This episode is the first of a new series dedicated to understanding and cultivating children with gifted neurodivergence. Two mothers, (Lillian Skinner and Beth Anne Johnson) in different stages of raising their children, discuss how they navigate and raise their gifted neurodivergent children to succeed now and in the future. While living a society that needs the unique spatial gifts of the gifted neurodivergent but has not tried to cultivate or understand them.
If you enjoyed the podcast check out our new podcast dedicated covering how we are raising gifted neurodivergent children and growing ourselves in the process.
https://giftedndchildpodcast.buzzsprout.com
www.GiftedND.com
copyright 2024
This episode is the first of a new series dedicated to understanding and cultivating children with gifted neurodivergence. Two mothers, (Lillian Skinner and Beth Anne Johnson) in different stages of raising their children, discuss how they navigate and raise their gifted neurodivergent children to succeed now and in the future. While living a society that needs the unique spatial gifts of the gifted neurodivergent but has not tried to cultivate or understand them.
If you enjoyed the podcast check out our new podcast dedicated covering how we are raising gifted neurodivergent children and growing ourselves in the process.
https://giftedndchildpodcast.buzzsprout.com
www.GiftedND.com
copyright 2024
Welcome to the Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the exploration and cultivation of the outside genius found in neurodivergence.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, welcome to the Gifted Neurodivergent Podcast. My name is Lillian Skinner. This is our first Gifted Neurodivergent child podcast and I am here with my co-host, beth Ann Johnson. Beth Ann and I met while we were doing coaching classes and we instantly took to each other. Beth Ann, in that coaching class, had a little tiny baby with her and we have maintained our friendship now for years and she has a new little baby in her arms and I thought, well, we should just go back to doing zoom calls and start a podcast.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's great to be here with you.
Speaker 3:Lillian, always an honor and it seems only fitting that there's a baby in my arms, yeah. So we met in our coaching class and I think my favorite story from that class is you said, oh yeah, your HSP highly sensitive people and I think I've always kind of walked through the world a little bit lonely knowing like, yes, I have this personality trait, this really resonates with me. But to have someone else recognize it and be like, oh, I sense this about you too, especially in a time when connection was happening over Zoom this 2021, covid was still very much raging in the world and I think you were all kind of hungry for connection, languishing in our homes and trying to figure out like, what is this next right thing for us in this new world? So that's my favorite Lillian story of you saw me wholly in that coaching class and just recognizing me for who I am as well. I always think that's special.
Speaker 2:Well, I have to say that I could see who you were instantly, because you are a force to be reckoned with. You definitely have an energy about you that is powerful. I love women like that and so instantly I was like, oh, I'm gonna like this girl, we're gonna get along.
Speaker 3:I think you know being reckoned and, of course, to be reckoned with.
Speaker 2:There's something to be said there, as well, yeah, yeah, I was like, oh, a sister of another mister. So Beth Ann and I decided that we would come together and talk each week about things that she's going through that I've already gone through. One of the things about being a savant is that I don't think about things, I just sort of feel them. And I do think that there are many more savans out there. In fact, I think most of us have some level of savantism.
Speaker 2:If you have neurodivergence, it is the creative brain. So we're gonna talk about the things that she's going through, that I've already gone through. And we're gonna talk about approaches and ups and downs and things that make us feel the need for community, because really, mothers of neurodivergent children are some of the loneliest and they definitely need community and our children need us to have that community so that we maintain our sanity, because it's a very solitary life when you're going against the grain of the whole society, everything's telling you to do something, yet your heart is saying that doesn't work for my kid and you should listen to your heart.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh my goodness. And and just like you said, there's a lot of lonely days for supporting your children and when you intuitively just know you can look at my son and just say like there is an old soul behind those eyes and you can see the wheels turning and you can just tell he's a deep thinker and that there's a rich life going on. So for anyone to kind of question his intelligence, my son has a speech delay. He's about six months behind. He just turned three last week and and according to the documents right, there's so many documents in this process to get them the support that they deserve he's about six months still behind. Call it COVID. He's a visual learner, so part of it is he's not only a visual learner, but we live in the southeast where it was kind of a political statement to or not to get vaccinated. So his first few teachers were not vaccinated in the school so therefore they had to wear masks at all times.
Speaker 2:Oh geez.
Speaker 3:He started daycare at one year old. I got a really wonderful year having my cake and eating it too once I said it time, so that is just a fallacy.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And I really loved being able to be this working parent with a young one at home and not missing a single milestone. It was a lot of joy and what's kind of really inspired me to be an entrepreneur for this next child of mine. So when he started, at a year kind of, when they really started to develop those different sounds and things like that, his teachers were wearing masks. So I'm sure that plays into part of it. I think the other part of it is he is.
Speaker 3:You can just see, he's the big picture thinker, big picture learner and so with all milestones with high heat, with like walking, for example, he did not want to walk at school until it was with mastery. So when he walked at school he could also run at school, he could hike up, he could balance on one, but but he did not want to walk at school until it was with complete perfectionism. Not only that, she would walk at home. So what the child I had at home was completely different from the child I had that was going to school, yeah, and he was a really great communicator, effective communicator with my husband, my partner and myself, because we intuitively understood him as well. He's been a whole year at home with him.
Speaker 2:Baby's de-awning and he's so cute. So one thing I want to add to that is your son is going through his largest cognitive growth spurt almost right out of the gate and we don't really understand fully. I don't hear much about how the cognitive growth spurt really are when you kind of notice the onset of their neurodivergence. When you think of neurodivergence, particularly for boys, they usually think of it around the time you get your shots. Two, three people think it comes out.
Speaker 2:For my children they actually were normal, I guess, seeming when they were that age but because we have later cognitive growth spurt. But my eight-year-old is now going through hers and she's just starting it and see her intensity increasing and I remember even watching Tides. He had the biggest eyes and he had the most intense gaze and but his awareness of you, he was tracking you and he was so attentive and so intense, just even as that little baby, and I remember thinking, oh yeah, this kid is smart, he's real smart. You send me a picture and I'll be like somebody's really happy to say okay, no, somebody's not happy to say he is what he is and it is beautiful. I mean, he's the most photographic child I've ever met in my life because he wears what he is.
Speaker 3:Yes, he, he. I think he comes by it very honestly.
Speaker 3:His mother and I are very intense. We I was like, oh my goodness, this perfectionism in our genes Really trying to focus on both myself and Tyler, just trying to encourage him to, to try to see what happens. Absolutely, I think, as a parent, what I want to keep for Ty is that he continues to show up with that tremendous authenticity and doesn't let the world take that away from him, because that's what's gonna, that's what's going to make him a world changer. That's what the world exactly needs. Yeah, and it's beautiful. It's beautiful that it's. It's such a joy to kind of see and so oftentimes I feel like, as a parent, part of me it's just advocating for letting him take up that authentic space with whatever big feelings are happening and normalizing that experience versus I don't know what other what?
Speaker 3:other little babies do.
Speaker 2:Well, the interesting thing is I see our world literally shaping babies out of the gate to serve the adults just between them having to stay in their strollers, or parents sort of ignoring them when they're fussing. And the child learns very early to smile when the parent looks at them, to try to get the parent to pay attention to them, and I have always cried a little bit over that. And yet our teachers, particularly those who are educated in the system, they're taught that you teach children to stay in line, you teach them to stay in the group, and our children are not meant for groups. Our children are outliers. So we are putting them in something that's already putting them at a disadvantage and not recognizing their uniqueness. It's not a burden, it's an opportunity for growth. It's rarely seen as such.
Speaker 2:We have a whole entire system set up that cultivates children, serving upward, emotionally, caretaking the leaders or their teachers or whoever's in charge. Our children aren't the best at that. They actually can get really, really good as they get older. But when they're little they're struggling so much, they're so intense, they have so much sensory going on, there's so many things kind of attacking them because they're so high sensing and they never grow out of it, our system ends up harming them. Traumatizing Trauma, by my definition, means not being allowed your perspective, but having to take on the perspective of others, and that is what it is like to move through neurodivergence. You're constantly having to take the perspective of the average of others, because your perspective is something they simply cannot even fathom.
Speaker 3:Yes, ian, you know I mentioned earlier about how my son was a different child at home than he was at school and I think the biggest thing is and here's where you and I can come in for parents and coaching them on how to have those conversations with their teachers, with their directors of the schools, principals of the schools and things like that. So Adam and I went in for a parent-teacher conference and told them we honor and respect our child's autonomy and it sounds like if we can build autonomy into Ty's day throughout school, he will be a much happier child. He will be a child he participates. But there'll be a child that says you know what? I'm actually overwhelmed. Right now I'm going to go into my corner and be, but when I'm ready to participate I'll come back.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And to us, to my son's school, they were very accepting of the feedback for parents listening. If your child's school is not welcome to that feedback, you find a different school.
Speaker 2:Right, yes.
Speaker 3:And so they took that feedback. The teacher took it as an opportunity to learn. She got feedback from one of their learning specialist instructors who comes in the school, and we started to see that same child at home at school. I still don't think he's all that happy. School isn't exactly his happiest of places. Oh, his happiest of places is at home with us. But he's certainly doing better and enjoying his time there much more.
Speaker 2:The home thing is key. I just finished talking to specialists about my daughter going to college at 14. And they said to me really, it doesn't matter what you do with her, she's such an outlier, you need to keep her home. She will do best with her family at home. And while I had always believed this being reaffirmed, it being told it clearly as day yes, you're doing the right thing by pulling her out. You're doing the right thing by serving her where she is educationally at. You're doing the right thing by not trying to make her socialize with people who are not at her level.
Speaker 2:There's such a push in our system to be a part of the group, to fit in, and when you have an outlier child, the more of an outlier they are, the more you have to create their path for them. The more you have to create their path with them, the more they have to create their path. We do not fit into the system's paths, but if you read that book, the New Smart by Dr Terry Richards, which I recommend to everyone and I know that you've read it that book talks about how creatives are the future that's what neurodivergence is is creative and it talks about how we need to make our own paths, We'll have to have many multi-potential skills, that we are going to be switching careers often and the system is. You have to catch up to that and that is our future. Our future is ahead and our education system is behind.
Speaker 2:So when you put your children in the system and they're telling you things, please take stock about whether or not it is going to benefit your child, especially if they're neurodivergent, because the neurodivergent children, they are already wired for our future. They may have not fit in the past, but neurodivergent children are naturally wired for the future. We are the creatives, and creatives are good at change. Creatives are good at seeing and responding and developing things to adapt, to change. The last thing you want to do is drive that out of your child. We have to navigate this system that is still operating as if the world is incredibly stable. The world is changing and if you want your child to be successful, they have more opportunity now than ever and you just have to protect them as they go in and out of the system and only put them in when it serves them.
Speaker 3:And what I really love, too, is our children get to see us do this for ourselves. They not only get to be at home with us. But we are entrepreneurs, we are those creative thinkers, we're building these businesses and so our kiddos can see oh, like this is what it looks like to do this for myself. That's assuming the world continues as is, but for now they're really getting to see that mommy's making a place for herself in this world. That's healthy, that sets boundaries, that works with people.
Speaker 2:And finding your community and the right clients to work with, which I think is especially important as well, and one of the beautiful things about you and I working together and recognizing our differences and our strengths is that you are in it. You're in the thick of it, whereas I'm sort of now kind of coming out of it. My kids are older, but you're in that new baby. What you can offer is something I cannot offer. You can offer sort of that companionship. Oh yes, I'm right there with you. This is what I'm doing for this. I've moved on from that, and so mine is more future focused, but your present focus, and I think that's a really beautiful partnership because you really have to go back and forth between the two. You're a parent, so you're future focused and you're preparing, but then you're a person and you're in the thick of it and you need some help, somebody to come along and give you a big hug, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So there were moments in this last pregnancy and I'll tell anybody I have the Disney Princess of discomfort, so nothing too terrible, but enough to be like you know this wasn't comfortable either.
Speaker 3:And I would love to tell you that some days don't feel like survival mode, that every day is rainbows and that even with intuitive parenting, it comes really easily for me. But, like you said, I'm in the thick of it and I have to lean on my networks, and this includes you, right, and coaching me on saying how do I show up? How do I show up for my son? My intuition tells me this, but, gosh, right now I wish I could be. Oh, I wish it could be something different. Right, I wish it could be easier. And the thing is, is taking that extra time to take a deep breath, to regulate, self-regulate and show up for your child? Man, oh, my goodness, talk about your children will have so much help. Right, help will be a prioritization for them, thriving will be a prioritization for them and just really helping you show up and be the best parent you can be. So, yeah, absolutely, and part of that present focus is because that's the choice I have right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you feel very fortunate for that choice, and then other times you feel like oh my gosh, what choice did I make?
Speaker 3:Yeah, in toddlerhood you know you mentioned ties, reaching this beautiful cognitive growth and just trying to sit with him and helping him make sense of that growth. I mean, you have to make sure you're in a really good place as well, right, To make sure that you are healthy and can sit with your little person and be like this is what's happening, or I'm gonna sit here and when you're ready, we will figure it out together.
Speaker 2:We don't really understand how children are processing and growing in that largest cognitive growth spurt. I was saying my eight year old's going into it and at the same time she's going into it, her teachers were saying, oh, I think she's falling behind. And then her map testing came out and it was the opposite. It was very much that she had been thinking ahead. But in perception, their brain is growing and changing and they're making things more deep and more dimensional and the spatialness is really filling in at that point. And so your son being behind six months is nothing. It's nothing because really what he's doing is he's taking in more. So when he starts talking he'll be off running in full sentences. But when they're going through such a large cognitive growth spurt, you will notice they actually don't grow much and you will notice that they seem to slow down in their learning in that period. But then when they come out of it, they've learned so much during that period you have no idea.
Speaker 2:It's about it being output versus what's taking input. It's like their bandwidth opens up for the input and it closes for the output because it has to in order to enable all that input coming in. So we need to realize that at the same time, their overexcidibilities are going to be higher and they stay higher. By the way, your overexcidibilities in giftedness are real. I really think all those things that we'd say are neurodivergence should be just couched in overexcidibility, because that's what it is. You have higher emotions. Those higher emotions bring more intelligence. They bring more connection between your conscious and subconscious, and that is giftedness. But we are so focused on them not being normal. Normal just doesn't have giftedness. That's what normal is. So with giftedness comes overexcidibilities. Instead of us trying to make them not there, we should teach our children to go into them and use them.
Speaker 3:Yes, and in going and you're, you're wrong If you birth that child, if you're the mother, the body giving person who carried that child, and they're having these emotional breakthroughs. It's like you are living it with them, but also having this out of body experience to be like what is happening, and so for those parents who are extremely empathetic with your child, it is so exhausting. So how are you taking that time to also meet equilibrium for yourself, right? So taking that time away from your child, taking that time away from your partner and just being like I am only Bethanne Johnson at this moment, right, yeah, so that you can be energized and making sure that that rest is energizing for you, right?
Speaker 3:Don't just get on your phone and do scroll or things like that but, doing something that just really reenergizes you Right, so that you can be that parent that you need to be in that moment.
Speaker 2:The other thing I want to add to that is that you, when you're in that moment with your child and they're having those emotions, your body, which created them, is also having those emotions.
Speaker 2:So when that's over with, you're both exhausted and you're like let's go to our bedrooms, our respective bedrooms not each one that's collected, but you take your time and I'll take mine, and they'll be like, yeah, sure, okay, but they've gone through it. You now have to go through it. Your whole body gets filled up with those emotions, which leases all this neurotransmitter. And then there you are, swimming in that emotion that they just went through, that you just coach them through and now you have to go process it for yourself. And I think that is the biggest thing we should recognize when we talk about downtime. It is you processing what you just went through so that the next time you can see it coming in advance and you can help them make it better. But you have to forgive yourself for not being on all the time and go process what happened so that you're more prepared each and every time.
Speaker 3:Yes, I just have a friend who she's actually a client of Lilian's and a friend of mine. She had this moment with her son and she said I can't stop ruminating. And I said, well, ruminating is like one way to freeze it. But think about it as you're trying to find the break in the pattern, you're reliving the pattern to find like where was the missing piece? And when you put in that piece, you get to avoid it in the future. And that's exactly what you're doing with this, like pause that you're building in. Yeah, and so if you're gifted and neurodivergent like you're not ruminating, you are problem solving and you are finding the broken part of the pattern and finding a solution and your future will be so thankful because you'll get to bypass the big feelings.
Speaker 2:The ruminating I define it as because this is how my brain actually like processes is you taking all that sensory data and making the picture fully complete so that you can see the full how it manifested, how it ramped up or ramped down or didn't ramp up at all, and then you're making it multi dimensional. I think one of the themes that you're going to find over and over in our podcast is how everything is about our multi dimensions, our ability for spatial giftedness in all these different areas. We all have certain areas where we're really talented in that spatial giftedness and so we sort of know it in an extreme way and we can cognitively manifest it. But we also have areas where we have that talent but we can't cognitively manifest it. So it comes up as a motion. So you have to learn to really use that intuition, really get in touch with it, because what's happening is in the one area that you have that real, accessible cognition. The other areas are still working and building it and it's still feeding up out.
Speaker 2:Is that one area? And so that's your manifest, like that, manifests as your gift, but the giftedness is across all of your areas and when we think about it, I think of it as Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. All of those intelligences are spatial gifted and you have them in all of those areas, but you have to figure out which ones they manifest, because that's how you're going to figure out how to go back and fix the things that you run into, resolve those emotions and go into them, because we are so much more complicated than they have said and we're so much more prepared for the future that we're facing than they realize. So we're kind of off on our own here trying to figure out the path, because they won't even pretend to recognize what we're doing. They won't even pretend. They kind of stay like Well, yeah, it's spatial goodness, and then they say nothing more about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think about that giftedness in how I approach learning with my son so you phrased it to me before, as you intuitively move, what kind of projects to put in front of your kiddos that would just kind of highlight those giftedness right, those opportunities for learning. And I'm doing that now because, like I said, ty has a speech delay. But oh my gosh, that boy is so smart, he knows all of his shapes, he knows he can count I think it's up to like 30. I mean, he loves counting, he's a member of his patterns, you know things like that. He really loves his ABCs. So we're introducing just kind of these just creative ways to play right their toys, that kind of introduce these concepts of spatial giftedness. There are blocks that are numbers One is really small and eight is really big and you can put up all the different numbers and they can kind of see and see, theoretically, addition and subtraction, but to them it's just play and joy.
Speaker 3:But for him he is tangibly touching these blocks and he's building these blocks and mommy's creatively telling these stories about these blocks and I just think about we as parents can do more of that as well. My gosh, like with the power, we will just evolve and it'll be so beautiful right. So I'm just I'm really excited to explore and see how my boys manifest these gifted traits throughout time and how to kind of take those gifted traits and put them into play so that learning is always joyful. I can't always say that learning's always been joyful, for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, understood, we are so wired for learning with a super focus and a special interest. We're absolutely wired for extreme learning Our children. If you want them to learn, you just have to make them interested, and they're already sort of naturally interested, so you just have to provide them something that cultivates that interest in that area. Because we're making our own paths for our children, because we recognize the fact that the system's pushing us out first because we're the ones that can handle it and can make it, and we're trying to give that to our children as well is we have to learn to teach our children in a way that naturally uses their gifts and so that they can keep that sort of going through their whole lives and just basically build that giant brain of theirs with a giant library of understanding in a spatial, gifted way, and with mine I have each identified their area and then I've fed it as many ways as I could possibly think. But then I also give them the space to go do it and they've done it in art.
Speaker 2:Like, I don't really consider myself a super drawer, sketcher person. I did go through a phase of that in high school, but I don't sit still long enough to really do too much drawing and my girls will just sit there for hours drawing and sketching. They have a different focus than I do. My middle one is already starting. Now to a YouTube channel where I bring math and art together. I show how somebody who's so young because she's just 14 will create essentially their own career. I said to her you know you could marry those two, since you already wanna do them, but I've been waiting for her to tell me how she wanted to do it. You'd have faith and just let them go and they figure it out, and then they teach you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think just being open to learning the lesson as well, I think of, like all the different cultures and the world, and they're based out in the United States. There's something just very odd about, I hope, this relationship we try to build in the United States kinda highlighted it a little bit earlier, but it's that I am the teacher, you are the student, I know better than you. It's what we see in American parenting, it's what we see in our American school systems. And what if we didn't do that? And we learn from those more so collectivist cultures throughout the world. That says like I can equally learn from you as much as you can learn from me. I am here to make sure you just don't die along the way. You can't touch the oven because it's hot, right, you're gonna burn yourself, but here's how we can interact with the oven and things like that.
Speaker 3:There's a huge beauty that, as a culture, we could step away from those systems that we are creating, where we are creating power dynamics. That's why you can hear so often standoffs in parenting right, the power geninic at play and encouraging your child to be autonomous and give autonomy where it's an opportunity, giving an opportunity to learn where it's on their terms. And then when your children come back and they're floppy fish or that's not right, you too learn from it as well. I think it's a really beautiful thing that I hope our messages finds the parents in time to say if you want a parent differently than what you've seen, we are here to support you and help you find the tools to do just that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're gonna give you faith in yourself, because, really, I don't think I have all the answers. I actually think you do, because it's your child and you know them better than I do. So one of the things that I think we're offering is reinforcement that your intuition is the right direction, cause that's what I needed so badly was I decided to take a completely different path than my parents, and I was being told by the outside that I was wrong, that I was doing it all wrong and that my kid was gonna show up messed up. And then Everybody was surprised that he turned out really well, like thanks, guys, thanks for that faith.
Speaker 3:You are the subject matter expert of your life. You intuitively know what you need. Coaching is what we just help people uncover what is intuitively in them that maybe different systems, or definitely systems, have told you or wrong, right. So reaching into yourself, listening to that, knowing inside into yeah, exactly right, you are the subject matter expert, as your child's parent, so tell us what feelings are coming up, how, when are they coming up and let's talk about what's a word to you need A reminder that you're not in this alone. I think that's what I do.
Speaker 2:I'm constantly calling her. But Bethanne, how do I do this? Well, the funny thing is that we do talk all the time. We're always texting and talking all the time and I do ask her things. The stuff I ask her is like a totally different ballpark than the stuff she asked me, and it's kind of great because Bethanne is much more connected than I am. She's much more in the thick of things with people, and I have always sort of stayed on the outside because I am an outlier and I have always taken this outside approach of people move through the world in a very different manner than I do, whereas you get right in the middle and you're like why are you doing that?
Speaker 3:And I'm like back there asking myself yeah, I am a social scientist by trade, so I do find people really fascinating, and you highlighted when I was doing research, the research methods I were using. Put me right in the middle of it to just say, like I'm beside you, like what are we doing today? Yeah, I get that we need to put things in buckets, you know, right or wrong, to help give context to things. But very few times in life does anything cleanly fit into a bucket, right, there's so much gray, everything's a spectrum. So, just trying to find that context, if you were saying here's what exists, here's what's going on and knowing for me one, you're just like more well read than I am, which I think is really unique for me. I'm a pretty well read person and so I explored people. When I was doing research. It was in leisure, right, and I was studying, investigating women's leisure and male dominated sports and starting with the brain. I started with the brain to learn okay, you've got a computer brain, you've got a monkey brain and kind of putting neuroscience into this relatable way for people.
Speaker 3:There's a really great athlete that I love. She and her husband wrote a book. They're pretty cool. They also just recently did All Quiet on the Western Front as well. So not only are they artists, but athletes. He's a former higher education career person, just like myself, so I think that's pretty cool. The book is called the Brave Athlete calm the app down and Rise to the Occasion. They have a big coach themselves for triathletes, so it's Dr Simon Marshall, phd, and Leslie Patterson. She's an extra triathlete wonderful. And so they really.
Speaker 3:In doing my own research on studying people, it was the first time, so strangely right, we should think about our brains first and why we do what we do. But it was the first time they made the brain relatable. And so for you, lily, and you bring that science component to that human component right. There's a whole science in our bodies. There's neuroscience for our brains, there's chemistry to our bodies, there's physics to what we do and actions we take, and we have to kind of in being intuitive, in kind of being self-aware. We need to know what's happening in our body. Too often our school systems haven't taught us anatomy right, not super effectively. They haven't taught us about our brain, and we've got to kind of reconsider how we teach our kiddos and those subjects and making sure that they are fully aware of how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the 3D thing again, where we are taught anatomy of 2Ds on a page and I remember my voice coach used to tell me, "'stend your diaphragm'. "'sort, my diaphragm extended down'". No, it actually extends out. I didn't know that the whole time it took voice lessons. I found this out in yoga a year ago that it actually blows out like a balloon and I have my whole life been trying to extend it down and I'd never realized that of course it can go out, because we are always taught everything on a 2D form screen or piece of paper. I forever thought, oh, your diaphragm goes lower with a squish out gut or something. That was just an epiphany for me of oh, it's a balloon. Why didn't somebody tell me that? Why did they make it seem like it's a muscle band where it's like thin and flat? I didn't realize it ballooned out.
Speaker 2:So how much of my anatomy is not actually understood because it's 2D? Yes, I know the name of it. Yes, I know where it is in the body, but I actually don't know how it really functions. Even though I've taken anatomy and I've read so many books on it and I've read music lessons and theories and all these, never until I took a yoga class and somebody said why are you doing that? You're supposed to just let it go out like a balloon. That's just kind of a silly example. But it's also very clear that 2D thing perspective came in there.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I love that you highlight multi-dimensional learning right Like I think we are so quick to specialize into our world that yoga and music have a lot in common. How do they work together? It's really beautiful and just like your daughter bringing in physics and math. Things aren't. Things relate, people relate and there's connection there, and so that's what we're really kind of doing here is helping people reconnect with what's inside them, what's happened onto the world, creating your way and making these pillars.
Speaker 2:And the other part of it is we're preparing you for the future, because the future will be that 3D. We have all of this data in AI. That's all 2D. We have all of the average perspective in AI. They have pulled in all of this information and the value that we will offer in the future is the unique insights that our 3D, 45d, 60d, multiple perspective brains offer. That is what we'll be bringing to the table and why they're going to be valued.
Speaker 2:Nobody's saying it aloud, I'm not sure if they're even sure of it, but that is the truth. That is what we have and why we're being identified as neurodivergent. Instead of just being ignored like we were for all those generations before, we're now suddenly being identified. The reason is that they see value in us, and that value is related to AI. That value is related to the fact that the world will be changing and is no longer stable, and they will need us to get ahead and see where things are going and then adjust for that or predict it and have foresight. When we talk and we talk about the 3D, we're opening this whole. Another level that you can expand on and run with this is the future careers. It will all be spatial, because the other careers are gonna be either atrophying or staying the same.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and it's important to continue to learn right.
Speaker 3:Evolve and learn, and that's how we're going to make a future and that's how we're going to make it is evolving, learning, community building and trusting yourself as an outlier to just say I got what it takes, I'm gonna make it. I work with different organizations right now and one of them is supporting diversity in these different spaces. Right, and neurodivergence is in that diversity space for sure. Right, you can't be an outlier without being in that spectrum when you have things going on where diversity, some people seem, lies right, the visible lives of black and brown folk, and there's legislation to get rid of programs. Right, or public funding of diversity programs.
Speaker 3:So going in and consulting with these groups and saying here's what I see the future looking like, but here's how you can make your services billable and here's what you can name them that doesn't use the targeted words. Right, and so using your superpowers to say here's what the pattern is saying to me, here's what the system is currently targeting, here's how you can leverage and evolve and by making these tweaks, you've got a quality product. Right, and that's how we go in and we support people and that's how we're presently doing the work and we're building a building a future where it's not questioned right, this beautiful difference where it'll one day be celebrated.
Speaker 2:The different perspectives. Our whole goal is to take your outlier perspective or your different perspective that is not currently out there, and maximize it so that they can see the value of it. We are very good at seeing the multiple perspective. That's one of the gifts, and we are in a world that keeps saying we only have one and you only get to pick that one. But that's gonna change really, really soon, and we're already trying to compensate for that change and teach you how you can come in and say it in the words that you have, that are now, but will be the words that you are later. So I think what you just offered was huge and magnificent, but also one key thing we need to make clear is that we're not going to change who you are. We're going to enhance what you can say you are.
Speaker 3:A rebranding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean essentially. Yeah, it's like my whole life I've always been trying to understand why other people don't see the way I do, and I've had to get the vocabulary to connect us, because I could see what they were seeing, but they couldn't see what I was saying, and so my job has been to get the vocabulary from their world and bring it to mind and marry the two, and that's essentially what our giftedness is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. Connection and growth are just two of my leadership words that I don't know I build into. Every action is asking myself how do I connect, how do I grow with this? And, like we said, you're the subject matter expert of your life, of your parenting. What we are doing is equipping you with the tools to go into a neurotypical world, be who you authentically are and creating a space for you to thrive and get what you need and get out and get back to your oasis of home, whatever that might be for you.
Speaker 2:And I think we also offer you safety. There's a lot of fear out there that you being an outlier or outside of the perspective of average is a bad place. I think the opposite is about to occur. I think we have, as I told one client recently, we're going through a lot of change and those of us who can see the change as the boat sinks like the ship as it once was is going to sink we get to bring our lifeboats out, stand there with a megaphone and say I have a lifeline, follow me, like, throw them lifelines and literally they will come to us if we just stand there with our megaphone saying I have a lifeline.
Speaker 3:Totally right. I've got a lifeline for any parent who's feeling a little lonely, and I am here to advocate and uplift you.
Speaker 2:And mine is more or less the like. You're not sure what to do for your children, like what their giftedness will translate to. That's the thing that I can just see. I've always been able to see it. It's been a very easy thing for me. So it's like here's your child's gift, this is how they manifest it, this is how the world will accept it, and you just sort of go into that and the same things for the other people. It's like I see how you take it in and I also see how it comes out, and then I can see a million opportunities and then we figure out which one for you is the most organic, essentially. I mean, really, it is just sort of introducing you to yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah and gosh, I mean I call you so often for that and I think about Ty will do anything for a song, right, like, and singing is part of that creative gift and this and seeing how that is such a great communication tool for him. It's how he builds understanding. It's a building block to that big picture and conceptualizing the details within the big picture, right. So just so beautiful to be able to sometimes get that outside perspective of you. Are in the throes of it, like I said, trying to survive and having someone from outside looking in. It's like this is obviously happening and as a parent you're like, oh, it's like this light bulb goes off and this sense of relief goes off because again now you have the tools to effectively build that for your future as well.
Speaker 2:Usually we pick topics based on what's happening in our lives or what the pathway is, but they all seem to always come together, so I'm not really too worried about what the topic will be, but we'll figure it out as we go. As always is a pleasure talking with you and I look forward to it the next time.
Speaker 3:Yes, until next time. I'll probably give you a call or text and we'll just share our lives with everyone in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2:As we make everything so complicated, but really it's quite organic when you get down to it. We're all capable of telling story, we're all capable of creating, we're all capable of seeing, we're all capable of being. We're just doing it the most organic way possible and you're welcome to join us on that journey.
Speaker 3:And tell us. What is it you wanna know more about too. Gosh, I'm super curious. You know you are not alone in this world. Right, and tell us your thoughts, what's going on in your parenting journey as well.
Speaker 2:Definitely. We wanna know what kind of questions you have and we wanna know what kind of frustrations you have and we wanna know what kind of support you need, because that's essentially what we're trying to create. It's not just about us, it's more about the community as a whole. We're the outliers and we're the ones who are not supported by the system, and so we have to kind of create our own, and that's a good thing and we are embracing it. We are, we are. Thanks for listening everyone. Thank you, bethanne. We'll talk to you again.
Speaker 1:The views, information and opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent Gifted and De-Incorporated Lilian Skinner or the Gifted Nor Divergent Podcast. This podcast, Lilian Skinner and Gifted and De-Incorporated are not responsible and do not verify the accuracy of the information contained in this podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to inform and educate. The Gifted Nor Divergent Podcast is only available for private, non-commercial use. Any other use of the information contained within this podcast must be done with express written approval and knowledge of Lilian Skinner. You may not edit, modify or redistribute any part of this podcast. The developer assumes no liability for this podcast or its use on any other podcast or other media.