. Ali shares her candid journey from adoption to navigating the complexities of raising children with additional needs while advocating for support in the workplace.

Through her initiative, Fizzy Kids, Ali has championed therapeutic parenting techniques and highlighted the importance of a supportive work environment for parent carers. This conversation delves into the challenges and victories of adopting, recognising the signs of autism and other additional needs in children, and the profound impact of employer support for families like hers.

This episode is packed with Ali’s firsthand experiences and tips on navigating the complexities of parenting children with additional needs, as well as the need for advocacy and workplace adaptability. It’s an essential listen for parents on a similar journey and anyone looking to create a supportive environment for families facing these challenges.

Tune in to hear Ali Fanshawe’s empowering story and learn about the impact of advocacy, support, and understanding in the journey of parenting and professional life.

Show Links:

Fizzy Kids Website

Connect with Ali on LinkedIn

Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Elizabeth Willetts: 0:01

Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life. I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women Job Board and Community. In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business. They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, their boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money struggles, growth loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all. Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school. So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and make sure you're cozy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays. This is the Work it Like a Mum podcast. This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women. Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers. Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you. They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries, ready to find your perfect job. Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity. Now back to the show.

Elizabeth Willetts: 1:54

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Work it Like a Mum podcast. I'm Elizabeth Willis and today we're diving into the truly inspiring conversation with Allie Fanshawe. Allie isn't just an advocate. She's a trailblazer for change. She's an adoptive mum to two wonderful children with additional needs and a voice for parent carers everywhere. Allie has taken life's challenges head-on founding fizzy kids to share her journey and the transformative power of positive language in parenting. Allie is a feminist, a school governor, and when the world gets too heavy, you'll find her seeking solace on the beach. The ski slopes are running with Max, her loyal lab. Today she's here to share her wisdom on making work more accessible and fulfilling for parent carers and also some brilliant tips on how to parent a child with additional needs. Join us as we explore the intersections of work, parenting and advocacy with Allie. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to welcome you to the podcast.

Ali Fanshawe: 2:53

Thank you, Liz. I'm really looking forward to chatting to you. I love the energy that you bring to parents looking for all kinds of different work and I think that has been really inspiring to me and a reason why you got in touch with you in the first place. Looking forward to it.

Elizabeth Willetts: 3:09

I'm really looking forward to it, because I know there'll be a lot of people listening to this as well that have children with additional needs, and I know that that is something that's such a huge passion project for you, and you've obviously set up a business fizzy kids around that and you support parents with children with additional needs. Let's wind back you adopted your children in 2013, is that?

Ali Fanshawe: 3:28

correct. That is correct. I can't actually believe it. I know everyone says they have kids. Time flies, but it really has flown. It was like a decade ago. We were celebrating with them last year for having it having been 10 years since we adopted them and that can come with happiness as well as sadness. I know we're not going to get too much into adoption, but for those parents who have adopted or for those parents thinking about adopting, there's a lot of emotion that travels on the journey of adoption with you and your kids and 10 years of the great success story. But it hasn't been without its challenges along the way. I think if I look back to 2013, I'm very lucky I'm still with the same husband. That has been a success in itself. Flip and egg.

Ali Fanshawe: 4:19

I was working and I was right in the thick of my early 30s. There were still weddings on right. You wrote a wedding every other weekend and people were starting to have kids and getting their first mortgages and starting to really settle down into their careers. I was at Yorkshire Water at that time, a fantastic company. We spent 10 years living in Sheffield with my husband from Yorkshire. I got very well-bursted with Yorkshire Tea. I'm never doing anything else.

Ali Fanshawe: 4:47

Now, it has to be said, yorkshire Water are a brilliant case study on how to help parents who want to adopt kids ensure that they have the support and leave that they need in order to do that. Firstly, just to pick up to them as an employer for taking it seriously and for supporting me to do that, because I left on adoption leave in April 2013 and I said I think I'll be off for about six months. Then, three months into my adoption leave, we got a call from the adoption agency saying would you also like to adopt your son's brother? I was like, maybe. Yeah, just give me a sec. I've got to call the boss.

Ali Fanshawe: 5:31

I called my manager and I was like here's the situation. We've got the opportunity to adopt not just one, but two children. How do you feel about me extending my adoption leave for a year rather than the six months? To be fair to them, they supported that. I think it's a big ask. I was in a relatively senior position at that time and they stepped up. They stepped up and it was their flexibility and their support that allowed me not just to adopt one child, but to adopt two. How employers interact with you at those really critical moments in your life. It can radically alter the success that you can have around big family moments.

Elizabeth Willetts: 6:18

Yeah, I agree my daughter's IVF and I remember plugging up the crew to tell my boss at the time that I needed to do IVF and I was so nervous and he was so supportive and I actually credit that IVF then being successful because I felt so much more relaxed then, taking the time off I needed for appointments. I didn't feel that I had to hide that I was in a meeting in inverted commas, when I was obviously in the hospital and things like that. I was so grateful to him for being so kind.

Ali Fanshawe: 6:49

Yeah, that absolutely resonates with me, Liz. I think that is so spot on. You can't underestimate the impact of that support, can you? Because I think it's important to state this out loud. What you're not saying is I'm not enjoying my work, I don't like being an employee here. You're saying completely the opposite. You're saying I love my work, I love being an employee for this company, I love working for this team and for you as a manager.

Ali Fanshawe: 7:15

I'm going to tell you a little bit about my life right now, because I'm seeking your support so that I can carry on. I think there is. I'm going to keep it to mums just simply because I'm a mum and that is my lived experience, but I'm sure it can be the same for many dads as well. You are incredibly grateful at that moment in your time and your loyalty to that company and that team and that manager will only increase because of the support you're given. If companies are looking for ways to retain good employees and staff, then that support in those emotional moments, those big turning points in your life, is so critical.

Elizabeth Willetts: 7:53

I know we're going to be talking more about special needs and parenting children with special additional needs, but just winding back to that, there'll be some people listening to this that maybe are adoptive parents considering adopting children. Talk to you in the process did you? Was being an adoptive parent, something you always wanted to be. Then what was the process like, going through that Adoption approval?

Ali Fanshawe: 8:14

Yeah, we decided relatively early in our 30s the personal reason that we wanted to adopt. We were relatively young, actually, quite often adoptees can be a little bit older and it's really important to tell people that there are no fixed ages to adopt children. You don't have to be between a certain age or do a certain job or be in a certain relationship or have a certain sized house. There are 100,000 children in care right now and about 3,000 to 4,000 of those get adopted every year. Let's just think about that from a statistical point of view. If you are thinking in any way about adopting a child, please, please, put yourself forward, find out more information. These children are desperate for permanent home. There are so many children out there who need adopted parents.

Ali Fanshawe: 9:01

My husband and I are quite vanilla. We're quite boring. We had a space for a child in our house and in our lives, both emotionally and financially. I guess at the time they saw us as quite a vanilla couple. I think we're quite boring. There was not too many skeletons in the cupboard, one that they found anyway. We got approved for adoption relatively quickly. I think it was kind of nine or 10 months. I think they've tried to speed it up even quicker now actually. Then you go through a panel process and they say, yep, you look fine, you sound fine, you get grilled a bit, which is a bit like sitting in a job interview. As you mentioned, you're quite senior in your role.

Elizabeth Willetts: 9:40

You loved your job. Was there ever any question about you giving up work to adopt children? Did they put that in your head, or were they quite supportive of you having a career?

Ali Fanshawe: 9:50

No, they were absolutely supportive. Yeah, there were no questions around. That was almost like I think they try not to nanny state you. So they want to make sure that you are in a stable position emotionally more than anything to take on these children, because it is a big arc. There will always be complicating factors when you adopt a child, so you've got to be really stable emotionally and ready to take that on. That's their number one priority, to make sure that's the case. All the other stuff how you're going to manage it once you've adopted is almost kind of left up to you a little bit. So I don't ever really remember being grilled about that too much, which is good, because then it gives you lots of options. So once we got approved for adoption, then we were matched to a child and we read his profile. We hadn't even seen the photos at this point and we were like hell, yeah.

Elizabeth Willetts: 10:42

So how do they match you to a child?

Ali Fanshawe: 10:46

Oh, my goodness. I mean I'm not a social worker or a groupie, so I don't really know, but they think about everything, you know, they genuinely think about everything the character, the background, the needs of the child, who you are as individuals, what you like doing. So they really try and think through it very carefully, you know, and we got quite lucky, I think. We just felt that the profile we were given was just a yes and immediately.

Elizabeth Willetts: 11:10

Yeah, that was just a yes.

Ali Fanshawe: 11:11

I know other parents who might have been and talked about 30 or 40 different profiles before they felt they'd got the right decision. And that's OK too. You know you've got to make as good a decision as you can. It's really important. So it's worth taking the time to really kind of get that decision right.

Ali Fanshawe: 11:32

And who got a good social worker that's brought you with that so you might get a proof reduction and then you might not be matched to a child who you think is right for six months a year. You know that's possible, but don't rush it. Take that time because that decision you make might feel long but the life you live with them will be longer. So it's so important to get that right, for the child Most importantly, but also for you as a family. So, yes, we got matched to who I call in 50 kid. One is my first 50 kid and we got matched in January and by April we were going through the settling in process with him. And just a little insight, those settling in weeks are amazing, amazing. Meeting that adoptive child for the first time incredibly exhausting and emotional.

Elizabeth Willetts: 12:18

They were the foster family at that point. Is that what you mean?

Ali Fanshawe: 12:21

Yes, they were with the foster family. He had a lovely foster family because he gave one. They'd fostered, I think, 80, 90 children over their lives. That's what they did. They were amazing and just a little anecdote on the last day kind of took all his stuff and got him back into our house and obviously each day that week he's put his shoes on to be taken back to the foster carers because he spent the day with us but then slept back at theirs and on the final day he was obviously kind of moving into ours.

Ali Fanshawe: 12:51

We had all his stuff that he went downstairs and he put his shoes on because he thought he was going again and we were like, no, you don't have to go this time, you can stay. You know there are so many moments like that in the first kind of few weeks, the months, as you build your relationship with that adoptive child. It's incredibly tough. Many adoptive children have been through extremely challenging, adverse childhood experiences and may have a lot of trauma that they carry with them. And it might not be easy, might be very, very challenging, but having that adoption leave, having that time of work to bond and attach to that child, is just critical.

Elizabeth Willetts: 13:31

What support do adoptive parents then get generally, if they adopted a child, you know that has experienced a lot of trauma in their young lives.

Ali Fanshawe: 13:38

In two words, Liz, not enough, OK, yeah, I'd love to be able to see more positively about that. I think the post-adoption social work teams are generally fantastic, but they have very limited funding and very limited powers. They're not actually kind of statutory people as such. So they can be on the other end of the phone, they can provide funding for therapy, they can offer kind of parenting courses. I had a kind of one-to-one therapeutic parenting course which is really helpful, but it's all quite short-term intervention, quite kind of limited really. So you are kind of on your own. You know the cavalry isn't coming and that can be hard. That can be really hard. If you're a parent who has grown up in a relatively stable environment my childhood had a fair share of stuff going on, but nothing compared to what my children had experienced then what you are going to experience with your children is very, very different, radically different, than how you experienced your own childhood. That can take a lot of getting used to.

Elizabeth Willetts: 14:47

How do you square that? I mean not necessarily you, but generally as a parent. You often actually want to. But if you had a nice childhood, you want to recreate that childhood for your own children.

Ali Fanshawe: 14:58

Absolutely. Which parent doesn't? Of course, that's what you want to give them everything that you had and more right the really natural feeling. The hard thing is when that gets rejected or sabotaged, or accepted and taken, but without any seeming gratefulness for it. And, yes, that can be very difficult.

Ali Fanshawe: 15:19

There's been a lot of resetting of expectations for both my husband and I over the past 10 years or so. If their mum was listening, or even dad's, this is. My husband did a great podcast for me on what it's like being a dad to adoptive and special needs parents and that's a really good listen actually, because it gives the dad perspective as well as the mum, and they can be quite different. So I think maybe it's been slightly easier for me to reset my expectations around the family life we lead, and it's been harder for my husband to do that for various reasons because of his own personal childhood experiences. So I think you have to be prepared to reinvent yourself a bit, reinvent family life a bit, not feel tied to all those societal norms and expectations.

Ali Fanshawe: 16:11

This is what you must do on Christmas Day. This is what a standard six-year-old's birthday party must look like. No, no, no, they do not have to look the same in your house, because your house is not standard and so you know there's a lot of kind of thinking through things which can be exhausting. But also I think accepting where your life is and accepting your life is different with adopted children can bring a lot of freedom. Yeah, just kind of give yourself a break. It's all right to be different.

Elizabeth Willetts: 16:42

So what was your adoptive life? Dude, how did that look, your adoptive life?

Ali Fanshawe: 16:46

That is a really good question, liv, so I probably should have made more of it, but I decided you were.

Elizabeth Willetts: 16:51

I will think that, though don't you Will you look back on that, liv, I think anything you know. I wish I'd made more of that anything. Well, yeah, I think you know.

Ali Fanshawe: 16:59

I think I was still. Maybe it's because I didn't experience the whole nine months of pregnancy thing. So I was definitely nesting just before they came and definitely getting rooms ready and doing all of that nice stuff. But I think I was still very much in work mode Whilst I was on adoption leave. I became a chartered environmentalist. I did my charter ship. I think actually it was a good way in a way, even though it was really hard work to do that as well as trying to get used to finally having two kids. I think it was quite good because it kind of kept my brain working. It kept me in the loop a little bit with work because I did some keeping in touch days as well. I think actually it gave me something really positive to go back to work with and maybe kept my confidence levels up during that time because you will know, having taken maternity leave, that you can start to feel really out of the loop really quickly right Really quickly.

Elizabeth Willetts: 17:57

Yeah, within a couple of months.

Ali Fanshawe: 18:01

It's bonkers, isn't it? You lose your confidence. You suddenly become this person you don't even recognize because you haven't put your makeup on or dried your hair for days and your clothes are dirty and you have puke on your shoulder and your house has turned into some kind of tip. It's like the local tip and it is so. I think maybe, especially if you, quite a lot of us are leaving it later in our lives to have children, whether it's birth children or adoptive children, and you've just got so into this pattern of living on your own and working on your own and having all this time Though I think it was, it was a challenge, just like it probably is for any first time mum or dad taking that leave, but for me it worked. Having a little work project to keep doing during that time, that was really good for me, they do nap a lot, don't they?

Elizabeth Willetts: 18:54

I mean, it's often a bit sporadic when they're young, but they do nap, You've got some.

Ali Fanshawe: 18:58

yeah, they generally go to bed. They're like from seven o'clock. Now I'm like lucky if I get a glass of wine at nine per to go to the table. So yeah, you do have that time and I think for me that worked.

Elizabeth Willetts: 19:14

So when did you discover, then, that they had additional needs?

Ali Fanshawe: 20:23

Yeah, so we didn't really discover that until they reached school age. Both of them, both of them? Yes, I think that's quite often the case in children with more of what I return kind of hidden disabilities. So maybe if your child has ADHD or autism or dyspraxia or dyslexia, some of those things don't really come out in the nursery setting or in the home setting, because they're just having fun, they're engaging with other kids, they get in trouble a little bit, but they don't really necessarily stand out from another toddler. Yeah, so it's often not until you get to school age where they're being expected to sit on the carpet to respond to questions, to mark make with pencil. It's not really until you get to that point where you start thinking hang on a minute, there's something going on here. Yeah, it was really kind of year one, year two when we started to understand the kind of the complexities, I guess, around the kids and their needs.

Elizabeth Willetts: 21:20

So what symptoms presented them for each? Autism and the other? Adhd and any other means that your children have trying to get the word out.

Ali Fanshawe: 21:31

No, that's fine, that's fine. It's hard, isn't it? It's like disorder, difficulty, need. There's so many words, aren't there? I won't take events to any, by the way, it's not at all. Oh gosh.

Ali Fanshawe: 21:41

I think the main kind of warning sign, if you like, with really their ability to interact in a kind of I'm going to use the word normal okay, in a normal way, in a mainstream classroom environment, and I'm not going to use the word normal in any kind of negative way. But 80% of children in a mainstream school classroom will operate in pretty much the same way. So they will be able to sit on the carpet and listen to their teacher for a bit. They'll be able to sit on a chair at the table and complete a certain task. They'll be able to go out to play time, have 20 minutes of running around, having a bit of fun, maybe a bit of pushy-pushy, shovey-shovy, whatever, but generally they'll be okay.

Ali Fanshawe: 22:26

My children and maybe other children with additional needs or special needs will not operate in that way, so it might be that they constantly talk on the carpet when they're meant to be quiet. Okay, yeah, or if a teacher asks them a question, they'll ignore the teacher. It's almost like they haven't heard them, but maybe actually they just haven't really had the time to process the question they're being asked. They might not be able to sit still at a table for very long without distracting another child. They might not be able to complete a simple task or they might struggle with reading or focus on retention.

Ali Fanshawe: 23:00

They might be outwardly more defensive or aggressive to other children and they might use words or say things that kind of just sound a bit odd to adults. So they might say some sexualized language at quite a young age and you think, oh, you know where's that come from. They might not have heard it at home. It's just things they pick up and things that would surprise you, things that kind of a fanatic would make you go oh, that's the time to maybe just step back and think. And what I would say, looking back on kind of where we've come from, is it's very easy to get very worried very quickly about these things.

Elizabeth Willetts: 23:39

Because they might say something odd one time. And then would you panic. At that point, exactly, exactly, at what point do you start thinking, oh okay, maybe because we need to explore this further.

Ali Fanshawe: 23:50

I think in a lot of cases, if you've got a good school and a teacher that you trust, if a teacher or a head teacher or a special needs coordinator in the school is saying things to you about your child, they're not saying it to be mean. They're saying it because they genuinely believe there might be something going on with your child.

Elizabeth Willetts: 24:08

And is that how you found out then? Was it the teacher that spoke to you?

Ali Fanshawe: 24:12

Yes, so we just started being kind of patterns of behavior, patterns of dysregulation in school, kind of running around the school at times when they shouldn't have been running around, or maybe just kind of consistently showing dysregulation and I use that word really carefully because it's important with these children to look beyond that behavior. They're not, they haven't got out of bed that morning and thought what can I do to be really bad behavior with my parents and to school. They've got out of school, they've got out of bed and they've gone. Oh the heck, life is overwhelming, stressful, crazy and I do not know how to process it. And of course they're not thinking that I'm verbalising what's going on in their brain. But that is what is coming out in their behaviour, their language and that's what we've really got to start digging into more deeply as a parent or as a teacher, to really work out what's going on.

Elizabeth Willetts: 25:05

The teacher in many cases might give you a bit of a heads up, and then what happens? So then, how do you then get that diagnosis, and what does that diagnosis then mean?

Ali Fanshawe: 25:14

There are many routes to a diagnosis. I wish it was straightforward. It is not. Starting with your GP is always a good place to start. They will possibly refer you to CAMHS, which is the Child and Adult Mental Health Service. Sadly, camhs is hugely underfunded and overneeded, and so even to get an ADHD or autism assessment, you can be on a waiting list for two to three years.

Elizabeth Willetts: 25:39

Okay, and then that's a lot of primary school gone then.

Ali Fanshawe: 25:42

That is a lot of your primary school gone. Yeah, that's a really good way of thinking about it, liz, actually. And some of these things might not start getting diagnosed until you get to year three, year four. So it really starts to kind of compound the impact it has on a child's education. And so, yeah, you can go for your GP, you can go through CAMHS. If you're fortunate enough to have some money that you can spend on it, you can get a private diagnosis for these things through psychologists and psychiatrists.

Ali Fanshawe: 26:12

But that's a big ask too, because you need to feel confident in the person that you're using for that and you'll want to have done all the checks that they're properly qualified and things like that. Facebook groups are a brilliant way of identifying local diagnosis support groups or professionals who might be able to help you. So I really suggest Facebook groups is a good way to kind of find out more information. Do you put your local area in then? Yeah, so you might put in I don't know, sheffield children with special needs, something like that and other parents are just the best support network you can find. And what I would say about getting a diagnosis is that there are lots of reasons to get one, and there are lots of reasons not to.

Elizabeth Willetts: 26:58

Yeah, because I was going to say, once you've got that diagnosis, then what do you do with it?

Ali Fanshawe: 27:02

Yeah, absolutely so. I do think there is a lot of practical benefit in getting an autism diagnosis, simply because if your child is autistic, then the Education, health and Care Plan, which is the kind of funding plan around your child that can take them through until they're 25 years old. So actually it quite beneficial because for quite a lot of autistic children not all, but some autistic children they may need longer support in a kind of educational setting in order to gain that same level of independence and qualifications. That's quite good for a practical point of view. But a diagnosis doesn't change anything. All it really does, aside from fine posting reasons for their difficulties or learning difficulties or their behavioural challenges. It really it will only give you potentially funding, support and also maybe help you work out what they might need in order to support them. So, for example, if you find out they're dyslexic, that can be really useful because then plans can be put in place in school to help support their dyslexia and there are loads of things out there to do that.

Ali Fanshawe: 28:09

We actually didn't get a diagnosis of ADHD or autism. For our youngest son it's possible, because his brother is autistic, but he is also autistic. If it is a genetic link, we don't feel like that would help him. He's a very different character to physical one, so our eldest child will go around saying I'm autistic, I'm different, I'm unique, I'm great. You know how cool am I? Our youngest son is very socially aware, very self-conscious, and we feel that actually he got a diagnosis of what's called reactive attachment disorder, which is all about how he processes attachment and relationships with people, and that was enough. That was actually enough to get him the support he needed in school and at home, and we didn't actually feel like in being diagnosed potentially as autistic or with ADHD was actually going to help him any further. So I think it's a really personal question to parents and to their children Is it going to help your child now or in the long term? If yes, do it. If actually you don't think it is, then you may not need to go down that route.

Elizabeth Willetts: 29:20

Yeah, I suppose there's some age of labelling people that maybe aren't too far along on that spectrum.

Ali Fanshawe: 29:27

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and so will it help? That's the first question to ask.

Elizabeth Willetts: 29:32

Yeah, I've also read girls can display different symptoms to boys. So if there's any parents or daughters that maybe have a bit of an inking, what symptoms do girls tend to present?

Ali Fanshawe: 29:44

Yeah, it's so interesting. I've done quite a bit of research around this and I've got quite a few friends who've got autistic daughters and they are phenomenally good at masking and kind of socially covering up things that they find so difficult, which is really fascinating, isn't it? I mean, there's a whole piece of research that's been done around this and it is a fascinating topic. So obviously some girls will display autistic or ADHD or dyslexic traits in a very similar way to boys. But if not, then from what I understand school refusal, high anxiety that can be a real kind of pointer for there being something underlying it. So if you've got a daughter who hides the way, who finds it really difficult to be in social situations, who maybe isn't going into school or is finding it really hard to get into school, or, as they're getting into school but really not interacting with anybody in a classroom, or presenting just kind of like very high anxiety, that can be something to look out for. What I understand and I think as well, you know the question again just comes back to if they have a diagnosis, will it help them? You know, and I was just with a mum who's got three children with special needs last weekend Her daughter is probably ADHD and she knows it.

Ali Fanshawe: 31:09

She will openly talk about it. She's like Mum. I think I'm ADHD. I think you know I've read it all. She's old enough now to have a mobile phone. Yeah, mum, I've read, you know, personality traits of ADHD about me. Her mum is ADHD. They've never had to diagnose for it because she copes, she gets through life and actually she's aware, she's very self-aware of herself as a person and what she needs and what she's good at and what she struggles with. And actually having that diagnosis wouldn't help, whereas her two younger brothers, who are both autistic ADHD, have both had kind of full diagnosis because they've needed it in order to help them get into specialist schools.

Elizabeth Willetts: 31:45

So, as parents, then if you get that diagnosis, or even if you suspect, how can you support your children?

Ali Fanshawe: 31:51

Oh Liz, what a question. I mean, I think it's a bit like a bit like kind of anything that happens to your child in a way, you know, even if they've got the flu, you know, it's just kind of it's accepting, it's acceptance, it's really just kind of finding a way to accept that they are who they are and that your love for them will come through whatever else is going on. They always, you know, as with any children, they need to know their loved. That is, you know, the number one priority. I think that is the biggest support you can give them is just showing that love and being their greatest advocate and number one fan. And I think it's especially as parents.

Ali Fanshawe: 32:43

You have to be absolutely super advocate.

Ali Fanshawe: 32:48

You have to be, you know, super sized mum, mum on steroids, whatever you want to call it, because life will be more challenging for both you and for them. So, aside from the really practical things, like you know, helping them through their education system, helping them access kind of support therapy, ensuring your home is set up to support them, you know there might be sent three integration techniques that you can use that kind of help to keep them calm in the home, like bouncy balls or special kind of music. You know there's a million practical things you can do, but really the nub of it is just accepting. You are where, you are with them and learning. You know learning about needs and their disabilities so that you can empathize. You might not have it, you know I don't have any learning difficulties that I know of, so I haven't been in the situation that my children have been in. All I can do is do my best to understand what's going on in their little head and help them to verbalise it, but I do, as you know, through my busy kids, yeah.

Elizabeth Willetts: 33:54

So why did you found busy kids? That's why I was going to come on to know Talks through busy kids, what you do and why you found it.

Ali Fanshawe: 34:00

Yeah, well, busy kids was all about me learning to accept my children's needs and to realise that I had to be a different kind of parent than the parents that I had. So all of those things I learned from my parents, all of those actions, those standard parenting techniques, those full script you know those phrases that every parent uses like you know how dare you talk to me like that and sit down and eat your dinner? Now, they were not giving me results, I wasn't getting anywhere with them and it was causing chaos. And it was only when I recognised this that I recognised that actually the way I had learnt to parent was not the way I needed to parent my children. So I went on a evolution that's the only way I can describe it An evolution of learning to parent differently. And I guess the kind of the term that other people may have heard is therapeutic parenting, which is very much kind of designed to support children who have had adverse childhood experiences, but really be very useful for any parent.

Elizabeth Willetts: 35:09

Exactly so what would be some sort of things therapeutic parenting advocates want.

Ali Fanshawe: 35:14

So I think the main difference between kind of therapeutic parenting and maybe slightly more standard parenting is that you're always doing a little bit of therapeutic work in everything you say and do with your kids. They won't realise that you're doing it, but you do. And I guess the other main thing about therapeutic parenting is that it's designed not just to help your children but, more importantly, to help you as the parent, because one of the most critical things about helping parenting children with special needs, particularly those with really challenging behaviours, is that you use stay regulated as a parent, because you are the sole focus in their lives and you are possibly the only person that's in their lives who will be able to help them stay regulated. And when I say regulated, what I really mean is calm not stress.

Elizabeth Willetts: 36:07

I was going to say because you know. You know like it's very hard to stay calm. You know if your children are coming to your house trying to get them out the door somewhere and you know I can feel my stress levels are really high, particularly in the morning and it's. You know, how do you stay calm in certain situations when they're really winding you up.

Ali Fanshawe: 36:26

With practice, liz, that's um oh my goodness. And, by the way, even when you have practiced the years, which I have now done, I am still so imperfect at it. So I think it takes a lot of practice and I vividly remember making this shift in my parenting and the immediate pushback I got from even like very well-meaning parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, friends, you name. It is why do you let your children get away with things? Why did you let them get away with that? So there's an immediate perception that when you change the way you talk to your children, when you don't necessarily what other people see as tell them off, yeah, when you don't react.

Ali Fanshawe: 37:07

I guess Don't react immediately and come down with a swift punishment or consequence or shouty telling off that you are somehow letting them get away with it. And that was one of the biggest kind of challenges to me in the early years of changing how I parented, and I really had to feel secure in myself to get to point to say I'm not letting them get away with this. They are struggling right now. What's happening here is not a I won't do something. It's an I can't do something, I am struggling, I need help. And so in that moment me shouting at them, telling them off, reacting, giving them a punishment that wasn't going to make any difference. That moment would have happened anyway or it would have got worse. So I had to be get to a point where I was really secure in saying to other people verbally I am not letting my child get away with something, I am dealing with it in a different way than you might have done.

Ali Fanshawe: 38:03

And the thing about therapeutic parenting is you might have an immediate win, but actually the power of it comes from years and years of therapeutic parenting. And actually what's been really fascinating, especially as my children now get into between 80 to 80 years, is that having therapeutic parents have them for quite a big chunk of their childhood. I'm actually now quite often able to move back into some standard parenting stuff and it now works. And it works because they trust me, because they know I'm not going to overreact, because they don't see me as a threat, because they don't think that the world is going to end just because I've told them off.

Elizabeth Willetts: 38:45

And the same time as your relationship changed, then parenting generally in a different way with your children.

Ali Fanshawe: 38:51

it's transformed it and I always say that I didn't learn to parent differently out of choice, liz, it was an absolute necessity, you know, six years ago, when I took nine months of parental leave from Thames Water and a. I'll be back in September, don't worry, I'll be back six years ago. I'm still. You know, I'm still not back. But when I left there, our life was in chaos at home, you know. The children were in chaos, I was in chaos. There were fights every day, there were arguments every day. There was a lot of challenging behaviour every day. There were, you know, walls being broken, doors being broken, toys being broken, people getting hurt. You know not saying that I was hurting my children, but they were hurting themselves, they were hurting us, they were hurting each other. It was. We were in a very, very difficult place. So we still have very difficult moments. I'm not going to lie.

Ali Fanshawe: 39:50

But because of that effort, we now are attached and connected more as a family. It's only when a family feels connected and attached to each other that you can work with each other. You know. You can build, you can start to. You know give instructions and know they'll be followed. You can start to have healthy discussions between children and yourself, you know. But golly, that was a really tough day, wasn't that a tough day? I'm exhausted. Are you exhausted? Yeah, I bet you are. I don't know what happened today, but let's go to bed and talk about it tomorrow. You know, it's just years and years of chipping away at that, really.

Elizabeth Willetts: 40:31

So if you talk to the websites I've got the website in the background I can see it's got loads of resources. So if someone's listening to this and they have a child that's got additional needs, or maybe they suspect they've got a child with additional needs, or perhaps they just wanted to parent in a slightly different way what are the resources on offer with Fizzy Kids?

Ali Fanshawe: 40:49

So at the moment we have got some online courses through Udemy. You can get to them through the website FizzyKidscouk, and basically they're just an online course so you can access it on demand, which is perfect for a busy parent. And there's courses really introduce parents to how to communicate differently with your kids, so they give you really practical tips. Here is a phrase you can use today on your child just go out there and see if it works. So there's a course just generally about kind of some kind of starting points, which is a really great one. If you want to dig your toe in, then there's a course. Are particularly focused around talking to the angry child and another one are talking to the anxious child, because those are the kind of two big emotions that parents of kids with additional needs or parents of just hypersensitive kids could be dealing with. So those are really good ways. There are a couple of hours each that's paid. You can use them on demand, so that's a good way to start. There's some cheat sheets as well which are free to download, and there's also a couple of early stage chapters of my book because, as you know, liz just finishing off a book which is called how to Stop Telling your Kids to Calm Down and why it Doesn't Work Anyway. So I've tried to put everything I've learned over the last five or six years into a book. I'm hoping to publish it in early summer and I just you know my aim with physical kids, especially having had to leave work because of my kids with special needs. My aim with physical kids really was just to help one other parent. I just thought to myself, if I can help one other parent get to the end of the day without feeling so utterly frazzled, exhausted, ashamed, whatever it might be your feeling, then I've done my job. That was really the mission behind physical kids. But it's been great because we've got a community of about two and a half thousand on Instagram and they're a really lovely, engaged community. So you know, I'm very open about what's going on in my life no filters, both physically and verbally, and it's been a lovely way to kind of interact and share things with people. So that's another way that people can get involved as well.

Ali Fanshawe: 42:59

And can you say you had a podcast as well? I do have a podcast. Yeah, it's called physical kids for podcasts and it's a mixture of just me talking about some of the things I've learned and the way to communicate with kids. But also, if you get, we've got Sarah Nesh on there who is the managing director of co-act, which is basically all about childhood trauma, how to kind of work with children with trauma so that's brilliant or parent children with trauma. And a couple of other kind of guest speakers as well. One of my favorites is one with a girl called Amy, who's a girl with special needs who talks about her life growing up with special needs. She is now a an environmental consultant having an amazing life, and it's just a really great listen for parents who are maybe in that phase where they think, oh, my goodness what, how is life going to pan out for me and my child? You know, there's a couple of really real kind of golden nuggets in there and I know you wanted to touch before we close up on employers.

Elizabeth Willetts: 43:55

How can employers support parents, children with additional needs? Are any employers listening?

Ali Fanshawe: 44:00

yeah. So I mean, I guess, whether you're an employer or even if you're an employee, talking to your employer, I've tried pretty much every format of working life. Unfortunately for me right now I can't find one that works, but I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that one will. But I tried everything and there are definitely some things which help and can work really well. And I think the first point is that your employer, whoever they are, whether it's an individual or an SME or a large corporate, it doesn't really matter.

Ali Fanshawe: 44:30

But flexibility is key. You know you need that flexibility. If you're a parent of a special needs child, you might have a medical appointment and if it's with the NHS, you just got to go because if it's not going to come up again for like two years. You know, one of my network is a senior partner at Accenture Consultancy in in London and she's a single adoptive mum and her child has a lot of behaviour challenges and she has created flexibility around her job by being absolutely honest with her employer but also with her clients. She will say to people I'm really sorry, that's the school phoning and I've got a child with behavioural issues and if I don't go now it's possible that in two years my child will be in prison. So I'm going to leave this meeting right now and go and sort my child out. I'll see you soon, yeah, now, not everyone have that confidence and, as you see, you have to be quite brave to say that she's a brave, brave lady, oh my goodness. But she has reached that point. She's like it is the only way that I'm still in work. I just have to be brave and a bit bold, she and a bit bold, and then I just have to work my ass off off. You know, turning a puppet, like to catch up, but I think flexibility is key.

Ali Fanshawe: 45:41

I think the second thing is really think about and ensure that you're getting treated equally, and not just equally, but also equitably, because a parent who is on the same contract as you, working the same job, might be able to fulfill that contract because their children are quite happy to go into before school and after school clubs. Yours might not be all the time. So how can you ensure, as a special needs parent, that you're not being left out or being given a harder time or not being able to meet your contract of work just because your children are struggling in some way? So try and think really carefully and have a really good chat to your employer about how they can make your job equitable for you, based on your circumstances. And I guess the final thing I just say is don't be afraid to try things out if your current work situation is not working. If full time is not working, try full time in four days if your employer will let you try a bit of working from home, try a bit of contractual work. If you can try moving jobs though it's less project management focus, where you've got particular deadlines you've got to be at into maybe a job that's a little bit more strategic. So actually you can write a report at 10 o'clock at night when your kids are in bed.

Ali Fanshawe: 47:00

Don't give up, you know. Do not give up because work can be a lifeline to kids, to parents, especially these kids. You know it doesn't just give you financial security, it gives you, it stops you being being socially isolated, it gives you an adult interaction, it gives you joy if you love your work. So, whatever you do, don't give up. Try everything before you have to give up, because it's really, really worth it thank you so much, allie, for joining us today.

Elizabeth Willetts: 47:30

Where can people find you, connect with you and remind us of the website again?

Ali Fanshawe: 47:36

yeah, thank you Liz. It's wwwfizzykidscouk or we're on instagram at the Fizzy Kids brilliant.

Elizabeth Willetts: 47:44

I'll put all the links in the show next.

Elizabeth Willetts: 47:45

Thank you so much, allie, for joining us thank you, liz thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like a Mum podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend. If you're on linkedin, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode. You can also follow my recruitment site investing in women on linkedin, facebook and instagram. Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.