Episode 59 Harnessing Resilience and Neuroplasticity in Overcoming Auditory Processing Disorder

Have you ever witnessed a child's tenacity when learning to walk, the unrelenting trial and error? That same resilience is the heart of our latest episode, where Monique Peters and I explore the challenges of auditory processing disorder. Monique opens up about her son's challenging journey, from the onset of a stutter to facing educational hurdles and being bullied.

Through their story, we reveal the light that shines at the end of the tunnel for parents and individuals confronting similar hurdles, as interventions like speech therapy and dietary adjustments pave the way to understanding and growth.

When Monique learned about the latest brain research from the book The Brain That Changes Itself  by Dr Norman Doidge, suddenly her son's learning challenges made sense.

He did an online program called Fast ForWord® mentioned in the book, and she was pleasantly surprised at the improvements in his speech and communication.  She soon found herself working with a Sydney based speech pathologist, supporting parents who had also bought the program.  Here she learned a lot about auditory processing disorder (APD), the role it plays in learning challenges,  and how neuroscience technology can help.

In our discussion, we discuss the human brain and neuroplasticity. Explaining neural pathways, illustrating how the interplay of nature and nurture sculpts our cognitive abilities. From the inspiring tales of survival by our elders to the impact of consistent brain challenges on language skills, I share anecdotes and expert insights that weave together the concept of a growth mindset and the resilience passed down through generations.
 
About Monique Peters:

Since 2018 Monique has been serving clients all over Australia, trademarking her Learnerobics® program in 2022. She is continually learning more about business, neuroscience and the growth mindset. Last year, she become one of Dr Daniel Amen's Licensed Brain Health Trainers.  

 
As a learning coach, Monique wants to learn as much as she can to help people with learning and reading challenges to feel more confident and capable in life.

 Contact Links for Monique:

https://learnerobics.com.au/

https://learnerobics.com.au/book-a-free-consult

https://www.facebook.com/learnerobics

https://www.instagram.com/learnerobics/

www.linkedin.com/in/monique-peters-learning

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Transcript

Fiona Kane: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I've got an interesting topic, I've got a guest and we're going to be talking about learning challenges, auditory processing disorder and the neuroscience which is helping us understand what is going on. So my guest is Monique Peters. Hi, Monique.

Monique Peters: 0:53

Hi, Hi Fiona, Hi everybody, Hi everybody.

Fiona Kane: 0:57

So introduce yourself, let us know who you are.

Monique Peters: 1:00

Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me on the podcast today. I learned all about learning challenges and auditory processing disorder through my son's learning challenges. He's 22 now and he's doing much better than I thought he was going to. For many years I was worried, very, very worried about how he would be able to survive as an adult. And I needn't have worried, because I read a book called the Brain that Changes Itself by Dr Norman Doidge, and that changed my whole life, changed my understanding of everything that was going on, and since then I've been on an incredible journey. I started my own business trying to help other children and other parents with the same problems so that was about six years ago now, okay, and I have been learning an awful lot and I've been undertaking some really amazing personal development since then.

Fiona Kane: 1:55

Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely. So it's been a six-year journey for you. Would you like to expand at all on that journey or what was going on in that time? Or even sort of things like how did you recognise there was an issue? All those kinds of things give us a bit more information about what that journey entailed.

Monique Peters: 2:12

Okay, so really quite interesting. So hindsight has given me as I look back, there were signs that I didn't really recognise before that he was struggling. So he developed a stutter overnight, when he was three, just before starting preschool, and he just said one morning I can't, can't, can't talk, and of course my husband I can't talk. And of course my husband and I were very worried. We eventually got him into speech therapy and they had an amazing program called the Lidcombe Program and his stutter was gone within three to four months.

Fiona Kane: 2:49

What was the program called? Sorry, I missed that, just in case.

Monique Peters: 2:52

It's called the Lidcombe Program, so it's offered by a lot of speech pathologists. It is australian and it does actually come from the. The thing is the university of technology or the university of sydney at lidcombe and that's why it's called the lidcombe program. But it's an amazing program for young children who have stutters and um. So we thought with that passing that that was over. We thought, okay, that was that, let's move into. You know he was soon starting school and so on.

Monique Peters: 3:22

But he started on par with everybody else at school. But as school became more complicated so especially as they started to read, he fell further and further behind and by year two and three he just wasn't keeping up with the others at all. There were social problems starting as well, a lot of misunderstanding. Just a really crazy time for him, very confusing for him and for me too, because I wasn't sure how we could help him. He had an assessment and he had markers for autism and ADHD, but not enough for a diagnosis and in those days it was before NDIS, so he couldn't get any help at school Without a diagnosis. He wasn't allowed to have any help at school, which was really.

Fiona Kane: 4:08

For those listening. In Australia, the NDIS is our National Disability Insurance Scheme, so that's only been around for the last few years and that is very useful for people dealing with these issues. So I thought I'd insert that, because not everyone who listens or watches is in Australia. So that's just our version of an insurance scheme for these issues.

Monique Peters: 4:32

Thank you, Fiona. Yes, because we didn't have that um back then and in the school he wasn't getting the help and support that I thought he needed. So he was, by that stage, uh, writing things out of sequence. Um, he couldn't kind of sequence a story properly. He really wasn't understanding much of what was going on at all. And, um, I was trying so hard, like we had him in speech therapy, we I gave him, uh, behavioral optometry, there were all sorts of things that we were doing. I would see a integrative medicine doctor, um, and he took him off gluten, dairy, we were taking digestive enzymes and all sorts of things, but nothing really seemed to be. Everything was helping in a small way, but there was nothing that was really happening.

Monique Peters: 5:21

And then when I read the book the Brain that Changes Itself, I read about Dr Michael Merzenich, I read about auditory processing disorder and, most excitingly, about the neuroscience that is, understanding how the brain learns and how we can actually overcome many learning challenges and many other brain injury challenges and all sorts of things as well, and it just really opened up my eyes to what was going on. There was a program in the book. It was called Fast Forward, and I got that program from my son. There was a company in Australia that I could buy it from.

Monique Peters: 6:01

So she was a speech therapist, self-speech pathologist and and oh my goodness, his speech pattern normalized. So it's kind of hard to explain. He a funny way of speaking. It was kind of like his own way of speaking in different inflections and different emphasis on different things. It wasn't quite within the normal pattern. It was kind of cute, but it was kind of losing that cuteness as well as he was heading towards high school yeah, it's cute when they're little, but as they get older that that could be really really challenging for them.

Monique Peters: 6:36

That's right yeah, and then with the social challenges getting worse and worse, like I say, he was just constantly being bullied. By this stage he was having a terrible time at school. He was trying to find he was a good kid and he was quite compliant and everything and would go to school, but he was trying to find ways to avoid it as much as he possibly could. You know he was getting sick, a lot things like that and how long did it take?

Fiona Kane: 7:02

because there's all this time, because it's been sort of this six-year journey, but you said that it was when you, when you, finally discovered that book. How long had it been that you were having these challenges until?

Monique Peters: 7:14

you discovered the book Probably from year two. I was getting really concerned.

Fiona Kane: 7:20

So that's about seven years old.

Monique Peters: 7:23

Yes, it was about seven, and then I didn't read the book until he was in year six, so he was 12 then.

Fiona Kane: 7:30

Okay, all right. So it took quite a while. So all those, other things you were exploring along the way. It took quite a while before you found this book that changed everything.

Monique Peters: 7:39

Yeah, and I was losing sleep every night because I was worrying what can I do? And I was constantly Googling. I know a lot of mothers share this particular part of the journey. We're always trying to find the thing that's going to make the difference because we don't want our children to be bullied. It's really hard to send them to school when you know they're going to be bullied. That was what was really bothering me. So buying the program was an incredible experience because the work that you do it's very repetitive, using the neuroscience and understanding those principles of neuroplasticity where you need the repetition, but at a much more basic level than is available on any other reading program. So it really gets to work on children being able to clearly hear the difference between speech sounds. You know so that at the cut. But if you can imagine, auditory processing disorder often comes across as a hearing problem, but these kids will pass hearing tests because that's actually based on volume.

Fiona Kane: 8:50

Yes.

Monique Peters: 8:50

But this is how fast the brain can process those sounds. And if it can't hear the difference clearly between things like but and perp, or ch and sh but there's many others that commonly get mixed up then the brain can't form a proper map of those sounds. And it's when we're reading, when we're writing, when we're talking, we're accessing that phonemic map all the time. And if that's not clearly mapped then it's very difficult for the brain to sequence and process the sound and do all the things that it needs to do to give us meaning from what we're hearing and from what we're reading.

Fiona Kane: 9:28

So that's auditory processing disorder. So I had an awareness around it because I had someone I knew a few years back who, like you said, I thought that this person was deaf or partly deaf, because that's how it seemed they just weren't hearing things and didn't seem to be understanding or didn't seem to be taking part. And I'm aware that I think for this person I don't want to say who it is because I want to keep a person's privacy but for that person, I think, when they were very young and they were trying to get help, there was definitely no, I don't think there was even a diagnosis for that or there was no understanding of that. And so, as you were just explaining, then it's not so much whether you hear, you can hear, but it's whether or not your brain can comprehend or understand or, like you said, understand those certain sounds well, it's hearing the difference between the little phonemes.

Monique Peters: 10:29

Um, so what's a?

Fiona Kane: 10:30

phoneme. Come on, tell us let's get drilled right down, because not everyone knows this language.

Monique Peters: 10:36

So a phoneme is the basic unit of language. So it's the at the k, de, f, g.

Fiona Kane: 10:43

Okay.

Monique Peters: 10:47

And this is why, with the science of reading, now we're actually returning in reading instruction in schools to phonetics. Yes, we're bringing that back.

Fiona Kane: 10:53

Why have we ever stopped that? Don't even get me started on that. That's ridiculous, but anyway, at least we're going back there.

Monique Peters: 10:59

That's good. We were bored for a little while there Well well-intentioned, because we wanted to make the reading very exciting for the children. And the phonetics going through the phonetics is quite boring, but our brain actually does need to have that experience and that repetition to build up that clear phonemic map.

Fiona Kane: 11:18

Okay.

Monique Peters: 11:18

Yeah.

Fiona Kane: 11:20

Auditory processing disorder. The people can't tell the difference between those sounds.

Monique Peters: 11:25

Not clearly, and it's on a spectrum itself. So you can have it severe and not so severe. I've worked out from my son's journey that I have it to a degree, but I never realised it. So I may be on a bit of a spectrum as well with dyslexia, because neurodiversity it's all part of the same group of things that are in that milieu of things going on.

Monique Peters: 11:53

But, I have trouble with my left and right, but I never had any learning challenges, so you know there's varying degrees of all of this. But yeah, it's just interesting when you realise how hard the brain is actually working to create meaning, both from what we're hearing and reading. There's an awful lot going on, so that phonemic map really needs to be clear before you can start matching letters to sounds, which is that decoding process of reading. Okay, children can't hear the difference clearly between a sound, and I hear it with some of the students that I work with now. They're saying et instead of eh, so they're repeating what they're hearing. They're hearing eh, but the sound is eh.

Fiona Kane: 12:42

Yes.

Monique Peters: 12:42

So this fast-forward program gives them a lot of repetition at hearing those differences clearly and making those clear distinctions between them. So someone with auditory processing disorder are the ones that will say hopsital instead of hospital or ask.

Fiona Kane: 13:02

Oh, okay.

Monique Peters: 13:03

Because that's the sequencing side of things. They're just. Things are getting out of sequence there somewhere.

Fiona Kane: 13:11

Okay, and so I just had a question on the tip of my tongue. What was it? I? What I wanted to know is with okay, so with the auditory processing disorder, with that, that practice that you were just talking about, practicing those sounds, is that building new neural pathways? Is that what it does? Is that what you're trying to do?

Monique Peters: 13:34

It's building more connections.

Fiona Kane: 13:36

Yeah, which is the?

Monique Peters: 13:38

part of the process. Yeah with auditory processing, so with children who are struggling to read. Many will struggle at first, so everybody needs varying degrees of repetition to get over those little hurdles. Reading, we have to remember, is a very recent thing, evolutionary speaking yeah so, and our brain was actually never meant to read.

Monique Peters: 13:59

It was never. It was never evolved or created to read. We make it do that and our whole survival of our culture has depended on that, which I find really exciting to to explore that, um, but it's not something that our brain was evolved to do, and the fact that it does is neuroplasticity at work. Really, every day, our brain is building connections and things to help us become more efficient at the things we are repeating, because when we're repeating something, that's how we tell our brain. This is important. We need to get good at this.

Monique Peters: 14:36

So let's repeat this, let's build those connections to make it more efficient in your brain, and we always see that process as grace. So if, for example, you're watching a child learning how to play piano and at first their elbows might be up and their fingers in the wrong place, sometimes their face even, you know, got contortions and all sorts of things, that's because the neural network is not refined yet and through the process of practice, it learns to refine all that. So we see it as grace. And it's the same with language we become more eloquent with language as we practice it more and more.

Fiona Kane: 15:14

Yeah.

Monique Peters: 15:15

Okay, yeah.

Fiona Kane: 15:15

Okay, yeah, so when I talk about neural pathways, I will tell you the way I explain it and you can tell me if you've got a different way of explaining it, because I think everyone just learns their way of explaining it to people. But when I talk about neural pathways, I always talk about the difference between, say, when a baby is born and when a giraffe is born. So when a giraffe is born, they already pretty much can stand up almost straight away. Yeah, and they're walking pretty much straight away because they need to be right.

Fiona Kane: 15:44

Yes, when a human baby is born because we've actually got such large brains and if we got to full size completely, no woman would ever be able to give birth what we do is we sort of say, all right, we can't have all the pathways built before the baby is born, so those pathways, the connection of how to walk and talk and many things, so those pathways, the connection of how to walk and talk and many things, will come after the baby is born.

Fiona Kane: 16:17

So when the baby is born, and you know, first of all it's like learning to hold their head up, you know, and they get the neck muscles strong enough to hold their head up and then they're doing like tummy time and their head up, and then they're rolling and then they're crawling and then eventually trying to stand and falling over 70 million times and then eventually walking. But all of those stages are what builds the neural pathway between kind of the muscles and the arms and the legs and everything and the brain. So that's how I describe what building a neural pathway looks like, and you were explaining it just then in whether it's learning to speak, learning to play the piano, learning to do a sport, learning to sing, whatever it is. So have you got sort of your way of explaining that neural pathways? Because I think it's good to explain it really well, because once you kind of understand that, there's a lot you can understand after that.

Monique Peters: 17:06

Yes, so I learnt to get away from the scientific explanation of it very early on in the piece, because I would kind of see people's eyes glaze over, and you know this.

Monique Peters: 17:14

I kind of see people's eyes glaze over, and you know this is kind of so. The best way I find it is about talking about the repetition. So whenever we repeat something, that's we're telling our brain that this is important to us. I need to get good at this. You lay down the pathways to make those electrical signals travel faster, to make things more efficient, and we'll both get the benefit of that. Like, basically, I'll survive.

Fiona Kane: 17:46

Yes, because it's all.

Monique Peters: 17:47

Everything we do is built around our survival. We kind of forget that a little bit these days because we're so comfortable in our lovely homes and everything, but it's really all about our survival. So even the traffic that comes from our body, all the sensory stuff that comes from our body, goes up our spine, through our nervous system, up through our spine into the amygygdala, which is all about our survival. You know, that's where our breathing is hardwired, our heartbeat, everything that we need for survival is more or less hardwired in there. Um, and that that's where the fear comes into things, where fear is our most basic. You know, one of our most basic emotions, probably the most basic emotion, and that's what seems to drive everything else. So if you look at the anatomy of the brain, it then goes through, you know, the feeling sort of side of things, and then to the prefrontal cortex, which is the human rational planning and all that sort of thing. So all those emotions, especially fear, we feel first Our brain. It goes through a process first.

Monique Peters: 19:00

Yeah, I think that's a good way of explaining it. I love the repetition because that makes sense to a lot of people. So it's kind of how we build the bad habits, good habits, how we change habits, those sort of things. But we've also got nature and nurture going on. So there's what you're born with and then there's what we wire in response to our environment. So, as far as language, the human brain is very, very sensitive to language, because that's how we've learned to communicate, cooperate and survive, and I think that's been how we've survived so well is because we have learned more or less to cooperate and language has been a very big part of that. And language has been a very big part of that. Um, but my brain is kind of, for example, half-wired in dutch and half-wired in english.

Monique Peters: 19:50

Well, okay, probably more towards the english side, but, um, I've got some dutch there because my family is dutch and I listened to dutch as a child and so do you think in english, or do you think I think in? English.

Fiona Kane: 20:01

Yes, I do think in english I've got a greek friend who grew up in Australia but she thinks in Greek.

Monique Peters: 20:07

There you go.

Fiona Kane: 20:09

She went to Aussie school and Greek school and she was involved in the church and all of that. I'd never thought about it before. Because I'm English, I used to speak English and Australian.

Monique Peters: 20:20

Well, then you spend your formative years. It's so important because that's your first language and, as you know, your first language is always. I remember my grandmother, for example. She came to Australia speaking Dutch. She learned English while she was here. She had a stroke in her late 70s, so it was obvious, you know, she reverted back back to Dutch, but she actually had another stroke later and she reverted back to English. She lost a lot of her Dutch, which I thought was a fascinating process, and I see that now with. I have a couple of people around me with dementia and I see that with their memory. You know, their memory is in different time zones. You know, sometimes they remember something from the recent past and they might forget something from their childhood. It's more likely that they remember something from their childhood as that goes last, but again, that's because it's deeper in the brain.

Fiona Kane: 21:19

But yeah, Getting up and getting ready for work or something like that from a job they were in 30 years ago.

Monique Peters: 21:24

That kind of thing. That's it, yeah, and have you heard of those people?

Fiona Kane: 21:28

There's people who have people have come out of, woken up from a coma and they speak a different language. Have you heard of those ones before? And the language that they never spoke before they wake up and you know they're English or something and they're speaking Chinese or something like that how crazy is that.

Monique Peters: 21:46

I actually met a fellow who, um, he's a tradie and I thought he was Irish, but he wasn't. He had a brain injury and he woke up with an Irish accent this is crazy, I don't. How does that?

Fiona Kane: 22:01

even I don't, even, I can't even begin to understand how that happens something with it. We even begin to understand how that happens.

Monique Peters: 22:05

That's something that we would love to explore because it is very interesting, very, very interesting. But I do love to talk about neuroplasticity as our brain's ability to adapt and survive to our situation. You know, and thank heavens, that it is that nature and nurture and that we can adapt to things. You know and thank heavens that it is that nature and nurture, um, and that we can adapt to things. You know, so, um, like I was talking about before the the professional development that I've undergone as I've gone into business um you know I I was frightened of doing videos.

Monique Peters: 22:40

Uh, in the very beginning, you know, just oh and well, I'm still a little bit nervous. Now I'm a lot more relaxed than I used to be and it's much easier to have a conversation, you know, and I love how skills develop confidence you know, and I love talking about that with my kids, you know, because the more they can do, the more capable and confident they feel.

Fiona Kane: 23:05

Yeah, and I think for a lot of us I mean the video more they can do, the more capable and confident they feel. Yeah, and I think for a lot of us I mean the video thing is a really really common thing. Video or public speaking, all that kind of stuff, really common fears, and so that's for a lot of people that's true. And with videos I found with myself I started doing Facebook Live videos very regularly. After a while it just became normal for me to do it and Facebook would always save. Like you know, when you scroll through and you see the video there, it would always save it.

Fiona Kane: 23:31

If you're in some weird position, that's how YouTube will save it. Now, because I've just done a weird movement but like so I got used to just really weird looking like seeing my face look really weird and all that kind of stuff and just seeing myself because it's funny, because we don't see ourselves all of the time, we oh, and it's like that's what everyone sees you all the time, that's what you look like. So sometimes you've just got to kind of get get over that and um and move on.

Fiona Kane: 23:59

But what you're saying there, that that process of you saying I just got used to it, that's your neural network yeah making it happen for you, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah and but in regards to the uh, god, this is my brain, this is an old person's brain trying to work. I've got, I've got as listeners would know I've got some brain damage. So sometimes I I lose access to certain words or I just have a moment. That's okay, I'm having a moment. I had a question about that.

Fiona Kane: 24:29

I had a question in regards to you were talking about building new neural pathways and we were talking about languages, and it'll come back. If we just continue on with something else, I'm sure it will come back to me, to me. I can't remember what it was, but it was just on the tip of my tongue and it's, it's gone anyway. So, in regards to neuroplasticity, um, oh, yeah, I think that's it. It's just like it's just sitting on the edge. It's sitting on the edge. As soon as I said that word, it started to come back in, but it's still not quite coming back in, uh, in regards to that. So, again with neuroplasticity, it's actually about your brain's ability to be sort of flexible and to adapt and to learn, and that's essentially what that means, or have I got that wrong?

Monique Peters: 25:20

Basically, yeah, but we can actually drive it, yes.

Monique Peters: 25:26

So with the kids that I work with, um and it is mainly children, although I have worked with um, a couple of people who have had a stroke um, and they've, you know, working on their language function and being able to find those words and yes, and things like that.

Monique Peters: 25:40

Um, so we know that if we place a consistent demand on the brain to whether it's improving attention. So the pillars that I work with are attention, memory, language processing and sequencing for reading and language skills, but then also mindset. So by the time they come to me, they're usually the typical. My typical client would be probably in year three or year four and they're already very resistant to learning because we were talking before about fear and things like that. When they're sitting in a classroom and they're not reading as well as they want to be, as well as the other children, they soon shut down and they're just trying to protect themselves from a painful experience. You know, they're not lazy, they're not this, they're just trying to protect themselves from a painful experience, you know they're not lazy, they're not this, they're not that.

Monique Peters: 26:29

They really are just trying to protect themselves from something horrible.

Fiona Kane: 26:34

Yes yeah.

Monique Peters: 26:36

So while the program that I do puts a demand on their attention, their memory, their language processing skills and their mindset, you have to start from where they're at, you know, and you have to build that. And because they're used to saying something to themselves like I can't do this, I don't want to do this, I hate this, I can't do this, I don't want to do this, I hate this. Changing that language is a big part of things. So what I like to do is is growth mindset coaching. So where we start to say, instead of I can't do that, we change that to I can't do it yet yes, yeah, my listeners would be very familiar with that.

Fiona Kane: 27:19

I talk a lot about language on this and absolutely that All of the can't, won't, don't, whatever. That language is not helpful at all. No, and it's not about lying. It's not saying oh, I'm really great at something and I'm not, because your brain won't believe that, but you've got to leave a door open, and the door open is yet.

Monique Peters: 27:40

Yes, I haven't done it before however, it's an absolutely beautiful word and it's when you think about it, your um, you are, uh, your thoughts are also wiring your brain, so you're saying I can't, I can't, I can't. You're actually wiring a physical structure in your brain to make that a reality, because your brain won't process just what's good, your neural pathways won't build just what's good. You actually are in control of that, so you are the one that wires your brain with your thoughts, and if you choose negative thoughts, then you're wiring a negative thought brain.

Fiona Kane: 28:21

Yes, I see it with nutrition all of the time. So I'll have someone who tried peas when they were four years old. They're 65 now and they've never tried peas again and they say things like I don't eat vegetables. That's a very broad category. There's not one single vegetable that you might like or that you could eat, and it's kind of once they've decided that that's a not, that's not a thing, they literally it's like closing down a big shutter yeah in their brain and their brain just no longer entertains it.

Fiona Kane: 28:59

That's right, and it's like done, finished, gone. And so again I sort of say to people, maybe you've never found a vegetable you like, so you can say I've never found a vegetable I like. Never know, I might one day. At least that's somewhat open, but they've kind of got it jammed closed.

Monique Peters: 29:16

Well, and the belief system comes into that as well. Yeah, so my beautiful father. He's 91, and he refuses to eat something as beautiful as pumpkin soup, because pumpkins were chicken food for him when they were children.

Fiona Kane: 29:30

Oh, okay, I suppose you've got to. I mean, when you look at cultures and stuff like that, I was listening to a podcast this morning and they were talking about how, when you go to Asia, they eat dogs and they eat bugs and they eat cockroaches, they eat tarantulas. When I was in Vietnam, they were eating tarantulas and cockroaches. So I suppose it is a cultural thing too that we have different things in our mind that we see as food or not food or whatever.

Monique Peters: 29:59

Well, again, if I can bring it back down to that, brain plasticity, as we're growing up in our culture, we are told all the time that this is not just how we do this, but the process in our brain is saying this is what's familiar, this is where you survive, this is what's familiar. You will always want to come back to this because this is what has been wired in and this is what's familiar. And we spend the rest of our lives trying to undo those sorts of things that we learned as children. You know, and that's what life is about. That's exciting, actually. We learn to question what we learned and we take on new beliefs, but what's at our heart, what happens to us as children, remains with us.

Fiona Kane: 30:48

Yeah, yeah, it does, and that's actually so while you were talking before, I did remember what I was thinking of before that I just couldn't quite find, and what it was is. It was about the. I just forgot it again while I was talking. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget.

Monique Peters: 31:04

I don't really do programs like this. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. I don't really do programs.

Fiona Kane: 31:06

I wrote it down because it's terrible. I was like I can say it 100 times in 101, I can't remember, but it was actually about failure, right. So a lot of what we were just talking about for the last few minutes is actually about that fear of failure. And you were sort of talking then about how we do. We find, obviously we figure out how to survive in our life and whatever that looks like in our family of origin, different for different people. It might be about getting one parent or the other parent on side, or both of them, or it might be about surviving in other ways to do with.

Fiona Kane: 31:42

I don't know where you are and what your customs are and all the rest of it, but we do learn absolute survival and it is all about survival and what I've learned from my friend, linda Campbell, who's a hypnotherapist.

Fiona Kane: 31:57

She said that we're one-time learners and essentially what that means is that when you a baby or as a child, when you sort of touch something hot and you burn your hand or a dog bites you or something, you learn very quickly that hot stuff is very painful or dog bites are very painful and scary, whatever, and because we're one-time learners, then we usually won't ever put our hand on the hot thing again, or you won't kind of, you know, pull on a dog's tail or whatever it is that provoked the dog, right?

Fiona Kane: 32:31

So the good thing is we're one-time learners and that is why we survive. The bad thing is, we're one-time learners and so we have a very clear in our brain, kind of we develop that sort of saying okay, so to be safe, we have to stay away from all dogs and you know, we have to stay away from all hot things or whatever it is. But we develop all of the rules in our brain for staying safe and, depending on what happens to you will depend on what staying safe in your brain, what it means, right, and the one-time learner thing means that that thing is no longer safe. So, yes, we're always trying to keep ourselves safe, because survival is the biggest thing that we need to do. We need to survive.

Monique Peters: 33:16

That's right.

Fiona Kane: 33:17

And so, then, that's what leads to that absolute fear of going outside of our comfort zone and being prepared to be real bad at something. Yes, for a long time. Yes, oh yeah, until you're good at it yes and so that that's kind of biggest fear for everyone. Really, it's like it's we can't sort of push or we can't wrong word, we don't push through those comfort zones, and a lot of it it relates to fear that's right, um, and so in some of the talks that I've been doing, I will talk about that fear.

Monique Peters: 33:52

Um, I'm thinking of a post that I did recently where I um, put it. It was a cartoon thank goodness ai can draw these things better than I can so it was a girl with a big lion next to her, but there was a sheet of glass in between, so they were like at a zoo and she was able to stand there and observe him very closely without feeling like he was going to jump through and attack her, and I think it's a very powerful picture, and I used it to talk about how, you know, if a child is being bullied at school, it actually feels like they are being hunted. Yes, that is how it feels, and so we minimise that and say, oh no, they won't. You know, that's all very well, but that's how it feels Now. Then what do we do? So those feelings can be very intense and very, extremely real.

Monique Peters: 34:44

But then what do we do? So those feelings can be very intense and very, extremely real, but then what do we do with it? So you know when we can give the child some strategies and so on and build safety that way, and we have to make those strategies familiar, because remember that using strategies is a prefrontal cortex thing with which most people don't have a full, you know, a full reasonable ability until they're 26, 27, 30, so as far as a little child is concerned, they then you know. So they need to have practice at those using those strategies and building their confidence is probably one of the better things, better strategies in in that sort of situation, because when they're feeling confident with themselves they seem to attract less bullies.

Fiona Kane: 35:30

Yeah, yeah, and it really is. It's about actually learning that you can survive stuff and that you will be okay. Yes, and the other thing too is, I think, at that age, which is why it's a whole other topic, but why I have such a big problem with children making really big decisions, life-changing decisions, because I just don't think that their brain is developed enough for them to do that. But when you oh, now I've lost my train of thought I was talking about children making decisions and that's where I was going, me and my brain, talking about neuroplasticity, me and my brain About knowing, when I talk to kids, when I talk to school kids, what I tell them is I don't care about anything that happened at my school, and I haven't since the day I left it right, it means nothing to me, it means less than nothing to me, pretty much. And and like it doesn't matter, school just one day, school just doesn't matter, even your marks and things like that. Like of course, it's nice to get good results and and you know that kind of thing. However, there is such a thing as as going like studying when you're older and bridging courses and all the different things you can do later on. So if you even completely flunk out of school, it's not ideal, but it's certainly not the end of the world. So it's amazing how we have such a big, because when you're there, I remember being that age and it's just so big and it's so, and school is pretty much your whole world.

Fiona Kane: 37:21

When you're that age, and because it is your whole world if it's going wrong, it feels like it's the end of your whole world. When you're that age, and because it is your whole world if it's going wrong, it feels like it's the end of your whole world. When, really, in six months, 12 months, two years, whatever it is, it's going to be in the rear vision mirror and you simply won't care, and so it's actually. Obviously you can't. You know old head on young shoulders, that kind of thing, but that's something that we know to be absolutely true and all you can do is reaffirm that with the kids. But essentially it really is. You will get more confidence in yourself and know that you, I think we have to learn how to be anti-fragile.

Monique Peters: 37:59

We have to learn how to cope with things we really do need to be challenged a lot more than we are.

Monique Peters: 38:06

And that's one of the reasons why I like to talk about learning not just being a school thing. So I love opening up my students' mind to the idea that we learn from every conversation that we have, from everything we see, touch, feel, smell. You know, we learn from our family. We learn from our family. We learn from the television. We learn from YouTube. We learn from so many other places. I mean my son with his avoiding school. He never wanted to avoid learning. School was a horrible place for him but he learned so much from. He loved to watch what entrepreneurs were doing on youtube and, go figure, he's really wants to start his own business and he's well on his way to doing that. Um, you know, he's, um, he would the things that we learned from each other. So we happen to connect really well.

Monique Peters: 39:00

On film study um, I happen to do a couple of units of film study when I was doing a tertiary preparation course at TAFE when he was in preschool and I loved that subject. It was such a good subject and when I started introducing him to some concepts that we were watching in movies, he would start to pick up on things and he said Mum, look, there's a dawn of a new day and I feel like there's a dawn of a new day and I feel like there's a new thing going on here in this movie and I'd say, yes, that's it. Um, you know there's, there's so much to learn. Um, I was only talking the other day, uh, with a friend of mine going into a nursing home, and I have very, very fond memories.

Monique Peters: 39:44

My mother worked in a nursing home back when. It was an unqualified thing to do, but she happened to be a very kind person and she loved looking after the older people and we were able to stay there at night if dad was working. And I remember having wonderful conversations with old people. I remember Mrs Bunnell and I remember Mrs Watt and Mrs Watt used to have butterscotch lollies for us and you know, and I remember learning so much and I was never afraid of old people because I had that lovely experience, so that the idea of older people became familiar to me.

Monique Peters: 40:20

So it wasn't a scary thing seeing know their skin, or you know, or how they were suffering. You know yes.

Fiona Kane: 40:28

I remember when I was a little, my great, great, great, great, no great grandmother lived with us and I just remember because I remember I was about three or four and I remember looking at her skin and she would have been in the mid 80s and I just I just couldn't believe it. I just thought it was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. Yeah, but she was still alive for a few years when I was first born, and then I lived with my grandmother for most of my young life. So, yes, I had the advantage of being around older people as well.

Fiona Kane: 40:58

Yes, and I think it's actually really important, and maybe there's a few things in our society because when you're talking about this, I'm kind of thinking of a few things that that are really causing more of the struggle now, and I think one of them is that many of us well, so many homes now both parents need to work and, like, I'm not saying wrong, right, should or shouldn't work, any of that.

Fiona Kane: 41:20

That's a whole other topic. However, it is different now because many people have to work and they don't get to spend as much time with the kids maybe. And I know that when I was younger, I had my extended family, so I had aunties and uncles and cousins and grandmas and that kind of thing and they're all really important because they all play different roles, they all have something different to offer. And then, if you add to that the level of now that so many families don't connect with each other and they spend all their time on their devices separately and not the devices don't have, obviously there's a lot of educational things and things that devices can be used for that are really beneficial. However, being curious and talking to lots of different people, I don't think you can replace that.

Monique Peters: 42:15

That's right and that can be really deep. So remember when COVID came along and everyone was battling over toilet rolls and all that sort of thing and my father looked at me and he wasn't stressed at all and I must admit I was a little bit stressed because I was trying to get some groceries together for him so that he'd be well stopped for a while. Yes, and he looked at me and said what is everybody so worried about? And it was because his childhood experience was being in an internment camp. You know, he was in Indonesia, he was a Dutch colonial and by the time the Second World War came along he was probably six years old and he's in an internment camp which is something like a concentration camp. But you know, know, he was imprisoned and, um, it had a terrible few years there. Um lost everything that was familiar to him because, you know, it then became indonesia. So the dutch really weren't welcome there anymore and um, and they weren't really altogether fully welcome in Holland either because they looked a bit different than the normal Dutch people. And so you know my dad had been through a lot and many of these Dutch colonials ended up in Australia and New Zealand and Canada and England, america. A lot of his family went to America.

Monique Peters: 43:47

But yeah, you know, he he was, and I also grew up listening. So my mum comes from Holland, holland, and um, they just had bombs going off in their neighborhood during their childhood. You know, churches were blowing up here and there and so on and, um, I grew up listening to those stories. But their stories were not about the tragedy of it all, because they were all kids. It was about, oh remember when we found this piece of equipment in this bomb thing, and they would all laugh. So there was a resilience that came with that as well, with listening to those stories. And I feel very privileged now that I'm old enough to understand how good it was to hear that sort of stuff and that they survived and that they stayed together and they still loved one another through this stuff.

Fiona Kane: 44:36

Yeah, and actually I heard I think it might have been Dr Phil talking about this the other day.

Fiona Kane: 44:39

I listen to so many podcasts I can't remember which one, but he was actually saying that it's important for if, if, a lot, because so many of us are not connected, maybe, to parents or grandparents or whatever over time, or we're not talking to them, we're not hearing those stories and it's actually really important so for us to understand that we can survive, it's important for us to hear other survival stories from people in our family to know that, okay, I come from a family of survivors, because I am quite sure, if you spoke to pretty much everyone about their family, wherever they've come from.

Fiona Kane: 45:20

I don't think there's anyone who's gone through one scape. The last 100, 150 years have been, you know, a lot's happened and so anyone who's descended from anyone over that time or even before that, but all of our descendants, essentially, they all have their own challenges and there are challenging times, and so I think that, again, having these stories and connecting with the older generation is really important for that learning that, oh, actually, I come from a whole bunch of survivors and the human race survive and we've adapted and come up with lots of things over the years and I know that there's many times, even in our lifetimes, because we're of similar age. I think there's many times in our lifetimes that you know we thought this is going to be it, there's going to be a nuclear bomb or this or that, and we're still here. So I think it is important for kids to learn that, yeah, we're survivors, the human race in general are.

Monique Peters: 46:16

Yeah.

Fiona Kane: 46:17

And many of our. If we talk to them, our family friends can tell you the survival stories.

Monique Peters: 46:22

Yeah Well, when I'm working with the kids I'm actually trying to bring some of that back. So part of my program is I encourage them to connect with an older cousin or uncle or auntie, someone who has been through some hardship, who will check in on the child or the student as they're making their progress, but also share those kind of stories and say you know, I went through this tough thing when I was younger and it kind of worked out okay. I learned this from it. You know that sort of thing and I think it's really helpful.

Fiona Kane: 46:54

Yes, yeah, definitely Definitely.

Monique Peters: 46:57

Yeah.

Fiona Kane: 46:59

Were you about to say something.

Monique Peters: 47:00

I was going to say that my program can be quite tough. You know we're doing a lot of repetition and you know a lot of the kids will tend to say, oh, this is getting really boring. Now, mum, can we do something else? And it's no, we're going to move through that. And I'm trying to find all those ways of keeping them engaged so that we can get that neural growth.

Fiona Kane: 47:20

Yeah, yeah, those neural pathways. You know you can't sort of be building a house and say, oh look, we'll skip the foundations, that bit's boring, we'll just build, we'll just build the structure on top. It doesn't work that way.

Monique Peters: 47:30

You actually do need to build the foundation that's it, and and the example that was given to me once by a very wise librarian was um if, um, if a child stopped wanting to walk because it didn't look good, or it was boring, or was falling over and things like that where would it be it's lucky that a child is operating completely on instinct and wanting to get up and walk.

Fiona Kane: 47:52

Yes, See they haven't got the story in their brain yet that they can't or they shouldn't, or they look stupid or any of that Exactly. So that shows you the difference, right? So how many times do children fall over Like? How many times do children fall over like? How many times? So that that you can tell the difference in the stories that we have in our brain and how powerful they are by watching a child learn to walk.

Fiona Kane: 48:15

if anyone's watched a toddler learning to walk, yes, there's nothing that's going to stop them and they will, they, they, they're going to fall over a million times, they fall over probably thousands of times every day until finally they're on their feet and they and they're wobbly and that's strange and whatever, yes, but there's nothing going to stop them. But there's a certain age, or as a as we get older, and we build up all of these stories about the danger and had what we need to do to be safe. It's like we put chains around ourselves and kind of wall ourselves into this kind of safety place and then all of a sudden, everything's danger, danger, oh no, I can't, won't, whatever, whereas that child had none of that. So you can tell that we do create those stories as we get older, from that kind of one-time learning thing that those stories build up and if we're not careful we end up building a fortress around ourselves.

Monique Peters: 49:12

Oh, we do, we do. There's a lovely video that I love to send to my new parents when they first start and it's about Starfish the dog. So starfish was born with swimmer's pup syndrome so couldn't bring her legs up underneath. These puppies will often be put just put down because they can't be looked after. But she came across a foster family that wanted to put the work in and it's a neurological condition that they're born with, but it can be retrained again, again through a lot of repetition, and so the video shows starfish, you know, walking, really funny at first and just, you know, chaos upon chaos. But instinctively the puppy wants to keep running and keep going and keep going and the puppy works so hard and in the end you see the puppy still got a bit of a funny walk but he's running along the beach at the end he's grown up and it's just lovely to watch and it's a perfect example of that neuroplasticity and how we can use the knowledge of it to overcome things that we didn't think were overcomable.

Fiona Kane: 50:19

Yes, so for me, sort of in. I'm aware of time, so I think we should wind up soon. Uh, because I tend I tend to go on.

Fiona Kane: 50:34

Excuse me, I think I'm gonna cough, so I'm just gonna have some I might have a drink too so I know, in regards to this, that what I do, or what I say to my clients is I always encourage people to stay curious, and stay curious not only to talking to other people and being just interested in life and people in the world, but also become curious and notice their own self-talk and the things they're saying either to others or in their head, and not to judge it. So I'm not about judging yourself, just about being curious. And when you become curious, you start to hear yourself and you hear your language and you hear all of the can'ts and the shoulds and won'ts and whatever those things. And you hear all of the can'ts and the shoulds and won'ts and whatever those things. And once you start to hear those, you can start to change it. And essentially, what I do is I question myself really, is that true? Is that true? Is that helpful? And I often yeah, sometimes it's true, but sometimes it's really not and even just simple things, like I always tell this story because it's a silly, silly story, but I always thought that I hated country music, and so some of it I don't like and some of it I do like now.

Fiona Kane: 51:56

Essentially, though, for years I said I hate country music. I hate country music. And then one day I asked myself the question do I music? And then one day I asked myself the question do I? And? And I thought no, my mum hated country music and so I was brought up with country music's awful, whatever. So in my mind I had the story country music's bad and I hate. So I was like I hate country music. It's just something I said for years.

Fiona Kane: 52:21

And then one day I discovered I did like some. I. I don't like all of it, but I liked some of it, but it wasn't. I know it sounds silly, but I didn't even. It was just so. It was just a story in my brain. And because it had this story in my brain, I'd never really explored if it was a true story. I just accepted that, that to be true. And then, once you do that, it's the chains. We keep ourselves limited because you don't go exploring if you've decided that that's no, I'm not going to do that, or I can't do that, or I won't do that that's right.

Monique Peters: 52:54

I um, you know, again, going back to that personal development that I've had in this business and also understanding the neuroplasticity of of choice, you know I'm choosing more often to hear other people's opinions on things. I'm choosing to be open to a lot more learning than I would have been if I hadn't gone on this trajectory with my life.

Fiona Kane: 53:18

Yes.

Monique Peters: 53:18

You know, and I really enjoy that because I think that's one of the things that keep us young, definitely. But I don't mind getting old either.

Fiona Kane: 53:28

And other opinions are really important because I know myself look, we do get a bit bogged down in. We have a certain belief or we think that we're right about things. Everyone does that. It's normal that we do that to an extent. However, I actually find it's really useful to hear the other side and it can do a number of things. Maybe it changes nothing, Maybe you learn more about why you think you're right, maybe you learn more about why the other person doesn't understand you or why you don't understand them. Or maybe you actually change your mind about something or a part of something. So any of those things can happen and they're all used. They can all be useful. That's right.

Monique Peters: 54:10

So it's still worth hearing the other opinion yeah, growth is such a wonderful thing. Um, yeah, it's when we we don't grow that well, we get stagnant. Yeah, yeah exactly, exactly, you know it's. But I think we're starting to understand that neurobiology of these things now, like we've talked about these things for a long, long, long time now, but understanding how much of our brain changes with our choices, that there's a physical change going on and we're driving that change with every choice that we make.

Fiona Kane: 54:49

it's so empowering, you know and I think, too, one thing that's worth mentioning that I thought of before and then it dropped out, dropped out of my brain, it came back is the importance of reading to your children, like from birth, pretty much reading to them every day and talking to them, because when you, or even like you, were talking about watching movies and talking about movies and that kind of thing, or whether it's going to look at art or something, whatever it is, but when you read books to your children, they're going to ask questions and it gives you the opportunity to talk about morals and ethics and all of those kind of important stories. So they might seem like a stupid thing reading whatever the book is, but there's actually often lots of opportunities within a book to discuss moral dilemmas and those kinds of things, and not just opportunities.

Monique Peters: 55:41

There is also. You are wiring their brain for learning later. Yes, and I know of a lot of children now that are starting school without ever having heard a nursery rhyme and they're missing out on that amazing alliteration that developed that phonemic map I was talking about before.

Fiona Kane: 55:59

Yeah, All those neural pathways, all the opportunity, all those neural pathways, so many of them happen from zero to five zero to five is where it's happening.

Fiona Kane: 56:10

So those children need to be and you just need to be talking to them all of the time. Yeah, and that's just, and it's exhausting. That's that's how it is, but it literally is, you know. So now we're going to make some breakfast and let's go and put we'll just put the garbage out first, or let's go and feed the dog or whatever but it's that talking constantly to that child that teaches them language.

Monique Peters: 56:31

That's right and also teaching them. And the baby talk is also very important. You know that repeating and using the higher pitch and that's so good for their nervous system. It relaxes them, it makes them feel safe.

Fiona Kane: 56:44

They.

Fiona Kane: 56:44

That's so good for their nervous system.

Fiona Kane: 56:45

It relaxes them, it makes them feel safe, they know they're safe and then it's like the facial expressions and then, even when they you know, it's really fun when they're really small and they first start sitting at a table with adults and the adults are talking and they mimic the sounds because they want to be part of it.

Fiona Kane: 57:05

They're not really saying any words, but they go da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da at work there and, yes, exactly, it's a very big part of how we learn to survive. It is so I think it's really important that because I don't think that we're always not everyone's taught this, not everyone understands this no judgment on anyone but it's just really important to know that really just having that interaction, just talking to children, talking all the time and reading the books and talking and discussing things and observing things, but that constant uh, that constant talk and being and sitting at the table and eating together and talking together at the table, not watching, using devices and stuff that's actually vital for how all of these neural pathways develop. That will affect them for the rest of their lives. So really I can't emphasise enough how important that is.

Monique Peters: 57:39

But I also want to add, if I may, about how neuroplastic the adult brain is, so talking about language and everything. So this is probably a bit funny. Um, I love singing in French. It was something that my mum loved to do and and I love to do it in the car. It's just something I can do while I'm traveling and moving and and living a very busy life, but I can put the music on and I can learn to sing in French, and I'm just doing it by hearing and mimicking what I'm hearing, because obviously I'm concentrating on driving as well, and quite a few goes into this. One particular song that I was learning. I dreamt about it one night and I thought, now, how cool is that? Because there has to actually be a physical part of my brain there now that is doing this, for me to be able to dream about it at night.

Monique Peters: 58:31

How interesting is that so I'm in my 50s, I don't mind saying so that neuroplasticity in our brain is still very, very active. It's just we've got to work a bit harder as adults to do it than we did as children. Yes, but we work a bit harder as adults to do it than we did as children. So yes, and whatever you're connecting ourselves to be able to do whatever you have or haven't done before, you can still do something.

Fiona Kane: 58:53

Now there's there's always, there's always something you can do, so so is there anything before I wind up, is there anything in particular that you feel like that you haven't said? That's really important for this conversation.

Monique Peters: 59:06

Thank you, thank you. So it's probably the reason why I decided to do all this, and that was because I know that there are so many children sitting in classrooms out there. They're as confused as my son was. They don't know what's going on, they don't know why, they don't understand, they don't know why reading is so difficult for them. Please get in touch with me. You know there is something we can do about it With my program. You don't need a diagnosis, you don't need assessments, you don't need anything like that. It's just basically your decision to jump on and keep going. You probably need three to six months, um to see good results.

Fiona Kane: 59:47

Yes, it does take work and that and that will keep them, that will build them up while, while they're waiting for a diagnosis anyway, so it won't interfere in any way. It will just get them on, you know, on the right path, and get them moving, moving forward. Therapy does start, they get benefits from it quicker yes, yeah, so they don't need to wait for the diagnosis to start doing something about these neural pathways that's right.

Monique Peters: 1:00:11

That's right. So for the kids out there, it's, it's um. Yeah, I just my heart breaks when I think of the children out there that are, you know, because you don't know what choices they're making later in life. Because of this, yes, yeah, yeah.

Fiona Kane: 1:00:25

Well, being able to communicate well and think things through and critically think and all of those things, they're all really important, and I think those neural pathways and those language skills are a really huge part of that, aren't they?

Monique Peters: 1:00:39

They are big.

Fiona Kane: 1:00:41

So I will put all of your links and things in the show notes, but is there a particular website or some way that you would like to send people to? Uh?

Monique Peters: 1:00:50

yes, just www. learnerobics. com. au. And um, yeah, have a read, um, and there's a form there that you can fill out and book some time and chat with me. Ask me anything. I love talking.

Fiona Kane: 1:01:08

As do I, which is why, if we're not careful, we'll do a two-hour episode. So thank you so much for today, Monique. It was really interesting talking about this, so thanks for coming on today.

Monique Peters: 1:01:20

Thank you so much for having me. All the best everybody.

Fiona Kane: 1:01:23

And for those of you at home, can you please remember to like, subscribe, share. Remember that we're on YouTube and Rumble if you want to watch this video, or you can just listen on all of the usual places, but please tell people about this podcast so more people will learn about all these valuable things that I get to learn from my guests. It's the first guest I've had in a while, so it is really good to have someone to chat to and to learn something new. So thanks again and I will see you all next week. Thanks everyone, Bye.

Monique Peters: 1:01:55

Bye.