May 7, 2025 • 34 mins
What if your child’s “overexplaining” isn’t defiance, but a deep need to be understood?
In this powerful and eye-opening conversation, I sit down with Sol Smith — autistic adult, author, life coach, educator, and dad of four neurodivergent kids — to talk about the inner world of autistic individuals. From masking and sensory differences to building friendships and finding identity through passion, Sol walks us through what self-discovery really looks like for autistic kids… and how we can better support it as parents.
We also dive into the hard stuff: the social exhaustion of masking, the difference between “traits” and diagnostic persistence, and why trusting your child’s path — even if it looks different — is the most loving move you can make.
Sol’s insights are real, relatable, and refreshingly hopeful. If you’ve ever wondered how to support your child in being their true self while also preparing them for “the real world,” this episode is your new roadmap.
🎧 Don’t miss it — press play and get ready to see your child through a brand-new lens.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/311
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
In this powerful and eye-opening conversation, I sit down with Sol Smith — autistic adult, author, life coach, educator, and dad of four neurodivergent kids — to talk about the inner world of autistic individuals. From masking and sensory differences to building friendships and finding identity through passion, Sol walks us through what self-discovery really looks like for autistic kids… and how we can better support it as parents.
We also dive into the hard stuff: the social exhaustion of masking, the difference between “traits” and diagnostic persistence, and why trusting your child’s path — even if it looks different — is the most loving move you can make.
Sol’s insights are real, relatable, and refreshingly hopeful. If you’ve ever wondered how to support your child in being their true self while also preparing them for “the real world,” this episode is your new roadmap.
🎧 Don’t miss it — press play and get ready to see your child through a brand-new lens.
You can find additional resources at parentingadhdandautism.com and Regulated Kids.com — because it’s not just about the struggles, it’s about progress, one step at a time.
Show notes and more resources at parentingadhdandautism.com/311
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beautifully-complex--6137613/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Lots of times. If I do a video on TikTok
or Instagram and talk about traits, there will be people
who jump on there and say these are just human traits.
Guess what autistics are human? You know, and we all
experience some of these some of the time. The difference
with an autistic person is the persistence with which they
show up. It's different if somebody just finds Musac annoying
(00:26):
than if somebody goes like, oh, I can only go
to Walmart during their sensory friendly hour from seven to eight.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights
and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches.
I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author
and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey
of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started. Welcome back
(00:57):
everyone to Beautifully Complex. I am thrilled to have with
me today Soul Smith and we are going to talk
about his book as well as how to help our
neurodiversent kids to find their place to be authentic, to
(01:17):
take on self discovery so they can even figure out
what being authentic might look like for them. I'm really
excited to jump into this conversation. But will you start
by letting everybody know who you are, what you do,
and of course the title of your book.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm Soul Smith. I'm an autistic and ADHD
life coach, college professor for twenty four years, and I, yeah,
have a book coming out. It's called The Autistics Guide
to Self Discovery and it's you know, mainly talking to
late diagnosed autistics who are just sort of coming into
this world and you know, this new world of discovering
(01:55):
themselves and trying to see how to better make fits
for themselves. I also, I'm a parent of four neurodivergent
kids and have you know, a lot of experience in
the world of education. And yeah, I'm really excited to
talk about all of this.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah. I have been able to read some of the book,
probably thirty percent or so so far already, and it's
really engaging, Like you pulled me right into your world.
And I already my neurodivergent kid is twenty two. But
I had a lot of AHAs reading some of the
stories and some of the perspective that you were sharing
(02:33):
about him. And I've worked really hard to be the
parent who understands autism, who works with him on being
his true self and all these things. But the way
that you explain some things kind of from that insider
perspective really clicked for me. And Yeah, I think there's
(02:53):
going to be so many other things like that in
this conversation that they're going to help a lot of parents.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, I'm really glad about that. It like our kids
have a big advantage in that there's just a much
better vocabulary for self identification than we had, and certainly
better than you know, my parents' generation had. I imagine
that you know, my mom would still probably argue as
to whether or not my dad is on the spectrum,
(03:19):
which is ridiculous. Just just you know, and once you
know the definition of all of that, it just it
really fits. And with my kids, like just their self
awareness of that. You know, studies have shown that the
earlier you know, the happier you'll be in life, that
(03:39):
the better your contentment is because you don't assign what
appear to be shortcomings to shortcomings of yourself that you
see that, oh I fit differently into this world. I
don't compare myself to this arbitrary notion of success, and
you know, instead I have to find my own definitions
of what all this stuff means and find my own way,
(04:01):
and just by having that locus of control, which obviously
we have to find our own resources and create our
own resources for each other. I mean, just like this,
you know, there's no centralized place to find all of
these things. And I think that's kind of what we're
in the process of doing now, is building for each
other all these different roadmaps. And that's part of what
the book is about, part of what I have an
(04:22):
online community that's about that, and you know, part of
what your podcast here is about.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, yeah, just hoping to find the comfort and being
who you are. And it's hard, Like this is hard work,
especially when you feel like you maybe don't fit or
don't have a place.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's so many different dots to connect
that it's easy to miss the fact that it's autism,
you know, like just sort of looking back, and you know,
I always felt like I faked my way through school
because I did it asignments differently than they told me to.
You know, I'd start with the final draft and then
I would make a sort of bad version of that
(05:06):
to be a rough draft that I'd make an outline
from that because you had to show all of your work.
And I did the same thing with math. I would
put the answer and then i'd sort of like make
bad handwriting to try to show the work because I
just it was tedious. So I always felt like I
faked my way through school. Then I had jobs where
I just had, you know, felt like I was doing
a good job, and my students felt like I was
(05:28):
doing a good job, but my colleagues just never seemed
to approve of me after a few months, and I
felt like the only answer was to go to other jobs.
And yet it always felt like I was just having
different episodes of bad luck at different places. And you
don't connect those two things. With the you know, tags
on your shirt bothering you, with music being too loud
(05:50):
in grocery stores, you know, with not being able to
touch cotton balls, like those don't seem like they would
have one underlying cause. But once you know that your
nervousness is different, all of these things have this big
underlying cause, and like memory is somehow connected to all
of this. My point of view, the way I analyze things.
So it's really interesting to sort of like see all
(06:12):
of this and start, you know, unwinding this thread and
seeing all of these differences. M hm.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I also can't touch cotton balls.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Oh they're the worst.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
And when I read that in the book, I was like,
I feel so seen. And wooden utensils. There are no
wooden utensils in our house. I cannot It just makes
me dry, like it's so crazy. And I also have
this symmetry thing like if I wet one hand, the
other hand has to be wet too, right, And I,
you know, I have these little things and you brought
(06:40):
this up in the book too, like that everybody has
some little trait that might seem autistic, but it doesn't
mean that we're all autistic. Do you want to explain
what that really means?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, that you know, lots of times if I do
a video on TikTok or Instagram and talk about traits,
there will be people who jump on there and say
these are just human traits, and it's like, guess what
autistics are human? You know, and we all experience some
of these some of the time. The difference with an
autistic person is the way these traits show up in
(07:15):
our life, the persistence with which they show up tend
to be such that it really can affect the way
that we choose to live, the way that we you know,
occupy our time, the choices that we make every day.
So once the traits are so abundant that you make
a totally different life choice based on it. You know,
(07:36):
that's autism where it's different if somebody just finds musaic annoying.
Then if somebody goes like, oh, I can only go
to Walmart during their sensory friendly hour from seven to eight.
You know, that's a very big difference. And you know,
it's easy to write this off because you know when
you have these bits and pieces, like it's like when
somebody says, I understand masking because you know, I mask
(08:00):
at the dentist and I have a customer service voice.
And that's true. But we don't expect going to the
dentist or dealing with customer service to be necessarily a
fun or engaging experience where we're supposed to be our
authentic selves. But how about masking at a party or
masking at a family gathering. You know, there's lots of
(08:20):
things that are supposed to be relaxing, cutting loose, and
enjoying yourself. That are tense and scary situations for autistics,
and we have a persona, We have a fake version
of ourselves that we feel like we have to put on.
And that's really different than masking through a dental appointment.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Right right. I want to talk more about masking because
I think this is something that's difficult for parents who
maybe are neurotypical to completely understand. And I can admit
that I'm one of those people that I don't quite
and I think part of the reason is because I
have intensive social anxiety, and so I do put on
(09:02):
a front which I would consider masking because of the anxiety.
So yeah, so like for me, it's hard to tease
apart when are we sort of performing in the role
when we go to work, you know, we interact with
our colleagues in a specific way versus I go to
work and I'm masking, and maybe that's more of the authenticity,
(09:27):
but both don't feel really authentic. Like this is where
I struggle. Help us tease this apart maybe a little bit, Okay,
no for sure. And you know, well, first of all,
just to say that there are some sorts of masks
that autistics wear that over time may become somewhat comfortable.
You know, I always say that my sort of professor
persona is somewhat comfortable because there is a very clearly
(09:49):
defined role. You know, I'm standing up in front of
the class. I'm in control of the conversation. I don't
have to do a reciprocal back and forth where we
are trading different levels of vulnerability, or I don't have
to join somebody else's conversation and engage with their rules
or pacing. So we have these sort of really specific
roles that make it very easy for me to engage
(10:11):
with people and feel like I have a sort of
parasocial relationship with them. So that's sort of an easy
It's kind of like having an easy suit to put
on that it's comfortable to wear, and I don't mind
being that.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
With colleagues. It's a little bit different because colleagues you
have a sort of like work persona, but there's also
this element of that they're kind of trying to be
friends too, or there's at least a rhetoric of being friends,
and those are two very different worlds to me. So
that line between friendship and co worker is really hard
and I'd much rather just not cross it. So if
(10:46):
a co worker is like, you want to grab a
drink after work, I just always make up an excuse
I don't because I don't know what we're going to
talk about. I don't want to bring up my family,
I don't want to talk about work stuff. And the
minute that I sort of let my guard down and
let those two things interfere, I'm not sure exactly which
mask to wear at which time. So the difference really
is that a neurotypical will match other people's tone, vibe,
(11:14):
atmosphere very instinctively. So just for example, there was an
experiment where they showed regular everyday social interactions on video
to neurotypicals and to autistics, and in neurotypicals when they're
in the brain scanner watching these interactions, they saw that
their mirror neurons light up. So for them, they are
(11:37):
doing this sort of form of feeling as if they're
taking part in this interaction, feeling as if they sort
of like match what's going on here and the autistics,
their mirror neurons are underactive and instead their mentalizing network
is lighting up, so they're very cognitively analyzing what's happening,
you know. So it's like sort of like if you
(11:59):
can really understand, you know, how to play Mario Kart,
you don't even remember which one's the gas or the
brake anymore. If somebody says which one's the gas pedal,
I don't know, Like you just put it in your
hand and do it where, you know. If you're just learning,
you're really trying to figure this out. But we're always
just learning as autistics, we're always trying to match this.
So like when you're building a friendship, for example, the
(12:20):
number one predictor for friendship among neurotypicals is proximity and time.
If you see somebody often you're close together, often you
become friends. And this is just you know, small talk.
You feel each other out. You're kind of like lobbing
a ball back and forth. Then you slowly get a
little bit deeper and deeper, and autistics, this isn't how
conversation works. We don't see many of those layers of
(12:44):
depth and conversation. We see conversation just generally as a
transfer of knowledge, as information exchange and small talk, which
is just the general observation of the immediate surroundings so
that people can converse and establish rapport without taking any
risks feels like a waste of time. So as things
(13:06):
get deeper, we have to sort of guess how much
vulnerability is being shown, how much trust is being shown,
And you're really at risk with these different levels that
are happening at holding back and seeming too cold or
offering too much and seeming like you're oversharing. And this
makes it where building friendships is really feels like a difficult,
(13:30):
unpaced thing to do, and is much safer for autistics
to build friendships around common interests where we can both
talk about this, and that gives us something to sort
of build a rapport over before we risk being vulnerable
to each other about something. So yeah, So basically that
locus of control and sort of seeing these layers of
(13:52):
communication that are happening in a conversation and it's sort
of like being color blind.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, yeah, I'm connecting so much with so much from
what you're saying with my own kid, And that social
interaction is so exhausting if you don't have that connection
already between a shared interest or something like that. Right,
And so a lot of times social things are just draining.
(14:21):
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Oh, definitely. You're just like, you're very busy analyzing things.
You're very busy trying to figure it all out. I
noticed one thing. You know before you self diagnose and
you go, oh, autisks have trouble with friendship, But I don't.
But I later realized I made all of my friends
through up through my teens through my brother. My brother
was very social and he introduced me to people, and
(14:44):
this gave me a role. I was the little brother.
I could drop in and out of friendships, I could
drop in and out of activities, and that was okay.
I had a sort of role to play. And since
getting married, I've made all of my friendships through my wife.
She introduces me to people. I'm the husband, and again
I have a role like I'm not expected to keep
up with text messages, I'm not expected to be at
(15:07):
every single function. So it puts me at this sort
of safe distance while I can also enjoy the social interactions.
But I also realized that it puts a certain strain
on my wife that she sort of has to sort
of watch and be a sort of ambassador sometimes at
these interactions. Whether she's explaining things or making sure I'm
being a little bit appropriate or something like that. So yeah,
(15:30):
when I'm feeling very relaxed, it's usually because I'm in
a comfortable role and I have a safe person there who's,
you know, more or less kind of watching to help
regulate my executive function. And if I'm not, then yeah,
it's really exhausting.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah. I love that you use the word ambassador because
I feel like that's sort of the role I took
as a parent. Often. I was, you know, a really
hyper vigilant, probably too much at times, I'll admit, in
watching over my kid's social interactions because they were hard
for him because people did misunderstand right, And so I
(16:08):
like thinking about it as an ambassador instead.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I mean, it's hard to know how much to do
because every parent who's ever gotten kids ready for school
in the morning knows that to some degree, you have
to be your kid's executive function. You know that they
don't have executive function. You have to be their executive function.
They're time blind, Like we end up really socializing our
kids into having an awareness of time and awareness of urgency,
(16:35):
and you know, it's sort of a pity that we
do that. But yeah, for autistics, it goes several layers deeper,
so it's harder to know exactly where those lines are,
and it can extend into adulthood pretty easily, And especially
with the spikey profile of autistics, where they're very good
at some things and very challenged at other things, then
it's really hard to know where to be protective and
(16:58):
where it's going to be embarrassing for them. So it's
it's hard to know exactly where that is.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And you talked in the book about not being aware
of or not feeling embarrassed, of being aware of when
someone might be embarrassed in your situation, but not feeling
that embarrassment, and I found that really interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, I tend I seem to be somehow forgiven of that.
I just I tend to not get embarrassed, Like public
speaking is easy for me, things like that. There are
times where I'm under intense scrutiny that I would rather
not be there, but that feels much more like stress
or pressure than embarrassment. But definitely, yeah, I just I
can meet the conditions of embarrassment and recognize it without
(17:40):
really feeling that way. So yeah, sometimes there's some big
advantages like that, you know, where we say, oh, it's
a superpower. Yeah, I can really put myself out there,
and you know, people will say, I'll talk about imposter
syndrome and self confidence, and people will comment on my
videos you have imposter syndrome, you seem so confident, And
I'm like, I'm glad it comes across that way, right,
you know it really is. That's my sort of lack
(18:02):
of self awareness in some ways too. That I can
get in front of this phone and talk, and it's
also years of practice of wanting to share the things
I've learned, wanting to share knowledge, being in front of
a classroom and establishing that relationship. So yeah, I very
much have the imposter syndrome and the lack of confidence,
but I also can project that sense of those things
(18:24):
very well. So it's a bit of a dichotomy.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Sort of makes me think of fake it till you
make it. You know, you put on this side that
you're you're good, You've got it. Really inside, it's like, ah.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I was working in my doctorate for education and
I ran across this line that said that most educators
have impositive syndrome for the first five years of teaching,
and at this time it was my fifth year and
I was like, oh good, it's about to go away,
and it just did not at all, and I was like,
oh darn yeah. So yeah, fake it till you make it.
It's just kind of for autistics, we're faking it a
(19:00):
lot of the time, just because yeah, we don't do
things the same way. We have a different you know,
the bottom up process is very different from a top
down process.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Can we talk a little bit about overthinking argumentativeness, these
things that I think society assigns to some autistic challenges
or behaviors that maybe aren't a good way of looking
at it. And I sort of had these AHAs as
I was reading some of your book about you know,
(19:40):
I feel like, oftentimes my own son just has so
much knowledge and he wants to share all of it
and he wants you to see his point of view,
but he will keep going until I feel like, you know,
I've been in a boxing match, right and I'm losing,
And so how do we sort of reframe that, right
(20:01):
as the adult on the other side of that, help
us understand what's really going on?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Uh, Yeah, what you're really seeing is is it's an
issue of context sensitivity. Neurotypicals seem to share a lot
of the same broad knowledge of context, so if there's
a disagreement or an argument, say, it's usually less of
a misunderstanding and more of two different points of view
(20:29):
on the same landscape. And with autistics, it's very often
a misunderstanding because the context of what is being said
or why it's being said can be very very different.
That we're anchored in a totally different set of meaning
than the neurotypical is, and we feel like we need
(20:50):
to explain all of the context. You know, this is
an issue of you know, sometimes it's intent versus impact. Right,
we've really hurt somebody's feelings. We feel bad about that,
but we feel even worse that they appear to feel
like we meant to hurt their feelings. So after apologizing
for hurting feelings, now we want to show how we
got there. So we began to explain the context of
(21:13):
how we felt this way and ended up saying the
thing that we said. And this can mean retreading some
old ground, and sometimes it can mean retreading years of
old ground to establish a pattern of thinking and why
it would arise now and the neurotypical person on the
other side of this conversation can be like, why are
you rehashing this? Why are you holding this against me?
(21:34):
And we're like, no, no, no, I'm not I don't
hold it against you. It's just that there was this
pattern and I thought this is the repeat of that pattern.
And so to us it doesn't feel personal. It feels
like this is something that happens with us sometimes and
it feels like we were getting into the same misunderstanding.
And to them, it feels like you're taking away my autonomy,
(21:55):
my ability to make my own choices by saying I'm
stuck in a pattern and you're reading me like tea leaves,
and I'm like, well, I read everybody like tea leaves,
you know, Like so it's hard to sort of separate
those things out. So a lot of times, you know,
we really are searching for wanting to share more context,
wanting to share where our point of view is coming from.
And sometimes we're seeking more context, so we can come
(22:17):
across as argumentative by questioning a lot. And this can
be in class, this can be in a disagreement where
we just want to have more and more information so
we can get a better idea of what is being
discussed here. You know, like math is hard for a
lot of autistic math classes because it's abstract and you're
(22:38):
doing these equations that don't have the numbers, aren't representative
of anything, And it's like, if you can put this
in context, then I might care about it, you know,
if you can tell me why we're doing this, I
might care about it. But you come across as sounding
as if you are challenging the teacher to go why
does this matter? It feels like you're saying this doesn't matter,
But I literally am asking them why does this matter?
(23:00):
Like why would this be used? I want to know,
because then I might be really fascinated with it, And
it can come across as as really questioning. And again
in the workplace, when you question your directions, it may
be because I don't have the full context of why
we're doing things this way and I would like to
understand it better. But it sounds like you're challenging them. So, yeah,
(23:22):
there are a lot of things to sort of rethink
about this, and yeah, really trying to sort of step
back and think, oh, is this one of these places
where the context is way off? And yeah, trying to
answer that can be really difficult at times, or.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Seeking context, like I hadn't counted the questioning or the
digging deeper or needing to know why with needing context
until you just explain that and it makes so much sense.
And yeah, Peter Vermulin, I think it is. He talks
a lot about context to autism as well, and it's
(23:56):
a big deal. It's a big part of things I think.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Right now, it really is, and it's yeah, it's one
of those major things. And one of the reasons why
our brains are using so much more energy is because
we are always sort of rebuilding things from the ground
up by you know, bringing in so much context, where
neurotypical top down thinking is basically building shortcuts. You know,
it's taking large amounts of context and then boiling them
(24:22):
down into a concept that is, you know, more or
less devoid of nuance or detail so that it's easy
to think about. Because no matter what brain you have,
its number one job is to think less because it
uses lots of energy to think and it knows this,
so it wants to think less. And yeah, so this
can really be again exhausting for autistics.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, yeah, before we close and wrap up. I want
to talk a little bit about helping parents other neurotypical
adults to I want to word it properly like so
so often I hear parents say, but my kid has
to exist in the real world, but my kid can't
speak to their employer that way, right, And so we
(25:09):
need to understand where that balance is between really guiding
our kid to be able to find their own success
and joy whatever that looks like for them within this world,
but also being neuroaffirming, also supporting authenticity, right, And where
(25:30):
do we find that balance? It can be so difficult.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I think it takes a lot more patience than most
people realize. I think that you have to really as
much as possible, and this may be philosophical or based
on my own experience, as much as possible, stay out
of their way and let them do what is interesting
to them and see if this is going to take
(25:54):
them further. And if I can just share the example
of my third kid, my daughter and Rubik's cubing. She
during the pandemic, watched this documentary about speed cubers and
there was this autistic kid, Max Park, who became the
world champion speed cuber and it's this very wholesome documentary
(26:15):
about him and his idol who lives in Australia and
their rivals, but very friendly rivals, and they've grown to
be great friends. And she said, my life's goal is
to meet these guys, and she six months later met
them because she was going up against them, like she
started working on this so much so she wanted to
go back to school. She goes back to school after
(26:36):
the lockdown, but she was so completely shy, so completely
closed off from people. She wouldn't talk to other kids.
She asked that we tell the teachers not to say
her name out loud. She would wear a mask and
she would not take it off even for lunch, just
completely shy. But we just stepped back and let her
do this, and we supported this cubing thing a lot.
(26:58):
She found competitions, would go to it, and from this
it took months of her meeting other kids who were
also neurodivergent and forming friendships at these speedcubing competitions before
she found her voice and found herself there and found
this confidence. And now she just really is very social
(27:19):
at school. She's found her way. She used to think
that just the classes were dumb and everything. And now
she's identified a college she wants to go to because
they have a great cubing program so or a Cuban
club and they're very selective. So she has a four
point nine to one GPA that she is determined to
get into this. And it all came from really chasing
(27:41):
this interest of hers. And it would be so easy
to say, Okay, you've done your cubing, now we need
to work on your school work. You know, just a
few months into that, we very much could have said
you're spending hours a day on this and you're not
studying your history. But by letting her just keep doing this,
she really found her sense of control and she found
that we felt like what she's interested in is important. Yeah,
(28:05):
so she feels taken seriously and trusted, and it bloomed
into something much bigger. So I do think we need
to like sort of step back and make them feel
like what they're into is important first, and that the
stuff about you know, how you're going to fit into society.
I do think a lot of that can come later
when they have a better sense of themselves rather than
(28:27):
yourself isn't good enough until you've done this for everybody else,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, totally. And we need to be so open with
those timelines. Yeah, you know, we need to quit expecting
that kids at certain ages are going to have certain skills.
And we talk about this a lot, we talk about
neurodivergent kids, that it's developmental delay, that there's different timelines
there and different skills and things, but we still sort
(28:54):
of get stuck at that eighteen you're an adult spot,
and we have to be willing to give people more
time to do it their way and in their own time.
That's how they're going to get there. If you were
stressing your daughter and putting a lot of pressure on
her to not care so much about cubing, what's going
(29:14):
to happen. She's still not going to be maybe developing skills,
she's still not going to be learning at school. She's
not gonna be open, she's not gonna have that confidence.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
These are all things that lead us to that point.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Right right, And Yeah, in autistics especially, we have these
spikey profiles were very good at some things, we fall
behind in others. In this myth of like how you
should be at different ages doesn't really check out because
you know, we had this idea that that's being well rounded,
but that's just how neurotypicals seem to be. It's not
necessarily the way one should be, and it can look
(29:47):
lots of different ways. I mean, when I did all
of my psychological testing, my psychiatrist was very excited to
tell me my IQ. He was impressed and thought I'd
be impressed and thought this was cool, and I was like, Okay,
that's cool. He was not so excited to tell me
that my social acuity, my ability to pick up on
social cues, was about that of a seven year old,
(30:07):
And I was like, oh, that makes sense, you know. So,
I mean, that's a huge disparity. And one of our
family friends who we spend a lot of time with,
we met in the cubing world. She's eighteen years old
and she's completing her master's in quantum computing.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah right, And all of her colleagues in this program
are in the thirties and forties, and they are intimidated
by her. They haven't made friends with her, and they
don't have a lot of sympathy for They just think
that the world has been handed to her, that it
must be so easy, being so smart, and the poor
thing feels very isolated and alone, has a difficult time
making friends already, And how do you tell that to
(30:44):
these people? You know, she looks like she has it
all together, so we can look one way and then
just you know, our internal worlds can be very difficult
falling apart, and it's hard to find the right people
to talk to and divulge this stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
That's why it's so important to look at the whole person.
You know. We use all these different things as standards
of measure you know, there's assessments and IQ tests to
measure intelligence, right, there's these measures of social acuity. There's
just measures of you know, like people think the more
friends you have, the right, the more social you are
(31:22):
or whatever. And it's like no, like there's different aspects
to all of us, and no one is high marks
at everything. It's just not possible. It's not human. And
so yeah, that just reminded me of like we have
to really be looking at the whole person and not
get fixated on one aspect or another. Right, it's really
(31:45):
really key. Yeah, tell everybody where they can find the book.
I'm not sure when it's publishing. Remind me of that
I've forgotten, and also where they can find you online.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
The book, well, it comes out April twenty seconds, so
it should be out.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Now, so we have it's out by the time they
hear this.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
That's right, So that's exciting. And it can be found
on any online bookstore, and you should be able to
order it through your own independent bookstore if it's not there.
And you can find me online at professorsoul dot com.
And you can also find my community where we have
a lot of autistic and ADHD people come together to
try and build a better sense of self and better
(32:25):
sense of direction together at Neurospicycommunity dot com and we
have people from dozens of countries. It's gotten to be
a really great place to meet and talk and share.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Love that and I will link all of that up
in the show notes for everyone. Thank you at PARENTINGADHD
Autism dot com slash three one point one for episode
three hundred and eleven. It has been so uplifting and
hopeful and ieopening to have this conversation with you. I
can't wait to finish the book and I can't wait
for the parents out there to read it and really
(32:59):
start to connect some of the things that they're seeing
in a different way, to understand them in a different way,
and to reframe them, because it's really what this parenting
is all about is reframing so many things and being
open to letting our kids lead. And you have really
illustrated why that's so important and why that works as well,
(33:20):
which I think is an important key aspect of that.
So I thank you so much. Thank you for the
book and for being open with your own story. It
really it changes lives and it's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well, thank you so much, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I will see everybody in the next episode. Take good care.
Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If
you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't
forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching
at PARENTINGADHD and Autism dot com and at the Behavior
Revolution dot com.
Lots of times. If I do a video on TikTok
or Instagram and talk about traits, there will be people
who jump on there and say these are just human traits.
Guess what autistics are human? You know, and we all
experience some of these some of the time. The difference
with an autistic person is the persistence with which they
show up. It's different if somebody just finds Musac annoying
(00:26):
than if somebody goes like, oh, I can only go
to Walmart during their sensory friendly hour from seven to eight.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights
and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches.
I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author
and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey
of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started. Welcome back
(00:57):
everyone to Beautifully Complex. I am thrilled to have with
me today Soul Smith and we are going to talk
about his book as well as how to help our
neurodiversent kids to find their place to be authentic, to
(01:17):
take on self discovery so they can even figure out
what being authentic might look like for them. I'm really
excited to jump into this conversation. But will you start
by letting everybody know who you are, what you do,
and of course the title of your book.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm Soul Smith. I'm an autistic and ADHD
life coach, college professor for twenty four years, and I, yeah,
have a book coming out. It's called The Autistics Guide
to Self Discovery and it's you know, mainly talking to
late diagnosed autistics who are just sort of coming into
this world and you know, this new world of discovering
(01:55):
themselves and trying to see how to better make fits
for themselves. I also, I'm a parent of four neurodivergent
kids and have you know, a lot of experience in
the world of education. And yeah, I'm really excited to
talk about all of this.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah. I have been able to read some of the book,
probably thirty percent or so so far already, and it's
really engaging, Like you pulled me right into your world.
And I already my neurodivergent kid is twenty two. But
I had a lot of AHAs reading some of the
stories and some of the perspective that you were sharing
(02:33):
about him. And I've worked really hard to be the
parent who understands autism, who works with him on being
his true self and all these things. But the way
that you explain some things kind of from that insider
perspective really clicked for me. And Yeah, I think there's
(02:53):
going to be so many other things like that in
this conversation that they're going to help a lot of parents.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, I'm really glad about that. It like our kids
have a big advantage in that there's just a much
better vocabulary for self identification than we had, and certainly
better than you know, my parents' generation had. I imagine
that you know, my mom would still probably argue as
to whether or not my dad is on the spectrum,
(03:19):
which is ridiculous. Just just you know, and once you
know the definition of all of that, it just it
really fits. And with my kids, like just their self
awareness of that. You know, studies have shown that the
earlier you know, the happier you'll be in life, that
(03:39):
the better your contentment is because you don't assign what
appear to be shortcomings to shortcomings of yourself that you
see that, oh I fit differently into this world. I
don't compare myself to this arbitrary notion of success, and
you know, instead I have to find my own definitions
of what all this stuff means and find my own way,
(04:01):
and just by having that locus of control, which obviously
we have to find our own resources and create our
own resources for each other. I mean, just like this,
you know, there's no centralized place to find all of
these things. And I think that's kind of what we're
in the process of doing now, is building for each
other all these different roadmaps. And that's part of what
the book is about, part of what I have an
(04:22):
online community that's about that, and you know, part of
what your podcast here is about.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, yeah, just hoping to find the comfort and being
who you are. And it's hard, Like this is hard work,
especially when you feel like you maybe don't fit or
don't have a place.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's so many different dots to connect
that it's easy to miss the fact that it's autism,
you know, like just sort of looking back, and you know,
I always felt like I faked my way through school
because I did it asignments differently than they told me to.
You know, I'd start with the final draft and then
I would make a sort of bad version of that
(05:06):
to be a rough draft that I'd make an outline
from that because you had to show all of your work.
And I did the same thing with math. I would
put the answer and then i'd sort of like make
bad handwriting to try to show the work because I
just it was tedious. So I always felt like I
faked my way through school. Then I had jobs where
I just had, you know, felt like I was doing
a good job, and my students felt like I was
(05:28):
doing a good job, but my colleagues just never seemed
to approve of me after a few months, and I
felt like the only answer was to go to other jobs.
And yet it always felt like I was just having
different episodes of bad luck at different places. And you
don't connect those two things. With the you know, tags
on your shirt bothering you, with music being too loud
(05:50):
in grocery stores, you know, with not being able to
touch cotton balls, like those don't seem like they would
have one underlying cause. But once you know that your
nervousness is different, all of these things have this big
underlying cause, and like memory is somehow connected to all
of this. My point of view, the way I analyze things.
So it's really interesting to sort of like see all
(06:12):
of this and start, you know, unwinding this thread and
seeing all of these differences. M hm.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I also can't touch cotton balls.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Oh they're the worst.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
And when I read that in the book, I was like,
I feel so seen. And wooden utensils. There are no
wooden utensils in our house. I cannot It just makes
me dry, like it's so crazy. And I also have
this symmetry thing like if I wet one hand, the
other hand has to be wet too, right, And I,
you know, I have these little things and you brought
(06:40):
this up in the book too, like that everybody has
some little trait that might seem autistic, but it doesn't
mean that we're all autistic. Do you want to explain
what that really means?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, that you know, lots of times if I do
a video on TikTok or Instagram and talk about traits,
there will be people who jump on there and say
these are just human traits, and it's like, guess what
autistics are human? You know, and we all experience some
of these some of the time. The difference with an
autistic person is the way these traits show up in
(07:15):
our life, the persistence with which they show up tend
to be such that it really can affect the way
that we choose to live, the way that we you know,
occupy our time, the choices that we make every day.
So once the traits are so abundant that you make
a totally different life choice based on it. You know,
(07:36):
that's autism where it's different if somebody just finds musaic annoying.
Then if somebody goes like, oh, I can only go
to Walmart during their sensory friendly hour from seven to eight.
You know, that's a very big difference. And you know,
it's easy to write this off because you know when
you have these bits and pieces, like it's like when
somebody says, I understand masking because you know, I mask
(08:00):
at the dentist and I have a customer service voice.
And that's true. But we don't expect going to the
dentist or dealing with customer service to be necessarily a
fun or engaging experience where we're supposed to be our
authentic selves. But how about masking at a party or
masking at a family gathering. You know, there's lots of
(08:20):
things that are supposed to be relaxing, cutting loose, and
enjoying yourself. That are tense and scary situations for autistics,
and we have a persona, We have a fake version
of ourselves that we feel like we have to put on.
And that's really different than masking through a dental appointment.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Right right. I want to talk more about masking because
I think this is something that's difficult for parents who
maybe are neurotypical to completely understand. And I can admit
that I'm one of those people that I don't quite
and I think part of the reason is because I
have intensive social anxiety, and so I do put on
(09:02):
a front which I would consider masking because of the anxiety.
So yeah, so like for me, it's hard to tease
apart when are we sort of performing in the role
when we go to work, you know, we interact with
our colleagues in a specific way versus I go to
work and I'm masking, and maybe that's more of the authenticity,
(09:27):
but both don't feel really authentic. Like this is where
I struggle. Help us tease this apart maybe a little bit, Okay,
no for sure. And you know, well, first of all,
just to say that there are some sorts of masks
that autistics wear that over time may become somewhat comfortable.
You know, I always say that my sort of professor
persona is somewhat comfortable because there is a very clearly
(09:49):
defined role. You know, I'm standing up in front of
the class. I'm in control of the conversation. I don't
have to do a reciprocal back and forth where we
are trading different levels of vulnerability, or I don't have
to join somebody else's conversation and engage with their rules
or pacing. So we have these sort of really specific
roles that make it very easy for me to engage
(10:11):
with people and feel like I have a sort of
parasocial relationship with them. So that's sort of an easy
It's kind of like having an easy suit to put
on that it's comfortable to wear, and I don't mind
being that.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
With colleagues. It's a little bit different because colleagues you
have a sort of like work persona, but there's also
this element of that they're kind of trying to be
friends too, or there's at least a rhetoric of being friends,
and those are two very different worlds to me. So
that line between friendship and co worker is really hard
and I'd much rather just not cross it. So if
(10:46):
a co worker is like, you want to grab a
drink after work, I just always make up an excuse
I don't because I don't know what we're going to
talk about. I don't want to bring up my family,
I don't want to talk about work stuff. And the
minute that I sort of let my guard down and
let those two things interfere, I'm not sure exactly which
mask to wear at which time. So the difference really
is that a neurotypical will match other people's tone, vibe,
(11:14):
atmosphere very instinctively. So just for example, there was an
experiment where they showed regular everyday social interactions on video
to neurotypicals and to autistics, and in neurotypicals when they're
in the brain scanner watching these interactions, they saw that
their mirror neurons light up. So for them, they are
(11:37):
doing this sort of form of feeling as if they're
taking part in this interaction, feeling as if they sort
of like match what's going on here and the autistics,
their mirror neurons are underactive and instead their mentalizing network
is lighting up, so they're very cognitively analyzing what's happening,
you know. So it's like sort of like if you
(11:59):
can really understand, you know, how to play Mario Kart,
you don't even remember which one's the gas or the
brake anymore. If somebody says which one's the gas pedal,
I don't know, Like you just put it in your
hand and do it where, you know. If you're just learning,
you're really trying to figure this out. But we're always
just learning as autistics, we're always trying to match this.
So like when you're building a friendship, for example, the
(12:20):
number one predictor for friendship among neurotypicals is proximity and time.
If you see somebody often you're close together, often you
become friends. And this is just you know, small talk.
You feel each other out. You're kind of like lobbing
a ball back and forth. Then you slowly get a
little bit deeper and deeper, and autistics, this isn't how
conversation works. We don't see many of those layers of
(12:44):
depth and conversation. We see conversation just generally as a
transfer of knowledge, as information exchange and small talk, which
is just the general observation of the immediate surroundings so
that people can converse and establish rapport without taking any
risks feels like a waste of time. So as things
(13:06):
get deeper, we have to sort of guess how much
vulnerability is being shown, how much trust is being shown,
And you're really at risk with these different levels that
are happening at holding back and seeming too cold or
offering too much and seeming like you're oversharing. And this
makes it where building friendships is really feels like a difficult,
(13:30):
unpaced thing to do, and is much safer for autistics
to build friendships around common interests where we can both
talk about this, and that gives us something to sort
of build a rapport over before we risk being vulnerable
to each other about something. So yeah, So basically that
locus of control and sort of seeing these layers of
(13:52):
communication that are happening in a conversation and it's sort
of like being color blind.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, yeah, I'm connecting so much with so much from
what you're saying with my own kid, And that social
interaction is so exhausting if you don't have that connection
already between a shared interest or something like that. Right,
And so a lot of times social things are just draining.
(14:21):
Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Oh, definitely. You're just like, you're very busy analyzing things.
You're very busy trying to figure it all out. I
noticed one thing. You know before you self diagnose and
you go, oh, autisks have trouble with friendship, But I don't.
But I later realized I made all of my friends
through up through my teens through my brother. My brother
was very social and he introduced me to people, and
(14:44):
this gave me a role. I was the little brother.
I could drop in and out of friendships, I could
drop in and out of activities, and that was okay.
I had a sort of role to play. And since
getting married, I've made all of my friendships through my wife.
She introduces me to people. I'm the husband, and again
I have a role like I'm not expected to keep
up with text messages, I'm not expected to be at
(15:07):
every single function. So it puts me at this sort
of safe distance while I can also enjoy the social interactions.
But I also realized that it puts a certain strain
on my wife that she sort of has to sort
of watch and be a sort of ambassador sometimes at
these interactions. Whether she's explaining things or making sure I'm
being a little bit appropriate or something like that. So yeah,
(15:30):
when I'm feeling very relaxed, it's usually because I'm in
a comfortable role and I have a safe person there who's,
you know, more or less kind of watching to help
regulate my executive function. And if I'm not, then yeah,
it's really exhausting.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah. I love that you use the word ambassador because
I feel like that's sort of the role I took
as a parent. Often. I was, you know, a really
hyper vigilant, probably too much at times, I'll admit, in
watching over my kid's social interactions because they were hard
for him because people did misunderstand right, And so I
(16:08):
like thinking about it as an ambassador instead.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I mean, it's hard to know how much to do
because every parent who's ever gotten kids ready for school
in the morning knows that to some degree, you have
to be your kid's executive function. You know that they
don't have executive function. You have to be their executive function.
They're time blind, Like we end up really socializing our
kids into having an awareness of time and awareness of urgency,
(16:35):
and you know, it's sort of a pity that we
do that. But yeah, for autistics, it goes several layers deeper,
so it's harder to know exactly where those lines are,
and it can extend into adulthood pretty easily, And especially
with the spikey profile of autistics, where they're very good
at some things and very challenged at other things, then
it's really hard to know where to be protective and
(16:58):
where it's going to be embarrassing for them. So it's
it's hard to know exactly where that is.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
And you talked in the book about not being aware
of or not feeling embarrassed, of being aware of when
someone might be embarrassed in your situation, but not feeling
that embarrassment, and I found that really interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, I tend I seem to be somehow forgiven of that.
I just I tend to not get embarrassed, Like public
speaking is easy for me, things like that. There are
times where I'm under intense scrutiny that I would rather
not be there, but that feels much more like stress
or pressure than embarrassment. But definitely, yeah, I just I
can meet the conditions of embarrassment and recognize it without
(17:40):
really feeling that way. So yeah, sometimes there's some big
advantages like that, you know, where we say, oh, it's
a superpower. Yeah, I can really put myself out there,
and you know, people will say, I'll talk about imposter
syndrome and self confidence, and people will comment on my
videos you have imposter syndrome, you seem so confident, And
I'm like, I'm glad it comes across that way, right,
you know it really is. That's my sort of lack
(18:02):
of self awareness in some ways too. That I can
get in front of this phone and talk, and it's
also years of practice of wanting to share the things
I've learned, wanting to share knowledge, being in front of
a classroom and establishing that relationship. So yeah, I very
much have the imposter syndrome and the lack of confidence,
but I also can project that sense of those things
(18:24):
very well. So it's a bit of a dichotomy.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Sort of makes me think of fake it till you
make it. You know, you put on this side that
you're you're good, You've got it. Really inside, it's like, ah.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, I was working in my doctorate for education and
I ran across this line that said that most educators
have impositive syndrome for the first five years of teaching,
and at this time it was my fifth year and
I was like, oh good, it's about to go away,
and it just did not at all, and I was like,
oh darn yeah. So yeah, fake it till you make it.
It's just kind of for autistics, we're faking it a
(19:00):
lot of the time, just because yeah, we don't do
things the same way. We have a different you know,
the bottom up process is very different from a top
down process.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Can we talk a little bit about overthinking argumentativeness, these
things that I think society assigns to some autistic challenges
or behaviors that maybe aren't a good way of looking
at it. And I sort of had these AHAs as
I was reading some of your book about you know,
(19:40):
I feel like, oftentimes my own son just has so
much knowledge and he wants to share all of it
and he wants you to see his point of view,
but he will keep going until I feel like, you know,
I've been in a boxing match, right and I'm losing,
And so how do we sort of reframe that, right
(20:01):
as the adult on the other side of that, help
us understand what's really going on?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Uh, Yeah, what you're really seeing is is it's an
issue of context sensitivity. Neurotypicals seem to share a lot
of the same broad knowledge of context, so if there's
a disagreement or an argument, say, it's usually less of
a misunderstanding and more of two different points of view
(20:29):
on the same landscape. And with autistics, it's very often
a misunderstanding because the context of what is being said
or why it's being said can be very very different.
That we're anchored in a totally different set of meaning
than the neurotypical is, and we feel like we need
(20:50):
to explain all of the context. You know, this is
an issue of you know, sometimes it's intent versus impact. Right,
we've really hurt somebody's feelings. We feel bad about that,
but we feel even worse that they appear to feel
like we meant to hurt their feelings. So after apologizing
for hurting feelings, now we want to show how we
got there. So we began to explain the context of
(21:13):
how we felt this way and ended up saying the
thing that we said. And this can mean retreading some
old ground, and sometimes it can mean retreading years of
old ground to establish a pattern of thinking and why
it would arise now and the neurotypical person on the
other side of this conversation can be like, why are
you rehashing this? Why are you holding this against me?
(21:34):
And we're like, no, no, no, I'm not I don't
hold it against you. It's just that there was this
pattern and I thought this is the repeat of that pattern.
And so to us it doesn't feel personal. It feels
like this is something that happens with us sometimes and
it feels like we were getting into the same misunderstanding.
And to them, it feels like you're taking away my autonomy,
(21:55):
my ability to make my own choices by saying I'm
stuck in a pattern and you're reading me like tea leaves,
and I'm like, well, I read everybody like tea leaves,
you know, Like so it's hard to sort of separate
those things out. So a lot of times, you know,
we really are searching for wanting to share more context,
wanting to share where our point of view is coming from.
And sometimes we're seeking more context, so we can come
(22:17):
across as argumentative by questioning a lot. And this can
be in class, this can be in a disagreement where
we just want to have more and more information so
we can get a better idea of what is being
discussed here. You know, like math is hard for a
lot of autistic math classes because it's abstract and you're
(22:38):
doing these equations that don't have the numbers, aren't representative
of anything, And it's like, if you can put this
in context, then I might care about it, you know,
if you can tell me why we're doing this, I
might care about it. But you come across as sounding
as if you are challenging the teacher to go why
does this matter? It feels like you're saying this doesn't matter,
But I literally am asking them why does this matter?
(23:00):
Like why would this be used? I want to know,
because then I might be really fascinated with it, And
it can come across as as really questioning. And again
in the workplace, when you question your directions, it may
be because I don't have the full context of why
we're doing things this way and I would like to
understand it better. But it sounds like you're challenging them. So, yeah,
(23:22):
there are a lot of things to sort of rethink
about this, and yeah, really trying to sort of step
back and think, oh, is this one of these places
where the context is way off? And yeah, trying to
answer that can be really difficult at times, or.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Seeking context, like I hadn't counted the questioning or the
digging deeper or needing to know why with needing context
until you just explain that and it makes so much sense.
And yeah, Peter Vermulin, I think it is. He talks
a lot about context to autism as well, and it's
(23:56):
a big deal. It's a big part of things I think.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Right now, it really is, and it's yeah, it's one
of those major things. And one of the reasons why
our brains are using so much more energy is because
we are always sort of rebuilding things from the ground
up by you know, bringing in so much context, where
neurotypical top down thinking is basically building shortcuts. You know,
it's taking large amounts of context and then boiling them
(24:22):
down into a concept that is, you know, more or
less devoid of nuance or detail so that it's easy
to think about. Because no matter what brain you have,
its number one job is to think less because it
uses lots of energy to think and it knows this,
so it wants to think less. And yeah, so this
can really be again exhausting for autistics.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, yeah, before we close and wrap up. I want
to talk a little bit about helping parents other neurotypical
adults to I want to word it properly like so
so often I hear parents say, but my kid has
to exist in the real world, but my kid can't
speak to their employer that way, right, And so we
(25:09):
need to understand where that balance is between really guiding
our kid to be able to find their own success
and joy whatever that looks like for them within this world,
but also being neuroaffirming, also supporting authenticity, right, And where
(25:30):
do we find that balance? It can be so difficult.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I think it takes a lot more patience than most
people realize. I think that you have to really as
much as possible, and this may be philosophical or based
on my own experience, as much as possible, stay out
of their way and let them do what is interesting
to them and see if this is going to take
(25:54):
them further. And if I can just share the example
of my third kid, my daughter and Rubik's cubing. She
during the pandemic, watched this documentary about speed cubers and
there was this autistic kid, Max Park, who became the
world champion speed cuber and it's this very wholesome documentary
(26:15):
about him and his idol who lives in Australia and
their rivals, but very friendly rivals, and they've grown to
be great friends. And she said, my life's goal is
to meet these guys, and she six months later met
them because she was going up against them, like she
started working on this so much so she wanted to
go back to school. She goes back to school after
(26:36):
the lockdown, but she was so completely shy, so completely
closed off from people. She wouldn't talk to other kids.
She asked that we tell the teachers not to say
her name out loud. She would wear a mask and
she would not take it off even for lunch, just
completely shy. But we just stepped back and let her
do this, and we supported this cubing thing a lot.
(26:58):
She found competitions, would go to it, and from this
it took months of her meeting other kids who were
also neurodivergent and forming friendships at these speedcubing competitions before
she found her voice and found herself there and found
this confidence. And now she just really is very social
(27:19):
at school. She's found her way. She used to think
that just the classes were dumb and everything. And now
she's identified a college she wants to go to because
they have a great cubing program so or a Cuban
club and they're very selective. So she has a four
point nine to one GPA that she is determined to
get into this. And it all came from really chasing
(27:41):
this interest of hers. And it would be so easy
to say, Okay, you've done your cubing, now we need
to work on your school work. You know, just a
few months into that, we very much could have said
you're spending hours a day on this and you're not
studying your history. But by letting her just keep doing this,
she really found her sense of control and she found
that we felt like what she's interested in is important. Yeah,
(28:05):
so she feels taken seriously and trusted, and it bloomed
into something much bigger. So I do think we need
to like sort of step back and make them feel
like what they're into is important first, and that the
stuff about you know, how you're going to fit into society.
I do think a lot of that can come later
when they have a better sense of themselves rather than
(28:27):
yourself isn't good enough until you've done this for everybody else,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, totally. And we need to be so open with
those timelines. Yeah, you know, we need to quit expecting
that kids at certain ages are going to have certain skills.
And we talk about this a lot, we talk about
neurodivergent kids, that it's developmental delay, that there's different timelines
there and different skills and things, but we still sort
(28:54):
of get stuck at that eighteen you're an adult spot,
and we have to be willing to give people more
time to do it their way and in their own time.
That's how they're going to get there. If you were
stressing your daughter and putting a lot of pressure on
her to not care so much about cubing, what's going
(29:14):
to happen. She's still not going to be maybe developing skills,
she's still not going to be learning at school. She's
not gonna be open, she's not gonna have that confidence.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
These are all things that lead us to that point.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Right right, And Yeah, in autistics especially, we have these
spikey profiles were very good at some things, we fall
behind in others. In this myth of like how you
should be at different ages doesn't really check out because
you know, we had this idea that that's being well rounded,
but that's just how neurotypicals seem to be. It's not
necessarily the way one should be, and it can look
(29:47):
lots of different ways. I mean, when I did all
of my psychological testing, my psychiatrist was very excited to
tell me my IQ. He was impressed and thought I'd
be impressed and thought this was cool, and I was like, Okay,
that's cool. He was not so excited to tell me
that my social acuity, my ability to pick up on
social cues, was about that of a seven year old,
(30:07):
And I was like, oh, that makes sense, you know. So,
I mean, that's a huge disparity. And one of our
family friends who we spend a lot of time with,
we met in the cubing world. She's eighteen years old
and she's completing her master's in quantum computing.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah right, And all of her colleagues in this program
are in the thirties and forties, and they are intimidated
by her. They haven't made friends with her, and they
don't have a lot of sympathy for They just think
that the world has been handed to her, that it
must be so easy, being so smart, and the poor
thing feels very isolated and alone, has a difficult time
making friends already, And how do you tell that to
(30:44):
these people? You know, she looks like she has it
all together, so we can look one way and then
just you know, our internal worlds can be very difficult
falling apart, and it's hard to find the right people
to talk to and divulge this stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
That's why it's so important to look at the whole person.
You know. We use all these different things as standards
of measure you know, there's assessments and IQ tests to
measure intelligence, right, there's these measures of social acuity. There's
just measures of you know, like people think the more
friends you have, the right, the more social you are
(31:22):
or whatever. And it's like no, like there's different aspects
to all of us, and no one is high marks
at everything. It's just not possible. It's not human. And
so yeah, that just reminded me of like we have
to really be looking at the whole person and not
get fixated on one aspect or another. Right, it's really
(31:45):
really key. Yeah, tell everybody where they can find the book.
I'm not sure when it's publishing. Remind me of that
I've forgotten, and also where they can find you online.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
The book, well, it comes out April twenty seconds, so
it should be out.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Now, so we have it's out by the time they
hear this.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
That's right, So that's exciting. And it can be found
on any online bookstore, and you should be able to
order it through your own independent bookstore if it's not there.
And you can find me online at professorsoul dot com.
And you can also find my community where we have
a lot of autistic and ADHD people come together to
try and build a better sense of self and better
(32:25):
sense of direction together at Neurospicycommunity dot com and we
have people from dozens of countries. It's gotten to be
a really great place to meet and talk and share.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Love that and I will link all of that up
in the show notes for everyone. Thank you at PARENTINGADHD
Autism dot com slash three one point one for episode
three hundred and eleven. It has been so uplifting and
hopeful and ieopening to have this conversation with you. I
can't wait to finish the book and I can't wait
for the parents out there to read it and really
(32:59):
start to connect some of the things that they're seeing
in a different way, to understand them in a different way,
and to reframe them, because it's really what this parenting
is all about is reframing so many things and being
open to letting our kids lead. And you have really
illustrated why that's so important and why that works as well,
(33:20):
which I think is an important key aspect of that.
So I thank you so much. Thank you for the
book and for being open with your own story. It
really it changes lives and it's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Well, thank you so much, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I will see everybody in the next episode. Take good care.
Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If
you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't
forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching
at PARENTINGADHD and Autism dot com and at the Behavior
Revolution dot com.
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