Unlocking Your Child's Potential: Parenting Strategies for Neurodivergent Kids with Elaine Taylor-Klaus

What if adjusting your parenting approach could unlock your neurodivergent child's full potential?

This week I am delighted to be joined by Elaine Taylor-Klaus from Impact Parents as we explore the unique needs of neurodivergent, or "neuro-spicy," children.

Elaine breaks down the differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent brains, addressing conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, learning disabilities, trauma, and autism.

We discuss how these differences impact executive function and why it's crucial for parents to adapt their expectations and strategies to support their children effectively.

All in all it's a wonderful conversation which I have no doubt will help and give insight to many people.

You can find Impact Parents everywhere
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And definitely check out their amazing "Parenting with impact"  podcast which is an amazing resource to all parents of neurodivergent/neurospicy kids.

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Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic     

Playing us out; "Make a break" by Nom Fabrique

Transcript

Peter: 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, peter Lap. That, as always, would be me. This is the podcast for the 23rd of June 2024. And you know, day before music means you have a guest on.

Peter: 0:12

Today I am talking to Elaine Taylor-Klaus from Impact Parents, and we are talking neurodivergence and parenting neurodivergent kids, or neuro-spicy as Elaine likes to call them. We're talking everything to do with neurodivergence, as in. What is it actually? Is it just ADHD or autism? Is it more than that? Does it include depression, anxiety, trauma, all that sort of stuff? At what age can you find, can you find out, can you figure out that your child might not fit the mold with regards to what society expects of them and how they process information and all that sort of stuff? How can you make life a little bit easier? What are the treatment options? Do we throw medication at everything and all that sort of thing? You're going to love this conversation. Elaine is an amazing person to talk to, so, without further ado, here we go you. So what would you say? The difference is between raising a neurodiverse child and a neurotypical child.

Elaine: 1:40

It's a really interesting question because what came to me, as I hear you say that, is that I think a lot of parents start off raising assuming that they have neurotypical kids and then only figure out in the process that they have kids who are not neurotypical.

Elaine: 1:57

I like to call them neurospicy Technically it's neurodivergent, but I like neuro spicy, um and so. So I think the first place to look in this arena is um, like you know, you know how we live in a heteronormative world, right? Well, we also live in a neurotypical, normative world. We live in a world that is designed for neurotypical brains, where people expect things to happen sequentially and logically and um, and there are expectations for how people should think and process and and receive and remember information, and the majority of people can do that the majority of the time, the majority of brains and then there are what I would call neuro spicy or neurodivergent brains. Neurodiversity is a term. What that means is that all brains are different and, you know, I think we may discover 20 years from now that maybe there is no neurotypical that maybe we're all range of neuro spicy, but right now there is.

Elaine: 3:05

You know, if you look at what qualifies as a neuro divergent brain, you're probably looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of the population in some way or another, whether it's ADHD, anxiety, depression, learning disabilities, trauma, autism, like all of these different ways that people are, their brains are wired, means that they process information differently, right and um, and that does include trauma and attachment. And so I mean, in some ways, we're all kind of living in a traumatized world post -covid, and so everybody's got a little bit of. We've all reacted to it differently. Our brains shift as we develop. Neuroplasticity is real, so our brains change. Sometimes that is a healthy, progressive change, but sometimes events happen in our life that are not so healthy. That's where trauma comes in.

Elaine: 4:02

So most people let's start with the assumption, for the sake of argument, that most people have a neurotypical brain and then there's the subset of people who have a neurodivergent brain. I'm going to argue that that subset is significantly higher than the majority would expect, probably almost half. And when you have a neurodivergent or a neuro-spricey brain, what that means is that people are experiencing a lot of areas of executive function in the brain differently. They're processing information differently. They're receiving it, they're communicating it, they're holding it, they're remembering it in a somewhat different fashion from the neurotypical brain. So let's bring it back to parenting little ones, right? So what that means for parenting is that our kids may be well. First of all, they may be developmentally delayed in some aspects of their development, and when we're talking about the brain, there are a lot of assumptions.

Elaine: 5:06

So we're not talking about brain delayed in terms of intelligence here. We're not speaking at all about whether someone is intelligent or not. Intelligence has absolutely nothing to do with this realm of neurodiversity that we're talking about. You can have some of the most brilliant people on the planet. Very often some of the most brilliant people on the planet are also quite neuro-spicy. Think the absent-minded professor Albert Einstein. You get a sense. So we're not talking about intelligence here.

Elaine: 5:42

We're talking about the executive functions of the brain and those, the parts of the brain. It's the frontal lobe, it's the part of the brain that makes us human, and it's the part of the brain that allows us to think, plan, to feel, think, plan and act and to, and. So there are a lot of different frameworks that people use for defining executive function. But at the end of the day, if you think about it in terms of my ability to regulate my thoughts, feelings and actions effectively in a developmentally appropriate way. So when someone is able to regulate or manage their thoughts, feelings and actions, they're there. That's what we would consider a typical brain. When people struggle with it, when they're delayed in some aspects of it, that kind of qualifies as neurotypical. So that was a lot of framework to answer the question, right. So I'll come back to what's. What's different about parenting these kids? Um, is that our expectations for how they're gonna behave may be different from the way that their brain guides them to behave. So go ahead.

Peter: 7:01

So so, at what age? Because this is because so you have to. It comes down to every child being, being an individual in some way anyways right, and I think every parent, definitely every parent who has more than one child will will probably say something on the line of, yeah, child one is completely different from child two. Yeah, and you know, I know there's a lot of, you know, second child syndrome, but every child is is different from from every person is an individual, right. I think we all exactly wide world accept this now.

Peter: 7:31

We're not being jackasses about this anymore. Every person, uh, is different, but at what age? At what age? Yeah, at what age do you? Because that's a tricky one, because when you say Maybe it's not. Maybe it's not tricky at all.

Elaine: 7:48

There you go. So I'm a mom in what I like to call an ADHD plus plus family of five now family of six because one of my kids is married and we didn't know when I started out as a mom that we were all neurodivergent and it started becoming clear. It was almost like one by one, like dominoes. It's like this one's diagnosed and this one's diagnosed. It's not all the same thing, um, but my first kid started struggling with self-regulation for lack lack of a better word at two weeks old.

Peter: 8:29

Right.

Elaine: 8:30

So there was always something about that kid that was complex and difficult and struggling, and whether it's metabolic or neurologic or some combination of the two, I knew from a very early age, and there are many parents out there you know we talk about do you have an easy baby or not, right? Well, sometimes a not so easy baby may be a clue that there's something going on that's making it hard for even an infant to adhere to what's expected of them.

Elaine: 9:04

When I was by the time, my third kid was coming along, and so now I have a six and a half year old who's been diagnosed for a couple of years, my third kid I knew in utero that that something was going on, that this kid was way more hyperactive, and by that point I mentioned to you earlier I was a pregnancy yoga teacher, so I spent a lot of time with a lot of pregnant people, even during the years that I was pregnant and my fetus was moving more than my peers were.

Elaine: 9:39

He was doing somersaults in there, he could knock things off my belly. He was doing somersaults in there, he could, like, knock things off my belly. And so by the time he was born I already knew I had that hyperactive tendency, because I'd been educated, I was aware of it, and so he was diagnosed much earlier than other kids might be, because I knew what I was looking at, I recognized it when I saw it, whereas I think with a lot of first kids you spend a lot of years wondering or being told well, it's within the range of normal, it's within the range of typical, and so you kind of wait for your kid to grow out of it. And the thing about a neuro spicy kid is that they're not growing out of it. They need to learn to understand it and manage it, because it's not going away. And the shift for that happens by focusing on us as the parents.

Peter: 10:29

They need to learn to understand it and manage it, because it's not going away and the shift for that happens by focusing on us as the parents. Yeah, because that's really interesting, because that is kind of where I was going, because for some reason, two-year-old and then diagnosed at six and all that sort of stuff seems to pop up a lot when you look at especially adhd and all sorts of, because it's and we'll get back to the, the trauma, if you don't mind the trauma side of things later, because that is fascinating to me, because that of course implies that it everybody can become neurodivergent at any stage right, yes, that's absolutely true if you add anxiety and depression to it, because a lot of I think a lot of up until like four or five years ago, a lot of people were happily pottering around the world Maybe ignorance is bliss, and all that sort of stuff.

Peter: 11:15

Then COVID hit and all of a sudden everybody was scared and some people never really found a healthy way out of that. But you know, for now, sticking to the kitchen, because that was kind of what my initial instinct was, is that the, when you were talking, the parent can usually tell way before any clinician is actually capable of administering any test, because the test is designed to be. I'm not sure when the last say neurodivergent, but ADHD test, for instance, was invented, but I'm guessing it was a while ago.

Elaine: 11:58

There's actually no test. I mean there's now guessing it was a while ago. There's actually no test. I mean there's now new technologies that we're beginning. I think we will have quote a test but it's actually a diagnosis of elimination, where a lot of mental health conditions and brain-based conditions are diagnosis of elimination and so they're complicated and hard to kind of ferret out what's really going on, and so absolutely're complicated and hard to kind of ferret out what's really going on.

Elaine: 12:20

And so absolutely part of what happens in our community is that we have parents who've been dealing with complex issues. I call them complex kids that's the term that I like to use. They struggle with some aspect of life learning, behavior, emotion management or social issues and parents have been dealing with complex kids for years before they start asking for help, because as a parent you don't know what you don't know and so you assume you're learning it all and you don't know when there's a problem, until it becomes really hard to deal with or until you start seeing your peers kids not dealing with the same thing you're dealing with. So it takes most of the time by the time people have come to my community and we have people in our community from age four to 44, parents of kids age four to 44. Most of the time they've been dealing with the issues they've been dealing with for upwards of five years yeah, like a long time Now. It's very common for kids, specifically you mentioned, with ADHD, to be diagnosed around six or seven years old.

Elaine: 13:21

That's probably the most common time, because what happens is they're getting into school age years, they're going to school and they're not able to sit still and perform as expected of them in an environment that was designed for factory workers. Yes, right, so it makes perfect sense that these kids would not be well suited to a classic school environment. So we do see a lot of of early diagnosis and then and that's a particularly with boys, the girls it's going to be a little later, because girls mask it really well, because girls have been raised to be good and to be attentive to other people's needs, and so they try really hard to to behave. Um, they have a tendency to be a little less hyperactive, but I think more what's more important is that they are trying so hard to be good that, um, what you see is with girls is it starts off looking a lot like anxiety, and it's not until later that you begin to see that what's underlying the anxiety is actually attention, regulation issues, self-regulation issues. All of what we're really talking about is self-regulation.

Peter: 14:34

Yeah, because it's. Because that is the more as, as you know, a relatively neurotypical person uh, I'm not sure what I am, but I like to fail. Yeah, exactly, but it is the more you look into this as as from the, from the outside looking in, and you just, you know, you do your google bits and all that sort of stuff the discrepancy between when girls are diagnosed versus when boys are diagnosed is is huge, right, and this is the okay. Admittedly, most of that will probably be down to people like me, the patriarchy, you know, um, that, that type of thing, because because medicine is set up in that well and medicine is all.

Elaine: 15:18

Yeah, we're only now. We didn't know until sari sold and wrote her book in 1991 I think there was there was no acknowledgement that girls even had adhd yeah yeah, and we're you know to some extent that even the girls had depression like there's.

Elaine: 15:33

There was this sense that, um, yeah, there's, there's not a lot of research, there's more. Now we're now seeing I watched something on social media today. It was a neurologist or a nurse psychiatrist talking about, you know, adhd, and she was saying that the prevailing myth is that it gets better for men as they get older and that it gets better as it get older. Then it gets better as it gets older, and what she said is for men that's probably true, because they get more and more supports and accommodations in place. For women, it's the opposite, because at some point they start getting more and more hormonal changes that make it untenable to deal with. So there's lots ahead for us to understand about it in terms of research and the differences between boys and girls, men and women.

Elaine: 16:25

But the bottom line here is that when you don't know what you're looking at, it's really easy to evaluate a behavior and judge it as a character flaw, as a moral diagnosis. It's really easy to see a very out of control, hyperactive kid or hyperactive kid and say he's out of control instead of this kid's got so much energy Right, and so how we look at it determines how we respond to it, and so part of what happens with neuro spicy kids is because parents don't understand and aren't educated about it. And I'm not judging parents, that's.

Peter: 17:04

It's just not, we don't do any parent training, much less neurodiversity.

Elaine: 17:07

Parent training um, the world doesn't. We do, that's what we do, um. But because they don't know what they're looking at, there's a tendency to interpret these behaviors as wrong or bad, and then the kids begin to internalize I'm bad. And then you've got this kind of shame spiral that you're dealing with on top of the neurodivergence that compounds the neurodiversity. So it's complicated stuff, which is why I'm so happy to be in this conversation with you, because the more that we can raise awareness for parents to just be on the lookout for neurodiversity, neuro-spicy kids, that not every kid processes information the same way and that's okay. Our job is to meet them where they are and help them in the way that works for them, not try to have them conform to our society.

Peter: 18:06

When we can do that, we can reduce a lot of the stigma and shame that these kids are being raised with yeah, that is an excellent point because I remember, you know, I've been a postpartum coach for years and I've worked with many parents that had more than one child. So I remember parents that are, say, my age, gen X and I don't know if anybody listening is Gen X, but you know we were raised a certain way. There was a lot more shouting happening in our households than in millennial households, or avoidance, yeah, exactly. But the whole sitting out, sitting doing the homework, and everybody knows that image of the boy sitting at the kitchen table doing math and the parents sitting there and it's five times three and the kid is, I don't know, 18 or 21.

Peter: 18:57

Not a silly kid. And the mom just goes, it's 15. Okay, and the dad asked the question, it was five times three, and the guy and the boy goes I don't know 12. And they're like we literally just told you, right, that's that type of that's yeah, how we used to do our homework, ladies and gentlemen, right, yes, let's beat it into you as if your brain is going to receive it.

Elaine: 19:18

Brain stables yes exactly.

Peter: 19:22

I think it's changing a bit now. I think so, thank goodness. At what age, would you say? Because for me the fascinating thing is that you know when you say parents already know before the age of six or 13 or or, or whatever it is, at what age would you say? Okay, it is useful for parents to start looking into. Hey, maybe my child processes information slightly differently from, uh, from what I expected, from how I expected, or from how I process information because of and I spoke about this for someone before they said there's a very strong genetic component to neurodiversity yes so there's maybe something to consider for the parent that says, hey, wait a minute, if I don't really fit in with the way this information, if I don't process information, say that maybe my child won't either.

Peter: 20:20

But at what age, would you say? Actually, instead of shouting at the child first which is the go-to reaction for a lot of parents, or at least saying there's something wrong with my child, let me put it that way Maybe it's a good idea to start looking. Hey, maybe if I go to impact parents and I can learn some tips of some tools to how to manage this, I will actually get better results. So I don't add to that. Like you said, especially with girls, yeah, you don't re-traumatize.

Peter: 20:50

No, you don't re-traumatize and force them to mask their behavior and their personality and that sort of thing.

Elaine: 20:58

So there are a lot of ways I could go with that question. It's a great. It kind of tees up a great conversation. What jumps at me is that so our goal as parents is to meet them where they are and help them grow from there, whatever that is. To meet our kids where they are, and it doesn't matter what your kid's dealing with whether it's a physical issue, an emotional issue, a non-issue, it doesn't matter right? Our job is to meet them where they are, help them understand themselves well enough to learn to manage themselves. Our job is to raise adults right.

Elaine: 21:39

So we want to elevate their self-awareness from a very early age. We tend to do it really well with toddlers and then they get into school age years and we forget all that fostering of independence we were doing. So our job is to meet them where they are. How do we meet them where they are? The question I invite parents to ask themselves all the time I think it's my favorite question is when we encounter a behavior that is frustrating, annoying, dysregulating, reactive, you know any of these things where, when we find ourselves scratching our head or going, why can't they just? Or any of those we teach parents to ask themselves the question is it naughty or neurological?

Peter: 22:21

Right.

Elaine: 22:23

Because just that framework shifts from a perspective of judgment. It's naughty. They must be doing this. They're doing this to me. How can they say this to me? How can they speak to me that way?

Elaine: 22:39

When we shift to, is it neurological? We can step out of judgment, get curious and access compassion and then we can say, oh, they're struggling with this. So instead of how can you speak to me that way, we can shift to he's having a hard time speaking respectfully right now. How can I help him with that? How can I help her with that? She's struggling to. What's an example? She's really struggling to talk to people she doesn't know well. How can I support her with that?

Elaine: 23:15

It's a different framework. It allows us to step out of this notion that there's something broken here and to step into the notion that they're struggling. Our job is to help them and sometimes we can start with that. And if we continue to see they need a lot of help in this way, then that's probably a good indication. They might need some evaluation, a diagnosis and some additional support. But for young kids especially when you're talking about ADHD, anxiety, some of these things the number one recommended treatment for the kids is for the parents to get training and support. It's parent interventions. It's not medication at all. It's you start by helping the parent understand what's going on so they can set appropriate expectations to the developmental ability of that child and work with the child in that capacity. That's where you start.

Peter: 24:15

Up to the age of six, there's nothing recommended other than parent training for most of these conditions we're talking about and, and that's the fascinating thing for me, because when I had a look at your website, you know, and, um, and it's, the website is, it's full of good stuff. So I will definitely, but it's, it's the, the, the. What is recommended treatment? The behavior therapy, only for kids six and under, but mainly the whole idea that it's actually the parents we mainly need to focus on, because there's fundamentally nothing wrong with the child. Exactly, the child is who the child is, as a little individual within itself and him and him herself with itself.

Elaine: 25:03

Um, well, and, and if I can add that there's nothing broken here that needs to be fixed right, and and I was interviewing somebody on my podcast yesterday okay and um, what she said she was she's talking about trying to teach neurotypicals to understand neurodiversity, and what she said is a relatively small effort on my part can bring out the best in them, and that's really what it's about.

Elaine: 25:31

Behavior therapy isn't about putting your kid in talk therapy at six years old. Behavior therapy is actually training the parent to create an accommodated environment that understands how the kid is functioning and sets the environment up for the kid to function at their best capacity. And that may be as simple as, instead of saying I told you three times, it's slowing down getting their attention and saying I'm going to ask you to do something. Are you ready? Okay, here's the one thing I want you to do Ready, go and let me know. You know like it's changing the way we interact with them, which we don't have a problem doing again when they're toddlers and we start feeling like we should be doing it differently as they get older. And we should be doing it differently, but that doesn't mean we should be doing it the way everybody else does.

Peter: 26:22

Yeah, and that is very much. Of course, that very much stems from the idea that you know when they start going to school and, like you said and this was an eye-opener for me as well I mean Gen X, again point this out middle-aged white guy, the most ignorant of all the generations, um, with the most confidence, yeah, but and entitlement too.

Elaine: 26:42

You guys have entitlement in spades.

Peter: 26:44

You're doing great on that hey, the patriarchy, it works for us. It doesn't really on a deeper level, but it's one of the most eye-opening things that I'm and I'm fairly well educated man. I've got my, my little PhD, in my pocket. Yes, it's when someone pointed out to me and I genuinely didn't notice it, you mentioned it earlier that schools are essentially there to produce factory workers. Yeah, that's how they started, and that to me was oh, now I understand why my schooling sucked for such a long time.

Elaine: 27:21

Yeah, and we haven't stepped out of that paradigm and we no longer live in a world that supports that. We're not doing a good job of teaching critical thinking skills in schools because we're trying to produce factory workers, which is really sad, because when we're talking about neurodiverse, neuro-spicy kids, these are kids with an extraordinary capacity for critical thinking and big picture thinking and making connections. And you know, when you flip the deficit to the strength and I believe, peter, that every strength over-applied becomes a deficit and every deficit has the capacity to be a strength overapplied becomes- a deficit and every deficit has the capacity to be a strength Right.

Elaine: 28:01

So when we can look at them without judgment, we can understand where are our strengths, where are our challenges, and we can play to the strengths and outsource the challenges. But we have to be willing to see it without judgment and and understand that we all need to process and learn information differently. But our schools aren't designed for that and it definitely makes it a harder, a steeper climb for parents of neuro-spicy kids, because not only are we trying to educate and raise our kids, but we're also often trying to fight the system that we're working within and that can get exhausting really, oh, yes, of course, and this is usually what I find.

Peter: 28:44

When I talk to anybody, almost on any subject, and to anybody I mean, I'm usually talking. If I'm talking with someone who is and I'll sound very ally-y, and I don't mean to be If I talk to anybody who's like a person of color, if I talk to anybody who is an active like feminist or neurodivergent, or someone who is disabled, anybody who doesn't form within the whole, like you said, heteronormal, middle-aged, white guy, sort of ballpark, you know, and almost everybody says to me at some stage that they are just so tired of explaining stuff to you know, jackasses like myself.

Elaine: 29:30

It's fundamentally what it boils down to you are a die. I'm going to take umbrage with that comment because you're not.

Peter: 29:38

But it's fundamentally, it's like you said. It's an exhausting thing.

Elaine: 29:42

It's exhausting.

Peter: 29:44

How can parents who kind of they figured it out at home, they're doing the best they can at home, they're working really well with their kids at home how can they go and convince, because most schools don't adapt Beautiful.

Elaine: 29:59

So I come from a coach approach. Everything I do, I do what I do because my kids were struggling and I was struggling raising them and when I discovered coaching, I became a significantly better parent, and it wasn't rocket science. So the secret to what we do at Impact Parents we were originally Impact ADHD. Now we've expanded to include Impact Parents to cover a lot of issues, not just ADHD is we teach coaching skills to parents neurodiversity-informed coaching skills. And because the coaching paradigm is an empowerment-based paradigm and it really works for people who are struggling with neuro-spicy issues, because our brains feel a little out of control. So we are seeking control and coaching is an empowerment-based modality. So that was a long explanation, but here's why I'm telling you that Because, as the coach approach, we talk a lot about inviting and asking permission, but we want to stay out of the realm of convincing, because when you try to convince somebody of anything, you're in a power dynamic and you're not likely to win. Right. You're trying to convince them, they get defensive, they put up their walls. It's a lose-lose situation. So when parents are advocating for their complex kids in the larger system, there are two things I would say that parents need to do. First, it's get support. Don't try to do this alone, whether you're working in a community like ours, with other parents, whether you're working with an advocate, but never, ever try to go through this parenting journey by yourself, because no parent does.

Elaine: 31:45

But those of us with neuro spicy kids, sometimes we feel so othered that we it's really hard to find our people. And people say, well, I understand my kids ADD. Sometimes too, it's like, no, you don't understand. If you are not like I have people in my community, I can't, even I don't want to tell horror stories because I don't want to scare people. But if you are not, if I often say about complex kids, if you don't know, if you have to ask what does it mean you probably don't have a complex or you don't understand it yet.

Elaine: 32:21

So so we're not just talking about the qualities Everybody is forgetful, sometimes disorganized, sometimes distracted. Sometimes we're talking about when kids are really struggling with these issues, when they're struggling to hit the expectations and hit the metrics that the society expects of them, in whatever form. Then our job is to meet them wherever they are and incrementally help them grow from there. And so, when it comes to advocating in a larger community, our job with our schools, with our churches, with our community organizations, wherever our kids are with our sports teams, is to help the other adults understand our kid so that they can support them more effectively, and not this kid is broken in this way. But when you take him aside and speak to him quietly, it's out of earshot of his peers, he's less likely to get embarrassed and he's more likely to listen to you. That's a proactive way to guide another adult to support your kid without demanding anything, and it's not to say that there's not a place for actually advocating in a more fierce way.

Elaine: 33:43

But I think we want to start off in a more subtle way and begin to invite people to understand how our kids function and invite them to meet them in a way that works for them. When my kids were little sports, they loved sports. It was a great outlet. But I had to be very actively involved with those coaches so that the coaches could understand, because I had a couple of kids who were really hard to be on the sports team and that same kid who was really hard in the early years became a major athlete and was a huge asset to their team for years and years. But it took some good coaches and a lot of training of coaches you know, subtle training for them to be able to be included in a way that worked for them yeah, because that's, that's because, again, it's, it's really interesting.

Peter: 34:37

And I know some teachers listen to this and they'll be saying that, um, yeah, that's all very good, but I only have a finite amount of time and I've got 35 36 kids in class which is why this works, by the way.

Elaine: 34:49

yeah, I mean we teach a class called sanity school for teachers and I've had teachers take the class and become teacher of the year, like because when you realize that you actually can meet each kid where they are and that by doing that you create a classroom environment that hums, it's magic because it really really does work. It's individualizing, but by individualizing in a context it's actually creating a sense of community and team. Everyone's going to get their needs needs met yeah, and it really works.

Peter: 35:29

Now, that sounds too fair. That sounds a very powerful way to do it, rather than the teacher just saying you know again my day and age? You used to get stuff thrown at you and then you weren't paying attention. You know the old, the old chalk erasers and chalk exactly yeah, and shouting was popular and I'm sure it's all much better now, right and anything is better now I'm sure you do a much better job than our teachers did, but then again they only work with what they had right.

Elaine: 36:01

So that's all we can. Any of us can do right, and the teachers are. We could have a whole other conversation about teachers in this realm, because my hat's off to them. It's such a challenging role to be in because teachers get into this because they care, but the system is not set up to really support them in doing what they really want to be doing, and so that's a whole other?

Peter: 36:30

yeah, exactly, it's, it's. Uh, there's a reason. I'm not a teacher. I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't pay me enough to to get that job. Uh, well, you probably could, but they don't. So so, no, that's, that's the thing, cool. So so I mean I've, like I said, I've had a long look at the impact parents website because I know we're very, you know, we have a, we have a deadline and all this sort of stuff. Everybody's busy, um, but it's. The impact parents website is so full of information. But what would your like top one or two things? If you, if you have any parent out that's listening to this, that's thinking, you know, maybe my child might be neurodivergent or neuro spicy, especially if you're including things like anxiety as maybe a mask in behavior for, or a symptom of, and all sorts of of stuff, what would your first thing be? Are they going to go to the GP or should they try something?

Elaine: 37:30

else. So there's two ways to answer the question. The first is get support for yourself as a parent, particularly if you're dealing with younger kids. But first is get some support. I mean, in our community we encourage everybody to start with Sanity School, because Sanity School is a training for parents in kind of neurodiversity inclusive coaching skills. There is no parent on the planet, no matter who your kid is, who wouldn't benefit from a class like this so that you can communicate better with your kid, foster a stronger sense of independence and create better communication in the family. Like period. Start with improving communication.

Elaine: 38:11

We often say two things. If you don't know where to start with your kids, there are two places to focus. One is to lean into the relationship and really cultivate the relationship with your kid, build trust, and the other is to practice self-care and for a lot of parents in our community, their self-care is getting support in the community right, not feeling alone on this journey. So that's the first thing I would say is start the change you want for your family dynamic always starts with you. The parent Always starts with you. Understanding what you're bringing to the dynamic is essential. So you got to start there. And then, yeah, you go to your GP and you say I'm noticing these behaviors. These are the areas I'm concerned about and ask for support. You may find your GP is not well-educated in the arena. That's fine If so.

Elaine: 39:07

If there's something you suspect, if you suspect learning disabilities, I would go to the school and insist that they evaluate and they do some assessments. If you suspect anxiety, you might also look at underlying either learning disabilities or attention issues. Look at underlying either learning disabilities or attention issues, typically what happens with a lot of kids, because ADHD is the number one diagnostic issue that kids struggle with and it's also the most treatable, particularly the earlier we catch it. And if you don't catch it, think about it. Kids have a hard time doing what's expected of them. They can't get themselves to do what they know they should do. Well, that's going to make them anxious and eventually that's going to make them depressed. So a lot of the comorbid conditions we see there's an underlying condition that's either ADHD or learning disability and if we can catch that and address that early, we can avoid a lot of this other lingering mental health stuff that happens as a result.

Elaine: 40:08

So if you don't feel like your provider is really listening and really understanding. Find another provider, find somebody with more expertise in the arena, because it really they're not all created equal. There's not a lot of training in this in medical school or in therapy in any therapy programs, so you really want to find somebody with some expertise. We have a lot of resources, as you say, on our website at impactparentscom, on the resources section. We could always in our communities, people are always looking to each other for referrals and resources. There's a lot of great stuff out there and there's a lot of crap, so you really want to go to a vetted resource and go from there.

Peter: 40:47

Yeah, no, that is definitely what I always tell people Don't just Google stuff. Yeah, dr Google is dangerous. Google sucks YouTube also terrible.

Elaine: 40:56

Well, it can't be great.

Peter: 40:58

No, I absolutely love YouTube. I think YouTube is phenomenal, but you need to know who's putting the information out there exactly, um, and you get your resources. Youtube is video google, right, that is fundamentally what you and it's phenomenal and I love youtube. I'm on it all day and way too much. But, um, that you need to check, indeed, to check your sources right for sure. On that happy note, was there anything else you wanted to touch on, because I know you've got to run off?

Elaine: 41:26

um, well, you know, maybe we can do another conversation another time about trauma, because I thought that was. I do think it's important, I hear. Can I just say something about that to kind of. So we talked a little earlier about neuroplasticity.

Elaine: 41:39

What happens with neurodiversity is people's brains are wired differently and then when we get messages we get deeper and deeper grooves when something happens the same way in our lives. So a lot of people with neurodiversity become traumatized by the way that they're treated because of their neurodiversity right, and that becomes these kind of deep grooves in the brain. And there are a lot of treatments out there that are beginning to, if you can imagine, lay a fresh coat of snow over the neural pathways so that we can create new neural pathways. And that's how we're beginning to deal with trauma is to try to break the deep grooves of these neural pathways. So it's not that mental health necessarily is traumatizing, but it's the way we are with it before it's understood that really can be traumatizing If I internalize the message at five or six years old that I'm lazy, crazy or stupid that I'm bad in some way that's going to have a cascading impact in my life.

Elaine: 42:43

That's going to have a cascading impact in my life, and so that's the only other thing I want to add to this conversation is slowing down and paying attention to what's really going on and to asking the question is this is this challenge that I'm facing really naughty, or is there something going on that needs my help? How?

Peter: 43:02

can I help with?

Elaine: 43:02

that If we can shift into that mindset without our own guilt and shame, because as parents we're all wondering, like, am I doing it wrong if you're asking these questions? You're not doing it, but that doesn't make it easy. It may be simple, but it's not easy, and so on. The simple path start by getting help for yourself, getting some support and making sure that you're working with and getting into communities and environments where somebody really understands what you're dealing with, because it's a long road. It really is.

Peter: 43:37

Absolutely Cool. So I'm not happy now because, like I said, we could have gone for hours, but we'll press stop record here, and press stop record is exactly what I did. Thanks so much to Elaine for coming on and taking time out of her ridiculously busy day. I will obviously link to the Impact Parents website. They have a tremendous amount of information on there. There's a good, there's a great blog out there. They also have the Parenting with Impact podcast, which I believe is currently on episode. Something ridiculous 160 plus 166 is the last one I saw on their website, you know, yeah, like I said, thanks very much to Elaine for coming on.

Peter: 44:20

I think it was an enlightening conversation and hopefully she'll come back on in the future to explain trauma and all that sort of stuff and how that has an impact on neurodivergent uh, neuro-spiciness and how people process information and all that sort of stuff. Anyways, that's me done for the week. Um, I will be back next week, so for now, bye, now, bye. Now. We're down on the streets and you're making a mess If you're gonna try and make your escape. The storm is rolling, the sea is like a cloud and now all the money is gone. Bye Before the sun comes again. Thank you, we'll be right back when I'm on stage.