Another Podcast
Scott Mair and his Close-Knit Clan
Join Scott Mair in this heartwarming episode as we explore the stories and wisdom of family bonds within Scott’s unique, large, close-knit family. Scott shares laughter, struggles, and valuable lessons learned from living with multiple generations, highlighting the unique dynamics where siblings, despite their occasional scuffles, fiercely look out for one another. This episode gives you a peek into the essence of modern masculinity and the joy of nurturing children within a tight-knit family.
We discuss the tough topic of bullying and the ways traditional schools can sometimes miss the mark when it comes to educating our neurodivergent kids. We hear Scott’s personal stories about homeschooling and how children with autism and ADHD can truly shine in the right learning environment. Scott inspires and advocates for an approach that genuinely embraces the unique strengths of neurodiverse individuals.
We talk about the challenges of long-term relationships and parenting within neurodiverse families. Drawing from his 26-year marriage to his wonderful wife, Sarah, we chat about the importance of mutual support, understanding, and empathy, especially when dealing with autism and ADHD. We discuss our experiences with perinatal mental health, PTSD, and how communication evolves within family life.
This episode celebrates the power of patience, trust, and self-care, offering a deeper look into the complexities and beauty of family life. Join Scott and me for a genuine conversation that celebrates the resilience and love within neurodiverse families. This is an inspiring and uplifting episode.
Scott Mair
Scott Mair is a leading expert in paternal mental health and parenting, navigating the often uncharted territory of fatherhood with remarkable insight. He highlights the crucial intersection of paternal mental health and effective parenting, combining his professional knowledge with an empathetic perspective rooted in personal experience. Scott offers a comprehensive guide for fathers tackling the challenges of parenthood and those seeking to support them. As an advocate for change, Scott champions father inclusivity at national and local levels, emphasizing fathers' essential role in family dynamics.
His initiatives include successfully establishing father support networks and utilising his military experience as an Infantry soldier to develop specialised resources for dads in high-pressure situations. Scott also provides consultancy services to health organizations and the corporate sector. Scott, a highly sought-after keynote speaker and guest lecturer, engages with current and future healthcare practitioners and family service providers. His work focuses on understanding the father’s journey, particularly during the perinatal period, stressing the importance of early engagement to foster emotionally supported parents and ensure the best outcomes for children.
Fatherhood Solutions: https://www.ipip.co.uk
Join Scott Mair in this heartwarming episode as we explore the stories and wisdom of family bonds within Scott’s unique, large, close-knit family. Scott shares laughter, struggles, and valuable lessons learned from living with multiple generations, highlighting the unique dynamics where siblings, despite their occasional scuffles, fiercely look out for one another. This episode gives you a peek into the essence of modern masculinity and the joy of nurturing children within a tight-knit family.
We discuss the tough topic of bullying and the ways traditional schools can sometimes miss the mark when it comes to educating our neurodivergent kids. We hear Scott’s personal stories about homeschooling and how children with autism and ADHD can truly shine in the right learning environment. Scott inspires and advocates for an approach that genuinely embraces the unique strengths of neurodiverse individuals.
We talk about the challenges of long-term relationships and parenting within neurodiverse families. Drawing from his 26-year marriage to his wonderful wife, Sarah, we chat about the importance of mutual support, understanding, and empathy, especially when dealing with autism and ADHD. We discuss our experiences with perinatal mental health, PTSD, and how communication evolves within family life.
This episode celebrates the power of patience, trust, and self-care, offering a deeper look into the complexities and beauty of family life. Join Scott and me for a genuine conversation that celebrates the resilience and love within neurodiverse families. This is an inspiring and uplifting episode.
Scott Mair
Scott Mair is a leading expert in paternal mental health and parenting, navigating the often uncharted territory of fatherhood with remarkable insight. He highlights the crucial intersection of paternal mental health and effective parenting, combining his professional knowledge with an empathetic perspective rooted in personal experience. Scott offers a comprehensive guide for fathers tackling the challenges of parenthood and those seeking to support them. As an advocate for change, Scott champions father inclusivity at national and local levels, emphasizing fathers' essential role in family dynamics.
His initiatives include successfully establishing father support networks and utilising his military experience as an Infantry soldier to develop specialised resources for dads in high-pressure situations. Scott also provides consultancy services to health organizations and the corporate sector. Scott, a highly sought-after keynote speaker and guest lecturer, engages with current and future healthcare practitioners and family service providers. His work focuses on understanding the father’s journey, particularly during the perinatal period, stressing the importance of early engagement to foster emotionally supported parents and ensure the best outcomes for children.
Fatherhood Solutions: https://www.ipip.co.uk
How many kids have you got?
Speaker 2:Seven Jesus, seven, all boys, all boys.
Speaker 1:Good Lord, and what ages are they?
Speaker 2:So eldest is 21. And then it goes 18, 15, 12, 10, 8 and 5. And we've just had our first grandchild, three months old today.
Speaker 1:Lovely.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's the first big girl in the family Because my eldest and his partner, they live with us as well. Wow. So yeah, we've actually got this little wonderful baby girl in the family. That everybody is obsessed with.
Speaker 1:Nobody knows what to do with her because she's female.
Speaker 2:They're just honestly, absolutely obsessed with her. They just adore her. There's cuddles and they're all changing nappies and feeding and playing and wending. Oh, yeah, it's been. But then because we're such a big family apart from the wee one who's always been the baby of the family, everybody else has always had babies oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was quite a natural transition. So, because of the age gaps, she's more like an addition to them, like a sister, rather than sort of being uncles. Obviously they are uncles, but that's not quite their role. I think that she's sort of one of them. So as soon as she's in that baby walker and running around the house, it'll be havoc for sure.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, I can imagine that she's going to be a very protected character as she grows up.
Speaker 2:Oh, she'll never be able to date.
Speaker 1:That's for sure I know. There's something really nice about that, though, that I don't know in the world that we live in, isn't there? There's um, something really nice about having that big protective family around you.
Speaker 2:That it's when you're a teenager right, I've just had to do um, or not had to do. I'd like to reword that um. I had the pleasure of doing an article and we were looking at sort of modern masculinity, um, and this sort of toxic bracket that sometimes sort of gets put into it. But that protective nature is ingrained in us as males, um, and it does come out in certain situations and I think that, having a large family, I see it in my boys. They're very protective of each other and just just the other day, you know, one of the boys are out playing and these bigger boys came and he phoned his big brother and his big brother flew down the stairs and he's gone down the park to see what's going on. That is them sort of being protective of their tribe. It's what's important to them. Sometimes we lose the importance of that and, yes, you can be people that take it the wrong way and people can be toxic in terms, but that protectiveness is really important and particularly the conversation we're going to have in and around parenting. But I always say this um, whenever I get the chance is that my two eldest particularly they would sort of fight like brothers, do a wee bit and the rest of the boys. They'll bicker and then squirrel, but they're very close, they're like puppies, they sleep together.
Speaker 2:We've got empty rooms in my house most nights because everybody will just sort of levitate to the same room. But they'd been out one day, my two eldest, and they came back and they were putting their bikes away outside the front of the house on the driveway and we could hear them because it was summer and the windows were open. And the second eldest, douglas, he says to my big brother, to his big brother he says I thought he was your best friend. Ali Alistair is my eldest and he says he is my best friend. He said so why did you hit him? And he said because Douglas, I'm allowed to be horrible to you but nobody else is. And I thought that just sort of sums it up to a degree. You know they we joke in my house that we're only nice to people, that we don't like um, and that that sort of joking and banter and sort of messing around that goes on in the house.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there's a line that nobody else is allowed to cross and I quite like that and I think, with her being the youngest and the first girl, then she's going to have sort of obviously her dad and I'm not granddad and my wife, sarah, isn't grandmom or nanny. Um, we are mammo and daddo, which is Irish for grandma and grandma, because Sarah's Irish and we're just like that because we thought we're only 42, you know yeah, um.
Speaker 2:So we went with mammo, mammo and daddo so yeah having her dad and me, obviously, that sort of protectiveness, which will be nice. Yeah, she's got six other versions of it, so, yeah, I think she should be okay. She doesn't have to fix much if anything goes wrong. She should have a few people that will fix it you would hope.
Speaker 1:I think there's something lovely about that that yous are all living in the same house as well. That sounds magical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it takes a village. You know, everyone says it and I think that that family I'm not criticising anybody and some people wouldn't want to do it this way, some people don't have the luxury but that having the family around for everybody to take a little bit of responsibility, to help sort of raise and navigate and with that child, I think from a developmental, from a social skill point of view, and that there is lots of benefits but they've been able to help with feeding. You know when, sort of during the night time, or if you know mom and dad need a break and a bit of sleep, you know there's enough people here that have been able to have that pleasure, which not every grandparent or dad or grandma, whatever you want to call it to have that pleasure.
Speaker 1:It makes me think about your son and his partner, though, in terms of their mental health. I think you know that could go either way, couldn't it? Because I couldn't think of anything worse than living with my in-laws after having a baby. However, I think you know if the house, if there was a house that was big enough and there was plenty of folk around, that could have been a different scenario. I was very much desperate to just have our own space when my first was born.
Speaker 1:But, having said that, I had our third and youngest child, who is seven, in Guernsey, and we didn't have any family here at all, and I definitely found that the most difficult part, I think, and I definitely was more mentally unwell being here without any family support.
Speaker 1:But also other things you know played into that, like my husband wasn't entitled to any paternity leave, so he had, um, I think Lewis was born on the Thursday, so my husband had the Thursday and the Friday, saturday, sunday off, and then back to work on Monday, um, and the challenge for me there was not the baby and the management of the baby, it was the other children, because my daughter, jodie, was then seven. She has substantial learning difficulties and um, autism, adhd and I had a two-year-old um and we know that two is a very challenging age. So it was, it wasn't the, it was just the management of the whole situation. And then to the fact that I had undiagnosed ADHD as well, the whole thing was just a recipe for really bad mental health. So actually you can see it from both sides. Actually having loads of family around is really, really supportive and really nurturing for your mental health, but then also I can imagine, can be a bit barbarian sometimes.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's a very valid point and it's one that we've had that conversation with both of them a few times, that we will not take that as an insult. We won't take it as personally. If there's times where this just gets a wee bit too much, you know, and we went away, um, for a week with the rest of the boys, so they had to house themselves for a week, um and there's there's times where we try and have longer days or we try and spend more time out yeah so that so they have that little bit of time, and trying to try to find that balance between being.
Speaker 2:This is what being a grandparent is just a different ballgame, because you see things a little bit earlier, because you haven't got the experience, you're a little bit removed from the situation. So what you don't want to do is I would do this, I would do that because that's not helpful and it's by all means. You can lean on us as much as you want, and if you're struggling to settle baby and it's three o'clock in the morning, just come and get us um and we'll get up um and we'll look after baby. Don't think that that's not there. But in the same way, I won't come up and knock, you know at three o'clock in the morning, and take baby away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know so it's trying to find that balance between. This is what I would do, but, as we've pointed out, you know, my wife and I have got seven. We've done it seven times. It's not that I think I'm any better, just experienced, and that that experience is quite helpful sometimes. What do you think this is? Or what would you do if they ask? We'll give it.
Speaker 2:It's that unsolicited advice, which is a bit that we tried really hard to make sure that we don't do that much and you can use us. We're your pawns. Use us to your advantage as and when you can. But if you feel that we're maybe overstepping, then please have that conversation. So we. But where it is an asset, I agree with you. It's also a hindrance at times because if you're a new parent my son, for example, he's the eldest, he's been around babies his whole life. You know his confidence is quite high, but as his partner never really been around the babies, you know she's not really got that same sort of experience. If you're then watching other people, that it comes a little bit more naturally to yeah and that can be quite difficult.
Speaker 2:So, again, it's trying to have that conversation, that don't be looking at it and that it's a big, massive plus to have all this if you're not thinking it is.
Speaker 2:But then don't be looking for the negative if it's not there, because what we might be able to do, quite naturally there'll be bits that nobody other than that child's parents can give it, and it's just finding those bits as you go along. So, yeah, it's been a landing call for both, for both of us, I think. From that point of view, we've tried to keep the channels of communication open. Check in on mental health because both my wife and I work in the perinatal mental health field to a degree and work with parents that we try to preempt it during pregnancy, where we start those conversations, which is obviously some of what we'll talk about, is that. I'm not saying you will, but if you do, this is what we can do to sort of combat it. And most of what we will discuss today, I think, when it comes to parenting, is when to have those conversations, how to have those conversations, and early intervention is always best and no matter what the problem is. I think those three things will steer you in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, hugely. So tell me then about home education how does that work day to day? I mean, it's certainly a thing that we seem to be seeing more and more of and actually, I think, rightly so. We've not had brilliant experiences in the education system, particularly for my daughter who, as I've said, has learning difficulties. She was moved out of mainstream education into special needs when, at the end of year three, going into year four, the mainstream system completely misinterpreted her. I labelled her as a naughty child, just, I think, that perception that she wasn't interested or not capable. And actually, when the referral was going in for the educational psychology team to come and review her, that referral letter came home in her school bag without a discussion with the parents ahead of it.
Speaker 1:And some of the language that was used in that referral letter was heartbreaking. Like, if I give you an example, the teacher had written that they struggle to identify any of Jodie's strengths, which was, I mean, that's for a. How old must she have been? Year four, oh gosh, same age as my son, about eight, and I mean that was hugely difficult to digest. That. I know what our qualities are, so how can you not see them? So I I completely understand. I've got lots of friends or know of lots of people whose children are going through school aversion right now, really struggling to get their kids into school. Yeah, so what's your perspective on the education system, everything?
Speaker 2:you've just said is part of the reason why we home educate and there is a few mitigating factors. So we started home educating before. There's been a bit of an influx. Now, like I said, there's more numbers. So we're part of a few home education networks where you can meet up and do certain activities. It's good for my boys, they quite enjoy it. But it's particularly good if there's maybe one child being home educated or possibly two, because you get that social bit. That's the bit that I think school has. It's so important that socialising part and I think they undervalue it massively in terms of how they look at academia and students and the social bit is important. So the meetups are quite good but we've got a big family, we've got a small classroom every day and so they get that sort of interaction.
Speaker 2:But my eldest and who has the little girl she he sorry had difficulties at school.
Speaker 2:He was bullied horrifically and the system massively failed him and what happens and the people listening to this that have maybe been through it will understand what I'm talking about but also how it felt as a parent, because there's that element of helplessness when you've got to maybe put them in an environment that you know is harming them to a degree. And there was a few stages when you've got to maybe put them in an environment that you know is harming them to a degree. And there was a few stages of that and I thought I'm not doing this anymore Because what was happening? They couldn't quite deal with the situation. So he was punished for being the victim and they would put him in isolation and it was sort of put under a label of we're protecting him, it's for his own good, so he's being punished for being bullied for his own good, which you try and explain that to a child of any age. It doesn't make any sense. As an adult, I struggle to understand it Right, okay.
Speaker 2:So we looked at a few different options and then he'd had a referral made to CAM for support and lots of people will have their own experiences. So my son it was a week before he's 14 40 that they made that referral. He was discharged a week before he's 18 40. That had been seen, um, but one of the recommendations at his actual assessment was school is the problem with his mental health. He was really struggling. He helped me understand mental health in a different way, particularly when you're looking at adolescents that are experiencing it. But he was in a bad place. He was really, really struggling.
Speaker 2:We were severely worried about him and we'd gone to look for support and they said if you want to take him out of school, we'll back him, because the school were a bit resistant to it. And what I was asking for is let me educate him at home we work from home, we have that sort of capability which I know doesn't work for everybody and let me help him fall back in love of education. You might never get him to to enjoy school, but as long as he enjoys learning and knowledge, that's all it matters to me, um, and they just wouldn't quite meet us halfway they told us it just couldn't be done. We got that letter from cam and that changed that we could then take him out, he would do work at home, they would take it and they would mark it and we'd sort of go from there. So he was the original remote learning really. Um, they told us not to sit in many ccs's because he was going to miss too much school, um, and that he wouldn't particularly do very well because he didn't enjoy school. And we were trying to explain the fact that he didn't enjoy school. We didn't know then. But he's adhd and he's got a mood disorder. So it was the environment rather than the ability. And they, again, they couldn't see that because they have this mold of what a student should fit. We put him through his gcse's, he passed them all, he went on to college and at that point we thought this works a little bit better. We had our second son. This is a long answer, but it makes sense, I promise um, our second, our second son, loved primary school.
Speaker 2:He was one of those kids that you know, if his leg was broken he'd want to go to school, um, whereas my eldest would have milked it for a month, whereas he wanted to go to school. He wanted to go to school. He had 100% attendance most of the years. He was there, just loved it. That transition to secondary school, high school he got lost. He just got lost in that machine and he didn't know where he fit because he was quite academic but he was a little bit sporty. He liked interacting with girls, but that wasn't the be all and end all. He definitely wasn't the rebellious or the kid that would get a little bit naughty. So he looked at these groups of children and it was Dad, I don't fit in any of them. I fit a little bit in most of them, but I'm just on my own.
Speaker 2:All his friends went off to do their own things and he didn't quite know. He really struggled and it made him quite unwell Headaches, nausea, lots of stuff that we'd know. With anxiety he became increasingly anxious and we'd just seen him shrivel up. This confident boy just disappeared in front of our very eyes and and we were trying again to figure out what we could do and we went home education and we'll go down the same route.
Speaker 2:Very, very quickly this boy changed and this boy's now flew through school, done incredibly well and in his gcse's went on to college and last week he applied to join the police. He wants to be armed response or counter-terrorism, which he always wanted to be in a uniformed service, but he just lost. You know, he stopped playing football and he was quite sporty but he just he was so unhappy in that transition. And then the rest of the boys we sort sort of followed, because three of them have autism and after seeing what had happened to their big brothers, I just wasn't that's not fair wasn't just me, it was both my wife and I. We didn't want to take that chance and so much of what the system tells you children with autism can't do my boys do on a daily basis because we don't have those same limitations don't tell them.
Speaker 2:Don't tell them what they can't do same with adhd and everyone's got their own opinion.
Speaker 2:You can probably talk more on this than I can. My wife is adhd and one of my youngest yeah, one of my youngest boys is soon to be um will be diagnosed once we get through the backlog. Um, but it's. I don't like the disorder label all the time. I think we're very negative about it. I'm not going to sit here and say it's, I don't like the disorder label all the time. I think we're very negative about it. I'm not going to sit here and say it's a superpower. That might be what people believe it to my degree it is, but I don't live it. I don't experience it in the same way, but I do see some of what my wife does. She couldn't have done if she wasn't and I look at lots of the strength. So we are very strength focused when we look at autism and ADHD in my house.
Speaker 2:Even dyslexia Two of my boys are dyslexic and we've found different ways because when we look at dyslexia most people think it's just struggle with reading. It's so much more to do with processing. But it also means they're quite resilient and think outside the box and just look at things a bit differently. And we need that in the world we need these people that see things differently and a school system just to correct people that see things the same all of the time and if you don't fit that, you're marginalized and penalized. And that's the bit that I don't like um about the system is it tries to create perfect students and whereas what I types, I want yeah, I wanted good people, and I think that you need that balance of someone that is just an empath is sometimes something that we use as a criticism. I think, someone that can relate to people as a strength in in the right way, someone that understands other people's emotions and feelings and takes their interest at heart, someone that is resilient, someone that is practical.
Speaker 2:My boy, who's dyslexic for home education, he may struggle with certain stuff that we're doing. So, for example, we found a petrol strimmer for the garden. He was walking down the road informing says this guy's throwing out his petrol strimmer. It's in the skip bag. Can I have it? He says.
Speaker 2:I asked him and the man said it's okay. I says all right. I said what do you want it for? I'm going to try and take it apart and see if I can fix it. This is all right, bring it back.
Speaker 2:So he brought it back and he stripped it and he sat and watched youtube videos on how to try and fix some of the parts and how to look at the spark plugs, and he spent two days rebuilding this um and the story doesn't end with it fixing it. He didn't fix it it was getting thrown away for a reason, but he learned so much about the components and he was able to go and research himself how to fix it and he sat and watched these videos. If I asked him to sit and watch a youtube video on shakespeare, it's not happening. But ask him to sit and do it on something practical, because he worked with his hands, he's tangible thinking, and that's the bit that I think the system misses out is the kids that don't learn in that way and, rather than bending to support them, we punish them for not bending to work that way, and I think that's wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Every single thing that you've just said there, yeah, hugely resonates that they're not very flexible in their approach to how it's best for each individual child to learn, because we all learn in slightly different ways. Um gosh, I remember when I was at school that I would sit there for every lesson, nod and agree, you know, almost to a people-pleasing extent for the teacher. Don't ask me a question because I'm pretending that I know exactly what you mean, but I would have to go home and read up about it. Um, I mean some things even now when I think back to when I was studying to be a midwife.
Speaker 1:Even now, some things that were covered in the classroom then the penny's only just dropping now, like nearly 13 years later, and I think, oh, I accepted it for what it was at the time, but I didn't fully understand what they were talking about or why I was to do that or understand it in that way. But now I do. It's only taken me 13 years. Um, it's, it's. I think education is a very difficult um situation for lots of, lots of not just neurodivergent children Without a doubt it's across the board.
Speaker 2:We'll emphasise the neurodivergent part because we've obviously got skin in that game. But, for example, it's the way that you say things sometimes and this is why Sarah and I do a lot of work in antenatal and helping people that are neurodiverse understand what you're actually trying to tell. I know that's where your expertise are. And when Mark Williams, a friend of both of ours, when we were first talking about you, it was something that excited me a lot was that conversation, because you can't explain things in the same way, because it's not taken.
Speaker 2:And I will sit with Sarah sometimes, especially around about emotions and feelings and understanding, and I will say something we've been together 26 years. Sarah and I met at 16, first day of college, um, and so we've learned how each other think and understand and I still sometimes will say something and she'll say scott, I don't understand that question. You know it's like can you reframe it? You can't do that in a classroom, sometimes with fairly kids, so they'll just sit there and not ask you to to reframe it because they don't feel comfortable, um, and then to say that in front of all of us, isn't it?
Speaker 1:you risk, then, being a target, for I mean, it certainly all depends whereabouts you grew up, but in the west coast of Scotland, in Kilmarnock, when I was growing up I certainly wouldn't have voiced. I don't understand what you're saying, because I would have been bullied stupid.
Speaker 2:So you, just like you said, you get that nod in agreement and Sarah won't mind me talking about this, but Sarah hated school, would have done anything not to be at school. Incredibly intelligent, my wife she's one of them people. When I talk, she'll hear this at some point, although she doesn't always listen to me. Anyway, in life she doesn't listen to me, but she doesn't listen to all the podcasts but she might listen to this podcast no exception no, is that.
Speaker 2:She's so unbelievably intelligent and she's so unbelievably intelligent and she's so good at things it becomes a wee bit annoying because she's just good at it. It's like she'll start doing something, like she started crocheting. She's making things, she'll start knitting, she'll do a blanket. You know she's just annoying like that.
Speaker 1:But me and. Sarah are on. Well, I'm a bit of a crocheter myself and I learned how to do it off of YouTube. And then it becomes an obsession You're just crocheting everything in a hat.
Speaker 2:Especially having a baby in the house.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God Books and hats and cardigans.
Speaker 2:Everything was getting made, so she'll just do something. So she's very entrepreneurial, got lots of small businesses, lots of passion projects. She's very crafty For small businesses, lots of passion projects, she's very crafty. For example, she started lots of people make wax melts and candles and stuff.
Speaker 2:But Sarah started making them because she couldn't find and she won't mind me saying this again, she couldn't find fragrances that didn't annoy her was her exact language, because smells annoy my wife. It's not just I don't like that smell, you can actually see. It irritates her, and so she wanted to make her own. And that was the only way that she said do you know what? I'll learn how to make them and not start making them. And that's sort of been a thing over the years is that she just sets up these little things and they just bubble away quite nicely. Sometimes they'll grow and when they get to a stage where it becomes something that needs a little bit more attention and she'll hand it on to somebody else and then build it from scratch and get to that point and there's been lots of small, we could be billionaires probably because she said all these small businesses, then she just gives them away. Um, but that dopamine which you know all about that, setting it up, starting from scratch, doing something that people say you probably can't has always been ingrained and that wasn't tapped into in school. But, like I said, we met first day of college. College is a different world and she excelled and thrived all the way through college and went on to do a university degree, you know, but school just it just wasn't there. But yeah, the whole college experience and I've got in case she does listen, I've got to tell this story because she reminds me of it all the time right.
Speaker 2:So we we both did a public service course at college because the plan was we both wanted to be in the police. So my son's just sort of following suit and I ended up joining the army instead. And when I went away, sarah came with me and never joined the police and five years ago she decided she was going to be a special constable and she went back to train to be a special constable, which was nice for me because I always felt that guilt that she never got to do that because of me. But when we were in college we both got student of the year for our sort of department and it was shared and we always joke that they just gave it to her because of me and she says the same. There was two head tutors and one gave it to me and one gave it to Sarah, so we split the award.
Speaker 2:But there was one piece of coursework we had to do and I was playing football at the time and we had to get it in by the next day. And Sarah says, don't worry, I'll do it for you. So I went to football and Sarah did my homework and I got better marks than Sarah did. Right, so it was virtually identical. I changed one paragraph so it wasn't plagiarism and, yeah, I got a better mark than Sarah did and because my business and stuff that I do with fathers, everything that we create, I don't do that without Sarah.
Speaker 1:Sarah is like my.
Speaker 2:Michelle Obama yeah, and I get a lot of the accolades and get to go on podcasts and none of this happens without Sarah. She's unbelievably influential. Everything that I do. I learned from Sarah about parenting because I hadn't done it before. I learned it from my children. Yeah, I just get all the glory. So when she does my presentations for conferences or my training programs and stuff, she always jokes you know, I'm doing your homework 26 years ago. I'm still doing it now. So that sort of hasn't changed. But yeah, so college was just a different experience, because I think you've just got a little bit more freedom.
Speaker 1:It's not quite restricted. You've just got a little bit more freedom. It's not quite restricted, yeah, and learn to identify as your own sort. You're not expected to wear a uniform, um, which I think has huge psychological implications, doesn't it? You're not trying to be the same as the rest of them. Um, I think there's a lot that, that next step to being the person that you're going to be.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that what I've found and you might be able to shed some light on your experience, is that we've looked at. So there's lots of things that I do in terms of my behaviours and how I am emotionally that will fit certain elements of neurodiversity. Emotionally, that will fit certain elements of neurodiversity, but I am undiagnosed dyslexic and it seems to like, for example, if I'm we're doing things together, I read incredibly slow, whereas Sarah sort of skim reads and speed reads. So if we're trying to go through a presentation together, she gets quite frustrated because she's quite irritable by the time I catch up. But it's just trying to understand certain words. But if someone sends me an email, I can't get the tone, you know, and I have to get Sarah and sometimes she can't either and say you know, what does this mean? Is this okay? I can't tell the difference between if somebody's annoyed at me or they're not. Sometimes and I act impulsively and sometimes I'll send a message back and then say or check and say, scott, you can't say that, because that's not what they meant. I've just sort of misinterpreted it.
Speaker 2:So so we look at certain things. Obviously we've been doing mapping with the boys as to where a lot of this comes from and they do pick up on so much of what you are um as a parent. But you know, when I look at um sarah, for example, with it's the emotional side with sarah that she just can't pick up on that unspoken language. Sometimes, um, and it's like that, the expectation from me that you will understand what's wrong with me make me happen to say it, and that doesn't work. They just can't. You've got to explain it fully, or I just can't pick up on it. And when you're a little bit frustrated or maybe having a bad day, you don't always have the energy to try and explain it. But then you're expecting them to understand it and they can't and that sometimes creates a bit of a standoff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, hugely, probably.
Speaker 1:Um, because I know if if I'm understanding correctly what what you're saying if my, if my husband comes home and say he said a bad day, he won't necessarily want to verbalize that to me, but I'll automatically be picking up on the energy that's radiating from him and I'll internalize that and think automatically that it's me that's done something and he's pissed at me. And then I then start kind of overcompensating for that, somehow, um, kind of adapting my behaviors without a word spoken. You know that we'll kind of just try and slot into this routine of how we do things, but neither one of us will be verbalizing. You know it's not actually anybody's fault, nobody's responsible for how the other one feels in that situation. But because we're not verbalizing, you know it's not actually anybody's fault, nobody's responsible for how the other one feels in that situation, but because we're not verbalizing it, you're just. You know it's a lifetime of internalizing things and not speaking so openly about your feelings or even being able to identify them well enough to give them a language, and I think it's.
Speaker 2:It's also and again it might be different, but from from our point of view. You see, I can't quite understand that. With me sometimes it's like I don't understand where this energy is coming from. Like you've just said, is it something that I've done? We're both a little bit like that, but, um, I'm a little I'm probably better at vocalizing it most of the time like sarah doesn't do. Talking about feelings you know, it's like we joke all the time. My anniversary cards she doesn't sign it. At the bottom right, there's no. She'll just put all my love, there's no, sarah right. And the first time I questioned it she said but you know who I am, you know, it was like that logical. Well, who?
Speaker 1:else is going to send your husband card on our anniversary.
Speaker 2:You know I don't have to put sarah at the bottom and it's sometimes you you want to say yeah, but that's just the way you should do it, and then you think you're actually right, that does make a lot of sense. You don't need to um. But you know, she's just that emotional bit and it's sometimes not quite there in the relationship at times. But with my boys it's sometimes a little bit different and it's like that relationship. She can pick up a little bit more and maybe know from a mothering point of view what that child needs without them being able to vocalize it. And the reason the main time sorry that I was able to maybe document that or start to see things a little bit differently is our youngest was was non-verbal um, until he was four, which in fairness it's a diagnosis of non-verbal, it's more speech delayed. If you're still in that area of four or five, I think we're just quick to put a label on it. Um, he started to talk, he decided it wasn't him and he stopped. And then we learned makaton. So we were able to communicate with him and he started to add a little bit of words, a little bit of Makaton, but she was unbelievable at picking up on him before he could speak, you know. So it was. It was being able to read that, which is maybe a mother's instinct as well to a degree, um, but it was like I sat and watched it and I thought that in other situations you maybe can't do that, but when it was a child that maybe watched it and I thought that in other situations you maybe can't do that, but when it was a child that maybe needed it, maybe slightly more vulnerable, there was just this, something that came from somewhere, and it was like those needs were met. She could understand it, um, and with his. So he was the third of our boys to be diagnosed, um, and we'd just gone through the process with the next one up, who's now 10, and when we're looking at we want he's about 18 months old, um, and sarah said from about six months he's got autism as well. Um, and I was looking and I said to sarah says maybe you're just seeing something that's not there because we've just gone through this and it was actually I wasn't seeing what was there because we'd just gone through it, um and it when we got to sort of 18 months and he'd had the diagnosis, but it was about 10, 11 months. I was about four or five minutes behind, four or five months behind. Say that in yeah, you're right, he does um, but it was just, she was adamant telling you and everybody said, just give it time, it's a little bit early. And Sarah says no, no, just trust me. And, in fairness, I never argued it, I just didn't see it. And then, yeah, sort of 18 months when he got his diagnosis, we sat down and it's so obvious when we look back now you know, but at that time and it was the reason I'm highlighting that is, I think sometimes one parent is a little bit further ahead on that journey than the other one.
Speaker 2:And it's hard when you know that you're right and you sometimes make that resistance and you get that a lot with the diagnosis of ADHD and autism and it's very rare you know we've got that, I've got. We'll always try and tell us something. It's very rarely wrong and I think we don't always listen to it. And when you're in the school system, you've got that extra resistance and we had a fantastic health visitor that helped us with that process every time. Really, we were very fortunate.
Speaker 2:But if you've not got that and you've got this sort of system pushing you back and pushing you back that parenting instinct it's very rarely wrong. It's tiring, it's frustrating, but it was really interesting and I run workshops with dad. That parenting instinct I said it's very rarely wrong. Um, it's tiring, it's frustrating, but yeah, it was. It was really interesting and I wouldn't run workshops for dad, which you know sort of messaged about. Um, that comes up a lot. I'm not saying it's always dad that sees it a little bit later, but most of the time parents will see a little bit differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah the sort of journey and the process and we don't support that enough. I don't think we don't help that journey as you navigate through it. And then if you've got one or two parents that are neurodiverse themselves, it just complicates that process quite a lot.
Speaker 1:There was something that you said there that I just wanted to touch on around, so do you mind answering this question? How old was Sarah when she was diagnosed? Was she diagnosed as a child or was she diagnosed into adulthood Adulthood?
Speaker 2:So what happened with Sarah is that, like I said, we were 16 when we met At that point, so we're going back to 1998, they were questioning bipolar. In 1998, they were questioning bipolar and that was the family GP, who was a phenomenal GP that had known Sarah her whole life. That was where the conversation was going. It's not uncommon, possibly, for a teenager to have bipolar.
Speaker 1:Yeah and far more often than not, they get a mental health diagnosis than even consider ADHD or autism.
Speaker 2:So it was the perinatal mental health psychologist and going through certain avenues after birth trauma and postnatal depression and trauma. What we now know is Sarah definitely has PTSD from horrific deliveries. But the postnatal depression I never thought it fit what they were trying to say at the time. Um, but this is originally. We're going back 10 years. I didn't have the understanding of paranormal health I do now and probably didn't have the same understanding of neurodiversity. Say that was someone that had adhd and it was just sensory overload. In that period it was everything that I'm uncomfortable with all happening at once. Um, one of my teenage boys is asked by others high functioning autism. We've never been diagnosed so I can't say for sure, but we think sarah is high functioning autism as well.
Speaker 2:So the whole environment of maternity settings and pregnancies and examinations and noise and sounds and smells and someone that has been diagnosed with globalized or general anxiety disorder since she was sort of 16 again, it all fits with that sort of. So it was perinatal mental health and looking at the trauma and starting to do edmr and and then there was a psychologist hang on a minute. You know there's too many things here and that are taking a lot of boxes that we haven't even looked at. And so, yeah, it was 37 was the first time it was really, yeah, really looked at. But at 16 it was. So from 16 before 16, 16 to 37, five pregnancies and lots of other complications. It was just you've got anxiety, then you've got postnatal depression and it was lots of different things.
Speaker 2:But the one thing I can say everybody's got their own opinion and everyone's got their own views. Having an understanding of it and being able to know what it is didn't really change Sarah's life that much. I know some people it does. It just changed that bubble around her and that's the only thing that I can say. She's my best friend, she's my hero. I think she's incredible and even being a former infantry soldier, sarah's the toughest, bravest person I've met in my entire life. And I think she's incredible. I genuinely do, and I'm not just saying that, um, that there's been times where it creates a little bit of conflict, because you don't quite understand why certain things don't change. And it's like I mentioned that you know if I'm having a difficult time or maybe just a little bit low or getting overwhelmed, stressed, whatever it might be, sarah's my person. She always has been. She is my safe space, she's my grounding.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of pressure to put on one person, but when I get to the stage where I'm really overwhelmed and I'm starting to struggle, she can't cope with that level and it's like she starts to shut down because this is too much information, she starts to catastrophize it and I'm looking for her to make me feel better, which is so selfish um one. She's not. That's not her job. To make me happy, um, and it's my job to be able to lean on her but figure it out to a degree on my own. I put that pressure on her and when she can't do that, I said why? Why can't you do this? You know, why can't you do this for me? And I never understood she can't, it's not don't want to, it's not capable. And we can go around and around and around for 100 years, I'm still not going to be capable of it, scott, and that realization as to why, why, that is something that just can't change, or the fact that you know we will, we'll be sitting down and this is not. I'm not making a lot of it, I'm not at all, because, like I said, I think neurodiversity there's so many positives that we forget about. But we'll be watching a movie and cyril will go to the bathroom and she won't come back.
Speaker 2:Laura and I'll go and see what she's doing. She's painting the kitchen. You know, like that, that's genuine, or it'll be right, we're going to build a shelving unit. We're going to build a shelving unit in the kitchen at 10 o'clock on a friday night, because that's just the way it is. Or we'll get up on a saturday and just say, right, pat the girl, we're going to the beach, you know. And then the beach that we go to is bournemouth. The bournemouth on a good day, without traffic, it's like four hours from my house, you know. So we'll just get up in the car and say, right, we're going to Bournemouth for the day and we'll come back tonight.
Speaker 2:You know, and that it became normal to me, but it wasn't. It was quite ailing. It took me a while because I like to plan things, I'm quite organized, whereas Sarah's just let's just do it. What's the worst that can happen, you know. So, being able to understand that that is something, that's just the way somebody is, it's the way they process it, I think for the immediate family, even the children sometimes, like we talk about it in the house, you know, um, why wouldn't you want to build a cabinet in the kitchen and take off on friday night?
Speaker 2:You know, yes, most of them, you know some of my kids just, oh, we'll be building something, they'll go out fishing, they'll come back and we'll build something, and they'll just sort of say, well, why not? And they just walk past it. But they know the way it is. And the point I'm trying to get to is I think sometimes we're looking to change the bits. That can't and it creates so much conflict. So I think when you get that diagnosis, it doesn't just help you, it helps the people around you understand the bits that. Yes, there's bits that are great, um, and we know why they're great, but it also helps the bits that we maybe bump up against a little bit and I think that that, for lots of people can be life-changing. So it's not always you that benefits from that diagnosis, but it does help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's I think that's a really good point actually, because I think I've always looked at it from. You know, this has been so beneficial for me getting this diagnosis a bit. Let's say that I was bang on 37, had been on antidepressants since the age of 14. Um just never really knew where I fitted in society and I've always just seen it as being such a catalyst for change in my own life. But actually, now that you say that, I can see the benefit of the whole family really being able to understand that and how they interact with me. What I wanted to touch on as well was that.
Speaker 1:So as a parent, I, I think, who then parents children who have autism, adhd, dyslexia, the likes of the series of invalidations that you have grown up, um, I think by the age of 10, I read that um children with adhd will had 20,000 more negative statements directed at them. So I do get a sense that most of us particularly in females, where it hasn't been as widely recognised your life has just been a series of invalidations. Nobody really takes you seriously and with that comes this um doubt in yourself. So while I do get quite strong gut instincts about things, I'll very often talk myself out of them because that's just how life has been. No, no, you're wrong, it can't possibly be like that. And then I would bend. So I then have learned to not trust myself, not trust the way that I feel, and that becomes really difficult. I think when it's becoming apparent that your children are struggling or that you think that your children might have ADHD or autism, then you go into that school setting and have all of those invalidations thrown at you again. You go into the healthcare setting. They're all thrown at you again and that, I think, can be very triggering. As a parent with ADHD or autism, you know you're kind of now comfortable in yourself, in your diagnosis, you're kind of gaining confidence back into yourself. But when you're then trying to go and advocate for your child, that becomes really difficult. I find really tiresome.
Speaker 1:Um, and obviously I mean we waited eight years for my daughter's diagnosis. We've got a kind of long, complex um physical history and different medical conditions. She has epilepsy, she has a form of oral Crohn's disease. There were so many things that we seemed to be battling at the time that her developmental things.
Speaker 1:She never spoke in fluid sentences until she was four and a half and actually the first full sentence she said was I don't know if you read the blog about the fat guy in the post office where we had gone to pick up a Royal Mail parcel. And I mean, jodie was a beautiful little girl, lovely, ringlet, curly hair. She was a bit like Shirley Temple and I had picked her up from my mum's after work and I thought I'll dash into the post office and collect this parcel. But it was really busy coming up to Christmas and we were just stood there waiting patiently in the queue and the door opened behind. So she turned round to look and see who was coming through the door and there was a man who was largely overweight. I do apologise if that man's listening now and you remember this, um, but Jodie looked at him, she looked at me and she went look, mum, there's a fat guy.
Speaker 1:And I was so proud of her because she was able to communicate that whole fluid sentence and the words were really clear and it was amazing. But also fucking hell, you cannae say that, jodie. I said say sorry to that man. So she looked at him and she went oh sorry, fat guy. I was like are you fat? Shaming little so. And so there was an element of me that felt really guilty for the fact that she had said that and that probably made him feel like shit. But equally, I was an element of me that felt really guilty for the fact that she had said that and that probably made him feel like shit, but equally I was so proud of her thinking she did it, she can speak.
Speaker 1:So I just I think that you know, when your children are younger, you kind of identify these things a bit like you know what you were saying, that Sarah picked up ahead of you. Picking it up because she obviously can see it from whatever perspective she's seen it from. Um, and then if you have a partner, then that's maybe not necessarily invalidating, but not seeing the same thing as you, that can be hugely frustrating, um. So it's really good that you had that kind of proactive health visitor that validated exactly. You know what experience you guys had and was able to help advocate for that.
Speaker 1:But I think it's really difficult and it really takes a toll on the mental health of parents. When you have your own experience of being invalidated through your entire life, then people not necessarily taking you seriously or whatever that might be, but I do think that there's a massive strain on the mental health of parents for many reasons, when it comes to being a neurodivergent parent, parenting neurodivergent or learning challenged children. Neurodivergent or learning challenged children. I mean, my husband really struggles to relate to our daughter. She's 15, she's hormonal and that's difficult anyway, whether she's autistic or not.
Speaker 1:But I think throwing autism into the mix, where we know that women experience those hormonal fluctuations far, they just feel them so much more than a neurotypical person, you know, it's really difficult for her to understand that, never mind trying to get her dad to understand it. There's a huge breakdown of communication and it certainly causes a lot of tensions in the household but also kind of makes me just be a bit like oh, I wish you two would just stop it. It's horrible, just get on. Why can you not just understand her and how can she not just understand you, like that's, just accept it, you don't need to shout or whatever. He very much, I think, takes it as a bit of a personal attack, her brutal, brutal honesty. She never says I love you back anymore, which I'm sure probably is common for a lot of teenagers. But I think he finds that quite hard-hitting. So trying to get him to understand the many complex layers of an autistic 15 year old girl is really difficult and there's just not the support there, I don't think, for parents, for their mental health, because and I don't know why that is you know, if we, from a wider public health point of view, we want families to stay together, don't we? We don't want them to be in that statistic that I gave you the other day about how 87% of couples who are parenting children with disabilities whether they're learning disabilities, physical disabilities will end in divorce, and I can quite clearly see why there's just no alternative and I just don't think it's acceptable really.
Speaker 1:I posted a video on my TikTok the other day that has gone viral about a recent experience we had at CAMHS, about a recent experience we had at CAMHS and I asked the psychiatrist three or four times for further psychological intervention for my daughter and he basically just said there's none available for autistic people. He suggested that I might want to look at some third sector support and I said and why are you recommending that? I do that? Because this is the child and adolescent mental health service. You are the psychiatrist. Why is that not something that you're able to offer? And he said well, she needs to be able to want the help with her anxiety. She needs to be able to name it and talk about it, and if she's unable to do that, our psychological therapies, essentially, are not going to work, which I was absolutely flabbergasted about.
Speaker 1:But clearly there's a lot of people out there who are having the same experiences. That there's just, you know, even for our children. There's not necessarily the right or appropriate mental health support, but clearly there's not either for the parents and that's testament to that video that's gone huge. So many offers of remote support for my daughter. Have you thought about this therapy or that therapy and I can help with this, that or the next thing? Loads of people have been interacting with it. So I think this is an area that many people are probably struggling with. Um, sorry, that was just a little bit.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, that was no don't. Please don't apologize. Um, I'll try and address a lot of those points as much as I can, but I think that, without criticizing um a lot of professionals, they as much as I can, but I think that, without criticizing a lot of professionals, they don't understand neurodiversity and the very limited basic training they do doesn't even cover the basics and what they get told. From my understanding and I've sat and witnessed a lot of this training and developed programs to help local authorities understand how to work with people that have got neurodiversity, because what we do is we tell them what it is. So a lot of professionals know what neurodiversity is, how you interact with that person and what that person needs to interact with you. That bit is lacking. You need a lot more lived experience in these areas that can shed that.
Speaker 2:Where we are in Warwickshire, we've been very fortunate to work with the local teams and they've had all the up-and-coming psychiatrists, psychologists, paediatricians. They, as part of their training, hear parents' voices and we were asked to create videos and an understanding of what it's like and that you get a snippet you get 30 minutes to an hour maximum of that child and you determine the best course of action for that child. You don't see the other 23 hours a day. You don't see what happens when they leave that office, because they've held it all in while they were there and they've masked it to a degree where they sometimes don't even make the car before that meltdown starts. We see it at schools. You know it's like oh, but they don't act like that in school. Yeah, but because of that we get it at home four o'clock yeah, the four o'clock explosion.
Speaker 2:So you don't see that. But and then it's like you're made to feel, like you're catastrophizing it, making it seem worse than it is, because they don't see it the other thing that happens is your parenting gets blamed for that because it doesn't happen in school or it doesn't happen here and there, so they don't have that understanding of how to interact with it.
Speaker 2:And my one of my teenagers who, who does um, he's mentioned Asperger's we're looking at ADHD but diagnosed Asperger's or high-functioning autism. He still calls it Asperger's because he identified with that and then when they changed it they lost their identity and so he still classes himself as Asperger's, not high-functioning. And he broke his leg and it was horrific. They did surgery, pinned, it was nasty and we got transferred from our local hospital, which is a smaller community hospital, to the main university hospital for surgery and it had been a long day. He'd seen lots of people, his surgery was delayed, he was done and he was really starting to get quite emotional, quite upset.
Speaker 2:This healthcare assistant came in and she'd been a SEM coordinator in a specialist school and he was really starting to get quite emotional, quite upset. This healthcare assistant came in and she'd been a SEND coordinator in a specialist school and she came in. She dimmed the lights, she drew the curtains and she got down on his level to talk to him and it changed everything and those three things like sort of started to retract that knockdown Because she said you know, she just sort of she didn't touch it. You don't have to look at me. She said everybody else is saying look at me when you talk to me. You know that sort of stuff. She said you don't have to look at me, but can you please listen? And she got down on him and she said is there anything that you really like? And they get these little roamed apple juices in hospital, the ones that you peel the foil off the top. For some reason he loves them. He says that was really nice. She goes back in a minute. She nipped off, she came back with like a brown bag full of apple juices and she says I'll just pop them under your pillow. And then she was talking to him. Can I just check? I need to put this little thing on your hand and it's going to get tight and then it'll tell me how much your blood's pumping.
Speaker 2:And she just explained things in a very different way and he was, you know he was sold and she managed to help, sort of recalm him. Then he was talking to her and he was showing her his football stickers and you know he'd shut down. He wasn't talking to the doctors, he wasn't talking to nurses because it was just too much and just those things. And she goes I get it, you know, and that was the difference. She understood it, she got it.
Speaker 2:I know not everybody can have that understanding, but if we have more people in these departments that do, yes, they can start to pass that message on um and that they said he was so upset and at that point as the parent, you're starting to get angry. And then when the doctors are coming in and it's the same in maternity settings I get this quite a lot is that my auntie was a former nurse and she always told me and I've tried to stick to this even when we've had really bad maternity experiences is there's a line that you don't cross, and I genuinely believe that when it comes to zero tolerance, I think there was times with sarah where I flirted with that line and but I genuinely believe I didn't cross it. But when your child or the people that you love are starting to struggle and they're getting upset and they're getting overwhelmed, it's very easy. Now what we see is the parent that crosses that line. We don't see what you could have done to prevent that from happening by just the way in which you explain that little bit of understanding. So a lot of this confrontation that we see in these settings between services and parents is because that understanding of the parts that each person plays is not there. And the bit you mentioned from dads and that sort of frustration we run or I run Sarah helps me put it together the workshops, and we talk quite a lot with healthcare professionals, but particularly the teams that will be doing assessments and diagnosis for autism, is that what you've got to understand.
Speaker 2:We hear it all the time about dads is dad's not taking it seriously, dad's in denial, he can't accept that this child's got autism or ADHD. And they say it in a way that's a bit condescending and it's a bit abrupt and it's not all the time and not all dads, um, but a lot of the time and much more than you would think. What happens is we mentioned at the start of this conversation about that protective instinct that we have as dads is that is coming in um abundance in this particular situation that if I accept that there is this and I don't like this this is not how I see it, but I know it's how people can see it something wrong with my child, then I've got to accept I can't protect them from it and I can't keep them safe from it and I can't take it away. I'm not ready to give up yet. So so you become this standoff of resistance, of hoping something's going to improve, and it makes it so much worse because I have to accept.
Speaker 2:No, the roles that not all and again I'll probably get this a bit controversial, I sometimes get told off for this but that parenting role that some of us and we'll see each of the other one, their part in it is mums will nurture.
Speaker 2:Now, if you've got a child that is either sick from the very beginning or has times where they're not well or they have something that again we see as a deficit or something that is wrong or a defect, is that you can nurture and love and support that child while they navigate, that you can't protect them from it. And that is really hard, without proper support and understanding, for dads to accept that I can't take this away. And then there's we are. We catastrophize it as dads quite often. So we're already a few steps ahead. When you get that diagnosis or when you get told it looks like you're going that way, mom will think what does my child need right now to get through this. How can I show them they're still special, I love them, everything's going to be okay and you can do that in the moment to a degree dad's already.
Speaker 2:Women are just fabulous. Oh yeah, absolutely, and and I don't dispute that, um, whereas dad's more practical because we're practically minded how do I? How they're going to have a job, how they're going to get married, how they're going to have their own house they're already miles ahead. So they're living in what might not ever happen, but it could, and mums are living in what's actually happening right now. And that's where that divide is, because you're looking at it from two different perspectives. Nobody sits them down, helps them understand that. You've got to try and see where the other person is and find that common ground, so they just stay divided, which they said that 87. You can see where that comes from because they will be seeing it incredibly differently. They will be looking at it through a different lens and then we've got a system that will tell you that if you don't see it the same way as other other one, then you're wrong and parents are not given. So, for example, we designed a toolkit on how to navigate these conversations, how to start to see each other's point of view on what you see.
Speaker 2:And again, it's very sexist sometimes. People don't always like it, but we are told we're the discipline as the male and in some relationships that's the way it will fit. Do you want to try and discipline someone that's a teenager of autism? Good luck, because you will never do it in the way society tells you. You discipline a teenager.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work, because one, because I said so, you've got ADHD or autism because I said so means nothing. If they think that what you've done is unfair, that that sense of justice just comes through in abundance and they will challenge you on it. So if you say and I've got, like I said, one one of my sons, there's days, don't get me wrong. I don't claim to be father of the year and get this right all the time, because I don't and there'll be days where I'll catch myself getting it wrong and I try and correct it, or there'll be days where I realize it much later on. I've got to go and apologize. And that's one bit of advice I always give to parents is you're not going to get it right all the time, but you do that repair. You go back three hours later and say I'm really sorry, I was wrong I overreacted then yeah so children that are apologized to are better at apologizing?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, and we have to mirror a lot of those behaviors, but it's very different, because you do have to justify why you're doing this. Someone that sees the world a little bit differently, particularly adhd, and you know this. Um and I've got it again with sarah, because I said so, or you can't do that or you won't be able to do that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'll show you exactly that then becomes oh, is that a challenge?
Speaker 2:well, I can show you that I can it just goes like this yeah, so you can see whether so you've got one parent who is trying to parent them in the way that they know, which might be the way they're parented other children that are not neurodiverse, or it might be the way that they were parented and then you might have the other one and this is not criticism, and anybody listening to this please don't think it is Then you've got the other parent who is looking at it that yes, my child is a little bit different, or the rules are different, and because of that you sometimes don't discipline at all. So you've got one parent that will let everything slide and one parent that's trying to parent in the way that they know or the way that they've done it with the other children, which is you discipline to a degree, whatever your choice of discipline is, and it doesn't work. So you're con. You've got conflict with the child that you're trying to discipline. That child will know that if I go to that parent, we're going to end up like this. So I'll just go to the easy target and then you created that device. And that's not just neurodiversity, that's parenting in general, but it's just they'll be aware of that. And the other bit that I like to highlight, based on what you've said, is whether it is mood disorder.
Speaker 2:Adhd worked with bipolar schizophrenia, children that are sort of adolescents into teenage years, and I say the same thing that when you've got two parents in the house and anybody that wants to correct me, then that's fine. This is just my opinion, but from the research and the studies that I've done, they will have that person. One of you will be their person and the other one will be jealous that they're not the person, but then also the one who's always the person will be a little bit resentful that they're always the person and that creates a divide. So you're that one that they come to. And if they are getting angry and and again, my son might have this conversation a lot because his mood disorder that he was diagnosed with it's called um ied, so it's intermittent diagnosed with it's called IED, so it's intermittent explosive disorder. So it's that not to a hundred gone, no in between and that, mixed with sort of ADHD, caused lots of outbursts through adolescence, teenage years.
Speaker 2:Those outbursts were never at his mum, those outbursts were at his dad, and it was when I started to understand it and I spoke to a psychologist and we got him in private psychiatric support to get a diagnosis and get medication. And he said to me that you know that and this is where I started to really look into this is that they pick that person, but they pick the person that they know can call. They pick the person that you can see the worst of me and you won't walk away. You'll always be there and I can show that to you.
Speaker 2:And sometimes that won't be their partner, it won't be anybody else. It will be that parent or somebody that was there that was able to give them that safe space, even if it's something they grow out of. For them to understand themselves and to start to see who they are, they've got to push, they've got to be challenging, but as that parent that's being, we never had it in my house, but I work with families where you've got the violent tendencies yeah yeah, they'll be the one that gets lashed out on and it's why is it always me?
Speaker 2:why don't they do this to you? We don't explain that, they don't understand it. So, again, that divide is being created because your experience of our child with neurodiversity is very different from mine, because we sit on different sides of it and without that communication in the middle and you do create resentment, you create that divide and you will have the mother who wants to protect and the dad who wants to prepare and those two don't always work and with a child that's neurodiverse. So you can see why we have the statistics. The sad thing is we could reduce that with work and, I think, the financial costs. If that's the way that everything always seems to be taken forward, to do something about it, we have to look at the financial costs, that breakdown in family and the implications to that.
Speaker 2:It would be well worth having that service and that could just help understanding, even if it's just a few. There's. There is third sector. I work with third sectors that do this parenting education to help them understand. But it should be the minute you get that diagnosis. Here's a two-hour workshop that I think every parent should just do and it helps you understand both sides of the parenting conversation, but also your child and what autism is. We don't do that. We don't explain what autism is to parents. We just tell them that their child's got it and that's it, end of conversation.
Speaker 1:There's no scaffolding round about it whatsoever, there's no false diagnosis, and I'm sure there are some trusts out there that that do model this better. But certainly for ourselves, um, within the Channel Islands, I know that there's no post-diagnostic support. There's no explanation as to you know all of the things that that you can actually benefit from. So for for years, we, when we first moved to Guernsey we've been here for nine years now we moved here Jodie had that kind of first year of settling in and then a terrible year at school in year three, was moved into special needs school. For year four, nobody told me until she was going into secondary school which so year four, year five, year six, so three, four for four years that we could have been receiving disability living allowance, for example, oh, or carer's allowance, which here is about £232 a week.
Speaker 1:But we struggled financially but nobody ever told us that we would be entitled to that. There was no person that could just sit down, come to the house and say, right, so we've classified Jodie as being Leland disabled and as a result of that, this is what we can do. This is, you know, the whole map of things that you might be able to access. This is what might help. I mean, there are certainly third sector organisations and unfortunately, it just seems to be the way, now that those organisations are expected to bridge a gap that the services, because they're so overwhelmed, are unable to meet. Yeah, I mean, I certainly don't know what the answer is. I think there's an issue, as the first step isn't it?
Speaker 2:I think the fraud sector picking up is across the board I think. All sorts of services. Again, you know your background midwifery. We see it there that there's so much of that getting sort of picked up. So it's in certain areas you can see that people fall through the net. In other areas there's no net. In this conversation there is. There's nothing and that there that understanding. Again, some people that might judge and I've gone past it. You know, like when your child has a meltdown in test scores, I don't care anymore yeah, you know somebody wants to carry on, um, but you know that judgment that people face, people will judge the ones that don't understand always.
Speaker 2:Well, um, it is more expensive having a child that's neurodiverse. It is facts. Because things are different, there is different needs and dietary requirements are completely different. Ballgame, um, and people close because it's got to be. You'll buy things and it's got the wrong tag, wrong label, wrong size, wrong scent wrong smell yeah um, so so it is.
Speaker 2:It is different and you can only go to certain places and even the the blue badges that you get for parking again to someone that's not been in this situation won't understand. If you get to Tesco's and the only parking space is right at the back of Tesco's and it's raining, good luck, yeah, trying to get that child into Tesco's, because that meltdown has started before you even start your show and then you've got to try. You know, and it's people again, you can't. Ignorance is probably the unfair um, but you know, they just don't understand um, and I don't want to look at it because I, like I said, I'm very positive as much as I can and that there is ways around a lot of it.
Speaker 2:Um, it takes a lot of work, it's a lot of learning, it is, it is a new skill that you have to learn. If you think you understand how to parent a child and then you add additional layers and, like I said, you're starting all over again and things are different and then you've got to find that balance. If you've got more children for example, I've got children that are not neurodiverse you can't have it that they get away with everything, because the other ones will see it and you start a rebellion oh, yeah, yeah that's a coup, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you've got to be very careful how you let certain things slide. And and the only again, this is just what we do. All of my children, even ones that are not neurodiverse I've got things that work and things that don't. You know, some of them have got lots of buttons and the other ones have got lots of fingers, and you know how certain things are going to do. So you strength-based parent.
Speaker 2:So there'll be things that, for example, one of my boys he loves going fishing. I know all of my boys they fish, they bite, right. They do lots of that sort of stuff in football, but one of them fishing, is everything it. They do lots of that sort of stuff in football, but one of them, fishing, is everything. It's his place where he goes and he can just sort of switch off a little bit. He's only 12, but that's his place. He's literally the sign of gone fishing. That's him.
Speaker 2:Now, if he did something that I've maybe got to punish, but it wasn't the end of the world. I'm probably not going to take away fashion. I might take away his Xbox, because it's a bit of a punishment to put something into the wall. Or I might take away his phone, but stopping him going out probably isn't the best way to manage the situation. And I've got another boy, exactly. I've got another boy that maybe don't let him go out because he could take it or leave it, but he'd rather be on Xbox with his mates.
Speaker 2:So you learn how to do it and that's from our point of view. When we've done that, the other boys know that if they're being punished, if I might have got paid if I didn't do my chores, I might have got punished differently. But then if I didn't do something else, I really got punished differently than they did. Because it's all to do with understanding. Because I think when you just have this hard line of this is what and this again is my take on parenting and people won't agree and that's fine, I know that. But I don't believe in discipline in the traditional way, because whether my children are neurodiverse or not, if I am disciplined and everyone thinks being an infantry soldier, you know that's the way it'd be. You know, wait till your dad gets home. I've mentioned sarah's irish in my house. Just wait till your mom gets home. Very, very different. Um, but that sort of discipline line of this is what we do and this is how it works.
Speaker 2:I think all that creates is fear yeah fear of crossing that line, and I didn't ever want that. I wanted if my children did something monumentally bad, really, really messed up. It should be not a case of what is my dad going to say. It should be I'll ring my dad and he's either going to know what to do or he'll help me figure it out, and if I'm ever the other side of that conversation I'll be heartbroken. But that comes from creating self-discipline. Even children with neurodiversity can be caught.
Speaker 2:Self-discipline, you know. So it's not. This is the lines, because some of adhd you tell me what that line is, they're going to stand on it, they're going to dance on it and set on fire. So you can't have that sort of strong line. It's a case of if I teach you self-discipline, you take that everywhere and you will know right from wrong. So I can't prevent who you're friends with and I don't always believe in people that are bad influences. I just think that you're allowed to be influenced badly and there's a difference. We all had friends. I think that maybe would have done things that if you know right from wrong to a degree you won't do it. Sometimes it's easy and we've got to work on that.
Speaker 2:But self-discipline is your own standards and what you're willing to accept and your non-negotiables, which will follow you into adulthood if you have that discipline line. All that happens is when they make mistakes, they won't come back. They won't come and help you fix it, and that's the bit that worries me. So, by having that understanding with my boys, is they know everybody's sort of non-negotiables and their punishment is slightly differently. And that's just what works for me, because if you've got a neurodiverse child and one that isn't, there will be times where you'll see hang on a minute. I would be grounded for that, you know, or I would, even I would never. I'd never speak to you like that in a million years. But what you don't see is the adh brain that if you shout at them and make them feel bad, they're just going to shout back. Yeah, you know so. So it's like, oh my god, I can't believe they spoke to you like that, but it's because they don't always understand that. That's just. They're just mirroring what you're doing yeah, yeah it's just like tennis.
Speaker 2:They're just playing it back, um, and when you show it, they just show it and it just goes up and up and up and it's so. It is difficult and with those big emotions and, again, for any parent. This is just my opinion, it's what's worked for me and I know it's worked for other parents because I teach it to a degree. But when you do have that overwhelm and they are having that meltdown, they are shouting and screaming.
Speaker 2:I don't believe you should discipline that. I think it's wrong. I think that you've just got to sit in it with them. You know, and it is that or whatever parent is doing it, and if you can get a mixture, fantastic. If you're separated, you're going to be doing it on your own at some point, but it's to sit in it with them and say I know this is bad, it feels terrible, I'm here, I ain't going, yeah, so sit, you have that cuddle and you help them because they've got to learn to navigate those overwhelms and those overlords. When you punish it, it doesn't do that, it just puts fuel on the fire, something and actually there's a lot of.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've seen the hand brain model, um, and so you're never going to rationalize, you're never going to while somebody's in that fight or flight big emotion response. So it's, it's futile really, isn't it? It's just causing you more stress if you can just learn to try and calm the situation and then have a rational discussion afterwards it's like the details.
Speaker 2:You eat. Things do, do they? No, I mean, I think you might you know, maybe you've just caught the end of it, but when we had our eldest son, you had Supernanny. I don't know if you remember Supernanny. Yeah, I had so many arguments with people because I just never bought into so much of that, but I think it worked in maybe certain areas, because they were brought in at the extreme end, whereas most of my work is you don't want to get there, no, so it's probably unfair. But the one thing that I I always pushed back on and I fell out with so many professionals over the years was I never believed in naughty steps. I don't believe in naughty steps and I personally don't believe in getting sent to your room when you're just overwhelmed, because that's all that is a lot of the time is. I don't know what these emotions are and it comes out in a bad way, because I think that all that sets the precedent for is that when you're at your worst, I don't want you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:My love is conditional. My love is conditional that when you're bad, don't come near me, because then again, when they're adults and they're gone and they've got problems in their life, they won't. And if you don't want that relationship with your child, that's fine. Like people say, you can't be friends with your kids. I live in a front house law. I live with all my best friends. I'm very, very fortunate. Um, there's.
Speaker 2:It's difficult to navigate that at times, um, and one of my boys, like he calls me, mate um, and people sort of raise an eyebrow. He is, I'm his dad and there's a line and sometimes I've got to explain to him when we're going to have a conversation which hat I'm wearing. Um, but if you do that groundwork with them at a certain age, particularly before they get to adolescence, then they pull away 14, 15 every child does. They pull away from you. We try and hold on to them and I personally don't think that that's the best way to do. I think we've got to let go and if we put the right framework and scaffolding that you said in place before that, then when they pull away at 14 15, you get the relationship that you wanted. When they come back at 18. It's just what you want that to look like at 18 is everybody's different. That, again, it's quite personal. You want that to look like at 18 is everybody's different, and again, it's quite personal. I want them to be close and friends. I want to have some relationships. My biggest success and the legacy that I think I've got it with my eldest too and I hope I have it with the rest of my boys everything else, if I went on to achieve phenomenal things in my life which I'm not saying I will, but if I did my legacy. My biggest accomplishment will be if my children want to hang out with me when they don't have to. Yeah, if, if they want me.
Speaker 2:And two of my boys from my 18 and my soon-to-be 15 year old went to see Liam Gallagher in concert um a few months ago in Manchester and you know we went and it was dad. You want to go? No, it was. It wasn't like I'm going to take you, it was dad. You want to go? And it wasn't like I'm going to take you, it was Dad. Do you want to go and see the Angola?
Speaker 1:Because everybody's sort of big fans of Oasis. They want to experience that with you, not through a bit and bite my back.
Speaker 2:That's success and we do. We go to festivals as a family and two years ago we were in a field in Cheshire at Carfest, which is a festival Chris Evans does to raise money for children, and it was the faithless experience. So it was the original faithless. You know, god is a DJ from the 90s in a field in the pouring rain with all of my children who glossed it. You know, those are the moments, you know, that really matter to me, but that measurement of success is when they're older. Have I done so when? Matter to me, that's, but that measurement of success is when they're older. Have I done so when we look at new parents?
Speaker 2:We've not had chance to really talk about it because it's been a wonderful conversation, but we didn't do the early stuff, but the one message I always like to get across we think you've got to have it all figured out. And, trust me, I'm telling you all this. I'm obviously telling you the positive stuff and there is negatives. Every parent has difficult days, but we think we've got to know it. When they're born and we've got to know it all by six weeks, six months, you don't, our children will tell us what they need from us, the only thing we have to do is learn how to listen. That's the bit, and that will come over time. So it's between in the womb, because I teach dads to talk to baby in the womb and read and interact with them and play with them so they kick back, so you can start that bond early. But for dads, particularly the work that I do, and for all parents from that pregnancy up to that 14, 15 stage, you've got all that time and there'll be bits that you get it wrong and there'll be bits where they they might not want to interact with you and then they go through phases where mommy is everything and then they don't want to know mommy, they want to know daddy, and then daddy's flavor of the month and they switch back and forth and there'll be times where you miss them and you think they don't care about you. They're shaping themselves, they're literally polishing into a diamond and they have to bounce between different things to do that. But once they pull away and then they come back. So you've got 15 years, really, in my opinion, to build that relationship and have that interaction with them.
Speaker 2:We only have small children for four years. Try and make the most of it. Don't think you're going to get it right all the time. You're going to make mistakes. Be honest about them. Accept the fact that you get it wrong. Try and invest as much time as you can into them. Um, in that early stage it's difficult with life and working and stuff gets in the way. But after that you've got all those years to sort of build that relationship. We're in a rush. We're in a rush to think that we've got to have it all figured out and we don't.
Speaker 2:And my son asked me the other day, my 18 year old. He asked me a question and I'm very good at unsolicited advice as a dad. You, I'll give them a half an hour lecture. I think they're probably getting to these days now where they pick what they ask, because if it's something that I'm interested in, they're just getting a sit down voice. I'll tell you a story and I said something I can't think what it was and he said Dad, can I ask you a question?
Speaker 2:He said when you were my age, were you this wise? Not even close, god, it is experience. It's the same as parenting. You learn these things by doing it time and time again. And it's with experience, and it's sometimes with age and, without being arrogant, I'd like to think I've always been fairly intelligent not the most intelligent person in the world, don't claim to be, but fairly intelligent and had my views on the world. But that wisdom and knowledge comes with time, you know, and I think it's the same.
Speaker 2:You know, if we could all go back to having a newborn baby, we'd probably do certain parts of it differently, but we can't. You know, we did the best at the time and I think that it's the same when you've got children with neurodiversity. We're always judging our own worst critic as parents, and I think we're quite harsh on ourselves and it's most of the time. You're just doing your best as you can, and if that sometimes looks like chicken nuggets for breakfast, well, that's chicken nuggets, it's just. It's the way it is.
Speaker 2:Um, and the last thing I'd say on that is social media as good as it is, because it gave me the platform where all these conversations started, um, and I wouldn't be doing the work that I'm doing, that I love, if it hadn't been for starting on social media, um, so there is a positive in that way, but it's very dangerous in in that way that we think so much about children and protecting them from social media. But parents can just be as damaged because you're looking at everybody else getting it right, um, or you're looking at what's going to be the other way. Now is everybody else saying how terrible it is. You know, there seems to be an orbit in the middle, which is where most of us live yeah is in that gray area.
Speaker 2:You know there's not enough representation of what the gray area looks like and the mundane to a degree it's either the oh my god, this is so difficult and it's so awful. And always remember that when you're having those conversations about how difficult it is and to have a child in general or a child that's got neurodiversity is, just imagine what that feels like to hear. Yeah, because they will. And if you're putting it on your social media and then they're on social media and that's awful. And I'm not saying don't do it, you know. Just, you know being mindful. So again it's I've tried to my children not really in my social media, um, and anything I do talk about, we talk about it, and particularly my out the story about my son. We've had that conversation a lot. I share what he's allowed me to and I don't share anything else and I try and look at my view of that situation because that's okay for me to share. But just be mindful that if you're saying how difficult it is, that you know they're hearing it and that inner voice that we have is the unheard little boy, little girl that we were when we were children and that never goes away and sometimes we just tap into that. You know there'll be something that happens and you'll remember how you felt and, whether you're neurodiverse or not, there was times where we, our emotions, weren't met. You know we talk about childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences. It looks like it's a criticism all the time. Everybody goes through stuff. It's just acknowledging the fact that it shapes who we are, positively and negatively. It's not a criticism of your parents that they got a divorce and, yes, that's unfortunate. But it impacted on me too as that child that went through it, and that's not saying you were wrong, it's just this was my experience of it. Yes, we lost grandma and I was very close to grandma. That's not anybody's fault, it's just that's what happened and it impacted on me. Or I was bullied at school or I lost. We lost that dog. That was my best. Whatever it is, there's lots of different things that our emotional needs are not met and we're impacted on as children.
Speaker 2:That goes back to the last point that I wanted to make. That you sort of referenced is that when you've gone through this as childhood and then you're trying to navigate those same waters, it is very triggering. It does bring back a lot of your own experiences and that can. It can be fuel and but it can also be very upsetting because it's the. I remember how that made me feel. It makes me feel that way again and you become that inferior, complex towards challenging authority, or it just gives you that there's no way my baby is going to feel like I did 25 years ago and it will push you on. But with that you're using negative energy as a fuel and at a point you pay a price for that and I think it's again.
Speaker 2:That's the bit we don't necessarily hold hands enough for parents is that whatever you're using to fight the system for your child, it's going to come out of the tank somewhere along the way and you've got to find a way to put something back into it. And yeah, again, we don't. We can call it self-care, call it what you want. You've got to top up that time to be able to sort of keep going and pushing forward, especially when neurodiverse people don't sleep as well.
Speaker 2:So there's broken sleep, there's lots of trying to keep them occupied, there's lots of oh my, we sit there at breakfast time and me and sarah and we say, oh god, what we're going to cook tonight because you've got all. It's like a restaurant in my eyes. You've got to take orders, because you know that if you cook spaghetti bolognese, three of them don't eat it, and if you did Hunter's chicken, one of them won't touch barbecue sauce with cheese on the same bit of chicken, and so you've got to sit and navigate it and it's exhausting sometimes. So all of this it is it's not negativity, it's just reality, but it is a little bit challenging. And, yeah, just try and be as kind as you possibly can to yourself, because parenting in general is very, very difficult.