Recommended Reads: My Top 5 Books for Moms of Neurodiverse Kids

This week, I'm reviewing five of my favorite books about parenting and neurodiversity.  

There's something here for everyone, from detailed parenting strategies to thought-provoking fiction by autistic authors:

• How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber & Julie King. (And How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish)
• Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy
• The Explosive Child by Ross W Greene, PhD
• A Kind of Spark By Elle McNicoll
• Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

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Everything on this podcast and website is for informational purposes only and should not be used as medical advice. Views are our own, and do not necessarily represent those of our past or present employers or colleagues.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. A fresh perspective on relationships, success and happiness for high achieving moms.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Hey, there it's Jenny. Welcome back to another episode of Rethink your Rules. This week I want to share with you some book recommendations for parents, and specifically these are five of my favorite books to recommend for parents who have neurodiverse kids. Now, neurodiversity includes the most common would be autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, although there are other diagnoses that are in that category, and some of the other words that people talk with me about when they're struggling with parenting would be you know, my kids are spirited, or they're difficult or challenging, or my kids are a lot. People will tell me that there's just a lot. My kids have high needs, my kids are exhausting. I've heard one of the authors I'm going to share in this list of books calls them deeply feeling kids. So there's a lot of different ways that we phrase this, but if you're a parent who just feels like gosh, like it feels like my kids don't respond in the typical way to what you know, the advice other people have, or what my parents did that seemed to work, or whatever you may be kind of, you may be dealing with neurodiversity, you may not. You may never know a specific diagnosis, but the books I'm going to share with you here can still give you some really great perspectives and techniques that you can use to make your interaction with those kids a little bit less exhausting. Definitely for anyone who's struggling in the parenting realm, I think all of these book recommendations will be great and, honestly, even if your kids are pretty chill and straightforward to raise so far, don't sign off just yet. Hear me out, take a listen, because many of these resources are actually going to be really useful for you as well. In fact, many of these techniques are felt to be kind of the best practices for parenting all kids, not just those who maybe are more challenging or differently wired. So those of us who are parenting kids that maybe challenge us a bit more or have different needs may be forced to seek out these books and resources I'm going to talk about because we're sort of in a survival mode where the traditional things that we've done are not working and we have to rethink everything.

Speaker 2: 2:55

But even if a person is not at that place with their parenting, even if it seems like they have pretty neurotypical kids responding pretty well to the usual things, often they get better results when they incorporate some of these best practices that are in these books and also sometimes, their longer term results with their parenting will improve with this versus the more traditional things. So, remember, you may have a kid who responds to the rewards and consequences that you're giving them in the short term. So it may look to you like it's working. But it may be also that they're suppressing their emotions and their responses and not learning to deal with them in a healthy way and it looks to you like it's working because you got compliance about what you wanted. But it may not be setting them up necessarily the best for the rest of their life emotional life as an adult and it may also not be setting them up necessarily the best for the rest of their life emotional life as an adult and it may also not be setting up a open relationship between the two of you, which may be important as they head into the teen years and maybe things that seemed once so easy are now more challenging and you may be kind of blindsided, right. So these are really book recommendations for any parent, some of them very specifically picked out for those of you mamas with neurodiverse kids, because I know that journey well and I coach many of you and I find myself recommending these over and over. But you'll be able to tell which ones are sort of more focused on neurodiversity as we go through.

Speaker 2: 4:22

I will include all the names in the show notes and I'll put a link to them. As always, I don't really do these things as like affiliates, so it's not like anyone sent me these books or asked me to review them or anything or to make money. These are all things I heard about organically from friends or colleagues and purchased or got from the library myself. When I put the links in the show notes, I may include links that are affiliate Amazon links. If I can figure out. I have a page, but I have a hard time figuring it out. So if they are affiliate links, I will have those clearly marked, but of course, you can find these on your own separately on Amazon they're super easy to search for or Audible. Or one of my favorites is the Libby library app, where you can actually get an ebook or a audiobook for free and just put a hold on it and then get it when it comes available at your library.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Okay, book number one on this list is how to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen a survival guide to life with children ages two to seven by Joanna Faber and Julie King. This is one of the first books that just completely transformed my mindset around parenting and, to be honest, it actually the first chapter of this book I think is useful for anyone to read, whether you have kids or not, because it's so clearly illustrates with great examples how humans are really emotional creatures first, and you have to show empathy and respond to the feelings before you move on to the logical debate If you want to get buy-in from the other person. So good, I used to always joke. I want to write a book like how to talk so your partner will listen, how to talk so your boss will listen. It's just. It's just universal truth. But they just do a really great job of giving specific examples, helping you see your kids as tiny humans who have an emotional life. That has to be acknowledged before you can get them to really want to do the things that you want them to do. And yeah, I think that's. I think that's a really good example of how you can help your kids.

Speaker 2: 6:17

The other reason I like this book is that every single chapter of this book is full of research-backed strategies and information, but they pepper it all the way through with specific phrases and examples. They highlight the outline of where the tools are, so it's really easy to flip through quickly and read and understand. It doesn't feel like you're getting bogged down. Flip through quickly and read and understand. It doesn't feel like you're getting bogged down, and at the end of each chapter they have almost like the CliffsNotes of the chapter, where it just has the outline of what were the tools and strategies and a few suggested phrases to use.

Speaker 2: 6:52

I think for a lot of us who live in the adults, maybe corporate world or we're in a STEM career like medicine or healthcare, we spend so much time in the world of logic and it can be a little hard to just know how to flip back over into the world of the kid's brain, which is much more playful and emotional and silly. And so now you may be naturally better at that than me, but I just loved that this book would tell me like here's a chapter on ideas of ways to make things silly and funny to help your kids, you know, want to put their shoes on or something like that and it would give examples and so it got my brain thinking about ways I could be more silly and playful with my kids. So those are just some of the examples in that book, but every chapter is full of so many specific techniques and so you have a list of strategies ready to go when you're struggling with these younger kids who are maybe not cooperating. There is a whole chapter also on kids with neurodiversity and special needs, which is great. And the other thing I love about this book is that it's written in such a way that you don't need to just sit down and read the whole thing cover to cover to start using it Because of those CliffsNotes at the end of the chapters. You could literally, if you were desperate, just look at the CliffsNotes and get started with that, or you could do what I did.

Speaker 2: 8:03

I think I read the first full chapter and started implementing those phrases and watched my son literally change the way he interacted with me in seconds, and then I sort of sporadically read through the other chapters and pulled out specific ideas and things like that. So I didn't feel like it was like another thing on my to-do list, stressing me out or having to find quiet time to read, because, let's be honest, most of us who have kids ages two through seven, we don't have a lot of time to sit down and read a book with all the theories and all that stuff, and we don't need another thing on our to-do list. And remember, for many of us who have kids with neurodiversity, it's highly genetic, right, and so if you have a kid who may be neurodiverse or differently wired, you may also be differently wired. In fact, in our case, I didn't know this at the time that I picked this book up, but it turns out both my kids have ADHD and I have ADHD, and so it makes sense that I kind of needed some of these strategies more than maybe the next person. And it also makes sense that the style in which this book is written, with the CliffsNotes and the really specific things to pull out, works well for me with ADHD, right. The other thing I want to mention is that this book is targeted towards ages two through seven, so some of the strategies are most effective there, right, the silliness and things like that. But again, I wouldn't totally discount it. I mean, my son is 10 now and some of these strategies really still resonate and work well.

Speaker 2: 9:25

Also, there is a related book that actually came first, called how to Talk, so Kids Will Listen and Listen, so Kids Will Talk. This was actually the original book. It's by Adele Faber. You've probably heard of it. It's very old classic. It's been, you know. They've updated the edition a few times. The reason that's not my main recommendation here is, to be honest, I actually haven't read that book the entire way through, so I hesitate to make it a recommendation until I do that. It is not specific to this younger age group, so if you want, you could start by reading that book, which I believe has a lot of the same concepts. What happened was Adele Faber wrote that book and then her daughter, joanna Faber, created this spinoff book for parents with younger kids and more specific strategies that resonate at that age group. But it's really an outgrowth of the original. So the concepts that I'm talking about, that I love so much, are most likely very similar in that book, so you could pick either one, okay.

Speaker 2: 10:21

The second book I want to recommend is called Good Inside by Becky Kennedy, and this book really again has a lot of practical strategies for very specific parenting challenges. So separation, anxiety she's got like some games and ideas for that. They don't. You know they have big emotions turning off their screens. There's discussion about that. They have problems with listening and minding and being safe. There's a lot of great ideas and, again, very specific words that have worked, and Dr Becky, as she calls herself, has worked with a lot of kids in her clinical practice and then with her own kids, so she just has a ton of examples and experience and again I've been amazed at how quickly I implement some of her things and my kids just respond really great to the wording. It's like she just knows how to word things, so kids will listen.

Speaker 2: 11:04

I also think that the philosophy behind the strategies that Dr Becky recommends is really important, because her philosophy is similar to that first book, that the key is the emotional state of the child, showing empathy to them as a human being who has emotions that are valid right, and remembering that they're good inside, they're a good person inside. They're having a hard time with emotion and then they're acting, maybe inappropriately, so their behavior is a problem. But you can't just start by trying to stop the behavior. You have to really get back to the root cause, which is the emotion. And Dr Bucky also nicely articulates something that I've talked about before, which is like the point of raising our kids is not to prevent them from feeling bad right or to prevent them from frustrating us or to make our lives easier. Right, the point is that there's just going to be problems and stresses and frustrations and difficult emotions, because there's the 50-50 of negative emotion in life for our kids, just like for us, and that as parents, our job is to be the sturdy parent who guides them through those difficult emotions and lets them know that that's not scary, it's not going to kill them, and helps them learn how to navigate difficult emotions in a healthy way. And I just don't think enough parenting gurus out there are really talking about that. She does a really great job of articulating it, so highly recommend her book. And, again, her Instagram is incredibly useful because she puts a lot of her practical tips and strategies in short reels or infographics and, as a busy parent, I just like being able to get a little dose of those ideas and mindset shifts throughout the day. When I don't have time to get a little dose of those ideas and mindset shifts throughout the day when I don't have time to maybe sit down with her book.

Speaker 2: 12:45

The third book I want to recommend is called the Explosive Child by Ross Green. One thing to remember is that this book actually has really great concepts for any parenting experience, even if your kid wouldn't be described as explosive. So still keep it in mind, even if that title doesn't resonate. So there are several things in this book that are really great, unique concepts I'm not sure I've seen as well outlined anywhere else. The first one is this idea of kids do well when they can. So this philosophy was really groundbreaking when it was first introduced. The first edition of this book came out in like 1998, but kids do well when they can.

Speaker 2: 13:27

It gets again to some of the concepts that I mentioned in the first two books, which is like there's not really a benefit to a child to disobeying you and making you upset and getting a consequence or a punishment. Right, they are not sitting there logically deciding to make themselves late to school or to throw their iPad across the room and break it or whatever the case may be. There's no benefit to them for that. It's not a logical choice. It's clearly they can't do well with what they're being asked to do. And when you think about it that way, then the question becomes why can't they? What's going on? And that's the second big thing.

Speaker 2: 14:00

I think he really outlines well here which is the reason they can't they what's going on and that's the second big thing I think he really outlines well here which is the reason they can't is either they've got a skill that's lagging behind where it should be or they have an unsolved problem. And you don't necessarily know what the unsolved problems, lagging skills, are until you kind of sit down and figure that out and you can be upset all you want about the behavior that they're not doing or the fact that they're not listening that out, and you can be upset all you want about the behavior that they're not doing or the fact that they're not listening to you and you can label them as oppositional, defiant or ADHD or whatever. But at the end of the day this book would say those labels aren't really the point. The point is calmly and logically figuring out what's missing, that's making it difficult for them to comply, so that you can strategize and get to the root of the problem. And he has a really nice list of all the possible unsolved problems and lagging skills so you can kind of think about your situation with your kid. And he also has this outline to think about.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Okay, what's your top priority problems, like, what are your top priority problems you want to solve and what are the ones we're just going to let go for now? Because, again, when you have difficult kids highly, you know, high needs kids that are really exhausting you can't solve all those problems at once. So you really have to consciously decide you're going to let a bunch of stuff go and then work slowly and patiently on the biggest concerns, then what he has you do is he actually gives you the framework for a collaborative conversation between you and your child, where you engage them in helping you figure out what the problems are, because and I think this is so wise, if you think about it often as parents we're looking at our kid and we're deciding what we think the problems are. Well, you just didn't get up early enough, you just don't have a to-do list. You just don't have this, you don't have that. Well, you just didn't get up early enough, you just don't have a to-do list. You just don't have this, you don't have that, right. And actually they're a human with their own internal life and we don't actually know for sure what's the problem unless we actually ask them and listen to them right, and we often skip that step. And so our solutions that we impose to solve what we think are the problems may not work because, first of all, they may not be correct, because we've assumed a lot about what's the problem, and secondly, we haven't got their buy-in on creating the solution.

Speaker 2: 16:04

So he really nicely outlines how to have an open conversation with your kid and understand them better and then collaborate on a solution. This does not mean, by the way, that you end up having to just like do everything their way. You get to say in that conversation, yeah, I hear that's your idea. That doesn't work for me for these reasons. And you learn to kind of do a back and forth until you try something and then you evaluate whether what you tried worked for everyone or not, and then you collaborate again and keep tweaking until it works.

Speaker 2: 16:31

Now, if you have an easy kid, you might be like, yeah, that sounds like a lot of work, you know, I'll. Just, my kids don't really know what to do. I know what's best for them. But I want you to consider that if you have easier, younger kids, that may be the case where you can just decide the solutions for them, but as they get older and they head into the teen years, it's going to be harder and harder for that to be effective and they're going to have their own mind about things and you're going to have a much harder time just convincing them to do things just because you said it's the best way.

Speaker 2: 16:57

And if you sit down and do this collaborative problem-solving conversation the way it's outlined, what happens is you help your teen get confidence in their own problem-solving ability. They begin to learn the skills of self-awareness, self-advocacy, being flexible, problem-solving with someone when you disagree, and think how great all those skills will be for them as they head into the real world. You actually would like them right To be able to make their own decisions and not just listen to whatever their friends say. So you got to start having them also not have to listen to everything you say blindly, but teach them how to have that back and forth and notice what they need and ask for it. So I really think this is such a great strategy for any family to have and if that's not enough reason to convince you to check this out, I will tell you that the concepts in this book have led to my favorite experiences of all of my parenting journey.

Speaker 2: 17:51

I would not say that I have implemented every strategy perfectly from this book, but once I had internalized the concepts in this book, I was able to start responding to really frustrating moments with my kids with more curiosity instead of anger and trying to like stop the behavior so much. And I was able to kind of ask myself why can't they do well here? What are the lagging skills or unsolved problems? And I would look for clues and what they were saying and doing it. Often I could find a clue just in the frustration they were voicing to me. That would help me figure out what the real problem was. That I wouldn't have seen if I wasn't getting curious and I was just getting angry and trying to stop the behavior. And then I also began to come and circle back with my kids after they'd calmed down a bit and actually asked them hey, like I noticed this was challenging, like what happened? What's up? What do you think was going on? Why was that hard?

Speaker 2: 18:43

And genuinely listening to them and once I had an idea, either from them directly telling me or from those clues that I saw, of specifically what the underlying issues were, what their thoughts about it were. First of all, it became super obvious that there's always a reason that does make sense. It just may be based on something in their mind that you aren't predicting or understanding because they think differently than you. Particularly if your kid is neurodiverse, that may be the case. I often would not have predicted what the real issue was for my kid with autism, but once it was articulated I could completely see why they were responding the way. They were right. So you get to understand where they're coming from. You can then communicate that you understand it and put it even in your own words and reflect it back to them, which they absolutely love and always calms them down because they feel seen and heard. And then you can either propose a solution idea or ask them for help coming up with one to get around that underlying problem. Ask them for help coming up with one to get around that underlying problem. And what was almost miraculous to me was how, when I started doing this approach with more curiosity and collaboration, I was able to take some of my absolute most devastating, horrible parenting experiences and somehow by the end they would transform into some of my best parenting memories, because I actually grew closer to my kid and understood them better and actually felt like we were a little bit more on the same team.

Speaker 2: 20:07

So, really quickly we are going to wrap up with two fiction recommendations that I think would be great for any parent Book. Number four on the list is called A Kind of Spark and it's by L McNichol. Number four on the list is called A Kind of Spark and it's by Elle McNichol and it is targeted towards a younger audience, maybe like middle school, high school ages I would say. But I listened to it on audio and I found it really engaging and interesting. It is written by a woman who has autism and is written from the perspective of a girl with autism. So it's really interesting to just hear her perspective and how the world feels and looks to her and how exhausting things can be that you wouldn't necessarily think of if you have never lived inside an autistic brain, which I have not. So, especially for me with a kid who has autism and other family members who identify that way, I was like, oh, this is really insightful and I was so glad to have that perspective. Obviously everyone's different, but at least to kind of think about gosh, I have really no idea how these things are coming across to them because they see the world differently. So that was interesting. And again, even if you don't have neurodiverse loved ones. I mean it's just great as a human in this world to think about how things may be feeling to others, right?

Speaker 2: 21:11

Also, the storyline is just kind of interesting. It's about an autistic girl growing up in Scotland who learns about the witch trials and as she's learning about that she kind of realizes wait, basically these were women who were different and unique and people thought they were kind of weird and they just decided they were witches and falsely accused them and killed them and then they were lost to memory forever. And she sees, of course, a lot of parallels to her life as an autistic woman who's kind of different and thinks, gosh, this could happen to me. Her life as an autistic woman who's kind of different and thinks, gosh, this could like happen to me. And she really wants to have a memorial made for these women that were put to death in her town. And there's a lot of resistance from the grownups and people around her and people thinking. You know, as one of the things about autistic people is, they get very focused on ideas and kind of over, uh, like they get these intense interests they can't let go of, and so it becomes an intense interest for her and she works so hard to campaign for this to happen. There's also it really tackles issues of like bullying. There's some you know language that's used towards her and some really sad things that happen. So I you know this is something you could even consider listening to or reading along with your kids, but I would maybe check it out first and decide how you feel your kids would handle it. I think my kids are still too young for a couple of reasons, so I have held off on that. But just kind of to be aware too, if you are a person who is neurodiverse, that may be a little bit triggering for you if you've had some of these bullying experiences yourself. But really, really great book.

Speaker 2: 22:35

And then the fifth book on the list is probably the weirdest one. It's called Chouette C-H-O-U-E-T-T-E by Claire Oshetsky. Again, I'll put all these titles in the show notes. This book is about the sacrifices that come with being a mom and how parenting takes over your life. And you have this really push and pull of positive and negative about being a mom, your life. And you have this really push and pull of positive and negative about being a mom. And it's illustrated with this wild allegory where a human woman gives birth to an owl baby.

Speaker 2: 23:10

I know it sounds so bizarre and it took me a long time to read it after it was recommended to me because it just sounded so odd. But it's a quick read and it's actually incredibly insightful and relatable if you're a mom who feels like you've had to sacrifice a lot for your kid. It's one of those books where the allegory that's chosen is just so extreme that it highlights these truths about our life that we otherwise might not see. And it is very weird Just want to warn you, not for everyone, but it is also incredibly well written, insightful and poignant in so many places and really you come away feeling seen and understood as a mom, especially if you're a mom who's had a lot of these conflicting experiences or has had a kid who's just neurodiverse or different in any way. And it kind of made sense when I looked into it a bit after I was reading it that the author herself is autistic and raised a child who is autistic, among other differences, and it was really an outgrowth of her experiences. So again I felt like I was getting a little insight into kind of the different way that people look at the world when they have autism. But even if none of that is relevant for you, I do have friends who have neurotypical kids who've also found it interesting and insightful, so something to consider, all right. So those are the five books I would love for you to think about reading.

Speaker 2: 24:28

I hope you enjoyed that. If you like hearing about book recommendations or book reviews or things like that, please let me know, send me a message or do a review, maybe send it to a friend, so I always watch to see how many people are downloading and watching these different episodes so I can see what's popular and what resonates with people. So help me to bring you more things that you like by letting me know what you enjoy most. If you like the series on travel, let me know about that as well, so I can definitely target the content to be most useful to you.

Speaker 2: 24:59

And again, the thing about podcasting is, in order to grow, you have to do reviews, you have to do ratings. That's just how it works. So I hate asking for that, but please do take a couple of minutes to do that If you can, or share it with a friend, I would be so grateful. And, as always, if you would like to talk more about being a busy working mom with neurodiverse kids or struggling with your own possible neurodiversity, I'm here set up a free consult call. The details are in the show notes and I would love to chat with you. Have a great week.

Speaker 1: 25:35

Thanks for listening to Rethink your Rules with Jenny Hobbs MD. Would you like to learn more about how to apply this to your own life through personalized coaching with Jenny? Visit us on the web at JennyHobbsMDcom to schedule a free consultation. If you found value in what you heard today, please consider subscribing to the podcast and giving us a five-star rating so we can reach even more women like you.