• Sensory Yes
• Activity Yes
• Control Yes
• Relationship Yes
• Flexibility Yes

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Transcript:

Welcome to the Exploring Neurodiversity Podcast for adults who support Neurodivergent children. Whether you’re an allied health professional, medical professional, education professional or a parent of a Neurodivergent child, you are welcome here.

This podcast is recorded on the Aboriginal lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people. I acknowledge the traditional owners elders past and present, and I extend my acknowledgement to any Aboriginal first nations people listening in.

I’m Adina from Play. Learn. Chat. I’m an autistic ADHDer, a speech therapist, professional educator speaker, and I also support Neurodivergent Business owners in my other business, neurodivergent Business Coaching and Consulting.

I’m obsessed with creating a world when Neurodivergent people are understood, embraced, supported, and celebrated. A world where we Neurodivergent people can understand ourselves and thrive in a life aligned with our individual strengths, wants and needs.

On the Exploring Neurodiversity Podcast, you’ll get my perspectives and conversations with my Neurodivergent friends. All about how adults can best support Neurodivergent children in our lives.

I bring a Neurodiversity Affirming approach and indeed a human affirming approach to the support that we all provide for Neurodivergent kids in our lives.

Let’s dive in.

Like many people at this pointy end of the year. I’m sure my family is going through a lot of change right now. The big things going on for us is getting my daughter ready to start school in February next year. She’s been going to her orientation visits at school, getting her uniform, all kinds of things that go on with preparing for starting school. The other big change is moving house.

In three days is our, I call it the truck day, the big move day.

And I’m kind of looking forward to it mainly for that to be over. You know, once all that stuff is in the new place, then we can take more time to unpack and sort it all out. I would like that to be behind us. Anyway, I sent an email yesterday, sharing lots of different ways that we are keeping ourselves okay.

Regulated and kind of feeling prepared and connected as well during this potentially tricky time of change.

And a few people shared messages with me and commented and replied around the, one of the ideas, particularly, Which is this idea of saying more yes. In times of big change. So I thought that would be a helpful thing to dive into more, to share what exactly it looks like. In our family, but to give you some more ideas about what does yes.

Look like, or what does more yes. Look like so that you can think about this. Whether you’re supporting a Neurodivergent child in your home, whether you’re supporting a Neurodivergent child that you work with professionally, and you’re working with a family to help them through times of change. And also you may well be in your, a divergent adult or even just an adult, a human with feelings, emotions, needs, and some of these ideas might help you when you’re working through Potentially tricky. Complicated. Flux situations yourself.

So there’s five main areas that I’m thinking about seeing lots more, yes.

To, and within each one, I’m going to share what that might look like for kids and what that might look like for adults.

The five main areas

I going to call them sensory. Yes. Relationship? Yes. Activity. Yes. Control. Yes. And flexibility. Yes.

Now, let me just get clear on why this is so important.

When there’s a lot of change and uncertainty happening, some people cope better with it than others. Autistic folks, myself included can seriously struggle with change. There is so much uncertainty. There is so much adjustment. There’s so much negotiation compromise.

Changing routine. All of those things that can help us feel regulated. Calm supported and secure. So much of that goes out the window.

So if you know that yourself or somebody that you’re supporting really struggles with change and relies on. routine and certainty.

To feel. Good safe, supported.

Then this is especially important for you or for that child.

A lot of these ideas are about reducing demands. Reducing expectations.

And getting very preemptive. About sensory supports emotional supports.

Basically, we’re trying to build in a really nice buffer of feeling good. So that when things get tricky, We’ve got more reserves to be able to cope with them.

When it comes to sensory. Yes. This is thinking about how to get yourself or a child. That you support?

In a really good sensory space. Feeling regulated feeling.

Comfortable as often as possible. Now, of course we want this throughout life all the time. Absolutely.

But at this time, it’s so much more important to be on top of it. For a kid during this time of flux, what it might look like is a lot more safe foods, a lot more of those favorite foods.

It. May not be the time to push.

Too much or offered too much of unfamiliar new foods. It’s probably not a learning time. As in learning, trying new food time.

There’s still no harm in keeping other options available, but at the same time, it’s okay for you to take a break from expanding a child’s food palette at that time.

Getting really preemptive about helping that child get regulated in their body. It might be about.

Intentionally bringing in more movement time.

It might be about offering more deep pressure.

It might be ensuring that the auditory and visual environment around them is closer to their preferred way as often as possible.

And for adults, what this really looks like is acknowledging, valuing, and prioritizing getting yourself into a good sensory space.

Don’t dismiss the need to look after your sensory regulation. Don’t put it aside and feel that it’s not urgent.

Taking a moment to look after what you need, your body, Your brain.

is always going to pay off. You feeling more regulated is then going to enable you to be.

More useful, more supportive. More connected to the people around you.

For me right now, it’s about taking an extra five minutes to set up my office space before diving into work. Even though I have reduced work time. And even though all my work feels really essential and urgent.

I’m getting really clear that prioritizing getting my sensory space sorted. Is gonna pay off. It’ll help me feel more focused and regulated while I am working. And really just give me a little bit more delight in my life. So I actually went digging around through my random objects to find what I’m holding right now, which is this beautiful squishy.

I can squish it and you don’t hear it on the microphone. And it’s like liquid and inside it and glitter.

Now for me, looking at glitter, looking at shiny things, looking at colorful things, matching colors is really, really a sensory delight. It’s a glimmer for me. So I know who that I knew that today I needed this squishy.

It’s one of my favorites. I did once pop one of them, I think while I was presenting a webinar. So I have to be a bit careful with it. I don’t want it to pop and. But also the more I squish it, I can kind of see through the liquid and the glitter gets shiny. I’m looking at it now, it’s making me very happy.

I could keep talking about it, but I just want you to know that. This is fine. You are allowed. And in fact you need it, whatever it is that brings your sensory system. Regulation and joy. Please go and make the time to do it.

When it comes to relationship yeses.

For kids. Again, a lot of it is about being really preemptive. You, uh, probably going to be very distracted or, you know, the grownup in this child’s life might be very distracted with the busy changes and organizing things that are going on. But calling out the fact that your child. May need more connection than ever.

They may need more presence than ever in that time.

Keeping that front of mind, and this is not to guilt anyone fulfilling busy. Like there are definitely times that I need to do things rather than be there with my kids, but at the moment, I’m making sure that as soon as I’ve got capacity, I’m prioritizing doing something with the kids. Something that they love spending more time, snuggling, spending more time doing games together.

Getting really, really conscious. That they are probably going to need more connection than usual at that time. So try to offer it ahead of time. Rather than. Doing it reactively where it can often come out in what may look like challenging behaviors from the child, but it’s really, they’re better for seeking connection and support.

Part of this relationship stuff, depending on the child that you’re supporting and. Their language ability and where they’re at with talking and thinking about emotions. But a big part of it can be about sharing your own emotions. Talking about feelings that you’re experiencing can be really, really helpful. And this can be in the form of a low demand conversation. You’re not necessarily asking the child to share their own feelings. That can be a tricky thing to do, but they’re welcome to you’re opening the door for that. But really what you’re doing is offering this human side of yourself. Sharing how you’re feeling about the changes, sharing that it can be unsettling or what you’re feeling excited about, what you’re feeling worried about.

It’s incredibly validating for children to hear that grownups have emotions and they work through them and process them.

And you can be modeling that, that you don’t have it all sorted. That you’re challenging that you’re feeling challenged at the moment and what you’re doing to help yourself.

For the relationship? Yes. When it comes to adults, also taking a moment to connect with family and friends where you can absolutely, but also be really, really clear with people about your limits at the moment.

So just recognize your capacity, recognize your ability to have catch-ups to have phone calls, to check in with people.

And again, you can preempt this time, this phase of life and let people know, look, I’m just super busy right now. Things are really full on. I’m only just managing everything. How about we get in touch in a couple of weeks when I’ve settled in a bit more.

So you can say the same here, preempting things, letting people know your boundaries, letting people know your limits, but of course that first has to stem from you understanding your limits.

And I hope that by listening to this conversation, You will already be forming a bit of an idea about. What you need to think through when you are in a challenging time with lots of change. Yeah. When it comes to activity yeses. For children. What I mean by activity, this is like, what do children want to do?

What are the activities that they want to do?

It’s always generally a good idea for adults to follow the lead of children in play or in the kinds of things that kids want to do. It’s not always possible. And as kids grow up there generally is more and more structure around their lives and around their time and around what they can or what they’re expected to do at any particular time.

These times of big change of all times. Some of the most important times to dial up the following your child’s lead. So in my family recently, this was my daughter wanting to build a cubby house.

And the, well, we call it the baby office. basically the cubby house was a blanket from the baby change table over to the chair. Pretty inconvenient because the timetable is kind of useful for us and not absolutely essential at this stage, but still very useful. And having it out of action while the cubby house was in play, that was tricky, but we got very, very intentional about our yes. So the first reaction to, can we build a Comey house over here? Is no can’t do that because we need the change table.

Or no, we can’t do that because it’s a bit weird or it might get in the way.

But what I’m encouraging you to do through this whole process and, you know, anytime in life, but absolutely in times of big change is to think really, really carefully. About saying no. So before you say no, catch yourself, And check in absolutely consciously. Is there a yes. Is there a version of yes.

Is there a way that you can turn it into? Yes. Is it actually fine? And you can work around what that other situation is, even if it’s a little bit odd. So for a day and a half, we actually used the floor as a changed mat. And that was completely fine, you know, a little bit less usual, a little bit more coordination to be done, but it worked fine.

And the result was my daughter had this amazing cubby house that she built and used for about a day and a half. She filled it full of her favorite things. It was a little safe space for her. And it gave her this absolute joy that she had this idea, this creative idea, and it was out of the usual and we allowed it.

That was really, really valuable to her. I could tell.

With the activity. Yes. For adults, it’s kind of almost a no in a way. Now what I’m saying, this sounds contradictory. Let me clarify that. In these times of being changed. So especially here thinking about moving house. Get really, really clear on what is actually most important for your like, have to do tasks, whether that’s within your work or your personal life or tasks related to this actual change.

So in this case, moving house, Is there anything that you think is necessary, but actually can be. Deleted hand it off to someone else or paused for later. Probably there’s probably a lot of those things. So get really conscious and deliberate on the things that you actually are expecting of yourself. So therefore the activities that you end up saying yes to what you’re doing with your time. Yeah.

I really consciously both the very, very important things, but also you need to give yes space to some joyful activities. They might feel random. They might feel a non-urgent and that’s kind of the point. You absolutely need to give yourself even little moments of calm and fun and joy. So for me, this is doing my nails today.

I very much value doing my nails. I do them about once a week. It’s something I’m going to take a few minutes to do today because it keeps me happy throughout the week. And right now I’m looking at my chip nails and that does not make me happy. How first nails work with moving and packing boxes. Don’t ask me, ask me at the end of the week. But I want you to know. That this idea of yes, is also about allowing yourself things that are moments of joy, moments of calm, moments of happy for you. Having those is going to spur you on through the tricky, boring, dull things that you don’t really want to do, but you actually do have to do.

Turning to control.

Yes. Sorry. In these times of change. There is often a massive loss of control. Now, some people are completely fine with this. I understand that that’s the truth, but I don’t empathize with it because I that’s not me. Um, what I’ll say is if you have no issues with losing control, Um, You can skip this part. Maybe. You can go forward, but.

But I will share here.

This is very, very important for me. And I know many Neurodivergent and especially many autistic people will relate to this as well.

How we can do a control. Yes. For children. Is preempting the fact that they are going to lose some control. So in the case of moving house for my daughter, this is losing control over knowing where all her things are and being able to access all of her favorite toys. You know, the exact moment that an idea pops into her head.

So I’ve preempted that and created a don’t pack me box.

We’ve literally written that on the outside of the box. And we went around together finding her favorite books, her favorite toys, her favorite dress ups. It’s not a huge box. It fits in one of those Ikea Calex squares. So it’s like, Maybe 35 centimeters across, And that. process was very empowering for her. It helped us frame the discussion of understanding that not everything will be available as we start to pack up other things, but she had that control ahead of time knowing that the actual favorite things were going to be in that box. She knew what was in there.

She got to choose what was in there.

Um, side note is I’m doing the same for myself. And the whole family knows that that is a sacred box. It’s not going in the moving van. It’s going to be traveling in the car with me to the new place so that it’s going to be kept very safe and available at all times.

Sorry control. Yes, for adults. Like I said, I’m going to be making my own don’t pack me books as well.

And the other thing for me, that’s been incredibly helpful is basically project managing this whole thing. And this whole move, all of these different pieces that we needed to do and put into place and organize and plan.

For me, my sense of control comes from knowing that there is a plan. And it doesn’t mean that everything has to happen immediately, but I need to know that this is going to happen on this day. That’s going to happen on that day. So having it very, very clear, having a written out that helps me personalize this for you, obviously. But get very conscious.

What helps you feel in control of a complicated situation? It might be doing what I’ve done in this case. I use notion.

Which has an app. Um, to basically project manage our family life right now.

You could list it out on paper. You could talk it out with a friend. You can brain dump. You can write down on paper, like write on a bunch of post-it notes. Speaking to a voice note, whatever works for you to help you feel that all of the scope of what you need to do. All of the ideas that tasks, all the things you need to be across in managing. Get them out of your head and put them in a form that helps you feel that this is under control. And try to share that load with somebody else.

My husband doesn’t have that same need for control.

He has a nice calm way of sort of just pacing through tasks and figuring them out as they go, which doesn’t suit my style, but that is his style. So we had many conversations to get very conscious about. How each of us. on our own would manage this move. And in the process of those conversations, we were able to. Figure out a way that’s going to work for both of us.

So basically I’m in control of the notion board and every few days we have a discussion.

And we just do project updates, but I’m the one doing the updates and we’re just talking out what’s next. What’s coming up. Any things that we’ve done for this big. We’ll call it the move project.

So, so much of that. It’s about self knowledge and communication with somebody else to recognize we have different ways of doing things. And find a way that is going to match. What everybody needs.

All of those conversations, all the effort put into doing what each of us needs and recognizing what each of us needs that is always going to pay off.

Our last kind of yes that I’ll be sharing about is a flexibility. Yes. So. Whether it comes from the child themselves, or whether it comes from the circumstances. Getting flexible with routines is super important at this time.

And this can be a bit tricky when it comes to somebody needing routine to feel in control, to feel supported.

The bigger part of the flexibility. Yes. For kids is kind of letting them choose parts of the routine. That might change.

It could even be fun and novel. Can they ate dessert in the bathtub? I don’t know, maybe.

Can you actually take away? Parts of the routine temporarily. Can they just have a bath every two days? If you normally have one every day, probably, maybe. Get very conscious again about what is essential. And is there another way that it could look. Following the child’s lead. If they have an idea.

For how else that routine could go. And sometimes it dropping demands, dropping expectations, doing less in that routine could be really useful. This flows on to a flexibility. Yes. For adults as well. So it is this idea of just letting go of your regular life, your regular expectations. Around life routines, meal times. Cleaning. Recognize that it is a blip in time.

Your family will move through that change and things will settle.

There’s no guilt to be associated with making things easier for you. Great from microwave meals. Go for takeaway meals.

Here in Sydney. I don’t know if it’s anywhere else in Australia, but we have the dinner ladies, which is amazing. They basically provide frozen meals that are really, really good. They’re like, Home cook style.

And to me, that sort of a middle ground between like home cooking and takeaway. the cost a little bit, but generally not as much as takeaway and the quality is amazing and it does take a little bit of prep, but most of the meals, very, very easy.

So, yeah, I mean, I’m sure around the world, there’s lots of different meal delivery type options.

So think about, can you turn on any of those options just for those few weeks of change and make that easier for you?

Essentially question everything you think you should do and check in, is it absolutely necessary? Can you do it in easier way? Can you drop it for now or do it less often?

Now you can probably hear, this is like a therapy session for myself. I’m working through all of these at the moment and getting really, really conscious what is a yes. And if I’m going to say a no, if I’m going to put up a boundary, I’m getting super considered super intentional about it. To make sure that. Life is as easy as possible while life is hard.

Whatever we can control whatever we can shift whatever expectations we can reduce that is only going to pay off to make this general phase of life a little bit easier.

So you might want to save this podcast episode and listen back to it when you or your family is going through a time of change.

If you are supporting Neurodivergent families, you might share this podcast link with them and also help them to work through some of these ideas and what that might look like, individualize it for them and their family.

I hope that this has been useful for you. It’s certainly been useful for me.

Now the one thing I will share before I head offline is that.

In about two weeks time, I’ll be running my biggest promotion of the year. So if you’re listening as this podcast, episode comes out, live.

You’ll be able to hop on the wait list for my black Friday week of deals. This is going to be the biggest and neuro-diversity affirming practice professional development sale of the year. I do have other things pop up across the year, but I’m doing a whole week of deals where. Extra special things are available for an extra special dollar value. One each day over black Friday week.

So that’s the 25th of November to the 29th of November, 2024. Yep.

If you’re listening beyond that time, you could head over to the link in the show notes anyway, and check it out and you can get on the wait list to find out when I run a similar things in the future.

If you’re listening before the 25th of November, head over to the link in the show notes. It’s playlearnchat.com/deals- week that’s deals week with a line between it. And if you’re doing the waitlist, you are going to get an extra 10% of everything that is on offer at that week. I can’t wait to share it with you.

I’m brewing up. A few surprises, a few amazing offers. And one thing is very, very limited, which is a January live workshop. There’s only going to be 11 spots and it’s in-person. At my office space in Sydney, it’s a workshop I’m running over two days called Your Streamlined Practice and it’s for allied health professionals.

Who are able to get to Sydney on the 10th and the 17th of January, 2025.

We’re getting very specific.

It’s very live in action. Two day workshop. As we work through various aspects of running your private practice business.

It’s a small group, like I said, only 11 people can enroll. So you get in the moment, feedback, support guidance, and there’s also further support with two monthly meetings on zoom after the live sessions, just to make sure that you can keep that momentum going and keep getting support and feedback along the way. It’s very personalized , very deep in action. And my big aim is to help.

Allied health, private practice owners.

Shape up your businesses to ensure that they are as streamlined as possible. Both for you. The practice owner for any team members, if you have them and especially for your clients, so that the client experience is streamlined smooth, they’re getting great communication in a way that suits their brains. So we’re meeting at the intersection of neuro-diversity.

If I’m being practice and streamlining and automating these, all of my deep, deep, exciting interests, and I help you understand how they fit together through that workshop. And implement it. it is. Action. Action. I kind of wish it was next week. I am so excited anyway. I’m going to leave that there. What I was about to say is that that workshop is already at early bird pricing during the black Friday week sale.

And if you do get on the wait list, you will get an extra 10% off that workshop. If you managed to get a spot, like I said, there’s only 11 spots available. head to the link in the show notes. If you’re curious to find out what is available all night, black Friday deals week.

And how you can level up your neuro-diversity affirming practice for 2025.

Thank you so much for sharing this space and time with me. Thank you for being open to learning and unlearning and to listening to the perspectives and experiences of Neurodivergent folks.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend, share a screenshot on Instagram, pop a five star rating and a review in your favorite app. And join me on Instagram and Facebook.

I’m @play.Learn.chat. Have a spectacular day!