August 19, 2025 • 64 mins
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Dive into a real, honest conversation about parenting, big emotions, and finding the right support for unique kids. In this episode, Andi Clark shares her journey from burnout to becoming a sleep, stress, and executive functioning coach—plus, she offers a family-favorite sweet potato chickpea curry recipe.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Andi’s personal story overcoming burnout and supporting her children through emotional and academic challenges.
- The signs and impact of burnout on both parents and kids.
- Insights into executive functioning, masking, and why some kids struggle in traditional school systems.
- Practical tips for helping children with big emotions, perfectionism, and learning differences.
- How Andi’s support community and podcast can help parents on similar journeys.
Check the show notes for all resources mentioned in this episode!
From Andi:
Remember those moments when your child was yelling in your face in public? Or having a panic attack? Or clinging to your side at a birthday party (if you even managed to get them out the front door)?
I’ve been there too.
I know what it’s like to stay at events and activities long after other parents have left, just in case my son had an outburst.
I’ve felt that loneliness, wondering how to help my child, feeling like every other kid had it together except mine.
Here’s the thing—you’re not alone.
There are so many kids out there just like our little firecrackers, and just as many parents feeling exactly the way we do.
My hope is that by sharing my story, experience and training through the years that you’ll gain the tools you need to understand your child’s needs and help them sooner than I did with a lot less mistakes.
Sleep, Stress , Trauma Informed & Executive Functioning Coach for Kids With Big Emotions. 30 years in the coaching world.
Connect with Andi:
https://andiclark.com/podcast/
https://www.instagram.com/kidswithbigemotions/
*******
Recipe shared courtesy of:
https://abbylangernutrition.com/incredible-good-vegan-sweet-potato-chickpea-curry/
******
Host: Reesa Morala, MA, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Reesa is a parenting specialist with a niche in supporting couples. Find Reesa hosting couples and parenting workshops nationwide!
Make sure to like, follow, and subscribe!
For the video version of this episode find us at: https://www.embracerenewaltherapy.com/
If you are a parent ready to share your real-life parenting struggle and dish up a recipe with Reesa, apply here:
https://www.embracerenewaltherapy.com/real-family-eats-guest
If you are experiencing a mental health crisis or need personalized support, please seek help from a licensed mental health professional. If you are in immediate danger or experiencing a crisis, contact emergency services or a crisis hotline in your area.
Suicide and Crisis Line: Text or Call 988
Go to your local hospital or call 911
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And as soon as I took thedifferent lens, instead of
(00:02):
that child is acting out,that child is misbehaving.
That child is not doingwhat I've asked.
I've taken that step backand thought, what does this
part want?
Hey everyone, thanks forjoining me.
(00:23):
My name is Reesa and I'myour host.
We are talking to real familiesabout real stories here on the
Real Family Eats, wherewe've got food for thought
and thoughtful food.
So let's eat.
(00:47):
Welcome back everyone.
Thanks so much for joiningus again.
I'm so excited for today'sepisode.
We have Andi joining ustoday. Hi Andi.
Thank you so much for joining.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yes, I am so excitedfor your recipe and your story.
But before we get started,for anybody listening
(01:07):
who doesn't know you, can youintroduce yourself for us?
Yeah.
So I live in Canada, whereit's pretty cold here right now.
And, I a long timeago, my son was actually first
born.
He was born in with all theburnout signs.
Cause I've been in burnout.
And he was struggling withjust so much going on
(01:30):
with his body.
And my mom came out,and that led me to being a sleep
and stress coach.
And I was gonna sort a burnout.
But he still was having a lot ofbig emotions at that time,
so I had no where he was.
I moved all the sleep and stresscoaching to first responders.
And so I was workingwith them for a while,
(01:52):
all through the pandemic.
Everything until a coupleyears ago, because after the
pandemic, I had to pull himfrom school because
his outbursts were so bad.
And I was like,how does this work?
What do I do?
Like what's going on?
All these sleep and stresstechniques that I use
with responders to get themback from medically, back on,
like they're not like it's stillnot stopping the outbursts.
(02:15):
So I had to dive into allof these other pieces
of the puzzle, and that drove meinto being an executive
functioning coach.
And through my journey withresponders.
Two I became a traumainformed coach.
So I am a sleep stresscoach, trauma informed coach,
and an executive functioningcoach who now works with kids
with big emotions.
(02:36):
Okay, so lots of appsthat you've had throughout
your journey.
It sounds like, it's beena journey.
I mean, we do what we need to dofor our kids.
I'm like diving into theresearch and studying
and certifying and whateverI can do.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
And so you have two children?
Yes, yes.
Perfect.
Literally, since, they are11 and 13 to boys.
(03:01):
Okay. Wow.
You've got your handsfull for sure.
Yeah.
They're amazing.
So I homeschooled both of themas well.
Well, I run my business,so. Wow. Okay.
So for any of your services,this is a great segue into our
shameless plug section.
So if someone's interested inyour services or connecting
with you, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
(03:23):
I would say to start offlistening to my podcast,
which I'm going to be having youon soon, which I'm very excited
about.
So that's Kids with Big Emotionspodcast and then everything else
I work one on one.
I have a group, it's asupport circle for parents
as well.
We're other parents with kidswith big emotions are in there
(03:45):
and just help them navigatethrough all of the sleep,
stress, all of the, you know,executives and all of the
different strugglesthat their kids are having
and just help them all navigatethrough that in a support
circle.
So all of that, the linksare all on my podcast.
So if you just go to Kidsand Big Emotions or Andy
clarke.com, which is AndyC clarke.com.
(04:06):
So Andy clarke.com willhave everything on it as well.
Perfect.
And as usual we will linkall of those wonderful links
and resources down in our shownotes.
So make sure to check those out.
As far as your podcast,where can folks find that?
Is that on particular platform?
So services, it's everywhere.
It's on YouTube.
(04:27):
It's on like everything Spotify,Amazon, Podbean.
Yeah, everywhere.
Like on Apple.
It's on all different channels.
We're almost hitting1100 episodes, 5000.
I wish we're almost at 100episodes.
So yeah. Wow.
Congratulations.
And that's so awesome.
And it sounds like it's superaccessible.
(04:49):
So make sure to check that outas well.
And I'm excited to be a guestand chat a little bit
more on that side too.
Okay.
So let's dive into your story.
But before we do that,what recipe are you sharing
with parents todayand why did you choose
this one? Yeah.
So this is a sweet potatochickpea curry we do sometimes
(05:10):
and chicken into it.
And I love this recipe becausethe thing is, time consuming
is actually making thesweet potatoes.
But I can do those inthe morning when my kids
are like, well, we'redoing breakfast or while
we're having lunch, I canthrow them in the toaster
oven and leave them and thenrest together quickly later.
So I love that I can kind ofdo it in two parts and do
(05:32):
the other part quick.
Also sometimes make batchas well, and then we'll freeze
a bunch of it so it makesquick meals after.
And my kids love it and it fillsthem up, which for boys,
I don't know, they're goingthrough a growth spurt.
Filling them up is amazing.
So I just love that. Likeonce you've got the sweet
(05:53):
potatoes done, the rest isquick and easy and freezes
so well.
Wonderful.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
So because of the nature of ourof the podcast, I did the
potatoes ahead of time too.
And you're also right, you know,to be able to kind of
do that, that get thatout of the way, that makes a
ton of sense, especiallywhen we're talking about parents
(06:15):
who sometimes, you know, havinglots of time is not really
a luxury feature to have.
And so I love that idea.
And being able to kind ofsit it out like that and then
just meet whatever your need isas far as time constraints.
So that's awesome.
Okay.
So tell me what sense, I have,I have these sweet potatoes
(06:38):
ahead of time that I bakedand then I mix them together,
with the coconut milk and the,vegetable broth.
Am I remembering that correctly?
Yeah.
Perfect.
So tell me now, what are whatare the steps?
What do I do while we chat?
And then I'll get going and thenwe'll jump into your story.
(06:59):
Yeah.
So you have all the spices.
So you'll need to chop gingerand garlic.
Okay.
And then once you havethose chopped what you're
going to start to dois you're going to heat your pan
and start off with the humanand the coriander seeds
and toast them just till they'refragrant, like just a
little bit.
It's not alone.
Very quick.
(07:19):
And then you add in,oh you chopped an onion as well.
So then you add in the onionturmeric, garam masala.
And you'll start to do thatuntil the onions get translucent
and then add in.
If you do choose a bit ofchili pepper along with
the ginger and garlic, we don't.
(07:40):
I have one son that doesnot like spicy and one
that likes.
So the one adds hot sauce afterand the other one keep mild.
So the all the other spices.
Nothing is spicy hot.
There's spicy flavor.
You can keep those.
And then you spicy those.
Once they're done you addthe chickpeas that you've
already drained okay.
(08:01):
Add in the chicken.
Satay them 2 or 3 minutesjust to get some of the flavor
and stuff in them.
And then you pour that sweetpotato mixture which the sweet
potato mixture should bea little bit like liquidy,
a little like not.
You don't want it hardlike mashed potatoes.
You want them.
And also it's just likea very thick sticks stew
kind of thing.
(08:21):
That's too think it'll burnon the bottom, and then all
you do is add the tomato pasteinto it, I'll add cilantro
into it and some spinach.
If my kids, when theywere younger, I used to blend
the spinach and the cilantrowith the with the sweet
potatoes.
So they see the pieces.
(08:41):
But now they're finewith pieces of green in it.
And then you just hit that.
That's it.
Wonderful.
And I love that little,you know, to this,
your kids are, like you said,maybe not liking the idea
of leaving the veggies, that wecan kind of sneak it in
there as well.
So perfect.
I can do all those thingswhile we chat.
(09:03):
And I'd love to know more.
And you kind of give usa little bit of a sneak peek
as far as, some ofthe challenges that your family
kind of face that broughtyou into what you're
doing today.
And so I'd love to hear a littlebit more about that journey
and kind of how did thatcome about?
I imagine, as you were saying,you know, you've been
(09:24):
coaching and helping folksand then to kind of have
it hit really close to home,was certainly, you know, kind
of a different challengepresented.
So can you tell us a little bitmore about that?
Yeah.
So do you want me to hit on boththe burnout and then having to
pull them and learning the like,the pulling out, or want me
(09:45):
to go more to when I hadto really pull them
out of school.
It's the burnout is, at playas far as your parenting.
So I think that manyparents could absolutely
relate to that.
So we'd love to hear that.
That's the thing is that I,I mean, I've been in the house
and all this industryfor 30 years, coaching for
30 years.
And so exercise, nutritionand sleep all those things
(10:08):
where like I was doing them alland I still burnt out.
Right.
So that's where it's fascinatingthat it really was having
to change that mindset of,okay, other things are going on.
And when you're in burnout,quite often you start getting
gut issues and you mightget skin issues and you get
moody, and, you know,your husband might walk
(10:30):
in the room and he smiles at youthe wrong way.
And you're like, this is firedat him.
That he doesn't know whichwhich end is up sometimes
because you can't.
You're stressed.
Hormone is the one that managesyour ability to handle stressors
and your energy.
And when it's crashing,you can't handle stressors.
So everything just becomesa fiery struggle to handle
(10:52):
your kids.
You're just pushing fromlike the moment you wake up
until the moment you go to bed.
Like your battery doesn't chargeat night.
So yeah, it was one thingwhen it was happening to me
and I was going to my doctorand I was saying, I'm
really tired.
That's going on, and they'resaying, your tests are
coming back.
Okay.
That was one thing.
(11:12):
But to the next stepwhere my son was born and his
skin was the worst caseof extreme, and the doctor
had ever seen, and thenwe couldn't find like
he ended up on this hyperallergenic for me, like I
was gluten and dairy free.
I was like everything I eat,like I ate.
So clean.
And he still couldn'thandle, like, projectile vomit
(11:33):
that we had to switch.
So this, this hypoallergenicformula that was prescription
based, it was just likethe issues, skin all
these things.
And then once he was like,he was kind of talking about,
like a year and a half,two years.
And he used to say, I'm so sadand so sad.
(11:54):
Or after he would eat certainthings like rage would come,
not even just anger or tantrumwould be like rage hitting
things like full on,like instant.
If you eat it and you see thisreaction in him, I'm like, okay,
this is not just me,this is my son as well.
So going to your entomologist,pediatric gastroenterologist,
(12:15):
pediatric allergists andI remember being I was working
with a natural partof the time to and the pediatric
gastroenterologist had saidthat, oh, most allergies are
never fixed, and there's nosuch thing as, like, leaky
gut or something like that.
Forget issues.
And I'm like.
No, no, no, no.
(12:36):
Like, I've been toldthis for years and had
been believing this for myself,that when nothing else
that you're saying is ableto help my son, I'm going this
other route.
So I started studyingand learning and researching
all of that issues, all abouthow like affects your hormones.
And it was just I just feltso bad for him because I
struggled for so many yearswith doctors telling me that
(12:57):
this was just the norm.
You know, it's just normalfor a parent to be pushing
through every single day.
It's just normal for youto like, be struggling.
And I'm like, this is notnormal for a baby to be born
like this.
This is not normal.
And it had to take meto that point to kind of
hear all of that.
And like you said, theit sounds like if I heard
(13:20):
you correctly, you do almostkind of this conditioning,
right, that it's just you,this is normal.
So you just kind of have toput up with it.
You just have to deal with itbecause this is what it is.
And that's just likehearing that just kind of
I mean, as I was listeningto you get it's feelings and
the thoughts are popping upin my head of just like this
hopelessness and this just,like really lonely and kind of
(13:43):
this really stinks.
Like what?
Yeah.
I remember just thinkingto myself, okay, I'm a personal
trainer and I can't work outlike I think.
And instead this is justgoing to have to be my life
because this must be in my head.
I kept thinking, this must bein my head because the doctors
just always, you know,my cortisol would come back
(14:06):
really low, but it wasn'tin disease yet.
So they're like, we'll keepan eye on it.
You're not.
Do you have signs of Addison'sdisease?
Which is like crazy, crazylow 2.5% of cortisol, but you're
10% cortisol, so you're notthere yet.
And I remember coming to thedoctor's office and just
thinking like, okay, I'm 10%cortisol on this test,
(14:29):
but I'm not in a diseasestate yet.
And I was so upset and sofrustrated, and I felt so alone
and like, this is just crazy.
And it was only then I realizedand really understood
the difference betweenour medical system is triage,
reactive medicine for disease.
And we need them.
We need them.
They have a role,they have a place,
(14:51):
but they're not preventativemedicine.
And I wasn't in a diseasestate yet, so training couldn't
help them.
So I needed to go to thatpreventative side.
And and at the momenttoo, like I'm finally working
with you guys.
Specialist who she's a lead,researcher for a university.
(15:14):
And and college three statecollege in the state.
So.
So she's a lead researcherin the students I've got
that has gastroenterologistworking under her.
And she's a natural path.
So she's helped me with wordingI needed to use.
And I'm finally being heardby my gastro to get to
work with.
So the holistic scienceworking with the UMass.
(15:35):
But this is such a strugglefor so many people to where we
go to our doctor and we expectthey're going to help us,
but we're not within their scopeof where they're training hits.
That we've been trainedto believe that they should
be able to help us throughbefore we're in disease state.
But it's not what theirtraining is.
(15:57):
Well, I'm like you said,you have to kind of get the
inside scoop on whatwords to say or you know how
to say it in order to get themto listen.
I mean, that's not commonknowledge that everyone
has accessible.
And so you're absolutely right.
If you're going in and justkind of looking to these
professionals, kind of be ableto support you in you
saying, hey, something's wrongand you don't have the code,
(16:21):
you can crack the codeto be able to get them
to listen.
Like, yes, I, I, I absolutelycan imagine how frustrating
that would be.
And then, so like yousaid, to see in your child
kind of coming up against thatsame wall like we're, you know,
I don't know about you,but I would definitely
my mom out there aboutwould be like, you know,
(16:44):
like, no.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And so when it was happen,my son is diving so deep
and listening to every podcast.
And finally, this onepodcast listed.
So I had some slightly differentsome symptoms than him,
some similar.
And I listen to podcast one daythat listed all of our symptoms
together and started talkingabout it.
As far as like the adrenalsor stress system and stuff.
(17:08):
And I remember sitting onthe floor crying and being like,
oh my God, I'm not crazy.
It's not in my spine.
I'm like, damn.
So deep into researchingand learning and training
and studying and coursesand yeah, it was, it was un
believable that when my son wassix years old, we went back
(17:28):
to the doctor and the doctor'sgoing over and going, it's gone.
There's no eczema anywhere.
So he had the worst eczemathat I've ever seen in a baby.
He's like, and it's funnybecause I can see some scars,
but it's gone and never swear.
Like, I had to build himsleeves when he was a baby
because he used to scratchhis wrist open in his sleep
(17:49):
and come to me at twoin the morning going, mommy
bleeding help! And I don'tlike sitting at two
in the morning just bandagingthis kid's wrist.
And you go, thank you.
And then go right back to that.
Like, that was just one for him.
Mean it's just it's.
And I'm like, no, this isn'tnormal.
This is not in your head.
This is truly happening.
(18:09):
And we need to divedown into this.
Yeah.
And to kind of have someoneall of a sudden validates,
like you said, this, this,you're not alone.
And and it's not somethingthat's just kind of made us.
Oh, I mean, it's so powerful.
And I think that's part ofI mean, I can just speak
(18:30):
for myself.
Part of the reason why I wasso passionate about wanting to
even start a podcast like this,because so much of just what
I've heard from otherparents for my own experience is
it is like when you are sittingthere and keeping it to yourself
because for whatever reason,then it it gets really lonely.
(18:50):
You don't hear storiesthat sound like yours, then it
just really furthersthat narrative and like, it must
just be something that's wrongwith me or, you know,
I'm missing.
Yeah, yeah, it it was.
You go through all thesefields too, because once
you realize there actuallyis something going on, you go
through the anger.
(19:12):
You also go like the grief,like you go through all those
stages, right?
Like, it's been so long.
How many years since I'vebeen struggling and no one
could help me.
And you get angry, and thenyou're like, no, I'm picking up
my socks and put my big girlpants on.
I'm gonna fix this.
And yeah, it's just fascinating.
All of the fields that yougo through.
And then, okay, now I'm alonein this fight, and then
(19:33):
you realize others are fightingthis fight, and you're like,
how this community.
Wow. Okay.
You know, there's others too.
And and.
Yeah, it's just it can be so,so lonely, So tell me then, you
know, you're you're fightingthis fight.
You you get some of the kind ofphysical manifestations where
(19:58):
your child kind of finding somesolutions.
And then you mentioned,you know, then you kind of had
another growing painas you continue to grow.
And you know that onceyou're into the emotion side,
can you say more aboutthat journey and kind of
how did that come about?
Yeah.
So we were able to help with thephysical side.
But that anger was stillalways there.
(20:20):
And the perfectionismand the anxiety and the not
liking change.
And when he started goingto school, he hated it
right from day one,like day one.
He hated, hated, hated,hated being in.
And he would cry goingto school.
(20:41):
And it was just such anxiety.
And I had.
A neighbor ended up takinghim to school.
And so because he was a bitbetter going to school,
but it was still bad.
And then we had a childthis year at this point that was
kindergarten and grade one,and then I think the
pandemic hit.
So we were off all agreedto part of grade one, and all of
(21:03):
grade two was at home.
Okay.
And then he went back.
It was just like still thesame thing.
And it was like it wastoo loud, too many noises,
just all kinds of stuff.
And he was bored.
He was just super bored.
And the teacher was like,I don't know what to do
with him.
So I thought his brotherwas in gifted.
And I thought, okay, once,you know, the testing happens
(21:27):
in grade three here,once he does the testing,
he'll get in the gifted.
We'll get him out of this schoolwhere he doesn't really like it.
And he'll he'll bechallenged and all of
that stuff.
And he didn't get in the gifted.
I was like, well, this kidsmarter than his brother
is smarter than his brother.
I'm like, yeah, how did he notget in the Gifted?
I didn't understand at.
(21:51):
So the teacher was phenomenalthat year, though, because
amazing.
He didn't know what else to dowith my son.
Like schoolwork wise.
And so my son read booksmost of the day in class,
and if he we had likea code word, so he would.
And if he would explode orhad explosions in school,
(22:11):
the teacher would call meor call me just before
an explosion would happen to goand get him.
This was happening like 3or 4 times a week.
So right now it's making himTuesdays and Thursdays
and he just needed quiet.
He needed to down regulate.
And he was really goodthe whole entire day.
I could go upstairs and workin the office, and he spent
the whole day and he was fine.
(22:32):
But he still struggled sometimeson Fridays to still be
in school.
I still get calls fromthe teacher when the school
would only deal with itbecause I went in and I'm
like, well, he's bored as well.
They're like, but he didn'tget in the gifted and I'm like,
then.
But he's bored and he's havingoutbursts of the old outbursts.
Okay, let's work with him.
(22:52):
When he's in the red.
And I'm thinking the part of whyhe's in the red is that
he's bored.
And we also didn't understandas well that he'd been masking
what at that point to end upthinking was learning
disability.
But it was a lot of these kids.
And that's why he didn't passthe gifted screening
(23:13):
was because.
So he was 99.9% in every subjectfor every crazy.
But it was the facial thathe didn't pass for 90.
So he got 96% out of allthe kids and not 98.
So he didn't pass and wentlike so if we fast forward
(23:37):
to all of my learning.
So we ended up doing psychoat Valve and learning
and they said he had adisability and learning
disability and writtenexpression where apparently.
So this is dysgraphia,which falls under the dyslexia
and the dyscalculia.
Okay.
And dysgraphia is strugglingto write by hand.
Get your thoughts on paper.
(23:58):
And so also like do grammarpunctuation, all of
those things.
And so if we fast forward to metrying to figure out
how does his brain work.
Like once I brought him home,I realized he can't handle more
than one instruction at a timeand write out the answers
(24:20):
to math, which he testedin grade three grade eight
level math.
But he could not even write downhow he got the answers for grade
three math.
Okay, so he can do all thisin his head, but he can't
get the stuff on paper.
Problems that was causing it wasyeah, and that's so cute.
(24:41):
If it's okay with you.
I heard you mentioned thathe was masking out.
And so for any listener who'swho is listening and maybe
doesn't know what thatlooks like, because I think that
sometimes that's very mucha big culprit for something
like this.
Getting this.
Can you say a little bitmore about, at least in your
(25:01):
experience, what is masking?
What did how did it present foryour child and kind of your
experiences?
Wow, that would be amazing.
Yeah. So being that he was inschool and reading full chapter
books, being that he could dodictation, he could do dictation
words, like at college level.
So when he was asked to writesomething down like, hey, write
(25:25):
a paragraph about this, do that,he'd write like one sentence
and they'd look at himand go, hey, you know,
you could write more on this.
He's like, I don't want tosay this.
I don't want to write calmly.
Never.
And and they would be like,but you should.
He goes, no, I'm notgoing to do it.
And it was like, there is no,he didn't fight with them.
(25:47):
He wouldn't reason with them.
He wouldn't let them do anythingyou don't know.
And then he eventuallystart saying, it's too easy.
And so they were like, well,I can't challenge this kid,
so what am I supposed to do?
I've got 30 other kidsin the class, so they just
let him be and go back to readhis book.
And same thing with his math.
The teacher knew that he coulddo math at such a high level
(26:09):
in his head.
They just didn't argue with himand then being able to get it
on paper, okay.
And then and now thatI see on this, I would be
curious to go back to thatclassroom and wonder if shortly
after the teacherasked him this, did he have
(26:30):
an outburst and yellat another kid, well,
why do you say that?
Because he would have beensitting there knowing that
he could not do it, knowing thathis brain was different
and he would have been becauseand this is the thing,
I don't like the term giftedbecause gifted often means that
(26:53):
a kid can academicallydo things, but their brain
works different and they oftenhave a lot of social or,
you know, different strugglesin the way that they
perceive things and the traumasthat they have.
All of these things.
So from a young age,he could always do things.
And then all of a suddenin school, he was being asked to
do something he couldn't do.
And the trauma can kickthe can, right?
(27:15):
Something's being asked of you.
Too soon, too fast, too much,and too.
I can't remember the other.
The other one.
But those create traumas andwhen we start driving, the way
their brains work, they havea bucket only for mistakes
or bad.
So he would get pissed if heslightly was inside the line
(27:38):
and coloring and even a circle,drawing a circle or drawing
his letters.
They weren't perfect.
It wasn't the perfect test fora perfect P.
And I'm thinking your writingis way better than mine,
but you know.
But it wasn't perfect, soit wasn't bad.
So he would even often rip uphis artwork where he would
wrap up his paper where he wasasking him to do so.
(28:01):
He have anger and outburstsbecause he's sitting there
thinking that he's beena failure.
He's been back.
And they get this like, it'sjust fascinating when you start
talking to these kids and withperfectionism and fear of making
mistakes, you start realizingevery single thing that they do
wrong.
They fear they put in that I'ma bad person bucket
(28:23):
and I've done wrong.
Bucket instead of what theyall say, oh, just move on to the
growth mindset.
And there's other stepsthat have to happen
before they're ready and ableto do that.
Absolutely.
And I think we want toI find that and I don't know
if this is true for you.
Is this a growth mindset?
(28:45):
First of all, they're you know,it's easier said than done.
And then also the itdoesn't move into the growth
mindset doesn't necessarilyall of a sudden, did you give
children a cognitive abilitythat develop naturally?
They're not quite there yet.
They don't like.
You should be able to kindof distinguish the gray.
(29:07):
Right now it is all veryblack and white.
And so it is eitherI did amazing or like you
said, I'm a failure.
And this is somehow, you know,on on me is something that I,
you know, shortcoming.
And so yes, we can give themskills and they might be able
to kind of conceptuallylike okay, that makes sense,
(29:27):
but doesn't always necessarilymean that their brain is able
to get there and get thereconsistently for all these
challenges that they'rereaching on a daily basis
that are challengingthat construct of themselves.
And so that sense.
(29:50):
So, for instance, and I thinkit was in that similar
to kind of your experienceat all. Yeah.
And it's fascinating because andyou made me think back to the
psychoactive drugs.
And I never actually linkedthis before, but when we did
this like a, when aboutshe said that he has, learning
disability, I've writtenthis expression in black
and white thinking, and Iremember her telling us
that's never going to change.
(30:11):
You can't fix that.
And I remember there is there'sso many things about that cycle.
What about that?
I was just like in my mindthinking, I'm gonna figure out
a way, you know, and it'sjust been so fascinating to go,
like, now to think back becauseI hadn't.
And yeah, that black and whitethinking mistakes are bad.
(30:34):
You know everything.
You have to say things this way.
This is how this is done.
Like so for reasoning gainor losing.
Right.
Losing in a game is like,yeah, I just could not
handle that.
And it's been so much work inunderstanding black and white
(30:55):
thinking, understandingcognitive flexibility
and working with him that,I mean, he still has
some more work to do on it.
Oh my gosh.
Like he laughs at himselfsometimes when he makes
mistakes now and he'll actuallypurposely do things
that are silly or likebeing a kid that he wouldn't,
(31:18):
or because that will look bador that's not how this is done.
Or somebody might laugh at meand it's just been fascinating
seeing the change in him in.
Yeah, with mistakesand being able to make
those mistakes and startingto now like I had to pull off,
(31:38):
even though academicallyhe was ahead in homeschooling,
I've had to pull off ofall of that because I need to
work at a stuff that he'scognitively ready for.
As far as working with himand being able to do
more than one step at a time,working at his home on
something that maybe he doesn'tactually know how to answer,
(32:00):
and being okay with that.
So I've been working more on theall of that side of things,
the executive functioningside of things with him and not
focusing at all on the academic.
It's been like un believable.
And the fascinating thing is, isI have not had him write
(32:23):
anything.
I have not touched that learningdisability or written
expression.
And I found in his GoogleDrive a two chapter story
that I thought he copiedfrom somebody that was so good.
Amazing grammar, amazingpunctuation, better than mine.
And I think it was suchan amazing story written out.
And I asked him wherehe got it from.
He's like, I wrote that.
(32:44):
And that was becausewe'd worked on all of the where
all of the things that werestopping him from being able to
pass and think about, okay,what do I need to do
for sentence structure here?
(33:05):
What do I need to do?
I need two paragraphs.
Like before his brain wasgoing so fast.
He couldn't stop.
He couldn't pause.
He couldn't self-monitor himselfto notice any mistakes.
He couldn't self-correcthimself.
And also two, he wouldbe so hard on himself about
self-correcting anywaysthat that would have sent him
(33:26):
in a tailspin.
Before you even start addinggrammar and punctuation
in there.
Oh, and so it sounds likeby giving him that
opportunity to to not havethat pressure to fit into a box.
But, you know, we're tryingto cram everybody else into
he was able to kind ofon his own find find his
(33:50):
lane there.
Is am I doing that correctly?
Yeah.
He's finding his way.
He still doesn't knowwhat subjects he likes.
He still doesn't know whatinterests him other than Pokemon
in Minecraft.
But, you know, he's like,in subject wise, like my
(34:11):
he does seem to like history,but he's very cautious about
telling me that he likes historybecause I think he's weird
in the back of his mindthat I'll give him stuff
that he won't understandor that will be too hard or that
will just hurt his brain.
And so I'll just sometimeshis hand in some videos or just
(34:33):
hand them up.
There's so many thingsyou can do homeschooling
wise that work different partsof his brain.
There's some great, you know,video games that are
all history.
And I'm like, hey, why don'tyou try this game?
And I have to start him offon the steps because he's always
there's still that piece.
Sometimes that I think it'sa trauma from before
(34:54):
starting things and getting thatinitiation of things.
So which is all executivefunctioning still too,
and working with the traumas.
But there's so many piecesto the puzzle.
Right.
And then I've learned executivefunction, who I studied under
to become a coach just through,Tara Sumner, who's an SLP.
(35:15):
And I do remember when shesaid that she discovered
a long time ago that dysgraphia,dyslexia, dyscalculia.
Well, not on some of thiscalculator is a bit different,
but some of it is executivefunctioning.
Executive functioning strugglesthat she has been able to work
with kids with all of theseand been able to help them,
(35:40):
be able to get past them,because they're actually
executive functioning.
But our school system tendsto put them under a learning
disability, and they'reonly looking at the way
that they academicallydo things, and they're
not looking at the way that thebrain cognitively thinks and
processes, you know,perception and where
(36:01):
their attention is when they'redoing these letters and what
they're inhibiting.
And if they can self-monitorand if they can self-correct,
if they can't do those things,then they are going to
constantly spell thingsbackwards and mix up
their letters and not be able towork on those things.
Have to figure out which partis it, their nonverbal working
memory like, which parts of itis causing them to not be able
(36:21):
to write all their letters?
I imagine with the masking thatyou mentioned that that just
further complicates,especially if we're talking
about folks who aren't payingattention or even know what
masking is.
The easily could get missed inthose ways.
And so then we're going thenthis doesn't you don't fit this
(36:42):
diagnosis.
So my it and then let's move onin in dismissing it in that way
that as well.
And our teachers as they'reamazing I love teachers.
They're not that executivefunctioning.
They're taught the academic sidehow somebody should learn
if their executive functioningsystem is completely intact,
(37:03):
if they're executive functioningis running the way that it is,
then they should be ableto do the stuff that, like
the teachers are being taught,they're not taught about
executive functioning.
So, yeah, here Sumneris the nominal.
She is booked until like 2026to speak in schools.
Are some schools that havehired her to teach all of
their teachers.
It's slowly comingwhere teachers are learning
(37:26):
about it and teachersare coming on board with that.
But most teachers aren'taware of it, which is, as I was
saying, like the support circlethat I have.
Like, I'll start teachingparents how to in a in a way
that teachers, most teachers,not all, I will be open
to hearing about it in orderto be able to help and support
(37:47):
their child child'sclass in there.
Because this is one ofthe big gaps we have is teachers
want to help the child,but they don't understand
the executive functioningside of it and how to
support it.
And so that's when tothey may miss.
So with my son, they missed itmore because they didn't
(38:08):
understand the executivefunctioning side and
none of them.
When I went back and told themthat dystrophy, that
none of them had known aboutdyspraxia.
The teacher of the year beforeis teacher.
This year, like that year,none of them had heard about
dysgraphia.
I went to a couple ofother teachers, my other son,
and had none of them had heardof it.
So there's a I mean,how can they learn everything,
(38:30):
especially when their kidsare filled with, you know, 30
kids in a class?
How can they have any bandwidthto even go and take
an extra course incertification, like for
a year? Yeah.
So I think to for him it washe was masking and they also
didn't understand enough aboutwhat was going on that they
(38:53):
weren't able to ask the rightquestions to figure
it out either.
Yeah.
I'm really curious for younow, going to the parent side
and kind of getting inyour brain a little bit.
I'm curious about what wasgoing on for you upstairs in
your brain, kind of seeingyour child struggling
(39:13):
through this, gettingthose phone calls, and, and just
not having a lot of answersat that point in time on how how
do I support my kid?
Can you say a little bitmore about that piece of it?
It was so hard, so lonely.
Like we talked before about thatburnout piece being lonely.
(39:34):
This was where I wasled to believe that my son
was the only one in this schoolthat was having outbursts
or having struggleslike this, that like, didn't
get them the gifted, butthey wouldn't help him now that
he didn't get in the gifted.
(39:55):
And I felt like I wasthe only one.
And going through this later,like there, actually ended up
being a gifted group in ourin our neighborhood, in our
in our zone, in our school zone,our area.
And I started realizingthat there were a lot of
other kids that werealso struggling with
the same thing and and thatthe school system truly did not
(40:17):
understand it.
And the gifted programs don'tunderstand it either.
My gifted here is grade level,so they don't go above
grade level for anything,and they don't understand all
the executive functioningand learning disabilities
and all these kids have towhen is they are smarter.
So it's been it wassuper lonely.
(40:39):
And then it was very frustratingwhen I found out.
Well, just being toldby the school all the time,
the guidance counselorwould only ever call me
or wanted me to meether in person, would never
ever reply to anything an email.
So nothing was on her andand she would pretty much
never ask me what was trulygoing on with my son would just
(41:00):
tell me what needed to happen.
And in my mind I'm like,you don't understand my child
at all.
So they hadn't spent anytime to even get to know him.
And it was very frustratingonce I got into these
other Facebook groups and stuffand I realized, oh, this isn't
only my son, there aretons of kids out there.
And then there's tons oftwo reasons twice exceptional,
(41:23):
which means they're academicallyahead, but they usually
have another struggle.
So dysgraphia, dyslexia,ADHD, autism, auditory
processing, sort oflike anything like when
these kids are struggling to,you know, get their morning
routine, get their stuffout the door they can't
like, remember to bringanything home from school.
They can't remember how to handin their homework or get their
(41:46):
assignments done on time.
All of these things,I'm realizing, oh, these are
there's tons of these kidsout there.
And so you start going,okay, I'm not lonely anymore.
But then they're allstruggling to and they're
like, oh, but they're allstruggling too.
And now that I understand aboutthe executive functioning piece,
(42:07):
as I read, like I want to go inthere all day and just
being like, oh my gosh,you could have an executive
functioning like you couldwhat you just said, that's
this piece of executivefunctioning and that's this one
and this one and this oneand these all make sense.
I just want to shout it outthere, and I want to reply to
everyone and give them a hugand be like, there's actually
a reason behind this.
(42:30):
Yeah.
It sounds like it might just,you know, maybe even providing
not only that normalization,that you're not alone, but
just a validation that it'sthere's something
going on there.
It's not just all kindof made up or something
that you have to kind ofsurvive in the sense
(42:50):
that there's something wrong,but rather that it just means
that maybe we got it.
We've got to get a little bitmore creative on how we're
supporting these children.
Yeah.
And and that's the thingis the way that I've
been taught to Tara isthat they're easy things.
(43:12):
How do I explain thisas a parent.
You're still sometimes it'sfrustrating here.
And there's simple thingsthat you have to do them
over and over againrepeating them over and over.
You have to support themand you really have to lower
what your expectations are like.
Okay, so this kid can readchapter books, but he can't
(43:33):
write on paper.
We need to work on these things.
Or he thinks every mistake isis really bad.
How do we come in with this?
Like we have to build uptheir cognitive flexibility
on that.
We have to build up theirthis, this other file for
them to understand noteverything is bad.
And how do we do that,especially in like a schooling
(43:54):
system where there's usuallyconsequences for like points
on a test and you need to getcertain points right, like in
homeschooling with my kids,I tell them that tests
are for us to know what elsewe could do and work on,
or where we shouldactually focus next.
It's not to test if youfeel that learning something.
(44:18):
So that's at the beginningand go, okay, do this
test and let's see where we needto focus.
You're not supposed to get allthe answers on this.
I don't want you to so thatwe know what we should do
this semester, you know.
Right.
And I love that webecause I seen so much of
this insight is you lookat tests.
And one of the reasons, at leastin my experience, my test
(44:38):
anxiety is is a real thingis because there is
that narrative that I'mgoing in there and I
this is going to determine in.
Me something about meand whether or not
I'm succeeding in some way,or if I'm failing in some way.
And there is, you know,going back to that
(45:01):
black and white thinking, right?
So much of that narrative,I find that is is perpetuated
when we think about testis is going into that
black and white and that'sall that's what's being
perpetuated.
And so I love that reframeof that.
This is actually this test is anopportunity for me as your
teacher, as your educatorto learn what are areas
(45:23):
that I could be betterin supporting you
and helping you to grow?
Yeah, right.
And there's one thing, too,that Terra Terra has a bunch
of teachers that dotake her course and there is
one teacher that at the endof the school day, every single
day, they ask the kids,what did I do?
Well.
And today, and what do I needhelp in or what do I what can I
(45:50):
work on more things?
She asks them that every day,and it was fascinating because
she said the change in the kidsover time.
First off, it really helped hersee when she had kids in
her class, they couldn'teven notice the mistakes
they were making.
So she's like, oh, I need towork on actually their self.
So self monitoring.
(46:11):
Yeah, they need to learnhow to self monitor themselves
to know even where they're weakor strong in this.
This is they didn't even knowthat they're weak in something.
Right.
And that they need towork on it.
And so she worked with them.
And what she found is over time,kids started coming up to her
during her free time and going,you know, can I work on this
or can I work on that?
And it was the thingthat they knew that they
(46:33):
needed to work on, and they wereseeing it as a negative anymore,
when every single day they hadto notice, they got to
acknowledge what they did.
Well and do more work on whatcould I use some help with.
So it's just asking those twoquestions every single day
in a classroom can givea teacher so much insight
(46:54):
to wrestling with the blackand white thinking, and the not
being able to noticeyour mistakes.
Like so many different things,if they know what to look for
from those two simple questions.
Yeah, absolutely.
And when I was, you know,I got one of the things
you mentioned earlier was thatgrowth mindset.
That's a wonderful wayto nurture that.
(47:15):
And and really work outthat muscle in the brain
as being able to take a lookat those areas that maybe we do
could use some extra growth inand could use some developing
and and like you said,instead of it being a
(47:35):
all or nothing about who you areas a character and who you are
as a person, that it's keyareas of growth is normal
for everybody.
And we all have areasthat we could, you know,
bump back and and reallyimprove.
And so that's okay.
That's actually somethingthat we're all working on.
It might look a littlebit different.
(47:55):
You know what one personis working on versus the other.
And that's totally okay.
And being able to kind of allowthat space for messing up
because we're humanand we're kind of messed up.
And so we kind of getstuck in that.
I mess up now that must mean I'ma horrible person, you know, and
and you know, gosh, I'm, I'mso a lot of what I hear that all
(48:17):
the time where we get kind ofused to that idea that if I,
if I feel it this problemlovable that makes me.
And so being able instead tokind of shift that is an up
because I'm human and nowall of a sudden I'm like,
okay, so how can we problemsolve this versus, you know,
getting stuck in it?
(48:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's black and whitethinking to get so stuck
and put down on yourself.
And something that stoodin my mind when you said
that too is the rewards system.
So for some kids they thriveon a reward system.
It works great for them,but for other kids, they may not
have the cognitive abilityto perform the way you're
asking them to perform.
(49:01):
That's when they can't do it.
They feel like they failed.
So you're giving a reward systemfor 30 kids when some are
very capable and some are likejust barely keeping it together
right then those kidsyou're barely keeping it
together are going to get worseand worse and worse because the
(49:21):
expectations being puton themselves,
they can't achieve, and thenthey feel the bad person.
And that's the thingin parenting too, is I have
to really take this step back.
And I think of it's a cognitiveladder is it's a therapy thing.
And so kind of a ladder iswe think of a ladder
(49:42):
of all the steps.
So I think of the top step,where do I want my kids
to get to?
I want them to get to all ofthose behaviors for that
reward. Start.
But if they can't I need tostep down.
Well, can they do this?
Not yet.
So let's put that one rung down.
Can they do this yet?
Nope. Not yet.
Let's go.
One run down.
So you start at the first rungis where can they be?
(50:04):
And business.
Yes.
And then you keep moving upthose rungs and and that's
the thing is we've beenso conditioned as well
to think like in this agethey can do this, in this age
they can do that in this age.
And it's so different.
It is so different.
They are going to be aheadin some things over other kids,
(50:25):
and they are going to be behindin some things with other kids.
It doesn't matter the childthey are always going to be,
nothing is going to be the samefor every age of a child.
And and that's whereas parents too, it's really hard
because there's these socialpressures, there's these norms,
(50:45):
these parenting norms,these ways of disciplining
that may work wellfor one of your kids.
It may not work at allfor another kid.
And we have to stop and think,okay, what is going on
with that kid?
Where are they able?
Where do I wait?
Where can I meet them?
At their cognitive level,at their ability?
(51:07):
At their abilities right now?
Like where truly are theirabilities?
And this is the hard thing toas a parent is to go, oh,
my kid's abilities.
And these are way lowerthan other kids are right now.
You get this same parent,you get this guilt,
you get this.
Well, am I a bad parent?
Have I done something wrong?
And I don't often see that.
(51:28):
Oh, my kids actually aheadin these other things.
Sometimes we then just focusonly on the things that they're
under and behind on.
Yeah.
And we focus so much on that.
And in a way that's not.
And not in the lens of okay,where are they at?
Let's think of this like ridinga bike.
(51:50):
What steps they actually need.
Instead, we try to get themright to the top of that ladder.
Yeah.
I'm so curious for you,has there been any moments
that have really helped youin navigating that?
Like you said, that seemand that help that sometimes
is very, very familiarto parents.
You know, parent guiltis a real thing that many of us
(52:13):
get really good at givingto ourselves and, and have that
difficulty, kind of, like yousaid, stepping back
and being able to kind of maybehave to have some reframe,
of that perspective of whatour kids can do.
And so I'm so curious,like, for you, how
how have you been able tonavigate that balance?
(52:37):
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
So I used to be the parentthat would judge I would judge
I think this is how parentingis.
This is what you'resupposed to do.
This is how a child reacts.
If they if they don'tact this way, this is what
you're supposed to do to them.
But I used to I used to judgeuntil I had my son.
You're given every timeyou're giving your kids
for a reason to write thingsI used to judge until I'm
(53:01):
in public and my child would beyelling at me in the face,
like randomly yelling at me,and I'd be like.
And I had to do a lot of therapyon myself as well and be okay
with me.
Part therapy was actuallya huge help for me, and that's
my trauma.
Informed coaching is two parts.
Three of us.
(53:22):
And so with parts therapy,I learned that every time
somebody is reactinga certain way, it's a part
of them that's protecting them.
It's protecting them usuallyfrom the vision of a child.
So the reaction that they'rehaving is usually going to
be like pretty.
They're bold or however it is.
(53:42):
And you have to stopand think, oh, that's a part
kicking up.
And as soon as I tookthe different lens, instead of
that child is acting out,that child is misbehaving.
That child is not doingwhat I've asked.
I've taken that step backand thought, what is this
part one?
So a really good example isthere was once that my son was
(54:04):
and we were going to Pokemon.
He loves Pokemon.
It's every Thursday nightwith his friends this
tournament.
It's great.
They love it.
And he was getting in this tiff.
He was just like not gettinghimself ready, but then
getting angry at us and thensaying that he was coming in.
And so I said something like,you don't have to go if
you don't want to go see,that's not what I want.
(54:25):
And I'm like, okay.
And normally I would havebeen like, well, you're
yelling at me, this isn't right.
And I went, oh, this is a partkicking in.
I'm like, so do you want to gothis way?
I don't know, like, okay.
So I stopped what I was doing,which is also hard to do
when you're trying to get outof the house and get into
something on time.
And I stopped and went, okay,so it seems like there's a
(54:45):
part of you that wants to go.
But a part of you isn't sureabout what you want to do when
you want to go, because youstill want it.
You don't want to stay home.
He's like, yes, my.
Okay, so is it that you'reunsure about playing,
but you maybe want to seeyour friends and instantly
(55:06):
you saw him come and he's like,yeah.
And I thought to myself, oh man,he is struggling with the fact
that he might lose a game.
He's probably had a daythat's taxed his whole system
and he's worried aboutgoing to play, but he still does
want to see his friendsand he doesn't want to miss out.
So I was like, okay, wellhow about this.
We go we go to your brother.
(55:27):
Once we get there,you let me know if you want
me to sign you up or not.
You go hang out with yourfriends.
You have to let me know.
By the time they start.
And if you don't want to do thisperfectly fine.
You let me know when youwant to walk home. I'll.
I'll come with you.
Your brother's old enoughto stay on his own.
I'll come back and get himlater.
He's like, okay.
Instantly packed up with stufftotally fine.
And we left.
And it was that I thinkwas such a big moment
(55:49):
for me to see.
It's usually parts.
There's a reason why they'reacting the way that they're
acting.
We're not always going to knowas a parent what the reason
is, and we're not going tolike it's not going to be
as laid out as that scenarioI just gave.
That was an amazingyeah it is not every scenario
(56:11):
works that way with him.
Like I don't alwaysfigure it out, but it helped me
go through a differentlens and be and handle it
differently, not judging him.
And then you would askabout the guilt and shame.
Now that I understandthat it's parts in him, it's
what he needs.
(56:33):
I've gotten to the pointto in myself and working
on myself, that I love myselfand my neurodiversity
and my ways of being and mydifferences.
I was judged for growing up,and now I'm like, you know what?
My kids are awesome.
And if people are going tojudge me, I know that when I did
(56:53):
it before, it was because Ididn't understand and I was not
that place of somebodyis going to judge me.
It's because they arelower on the cognitive ladder.
They're like, we're ona different stack and they're
at the step.
The judges, I've been there,so I can't judge them.
At the same time, I'm a fewsteps higher, which is not said
(57:15):
in a judging tone or anything.
It's just I've workedto that step.
That's where I am,and that's okay to be there
even if others don'tunderstand it.
Wow.
That sounds like, if I'm hearingit correctly, just really
being able to maybe extendsome of that compassion
and grace for whatever step andprocess other folks and,
(57:39):
and yourself are at, and alsobeing able to kind of honor
those pieces and knowthat they are all ways that
we can grow and that for you,it hasn't happened overnight.
It sounds like it's come froma lot of hard work, a lot
of intentional hard work.
To be able to saythis is an area that I want
to grow in, I'm kind of goingafter that.
(58:02):
At the same time, it soundslike being able to offer
that same compassion to ourchildren.
I'm saying like knowmeeting them where they're at
and having that be okay without,like you said, that just meant
that you're just it sounds likecuriosity is what's going
on for you, where you atand how can I best support you
at whatever step you're in?
(58:24):
Yeah.
And I do want to sayfor everybody listening that
that sounds all beautifuland nice and everything,
and that's not how it isall the time.
I do yell sometimes.
There's sometimes where I dojust listen and I yell, and then
afterwards I have to come backand be like, okay, I'm sorry,
I shouldn't have done that.
And there are other timeswhere I will come up to
them and go, I'm gonnayell at you, and I need you
(58:47):
to know I'm going to yellbecause I've done
everything else that I can doin my toolbox right now.
I don't know how elseto help you, and I just need to
yell.
And I just need to tell youwhat's frustrating me right now.
And then I'll be done.
And I've done that as well.
So it's like, it's been funnyand it's so funny because when
I do that with my husband,sometimes I actually
stop sometimes and thenit's like it changes a state
sometimes, which is funny.
(59:09):
So like, not everythingis perfect.
Like it's not what Iexplained as to how I do
approach it.
I don't always havethe bandwidth to approach it
that day.
That way, every dayand every time.
And that's okay to.
As long as I'm doing mybest with the bandwidth
(59:30):
that I have on thatparticular day, if I'm doing
my best, then however I reactis going to be okay.
My kids will be okayif I totally overreact,
if I totally yell at themand I come back later and say,
okay, I'm not havinga good day, I'm struggling today
that was not because of whatyou had done.
(59:51):
So we need to figure this out.
We'll figure it out together,but I can't right now.
They're getting used tothat too.
That I'll come back and talk itthrough with them.
I will say that how you werereacting was not okay as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And I really appreciate youand is making sure to add that
this is this is us rightat our best capacity.
(01:00:14):
And, you know, a great day.
And yes, absolutely.
It's it's not.
And and like you said thatit's okay to also, going back
to that that idea, it'sokay to myself and because
we're going to and parenting isreally hard and I think that if
(01:00:36):
you didn't mess up, I would beasking you, what is your secret?
What did you take?
And if somebody said they didn'tmess up at all, I'd be like,
what are you not telling me?
You right now?
What's really going on?
Yeah, absolutely.
(01:00:57):
Alright, so as we wrap upthe last question, I always
like to ask folks that,if you had access to a Delorean
and a big back to the future.
Yeah.
Is there anything that you wouldgo back and tell yourself,
as far as anything thatyou've learned or just
giving yourself a little love,what would you offer
to your self if you hadaccess to what that makes
(01:01:19):
me tear up?
Because of all the workI've done on myself and all that
I've learned about these kidswith these cool brains
is usually when we havethese kids with these brains
that struggle to do certainthings that are totally in
another world with other things,then usually their parents
are a part of it,have it as well.
So I've now learned thatthe things that like
(01:01:40):
I never lived in a boxgrowing up and my parents
always tried to put me in a box.
And I now know that I go backto that girl and girl like fly.
Use your imagination,be you on a apologetically
you, you know, think outsidethe box.
It's okay that they don'tunderstand it and maybe
(01:02:01):
are fearful of some ofyour ideas.
And how do you diveinto subjects.
But one day that is going to,I mean, with me, with
that is going to allow youto get responders back from
medical, even back on the jobthat's going to stop them
from committing suicide.
So it's going to stop and helpthese kids and these parents
to do that.
(01:02:21):
So go back and beunapologetically you and
live in you and who you are,because you are going to change
the world because you arebeing you with that neurodiverse
brain.
And I love that so much.
So I got goose bumpsbecause it's, it's such a
powerful message.
(01:02:42):
And thank you.
Thank you so much for beingwilling to open up and and help
pull back that curtain and sharewith us the struggle that is
parenting and, also sharingthis recipe.
I'm so excited to have somethingto share with my kids.
My kids love a good curry, butwe've never had this particular
recipe, so I'm so excitedto share it with them too.
(01:03:03):
Thank you so much forfor joining me today.
I really do appreciate you.
Thank you so much.
Yes, yes.
And everyone, thank you so muchfor tuning in.
And as Andy said, I hopethat this episode helps
inspire you to fly and beunapologetic here today.
Thanks so much and we'll seeyou next time.
(01:03:24):
If you or anyone that you knowis struggling with any of
the topics that we discussed intoday's episode, make sure
to check out our show notesfor support and resources
you can get help.
So thanks again for joining uson today's episode of
The Real Family Eats.
If you're a parent readyto share your real life
(01:03:44):
parenting story, make sure toreach out to us and our website
found in the show notes.
And that goes for today'srecipe.
Social media's supportand resource, as all of that
can be found in our show notes.
So make sure to check them outand make sure to follow, like,
share, subscribe, and stayup to date on all things
the real Family Eats.
(01:04:05):
I hope you'll join us next timefor more food for thought
and thoughtful food!Enjoy your eat!
And as soon as I took thedifferent lens, instead of
(00:02):
that child is acting out,that child is misbehaving.
That child is not doingwhat I've asked.
I've taken that step backand thought, what does this
part want?
Hey everyone, thanks forjoining me.
(00:23):
My name is Reesa and I'myour host.
We are talking to real familiesabout real stories here on the
Real Family Eats, wherewe've got food for thought
and thoughtful food.
So let's eat.
(00:47):
Welcome back everyone.
Thanks so much for joiningus again.
I'm so excited for today'sepisode.
We have Andi joining ustoday. Hi Andi.
Thank you so much for joining.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yes, I am so excitedfor your recipe and your story.
But before we get started,for anybody listening
(01:07):
who doesn't know you, can youintroduce yourself for us?
Yeah.
So I live in Canada, whereit's pretty cold here right now.
And, I a long timeago, my son was actually first
born.
He was born in with all theburnout signs.
Cause I've been in burnout.
And he was struggling withjust so much going on
(01:30):
with his body.
And my mom came out,and that led me to being a sleep
and stress coach.
And I was gonna sort a burnout.
But he still was having a lot ofbig emotions at that time,
so I had no where he was.
I moved all the sleep and stresscoaching to first responders.
And so I was workingwith them for a while,
(01:52):
all through the pandemic.
Everything until a coupleyears ago, because after the
pandemic, I had to pull himfrom school because
his outbursts were so bad.
And I was like,how does this work?
What do I do?
Like what's going on?
All these sleep and stresstechniques that I use
with responders to get themback from medically, back on,
like they're not like it's stillnot stopping the outbursts.
(02:15):
So I had to dive into allof these other pieces
of the puzzle, and that drove meinto being an executive
functioning coach.
And through my journey withresponders.
Two I became a traumainformed coach.
So I am a sleep stresscoach, trauma informed coach,
and an executive functioningcoach who now works with kids
with big emotions.
(02:36):
Okay, so lots of appsthat you've had throughout
your journey.
It sounds like, it's beena journey.
I mean, we do what we need to dofor our kids.
I'm like diving into theresearch and studying
and certifying and whateverI can do.
Yeah.
Wonderful.
And so you have two children?
Yes, yes.
Perfect.
Literally, since, they are11 and 13 to boys.
(03:01):
Okay. Wow.
You've got your handsfull for sure.
Yeah.
They're amazing.
So I homeschooled both of themas well.
Well, I run my business,so. Wow. Okay.
So for any of your services,this is a great segue into our
shameless plug section.
So if someone's interested inyour services or connecting
with you, what's the best wayfor them to do that?
(03:23):
I would say to start offlistening to my podcast,
which I'm going to be having youon soon, which I'm very excited
about.
So that's Kids with Big Emotionspodcast and then everything else
I work one on one.
I have a group, it's asupport circle for parents
as well.
We're other parents with kidswith big emotions are in there
(03:45):
and just help them navigatethrough all of the sleep,
stress, all of the, you know,executives and all of the
different strugglesthat their kids are having
and just help them all navigatethrough that in a support
circle.
So all of that, the linksare all on my podcast.
So if you just go to Kidsand Big Emotions or Andy
clarke.com, which is AndyC clarke.com.
(04:06):
So Andy clarke.com willhave everything on it as well.
Perfect.
And as usual we will linkall of those wonderful links
and resources down in our shownotes.
So make sure to check those out.
As far as your podcast,where can folks find that?
Is that on particular platform?
So services, it's everywhere.
It's on YouTube.
(04:27):
It's on like everything Spotify,Amazon, Podbean.
Yeah, everywhere.
Like on Apple.
It's on all different channels.
We're almost hitting1100 episodes, 5000.
I wish we're almost at 100episodes.
So yeah. Wow.
Congratulations.
And that's so awesome.
And it sounds like it's superaccessible.
(04:49):
So make sure to check that outas well.
And I'm excited to be a guestand chat a little bit
more on that side too.
Okay.
So let's dive into your story.
But before we do that,what recipe are you sharing
with parents todayand why did you choose
this one? Yeah.
So this is a sweet potatochickpea curry we do sometimes
(05:10):
and chicken into it.
And I love this recipe becausethe thing is, time consuming
is actually making thesweet potatoes.
But I can do those inthe morning when my kids
are like, well, we'redoing breakfast or while
we're having lunch, I canthrow them in the toaster
oven and leave them and thenrest together quickly later.
So I love that I can kind ofdo it in two parts and do
(05:32):
the other part quick.
Also sometimes make batchas well, and then we'll freeze
a bunch of it so it makesquick meals after.
And my kids love it and it fillsthem up, which for boys,
I don't know, they're goingthrough a growth spurt.
Filling them up is amazing.
So I just love that. Likeonce you've got the sweet
(05:53):
potatoes done, the rest isquick and easy and freezes
so well.
Wonderful.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
So because of the nature of ourof the podcast, I did the
potatoes ahead of time too.
And you're also right, you know,to be able to kind of
do that, that get thatout of the way, that makes a
ton of sense, especiallywhen we're talking about parents
(06:15):
who sometimes, you know, havinglots of time is not really
a luxury feature to have.
And so I love that idea.
And being able to kind ofsit it out like that and then
just meet whatever your need isas far as time constraints.
So that's awesome.
Okay.
So tell me what sense, I have,I have these sweet potatoes
(06:38):
ahead of time that I bakedand then I mix them together,
with the coconut milk and the,vegetable broth.
Am I remembering that correctly?
Yeah.
Perfect.
So tell me now, what are whatare the steps?
What do I do while we chat?
And then I'll get going and thenwe'll jump into your story.
(06:59):
Yeah.
So you have all the spices.
So you'll need to chop gingerand garlic.
Okay.
And then once you havethose chopped what you're
going to start to dois you're going to heat your pan
and start off with the humanand the coriander seeds
and toast them just till they'refragrant, like just a
little bit.
It's not alone.
Very quick.
(07:19):
And then you add in,oh you chopped an onion as well.
So then you add in the onionturmeric, garam masala.
And you'll start to do thatuntil the onions get translucent
and then add in.
If you do choose a bit ofchili pepper along with
the ginger and garlic, we don't.
(07:40):
I have one son that doesnot like spicy and one
that likes.
So the one adds hot sauce afterand the other one keep mild.
So the all the other spices.
Nothing is spicy hot.
There's spicy flavor.
You can keep those.
And then you spicy those.
Once they're done you addthe chickpeas that you've
already drained okay.
(08:01):
Add in the chicken.
Satay them 2 or 3 minutesjust to get some of the flavor
and stuff in them.
And then you pour that sweetpotato mixture which the sweet
potato mixture should bea little bit like liquidy,
a little like not.
You don't want it hardlike mashed potatoes.
You want them.
And also it's just likea very thick sticks stew
kind of thing.
(08:21):
That's too think it'll burnon the bottom, and then all
you do is add the tomato pasteinto it, I'll add cilantro
into it and some spinach.
If my kids, when theywere younger, I used to blend
the spinach and the cilantrowith the with the sweet
potatoes.
So they see the pieces.
(08:41):
But now they're finewith pieces of green in it.
And then you just hit that.
That's it.
Wonderful.
And I love that little,you know, to this,
your kids are, like you said,maybe not liking the idea
of leaving the veggies, that wecan kind of sneak it in
there as well.
So perfect.
I can do all those thingswhile we chat.
(09:03):
And I'd love to know more.
And you kind of give usa little bit of a sneak peek
as far as, some ofthe challenges that your family
kind of face that broughtyou into what you're
doing today.
And so I'd love to hear a littlebit more about that journey
and kind of how did thatcome about?
I imagine, as you were saying,you know, you've been
(09:24):
coaching and helping folksand then to kind of have
it hit really close to home,was certainly, you know, kind
of a different challengepresented.
So can you tell us a little bitmore about that?
Yeah.
So do you want me to hit on boththe burnout and then having to
pull them and learning the like,the pulling out, or want me
(09:45):
to go more to when I hadto really pull them
out of school.
It's the burnout is, at playas far as your parenting.
So I think that manyparents could absolutely
relate to that.
So we'd love to hear that.
That's the thing is that I,I mean, I've been in the house
and all this industryfor 30 years, coaching for
30 years.
And so exercise, nutritionand sleep all those things
(10:08):
where like I was doing them alland I still burnt out.
Right.
So that's where it's fascinatingthat it really was having
to change that mindset of,okay, other things are going on.
And when you're in burnout,quite often you start getting
gut issues and you mightget skin issues and you get
moody, and, you know,your husband might walk
(10:30):
in the room and he smiles at youthe wrong way.
And you're like, this is firedat him.
That he doesn't know whichwhich end is up sometimes
because you can't.
You're stressed.
Hormone is the one that managesyour ability to handle stressors
and your energy.
And when it's crashing,you can't handle stressors.
So everything just becomesa fiery struggle to handle
(10:52):
your kids.
You're just pushing fromlike the moment you wake up
until the moment you go to bed.
Like your battery doesn't chargeat night.
So yeah, it was one thingwhen it was happening to me
and I was going to my doctorand I was saying, I'm
really tired.
That's going on, and they'resaying, your tests are
coming back.
Okay.
That was one thing.
(11:12):
But to the next stepwhere my son was born and his
skin was the worst caseof extreme, and the doctor
had ever seen, and thenwe couldn't find like
he ended up on this hyperallergenic for me, like I
was gluten and dairy free.
I was like everything I eat,like I ate.
So clean.
And he still couldn'thandle, like, projectile vomit
(11:33):
that we had to switch.
So this, this hypoallergenicformula that was prescription
based, it was just likethe issues, skin all
these things.
And then once he was like,he was kind of talking about,
like a year and a half,two years.
And he used to say, I'm so sadand so sad.
(11:54):
Or after he would eat certainthings like rage would come,
not even just anger or tantrumwould be like rage hitting
things like full on,like instant.
If you eat it and you see thisreaction in him, I'm like, okay,
this is not just me,this is my son as well.
So going to your entomologist,pediatric gastroenterologist,
(12:15):
pediatric allergists andI remember being I was working
with a natural partof the time to and the pediatric
gastroenterologist had saidthat, oh, most allergies are
never fixed, and there's nosuch thing as, like, leaky
gut or something like that.
Forget issues.
And I'm like.
No, no, no, no.
(12:36):
Like, I've been toldthis for years and had
been believing this for myself,that when nothing else
that you're saying is ableto help my son, I'm going this
other route.
So I started studyingand learning and researching
all of that issues, all abouthow like affects your hormones.
And it was just I just feltso bad for him because I
struggled for so many yearswith doctors telling me that
(12:57):
this was just the norm.
You know, it's just normalfor a parent to be pushing
through every single day.
It's just normal for youto like, be struggling.
And I'm like, this is notnormal for a baby to be born
like this.
This is not normal.
And it had to take meto that point to kind of
hear all of that.
And like you said, theit sounds like if I heard
(13:20):
you correctly, you do almostkind of this conditioning,
right, that it's just you,this is normal.
So you just kind of have toput up with it.
You just have to deal with itbecause this is what it is.
And that's just likehearing that just kind of
I mean, as I was listeningto you get it's feelings and
the thoughts are popping upin my head of just like this
hopelessness and this just,like really lonely and kind of
(13:43):
this really stinks.
Like what?
Yeah.
I remember just thinkingto myself, okay, I'm a personal
trainer and I can't work outlike I think.
And instead this is justgoing to have to be my life
because this must be in my head.
I kept thinking, this must bein my head because the doctors
just always, you know,my cortisol would come back
(14:06):
really low, but it wasn'tin disease yet.
So they're like, we'll keepan eye on it.
You're not.
Do you have signs of Addison'sdisease?
Which is like crazy, crazylow 2.5% of cortisol, but you're
10% cortisol, so you're notthere yet.
And I remember coming to thedoctor's office and just
thinking like, okay, I'm 10%cortisol on this test,
(14:29):
but I'm not in a diseasestate yet.
And I was so upset and sofrustrated, and I felt so alone
and like, this is just crazy.
And it was only then I realizedand really understood
the difference betweenour medical system is triage,
reactive medicine for disease.
And we need them.
We need them.
They have a role,they have a place,
(14:51):
but they're not preventativemedicine.
And I wasn't in a diseasestate yet, so training couldn't
help them.
So I needed to go to thatpreventative side.
And and at the momenttoo, like I'm finally working
with you guys.
Specialist who she's a lead,researcher for a university.
(15:14):
And and college three statecollege in the state.
So.
So she's a lead researcherin the students I've got
that has gastroenterologistworking under her.
And she's a natural path.
So she's helped me with wordingI needed to use.
And I'm finally being heardby my gastro to get to
work with.
So the holistic scienceworking with the UMass.
(15:35):
But this is such a strugglefor so many people to where we
go to our doctor and we expectthey're going to help us,
but we're not within their scopeof where they're training hits.
That we've been trainedto believe that they should
be able to help us throughbefore we're in disease state.
But it's not what theirtraining is.
(15:57):
Well, I'm like you said,you have to kind of get the
inside scoop on whatwords to say or you know how
to say it in order to get themto listen.
I mean, that's not commonknowledge that everyone
has accessible.
And so you're absolutely right.
If you're going in and justkind of looking to these
professionals, kind of be ableto support you in you
saying, hey, something's wrongand you don't have the code,
(16:21):
you can crack the codeto be able to get them
to listen.
Like, yes, I, I, I absolutelycan imagine how frustrating
that would be.
And then, so like yousaid, to see in your child
kind of coming up against thatsame wall like we're, you know,
I don't know about you,but I would definitely
my mom out there aboutwould be like, you know,
(16:44):
like, no.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And so when it was happen,my son is diving so deep
and listening to every podcast.
And finally, this onepodcast listed.
So I had some slightly differentsome symptoms than him,
some similar.
And I listen to podcast one daythat listed all of our symptoms
together and started talkingabout it.
As far as like the adrenalsor stress system and stuff.
(17:08):
And I remember sitting onthe floor crying and being like,
oh my God, I'm not crazy.
It's not in my spine.
I'm like, damn.
So deep into researchingand learning and training
and studying and coursesand yeah, it was, it was un
believable that when my son wassix years old, we went back
(17:28):
to the doctor and the doctor'sgoing over and going, it's gone.
There's no eczema anywhere.
So he had the worst eczemathat I've ever seen in a baby.
He's like, and it's funnybecause I can see some scars,
but it's gone and never swear.
Like, I had to build himsleeves when he was a baby
because he used to scratchhis wrist open in his sleep
(17:49):
and come to me at twoin the morning going, mommy
bleeding help! And I don'tlike sitting at two
in the morning just bandagingthis kid's wrist.
And you go, thank you.
And then go right back to that.
Like, that was just one for him.
Mean it's just it's.
And I'm like, no, this isn'tnormal.
This is not in your head.
This is truly happening.
(18:09):
And we need to divedown into this.
Yeah.
And to kind of have someoneall of a sudden validates,
like you said, this, this,you're not alone.
And and it's not somethingthat's just kind of made us.
Oh, I mean, it's so powerful.
And I think that's part ofI mean, I can just speak
(18:30):
for myself.
Part of the reason why I wasso passionate about wanting to
even start a podcast like this,because so much of just what
I've heard from otherparents for my own experience is
it is like when you are sittingthere and keeping it to yourself
because for whatever reason,then it it gets really lonely.
(18:50):
You don't hear storiesthat sound like yours, then it
just really furthersthat narrative and like, it must
just be something that's wrongwith me or, you know,
I'm missing.
Yeah, yeah, it it was.
You go through all thesefields too, because once
you realize there actuallyis something going on, you go
through the anger.
(19:12):
You also go like the grief,like you go through all those
stages, right?
Like, it's been so long.
How many years since I'vebeen struggling and no one
could help me.
And you get angry, and thenyou're like, no, I'm picking up
my socks and put my big girlpants on.
I'm gonna fix this.
And yeah, it's just fascinating.
All of the fields that yougo through.
And then, okay, now I'm alonein this fight, and then
(19:33):
you realize others are fightingthis fight, and you're like,
how this community.
Wow. Okay.
You know, there's others too.
And and.
Yeah, it's just it can be so,so lonely, So tell me then, you
know, you're you're fightingthis fight.
You you get some of the kind ofphysical manifestations where
(19:58):
your child kind of finding somesolutions.
And then you mentioned,you know, then you kind of had
another growing painas you continue to grow.
And you know that onceyou're into the emotion side,
can you say more aboutthat journey and kind of
how did that come about?
Yeah.
So we were able to help with thephysical side.
But that anger was stillalways there.
(20:20):
And the perfectionismand the anxiety and the not
liking change.
And when he started goingto school, he hated it
right from day one,like day one.
He hated, hated, hated,hated being in.
And he would cry goingto school.
(20:41):
And it was just such anxiety.
And I had.
A neighbor ended up takinghim to school.
And so because he was a bitbetter going to school,
but it was still bad.
And then we had a childthis year at this point that was
kindergarten and grade one,and then I think the
pandemic hit.
So we were off all agreedto part of grade one, and all of
(21:03):
grade two was at home.
Okay.
And then he went back.
It was just like still thesame thing.
And it was like it wastoo loud, too many noises,
just all kinds of stuff.
And he was bored.
He was just super bored.
And the teacher was like,I don't know what to do
with him.
So I thought his brotherwas in gifted.
And I thought, okay, once,you know, the testing happens
(21:27):
in grade three here,once he does the testing,
he'll get in the gifted.
We'll get him out of this schoolwhere he doesn't really like it.
And he'll he'll bechallenged and all of
that stuff.
And he didn't get in the gifted.
I was like, well, this kidsmarter than his brother
is smarter than his brother.
I'm like, yeah, how did he notget in the Gifted?
I didn't understand at.
(21:51):
So the teacher was phenomenalthat year, though, because
amazing.
He didn't know what else to dowith my son.
Like schoolwork wise.
And so my son read booksmost of the day in class,
and if he we had likea code word, so he would.
And if he would explode orhad explosions in school,
(22:11):
the teacher would call meor call me just before
an explosion would happen to goand get him.
This was happening like 3or 4 times a week.
So right now it's making himTuesdays and Thursdays
and he just needed quiet.
He needed to down regulate.
And he was really goodthe whole entire day.
I could go upstairs and workin the office, and he spent
the whole day and he was fine.
(22:32):
But he still struggled sometimeson Fridays to still be
in school.
I still get calls fromthe teacher when the school
would only deal with itbecause I went in and I'm
like, well, he's bored as well.
They're like, but he didn'tget in the gifted and I'm like,
then.
But he's bored and he's havingoutbursts of the old outbursts.
Okay, let's work with him.
(22:52):
When he's in the red.
And I'm thinking the part of whyhe's in the red is that
he's bored.
And we also didn't understandas well that he'd been masking
what at that point to end upthinking was learning
disability.
But it was a lot of these kids.
And that's why he didn't passthe gifted screening
(23:13):
was because.
So he was 99.9% in every subjectfor every crazy.
But it was the facial thathe didn't pass for 90.
So he got 96% out of allthe kids and not 98.
So he didn't pass and wentlike so if we fast forward
(23:37):
to all of my learning.
So we ended up doing psychoat Valve and learning
and they said he had adisability and learning
disability and writtenexpression where apparently.
So this is dysgraphia,which falls under the dyslexia
and the dyscalculia.
Okay.
And dysgraphia is strugglingto write by hand.
Get your thoughts on paper.
(23:58):
And so also like do grammarpunctuation, all of
those things.
And so if we fast forward to metrying to figure out
how does his brain work.
Like once I brought him home,I realized he can't handle more
than one instruction at a timeand write out the answers
(24:20):
to math, which he testedin grade three grade eight
level math.
But he could not even write downhow he got the answers for grade
three math.
Okay, so he can do all thisin his head, but he can't
get the stuff on paper.
Problems that was causing it wasyeah, and that's so cute.
(24:41):
If it's okay with you.
I heard you mentioned thathe was masking out.
And so for any listener who'swho is listening and maybe
doesn't know what thatlooks like, because I think that
sometimes that's very mucha big culprit for something
like this.
Getting this.
Can you say a little bitmore about, at least in your
(25:01):
experience, what is masking?
What did how did it present foryour child and kind of your
experiences?
Wow, that would be amazing.
Yeah. So being that he was inschool and reading full chapter
books, being that he could dodictation, he could do dictation
words, like at college level.
So when he was asked to writesomething down like, hey, write
(25:25):
a paragraph about this, do that,he'd write like one sentence
and they'd look at himand go, hey, you know,
you could write more on this.
He's like, I don't want tosay this.
I don't want to write calmly.
Never.
And and they would be like,but you should.
He goes, no, I'm notgoing to do it.
And it was like, there is no,he didn't fight with them.
(25:47):
He wouldn't reason with them.
He wouldn't let them do anythingyou don't know.
And then he eventuallystart saying, it's too easy.
And so they were like, well,I can't challenge this kid,
so what am I supposed to do?
I've got 30 other kidsin the class, so they just
let him be and go back to readhis book.
And same thing with his math.
The teacher knew that he coulddo math at such a high level
(26:09):
in his head.
They just didn't argue with himand then being able to get it
on paper, okay.
And then and now thatI see on this, I would be
curious to go back to thatclassroom and wonder if shortly
after the teacherasked him this, did he have
(26:30):
an outburst and yellat another kid, well,
why do you say that?
Because he would have beensitting there knowing that
he could not do it, knowing thathis brain was different
and he would have been becauseand this is the thing,
I don't like the term giftedbecause gifted often means that
(26:53):
a kid can academicallydo things, but their brain
works different and they oftenhave a lot of social or,
you know, different strugglesin the way that they
perceive things and the traumasthat they have.
All of these things.
So from a young age,he could always do things.
And then all of a suddenin school, he was being asked to
do something he couldn't do.
And the trauma can kickthe can, right?
(27:15):
Something's being asked of you.
Too soon, too fast, too much,and too.
I can't remember the other.
The other one.
But those create traumas andwhen we start driving, the way
their brains work, they havea bucket only for mistakes
or bad.
So he would get pissed if heslightly was inside the line
(27:38):
and coloring and even a circle,drawing a circle or drawing
his letters.
They weren't perfect.
It wasn't the perfect test fora perfect P.
And I'm thinking your writingis way better than mine,
but you know.
But it wasn't perfect, soit wasn't bad.
So he would even often rip uphis artwork where he would
wrap up his paper where he wasasking him to do so.
(28:01):
He have anger and outburstsbecause he's sitting there
thinking that he's beena failure.
He's been back.
And they get this like, it'sjust fascinating when you start
talking to these kids and withperfectionism and fear of making
mistakes, you start realizingevery single thing that they do
wrong.
They fear they put in that I'ma bad person bucket
(28:23):
and I've done wrong.
Bucket instead of what theyall say, oh, just move on to the
growth mindset.
And there's other stepsthat have to happen
before they're ready and ableto do that.
Absolutely.
And I think we want toI find that and I don't know
if this is true for you.
Is this a growth mindset?
(28:45):
First of all, they're you know,it's easier said than done.
And then also the itdoesn't move into the growth
mindset doesn't necessarilyall of a sudden, did you give
children a cognitive abilitythat develop naturally?
They're not quite there yet.
They don't like.
You should be able to kindof distinguish the gray.
(29:07):
Right now it is all veryblack and white.
And so it is eitherI did amazing or like you
said, I'm a failure.
And this is somehow, you know,on on me is something that I,
you know, shortcoming.
And so yes, we can give themskills and they might be able
to kind of conceptuallylike okay, that makes sense,
(29:27):
but doesn't always necessarilymean that their brain is able
to get there and get thereconsistently for all these
challenges that they'rereaching on a daily basis
that are challengingthat construct of themselves.
And so that sense.
(29:50):
So, for instance, and I thinkit was in that similar
to kind of your experienceat all. Yeah.
And it's fascinating because andyou made me think back to the
psychoactive drugs.
And I never actually linkedthis before, but when we did
this like a, when aboutshe said that he has, learning
disability, I've writtenthis expression in black
and white thinking, and Iremember her telling us
that's never going to change.
(30:11):
You can't fix that.
And I remember there is there'sso many things about that cycle.
What about that?
I was just like in my mindthinking, I'm gonna figure out
a way, you know, and it'sjust been so fascinating to go,
like, now to think back becauseI hadn't.
And yeah, that black and whitethinking mistakes are bad.
(30:34):
You know everything.
You have to say things this way.
This is how this is done.
Like so for reasoning gainor losing.
Right.
Losing in a game is like,yeah, I just could not
handle that.
And it's been so much work inunderstanding black and white
(30:55):
thinking, understandingcognitive flexibility
and working with him that,I mean, he still has
some more work to do on it.
Oh my gosh.
Like he laughs at himselfsometimes when he makes
mistakes now and he'll actuallypurposely do things
that are silly or likebeing a kid that he wouldn't,
(31:18):
or because that will look bador that's not how this is done.
Or somebody might laugh at meand it's just been fascinating
seeing the change in him in.
Yeah, with mistakesand being able to make
those mistakes and startingto now like I had to pull off,
(31:38):
even though academicallyhe was ahead in homeschooling,
I've had to pull off ofall of that because I need to
work at a stuff that he'scognitively ready for.
As far as working with himand being able to do
more than one step at a time,working at his home on
something that maybe he doesn'tactually know how to answer,
(32:00):
and being okay with that.
So I've been working more on theall of that side of things,
the executive functioningside of things with him and not
focusing at all on the academic.
It's been like un believable.
And the fascinating thing is, isI have not had him write
(32:23):
anything.
I have not touched that learningdisability or written
expression.
And I found in his GoogleDrive a two chapter story
that I thought he copiedfrom somebody that was so good.
Amazing grammar, amazingpunctuation, better than mine.
And I think it was suchan amazing story written out.
And I asked him wherehe got it from.
He's like, I wrote that.
(32:44):
And that was becausewe'd worked on all of the where
all of the things that werestopping him from being able to
pass and think about, okay,what do I need to do
for sentence structure here?
(33:05):
What do I need to do?
I need two paragraphs.
Like before his brain wasgoing so fast.
He couldn't stop.
He couldn't pause.
He couldn't self-monitor himselfto notice any mistakes.
He couldn't self-correcthimself.
And also two, he wouldbe so hard on himself about
self-correcting anywaysthat that would have sent him
(33:26):
in a tailspin.
Before you even start addinggrammar and punctuation
in there.
Oh, and so it sounds likeby giving him that
opportunity to to not havethat pressure to fit into a box.
But, you know, we're tryingto cram everybody else into
he was able to kind ofon his own find find his
(33:50):
lane there.
Is am I doing that correctly?
Yeah.
He's finding his way.
He still doesn't knowwhat subjects he likes.
He still doesn't know whatinterests him other than Pokemon
in Minecraft.
But, you know, he's like,in subject wise, like my
(34:11):
he does seem to like history,but he's very cautious about
telling me that he likes historybecause I think he's weird
in the back of his mindthat I'll give him stuff
that he won't understandor that will be too hard or that
will just hurt his brain.
And so I'll just sometimeshis hand in some videos or just
(34:33):
hand them up.
There's so many thingsyou can do homeschooling
wise that work different partsof his brain.
There's some great, you know,video games that are
all history.
And I'm like, hey, why don'tyou try this game?
And I have to start him offon the steps because he's always
there's still that piece.
Sometimes that I think it'sa trauma from before
(34:54):
starting things and getting thatinitiation of things.
So which is all executivefunctioning still too,
and working with the traumas.
But there's so many piecesto the puzzle.
Right.
And then I've learned executivefunction, who I studied under
to become a coach just through,Tara Sumner, who's an SLP.
(35:15):
And I do remember when shesaid that she discovered
a long time ago that dysgraphia,dyslexia, dyscalculia.
Well, not on some of thiscalculator is a bit different,
but some of it is executivefunctioning.
Executive functioning strugglesthat she has been able to work
with kids with all of theseand been able to help them,
(35:40):
be able to get past them,because they're actually
executive functioning.
But our school system tendsto put them under a learning
disability, and they'reonly looking at the way
that they academicallydo things, and they're
not looking at the way that thebrain cognitively thinks and
processes, you know,perception and where
(36:01):
their attention is when they'redoing these letters and what
they're inhibiting.
And if they can self-monitorand if they can self-correct,
if they can't do those things,then they are going to
constantly spell thingsbackwards and mix up
their letters and not be able towork on those things.
Have to figure out which partis it, their nonverbal working
memory like, which parts of itis causing them to not be able
(36:21):
to write all their letters?
I imagine with the masking thatyou mentioned that that just
further complicates,especially if we're talking
about folks who aren't payingattention or even know what
masking is.
The easily could get missed inthose ways.
And so then we're going thenthis doesn't you don't fit this
(36:42):
diagnosis.
So my it and then let's move onin in dismissing it in that way
that as well.
And our teachers as they'reamazing I love teachers.
They're not that executivefunctioning.
They're taught the academic sidehow somebody should learn
if their executive functioningsystem is completely intact,
(37:03):
if they're executive functioningis running the way that it is,
then they should be ableto do the stuff that, like
the teachers are being taught,they're not taught about
executive functioning.
So, yeah, here Sumneris the nominal.
She is booked until like 2026to speak in schools.
Are some schools that havehired her to teach all of
their teachers.
It's slowly comingwhere teachers are learning
(37:26):
about it and teachersare coming on board with that.
But most teachers aren'taware of it, which is, as I was
saying, like the support circlethat I have.
Like, I'll start teachingparents how to in a in a way
that teachers, most teachers,not all, I will be open
to hearing about it in orderto be able to help and support
(37:47):
their child child'sclass in there.
Because this is one ofthe big gaps we have is teachers
want to help the child,but they don't understand
the executive functioningside of it and how to
support it.
And so that's when tothey may miss.
So with my son, they missed itmore because they didn't
(38:08):
understand the executivefunctioning side and
none of them.
When I went back and told themthat dystrophy, that
none of them had known aboutdyspraxia.
The teacher of the year beforeis teacher.
This year, like that year,none of them had heard about
dysgraphia.
I went to a couple ofother teachers, my other son,
and had none of them had heardof it.
So there's a I mean,how can they learn everything,
(38:30):
especially when their kidsare filled with, you know, 30
kids in a class?
How can they have any bandwidthto even go and take
an extra course incertification, like for
a year? Yeah.
So I think to for him it washe was masking and they also
didn't understand enough aboutwhat was going on that they
(38:53):
weren't able to ask the rightquestions to figure
it out either.
Yeah.
I'm really curious for younow, going to the parent side
and kind of getting inyour brain a little bit.
I'm curious about what wasgoing on for you upstairs in
your brain, kind of seeingyour child struggling
(39:13):
through this, gettingthose phone calls, and, and just
not having a lot of answersat that point in time on how how
do I support my kid?
Can you say a little bitmore about that piece of it?
It was so hard, so lonely.
Like we talked before about thatburnout piece being lonely.
(39:34):
This was where I wasled to believe that my son
was the only one in this schoolthat was having outbursts
or having struggleslike this, that like, didn't
get them the gifted, butthey wouldn't help him now that
he didn't get in the gifted.
(39:55):
And I felt like I wasthe only one.
And going through this later,like there, actually ended up
being a gifted group in ourin our neighborhood, in our
in our zone, in our school zone,our area.
And I started realizingthat there were a lot of
other kids that werealso struggling with
the same thing and and thatthe school system truly did not
(40:17):
understand it.
And the gifted programs don'tunderstand it either.
My gifted here is grade level,so they don't go above
grade level for anything,and they don't understand all
the executive functioningand learning disabilities
and all these kids have towhen is they are smarter.
So it's been it wassuper lonely.
(40:39):
And then it was very frustratingwhen I found out.
Well, just being toldby the school all the time,
the guidance counselorwould only ever call me
or wanted me to meether in person, would never
ever reply to anything an email.
So nothing was on her andand she would pretty much
never ask me what was trulygoing on with my son would just
(41:00):
tell me what needed to happen.
And in my mind I'm like,you don't understand my child
at all.
So they hadn't spent anytime to even get to know him.
And it was very frustratingonce I got into these
other Facebook groups and stuffand I realized, oh, this isn't
only my son, there aretons of kids out there.
And then there's tons oftwo reasons twice exceptional,
(41:23):
which means they're academicallyahead, but they usually
have another struggle.
So dysgraphia, dyslexia,ADHD, autism, auditory
processing, sort oflike anything like when
these kids are struggling to,you know, get their morning
routine, get their stuffout the door they can't
like, remember to bringanything home from school.
They can't remember how to handin their homework or get their
(41:46):
assignments done on time.
All of these things,I'm realizing, oh, these are
there's tons of these kidsout there.
And so you start going,okay, I'm not lonely anymore.
But then they're allstruggling to and they're
like, oh, but they're allstruggling too.
And now that I understand aboutthe executive functioning piece,
(42:07):
as I read, like I want to go inthere all day and just
being like, oh my gosh,you could have an executive
functioning like you couldwhat you just said, that's
this piece of executivefunctioning and that's this one
and this one and this oneand these all make sense.
I just want to shout it outthere, and I want to reply to
everyone and give them a hugand be like, there's actually
a reason behind this.
(42:30):
Yeah.
It sounds like it might just,you know, maybe even providing
not only that normalization,that you're not alone, but
just a validation that it'sthere's something
going on there.
It's not just all kindof made up or something
that you have to kind ofsurvive in the sense
(42:50):
that there's something wrong,but rather that it just means
that maybe we got it.
We've got to get a little bitmore creative on how we're
supporting these children.
Yeah.
And and that's the thingis the way that I've
been taught to Tara isthat they're easy things.
(43:12):
How do I explain thisas a parent.
You're still sometimes it'sfrustrating here.
And there's simple thingsthat you have to do them
over and over againrepeating them over and over.
You have to support themand you really have to lower
what your expectations are like.
Okay, so this kid can readchapter books, but he can't
(43:33):
write on paper.
We need to work on these things.
Or he thinks every mistake isis really bad.
How do we come in with this?
Like we have to build uptheir cognitive flexibility
on that.
We have to build up theirthis, this other file for
them to understand noteverything is bad.
And how do we do that,especially in like a schooling
(43:54):
system where there's usuallyconsequences for like points
on a test and you need to getcertain points right, like in
homeschooling with my kids,I tell them that tests
are for us to know what elsewe could do and work on,
or where we shouldactually focus next.
It's not to test if youfeel that learning something.
(44:18):
So that's at the beginningand go, okay, do this
test and let's see where we needto focus.
You're not supposed to get allthe answers on this.
I don't want you to so thatwe know what we should do
this semester, you know.
Right.
And I love that webecause I seen so much of
this insight is you lookat tests.
And one of the reasons, at leastin my experience, my test
(44:38):
anxiety is is a real thingis because there is
that narrative that I'mgoing in there and I
this is going to determine in.
Me something about meand whether or not
I'm succeeding in some way,or if I'm failing in some way.
And there is, you know,going back to that
(45:01):
black and white thinking, right?
So much of that narrative,I find that is is perpetuated
when we think about testis is going into that
black and white and that'sall that's what's being
perpetuated.
And so I love that reframeof that.
This is actually this test is anopportunity for me as your
teacher, as your educatorto learn what are areas
(45:23):
that I could be betterin supporting you
and helping you to grow?
Yeah, right.
And there's one thing, too,that Terra Terra has a bunch
of teachers that dotake her course and there is
one teacher that at the endof the school day, every single
day, they ask the kids,what did I do?
Well.
And today, and what do I needhelp in or what do I what can I
(45:50):
work on more things?
She asks them that every day,and it was fascinating because
she said the change in the kidsover time.
First off, it really helped hersee when she had kids in
her class, they couldn'teven notice the mistakes
they were making.
So she's like, oh, I need towork on actually their self.
So self monitoring.
(46:11):
Yeah, they need to learnhow to self monitor themselves
to know even where they're weakor strong in this.
This is they didn't even knowthat they're weak in something.
Right.
And that they need towork on it.
And so she worked with them.
And what she found is over time,kids started coming up to her
during her free time and going,you know, can I work on this
or can I work on that?
And it was the thingthat they knew that they
(46:33):
needed to work on, and they wereseeing it as a negative anymore,
when every single day they hadto notice, they got to
acknowledge what they did.
Well and do more work on whatcould I use some help with.
So it's just asking those twoquestions every single day
in a classroom can givea teacher so much insight
(46:54):
to wrestling with the blackand white thinking, and the not
being able to noticeyour mistakes.
Like so many different things,if they know what to look for
from those two simple questions.
Yeah, absolutely.
And when I was, you know,I got one of the things
you mentioned earlier was thatgrowth mindset.
That's a wonderful wayto nurture that.
(47:15):
And and really work outthat muscle in the brain
as being able to take a lookat those areas that maybe we do
could use some extra growth inand could use some developing
and and like you said,instead of it being a
(47:35):
all or nothing about who you areas a character and who you are
as a person, that it's keyareas of growth is normal
for everybody.
And we all have areasthat we could, you know,
bump back and and reallyimprove.
And so that's okay.
That's actually somethingthat we're all working on.
It might look a littlebit different.
(47:55):
You know what one personis working on versus the other.
And that's totally okay.
And being able to kind of allowthat space for messing up
because we're humanand we're kind of messed up.
And so we kind of getstuck in that.
I mess up now that must mean I'ma horrible person, you know, and
and you know, gosh, I'm, I'mso a lot of what I hear that all
(48:17):
the time where we get kind ofused to that idea that if I,
if I feel it this problemlovable that makes me.
And so being able instead tokind of shift that is an up
because I'm human and nowall of a sudden I'm like,
okay, so how can we problemsolve this versus, you know,
getting stuck in it?
(48:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's black and whitethinking to get so stuck
and put down on yourself.
And something that stoodin my mind when you said
that too is the rewards system.
So for some kids they thriveon a reward system.
It works great for them,but for other kids, they may not
have the cognitive abilityto perform the way you're
asking them to perform.
(49:01):
That's when they can't do it.
They feel like they failed.
So you're giving a reward systemfor 30 kids when some are
very capable and some are likejust barely keeping it together
right then those kidsyou're barely keeping it
together are going to get worseand worse and worse because the
(49:21):
expectations being puton themselves,
they can't achieve, and thenthey feel the bad person.
And that's the thingin parenting too, is I have
to really take this step back.
And I think of it's a cognitiveladder is it's a therapy thing.
And so kind of a ladder iswe think of a ladder
(49:42):
of all the steps.
So I think of the top step,where do I want my kids
to get to?
I want them to get to all ofthose behaviors for that
reward. Start.
But if they can't I need tostep down.
Well, can they do this?
Not yet.
So let's put that one rung down.
Can they do this yet?
Nope. Not yet.
Let's go.
One run down.
So you start at the first rungis where can they be?
(50:04):
And business.
Yes.
And then you keep moving upthose rungs and and that's
the thing is we've beenso conditioned as well
to think like in this agethey can do this, in this age
they can do that in this age.
And it's so different.
It is so different.
They are going to be aheadin some things over other kids,
(50:25):
and they are going to be behindin some things with other kids.
It doesn't matter the childthey are always going to be,
nothing is going to be the samefor every age of a child.
And and that's whereas parents too, it's really hard
because there's these socialpressures, there's these norms,
(50:45):
these parenting norms,these ways of disciplining
that may work wellfor one of your kids.
It may not work at allfor another kid.
And we have to stop and think,okay, what is going on
with that kid?
Where are they able?
Where do I wait?
Where can I meet them?
At their cognitive level,at their ability?
(51:07):
At their abilities right now?
Like where truly are theirabilities?
And this is the hard thing toas a parent is to go, oh,
my kid's abilities.
And these are way lowerthan other kids are right now.
You get this same parent,you get this guilt,
you get this.
Well, am I a bad parent?
Have I done something wrong?
And I don't often see that.
(51:28):
Oh, my kids actually aheadin these other things.
Sometimes we then just focusonly on the things that they're
under and behind on.
Yeah.
And we focus so much on that.
And in a way that's not.
And not in the lens of okay,where are they at?
Let's think of this like ridinga bike.
(51:50):
What steps they actually need.
Instead, we try to get themright to the top of that ladder.
Yeah.
I'm so curious for you,has there been any moments
that have really helped youin navigating that?
Like you said, that seemand that help that sometimes
is very, very familiarto parents.
You know, parent guiltis a real thing that many of us
(52:13):
get really good at givingto ourselves and, and have that
difficulty, kind of, like yousaid, stepping back
and being able to kind of maybehave to have some reframe,
of that perspective of whatour kids can do.
And so I'm so curious,like, for you, how
how have you been able tonavigate that balance?
(52:37):
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
So I used to be the parentthat would judge I would judge
I think this is how parentingis.
This is what you'resupposed to do.
This is how a child reacts.
If they if they don'tact this way, this is what
you're supposed to do to them.
But I used to I used to judgeuntil I had my son.
You're given every timeyou're giving your kids
for a reason to write thingsI used to judge until I'm
(53:01):
in public and my child would beyelling at me in the face,
like randomly yelling at me,and I'd be like.
And I had to do a lot of therapyon myself as well and be okay
with me.
Part therapy was actuallya huge help for me, and that's
my trauma.
Informed coaching is two parts.
Three of us.
(53:22):
And so with parts therapy,I learned that every time
somebody is reactinga certain way, it's a part
of them that's protecting them.
It's protecting them usuallyfrom the vision of a child.
So the reaction that they'rehaving is usually going to
be like pretty.
They're bold or however it is.
(53:42):
And you have to stopand think, oh, that's a part
kicking up.
And as soon as I tookthe different lens, instead of
that child is acting out,that child is misbehaving.
That child is not doingwhat I've asked.
I've taken that step backand thought, what is this
part one?
So a really good example isthere was once that my son was
(54:04):
and we were going to Pokemon.
He loves Pokemon.
It's every Thursday nightwith his friends this
tournament.
It's great.
They love it.
And he was getting in this tiff.
He was just like not gettinghimself ready, but then
getting angry at us and thensaying that he was coming in.
And so I said something like,you don't have to go if
you don't want to go see,that's not what I want.
(54:25):
And I'm like, okay.
And normally I would havebeen like, well, you're
yelling at me, this isn't right.
And I went, oh, this is a partkicking in.
I'm like, so do you want to gothis way?
I don't know, like, okay.
So I stopped what I was doing,which is also hard to do
when you're trying to get outof the house and get into
something on time.
And I stopped and went, okay,so it seems like there's a
(54:45):
part of you that wants to go.
But a part of you isn't sureabout what you want to do when
you want to go, because youstill want it.
You don't want to stay home.
He's like, yes, my.
Okay, so is it that you'reunsure about playing,
but you maybe want to seeyour friends and instantly
(55:06):
you saw him come and he's like,yeah.
And I thought to myself, oh man,he is struggling with the fact
that he might lose a game.
He's probably had a daythat's taxed his whole system
and he's worried aboutgoing to play, but he still does
want to see his friendsand he doesn't want to miss out.
So I was like, okay, wellhow about this.
We go we go to your brother.
(55:27):
Once we get there,you let me know if you want
me to sign you up or not.
You go hang out with yourfriends.
You have to let me know.
By the time they start.
And if you don't want to do thisperfectly fine.
You let me know when youwant to walk home. I'll.
I'll come with you.
Your brother's old enoughto stay on his own.
I'll come back and get himlater.
He's like, okay.
Instantly packed up with stufftotally fine.
And we left.
And it was that I thinkwas such a big moment
(55:49):
for me to see.
It's usually parts.
There's a reason why they'reacting the way that they're
acting.
We're not always going to knowas a parent what the reason
is, and we're not going tolike it's not going to be
as laid out as that scenarioI just gave.
That was an amazingyeah it is not every scenario
(56:11):
works that way with him.
Like I don't alwaysfigure it out, but it helped me
go through a differentlens and be and handle it
differently, not judging him.
And then you would askabout the guilt and shame.
Now that I understandthat it's parts in him, it's
what he needs.
(56:33):
I've gotten to the pointto in myself and working
on myself, that I love myselfand my neurodiversity
and my ways of being and mydifferences.
I was judged for growing up,and now I'm like, you know what?
My kids are awesome.
And if people are going tojudge me, I know that when I did
(56:53):
it before, it was because Ididn't understand and I was not
that place of somebodyis going to judge me.
It's because they arelower on the cognitive ladder.
They're like, we're ona different stack and they're
at the step.
The judges, I've been there,so I can't judge them.
At the same time, I'm a fewsteps higher, which is not said
(57:15):
in a judging tone or anything.
It's just I've workedto that step.
That's where I am,and that's okay to be there
even if others don'tunderstand it.
Wow.
That sounds like, if I'm hearingit correctly, just really
being able to maybe extendsome of that compassion
and grace for whatever step andprocess other folks and,
(57:39):
and yourself are at, and alsobeing able to kind of honor
those pieces and knowthat they are all ways that
we can grow and that for you,it hasn't happened overnight.
It sounds like it's come froma lot of hard work, a lot
of intentional hard work.
To be able to saythis is an area that I want
to grow in, I'm kind of goingafter that.
(58:02):
At the same time, it soundslike being able to offer
that same compassion to ourchildren.
I'm saying like knowmeeting them where they're at
and having that be okay without,like you said, that just meant
that you're just it sounds likecuriosity is what's going
on for you, where you atand how can I best support you
at whatever step you're in?
(58:24):
Yeah.
And I do want to sayfor everybody listening that
that sounds all beautifuland nice and everything,
and that's not how it isall the time.
I do yell sometimes.
There's sometimes where I dojust listen and I yell, and then
afterwards I have to come backand be like, okay, I'm sorry,
I shouldn't have done that.
And there are other timeswhere I will come up to
them and go, I'm gonnayell at you, and I need you
(58:47):
to know I'm going to yellbecause I've done
everything else that I can doin my toolbox right now.
I don't know how elseto help you, and I just need to
yell.
And I just need to tell youwhat's frustrating me right now.
And then I'll be done.
And I've done that as well.
So it's like, it's been funnyand it's so funny because when
I do that with my husband,sometimes I actually
stop sometimes and thenit's like it changes a state
sometimes, which is funny.
(59:09):
So like, not everythingis perfect.
Like it's not what Iexplained as to how I do
approach it.
I don't always havethe bandwidth to approach it
that day.
That way, every dayand every time.
And that's okay to.
As long as I'm doing mybest with the bandwidth
(59:30):
that I have on thatparticular day, if I'm doing
my best, then however I reactis going to be okay.
My kids will be okayif I totally overreact,
if I totally yell at themand I come back later and say,
okay, I'm not havinga good day, I'm struggling today
that was not because of whatyou had done.
(59:51):
So we need to figure this out.
We'll figure it out together,but I can't right now.
They're getting used tothat too.
That I'll come back and talk itthrough with them.
I will say that how you werereacting was not okay as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And I really appreciate youand is making sure to add that
this is this is us rightat our best capacity.
(01:00:14):
And, you know, a great day.
And yes, absolutely.
It's it's not.
And and like you said thatit's okay to also, going back
to that that idea, it'sokay to myself and because
we're going to and parenting isreally hard and I think that if
(01:00:36):
you didn't mess up, I would beasking you, what is your secret?
What did you take?
And if somebody said they didn'tmess up at all, I'd be like,
what are you not telling me?
You right now?
What's really going on?
Yeah, absolutely.
(01:00:57):
Alright, so as we wrap upthe last question, I always
like to ask folks that,if you had access to a Delorean
and a big back to the future.
Yeah.
Is there anything that you wouldgo back and tell yourself,
as far as anything thatyou've learned or just
giving yourself a little love,what would you offer
to your self if you hadaccess to what that makes
(01:01:19):
me tear up?
Because of all the workI've done on myself and all that
I've learned about these kidswith these cool brains
is usually when we havethese kids with these brains
that struggle to do certainthings that are totally in
another world with other things,then usually their parents
are a part of it,have it as well.
So I've now learned thatthe things that like
(01:01:40):
I never lived in a boxgrowing up and my parents
always tried to put me in a box.
And I now know that I go backto that girl and girl like fly.
Use your imagination,be you on a apologetically
you, you know, think outsidethe box.
It's okay that they don'tunderstand it and maybe
(01:02:01):
are fearful of some ofyour ideas.
And how do you diveinto subjects.
But one day that is going to,I mean, with me, with
that is going to allow youto get responders back from
medical, even back on the jobthat's going to stop them
from committing suicide.
So it's going to stop and helpthese kids and these parents
to do that.
(01:02:21):
So go back and beunapologetically you and
live in you and who you are,because you are going to change
the world because you arebeing you with that neurodiverse
brain.
And I love that so much.
So I got goose bumpsbecause it's, it's such a
powerful message.
(01:02:42):
And thank you.
Thank you so much for beingwilling to open up and and help
pull back that curtain and sharewith us the struggle that is
parenting and, also sharingthis recipe.
I'm so excited to have somethingto share with my kids.
My kids love a good curry, butwe've never had this particular
recipe, so I'm so excitedto share it with them too.
(01:03:03):
Thank you so much forfor joining me today.
I really do appreciate you.
Thank you so much.
Yes, yes.
And everyone, thank you so muchfor tuning in.
And as Andy said, I hopethat this episode helps
inspire you to fly and beunapologetic here today.
Thanks so much and we'll seeyou next time.
(01:03:24):
If you or anyone that you knowis struggling with any of
the topics that we discussed intoday's episode, make sure
to check out our show notesfor support and resources
you can get help.
So thanks again for joining uson today's episode of
The Real Family Eats.
If you're a parent readyto share your real life
(01:03:44):
parenting story, make sure toreach out to us and our website
found in the show notes.
And that goes for today'srecipe.
Social media's supportand resource, as all of that
can be found in our show notes.
So make sure to check them outand make sure to follow, like,
share, subscribe, and stayup to date on all things
the real Family Eats.
(01:04:05):
I hope you'll join us next timefor more food for thought
and thoughtful food!Enjoy your eat!
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