EP 94: Challenging Traditional Parenting: Low Demand Strategies for Neurodivergent Children with Dr. Naomi Fisher and Eliza Fricker

Please excuse any errors in this auto-generated transcript




Speaker Names

Dr Olivia Kessel

00:06

Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast. I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast, I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. I am super excited to invite you Send Parenting Tribe listeners to join our neurodiverse parenting community on WhatsApp, a space where we can connect, share experiences and support each other on this unique journey To be part of this private community. Simply send me a WhatsApp message at 07856-915-705. Don't worry, the number's in the show notes. You can find it there. It'll also be on my website. I will personally add you to the group and then we can start connecting and supporting each other, looking forward to hearing from you.

01:27

In today's episode, we'll be joined by Dr Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist and author of Changing Our Minds and A Different Way to Learn, and Eliza Fricker, also an author and illustrator, including her books the Family Experience of PDA and the Sunday Times bestseseller Can't Not Work. They're going to join us today to discuss their upcoming book release, when the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse a title I think that will resonate with a lot of us. So welcome, naomi. It is such a pleasure to have you back on the Send Parenting podcast and you know you're going to be talking on behalf of you and Eliza Fricker, who you have worked with to create this amazing book when the Naughty Step Doesn't Work. And I have to say, what a great title. I mean. I've been chanting that in my head for many years.

02:20

So immediately I wanted to read it because I'm like why hasn't this existed before? It is such a breath of fresh air, I think not just for me but for other parents because we've all felt like we're going insane because none of the parenting advice, be it traditional or popular, seems to work with at least my child and my listeners' children. It actually backfires, and I think we even talked about it the last time that you came on the podcast.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

02:42

It's a common theme in the things I talk about, because I also had that experience reading all the manuals and it's like but they never say what to do when this doesn't work. It's always just do more of it. You know, I'll be through going. Where's the bit that says when this doesn't work, try this? It's not there. It's always. You must do it harder, you must do it more consistently, you must be more you know. And so I think what happens to parents, and particularly mothers, is we end up thinking I'm not doing this right, I'm doing this badly, it's my fault. We internalize that thought of this is the only way and seems to work for everybody else. Why doesn't it work for me?

Dr Olivia Kessel

03:19

I just wish you'd written this a lot earlier. I would have a lot less gray hairs that I have to cover, you know, and patches where I've pulled out my hair. Just wondering, exactly like the guilt and the shame you know.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

03:29

Yes, that's the hardest bit, isn't it? And that's the thing so many parents say that you know as managing a child with who's struggling with the world and for whom things are more difficult. But really what's difficult is the judgment of everybody else and the feeling, the constant feeling. Maybe it's my fault, maybe I'm doing this badly. It's like you have a constant undermining voice in your head and I always say one of the things I often I noticed, in fact, when my children were small was that there's such a disparity with parenting that we judge parenting by a child's behavior, parenting that we judge parenting by a child's behavior.

04:07

So good, parents in quotes and we talk in the book a lot about good parenting, tm, which is, like you know, the parenting everybody knows you should do, like make your child share and give them stickers when they do things well and use time out and all that kind of stuff. And um, if a child responds well to all of that kind of stuff, then parents tend to assume that's because they're doing it really well, that they're great at it. And then the parents whose children don't respond well to that kind of stuff are left thinking must be a rubbish parent, must not be doing this very well, and so the parents who think that they're great parents because they have easy to manage kids, feel free to go around and tell everybody else how to do it. So they set up themselves up as parenting coaches and they're all like you know, and you're like, it's not you, it's the children. It was basically my thought when I was seeing all of that.

04:55

And so I really wanted to do this.

Dr Olivia Kessel

04:55

What I love is when those people have a second child.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

04:57

Oh yes, and then they're suddenly like, oh, or when their children get older too. That's the other thing I've noticed. I noticed, you know, people would set themselves up as kind of parenting coaches or experts with really young children, like their eldest child was six or five, and I'd always be thinking, you just wait till they get to 11, and you know, because everything, oops, did I just do something? Sorry, I just went out of the thing by accident, because they change so much and it's so easy to think we're we're getting this right, we're on this right trajectory, um, and then, yeah, and then life, just life, just comes in exactly and you're like, oh, I always say that yeah, having two children was one of the best things I did, because I realized that I had much less input into how my children were than I thought I did. Basically, it's humbling, it's humbling, it is, it's really humbling, yeah, which is good.

Dr Olivia Kessel

05:57

I have so much to discuss with you about this book and unpick that I'm so excited to. But before we even get started on that, how did you and Eliza start collaborating together and what was the inspiration for this book?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

06:09

Yeah, so it's funny. It's one of those stories where lots of things just happen. So my family ended up in Brighton and Hove almost really by accident. That wasn't part of the plan. We lived in Paris and we were planning to stay in Paris, but then Covid happened and we couldn't manage. Well, we were kind of living across two countries and it wasn't possible, and also Brexit was coming, and so there were lots of things that we were like, okay, actually, this, this dream, isn't going to happen. We need to realign, make pivot, make a new choice. And so we moved to Brighton and Hose during the pandemic, actually in August 2020, and first book Changing Our Minds came out and I was trying to promote it.

06:50

So I actually joined Twitter at the time and started posting about education and all this sort of thing, and Eliza somehow connected with me and I think what she says is that she was working with families already at that time, doing some consults, and a family mentioned my book to her and they said oh, you know, this is about children for whom school doesn't work really. And so she friended me on Twitter and then I guess it must have said in my bio lives in Hove, you know. So she knew that we lived really close by. So she was like let's meet up. And at the time it was meeting up outside cafes with masks on.

07:27

You know, it was social distancing, and she was making this podcast called Missing the Mark and she wanted me to go on that podcast. So I did, and then I just really liked her illustrations. I felt they so much brought to life the reality of the situation. But they also brought humour into it and I think one of the things that is so important when you are kind of in the parenting trenches is humor, because it can just start to feel so grindingly hard and when you see it from a different perspective or you see one of Eliza's cartoons, you're like, oh yes, actually, you know, maybe one day I'll be able to laugh at this.

Dr Olivia Kessel

08:02

Yeah, they do make you laugh. I remember lots of them stick out but the parent is sitting there and the child's saying I told you I don't want to eat vegetables. How many times do I need to tell you?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

08:16

I really love those Exactly. I love the way she flips it around. Or there's another one of the child saying know, it's Tuesday and the cat litter tray has not been emptied. I'm disappointed in your behavior and I just yes, I really like, I just love the way that they make us see things slightly differently.

Dr Olivia Kessel

08:38

Um, yeah and so she then fun of ourselves.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

08:40

You know, yeah, what's been so serious, you know exactly exactly and just see the absurdity of some of these situations. So there are some for this new book where she's got one with a um, the pet child sitting on the naughty step in quotes and the parent is saying come on, all you have to do is say sorry, we've been here for six hours and the child's like nope. And that's just exactly what I what I used to think when I read these parenting books. Like what happens when the child's like nope. And that's just exactly what I used to think when I read these parenting books. Like what happens when the child just doesn't do what they're meant to do. There's always this idea that if you put enough pressure on, at some point the child's going to comply.

Dr Olivia Kessel

09:17

And some children Like you're going to break the child. You know what I mean, that's what it feels like as a parent, exactly At some point they will give up.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

09:25

that's what it feels like as a parent exactly. At some point they will give up. They'll say, oh, all right. Then I'll say sorry, and everybody has learned their lesson in quotes, but actually I always use, you know, because there's so much about consistency and holding your boundaries and I always used to think but what happens when the child is really good at consistency and holding their boundaries and their boundaries are no broccoli, or their boundaries and their boundaries are no broccoli, or their boundaries are? I never apologize. What do you do then? It basically becomes a battle, doesn't it? Life becomes a battle, and they're better at it than they are good.

09:56

They've got loads more energy than you. They've generally slept better. They haven't got other concerns like I need to cook, I need to look after other children, I don't want to spend my whole day at the naughty step. They just don't have those worries. So they can really devote themselves fully and wholeheartedly to being entirely consistent and there's no way we can win. There's just no way we can win. So the book really is about let's stop trying to win and let's instead get alongside them and think about how we can do things differently.

Dr Olivia Kessel

10:26

Yeah, you know, I I loved, and in your book you said it. I mean it was really refreshing to me to read. You know, the starting point in this book kind of is that different children experience the world differently, and that's something that most parenting books don't actually highlight. It's kind of like if you put them through this cookie cutter thing that we've told you they will all pop out as perfect sausages and you know, instead you've got this mangled piece of like you know ground beef that landed on the floor. You know, yes, exactly Because your child is different.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

10:54

Because your child is different and the more you apply the same rules, the less well it works. And it's so and I think one of the things actually I thought about in my first book a bit is how often we talk about parenting as being something that parents do to children. And you do it and you get the outcome and the child responds and you know a good parent does these certain things. But as a psychologist, one of the things I know is that everything is bidirectional, so the child creates the parent in the same way as the parent creates the child, so the parent.

11:27

Children get different parents depending on how they are.

11:30

If their parents are responsive and I mean just at the most basic level with babies a baby who is really placid and sleep through the night and it's easy to entertain and just you know you can plonk them down and they'll just get on with things.

11:43

And just you know you can plonk them down and they'll just get on with things they're going to have a really different parent to the baby, who cries all day and needs a parent jiggling them every moment and won't sleep unless they've got a parent next to them Because one parent is going to be frazzled and exhausted and the other parent is going to be thinking wow, this is not nearly as hard as I thought these babies they're. You know, it's easy, and that's going to make an enormous difference to how that parent relates to the child. And so parenting is really bi-directional, it goes in both directions. And yet, with a lot of the talk about parenting, it's all about rigidity. It's about how to be rigid, how to set your boundaries and say this is what you must do. But actually flexibility, I think, is the defining feature of whether things go well or not. And if a child can be less flexible, parent needs to be more flexible.

Dr Olivia Kessel

12:33

Yeah, and being a dictator, I mean it doesn't work in the world and it really doesn't work in the home either. And I love your description of the good parent because it trademarked, and I'd love you to just describe that a bit, because you do a really good sarcastic job, if I might add. Yeah, I'm describing the good parents.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

12:52

Yes. So good parenting TM is the phrase we've used for the cultural practices of parenting, which everybody knows are good parenting. So things like your child. You know you need to set clear boundaries. That's a really obvious one that comes up. You know your children must share with other children at the park. You must take turns If you're on the swings. You can't just stay on the swing forever. Good parents say come on, it's time to get off the swing now so the next person can have their go. You know good parents tell their children off when they do something. If they hit someone, there's a telling off process.

13:27

Good parents reward their children for doing the things they want and punish their children, maybe not explicitly through punishment, but through things like disapproval for doing things that they want less of. So they mould their children. So good parenting is essentially controlling. It is essentially how can I mould you into the person that I think you should be or that society thinks you should be, and how? It's like a performative things. How am I showing everybody that I'm a good parent?

13:52

And often you're showing people you're a good parent through how you talk to your child or things like the screen limits you have with your child. You know what, how you're, how healthy the food your child eats. These are all the markers of the good parent, and I think of it a bit like. This is kind of hierarchical process, where the the parents at the top of the good parenting tree are the ones who have children who are high achieving at school, eating healthy food, doing exercise in their spare time, learning six musical instruments because they love it. No one has to make them practice. You know, they tidy their bedrooms, they are like these sort of perfect children and that means that the parents get the kind of good parenting badge because we always judge parents by the child, by the outcome of the child, which I think is really wrong, because I don't think parenting should be about producing a certain type of individual. It should be about responding to the child that you've got.

Dr Olivia Kessel

14:48

And there's that huge pressure from everyone around you. That that's how you know. I have a new partner in my life and we were going to go to an event with my daughter and my daughter can have a complete meltdown for no reason and there's no rhyme or reason. He's seen them.

15:01

You know, he's been there for them, he's been part of the instigating factor of them and you know he's like is there any way that you can tell her not to do it? I said no. I said you know what? We don't have to go. I said I am completely happy going on this boat and if she has it which she probably won't because she couldn't, you know, but I don't care. And he's like, and I said so, you need to come to terms with the fact that you need to not care or we don't come, but you can't worry about it because it could happen or it could not happen. You have to accept that once you get rid of that good parenting cape and you realize you'll never be defined by anyone else's view of a good parent, ever again.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

15:43

It's quite liberating, isn't it? It is quite liberating.

Dr Olivia Kessel

15:45

And you know what else was liberating? I loved, and I've just downloaded, the book that you recommended called Blueprint, because I have a psychology degree and they didn't teach me any of the genetic association with psychological conditions that our genes have. I'm just at the start of it, but it's blowing my mind. Oh, interesting. Yeah, you know, because then it's not our fault as parents, you know. I mean it really takes off and I should explain more. So, basically, our children are born. It's a nature, nurture, debate and how. Now there's more scientific evidence that actually a lot of what our children will grow up to be, what they'll like, how much they watch TV, is genetically in them already and we don't have the influence that we think we have. We can't mold them.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

16:33

But the other part of the genetic research which I think is really interesting and has really influenced me is the idea that genes and environment always interact, so that genes are very. There are very few things where genes are deterministic.

Dr Olivia Kessel

16:48

The epigenetics of it. Yeah, exactly, he doesn't go into it, unfortunately, he leaves that all.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

16:53

Like I'll just leave that aside for this book. Oh, that's it. Yes, but he does go into how people create their own environment and how the environment that they're in then affects the person that they become, and I think that's what our book is all about. It's really saying your child is like they are. They are born as the person they are.

17:11

The challenge of parenting is how do you meet and respond to the person they are and help them grow into the person that they want to be, rather than how do you make them into this kind of ideal person that we all have in our heads, maybe the good parenting outcome and it's not just about academic achievement, it's about the right level of social ability and how you know having the right number of friends, it's there's a whole set of kind of criteria which we measure children against and therefore we measure parents against and you talk about that like that reality gap, and I think, and I know for myself I had to, I had to and I know people don't like saying grieving but like I had this whole idea of where my daughter was going, based on what my parents, you know, and I had to let that go and it was tough, it was and there was a catastrophizing in that for me, you know, and now I truly am at a place where I've let it go.

Dr Olivia Kessel

18:00

You know she will be who she will be and I will be there to support her.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

18:03

Yeah, and I actually think that all parents, whatever however their child is, needs to go through that at some stage. It's just when, in the child life, that you go through that process. So because I actually think if you don't go through that process, then those are the people, these are the adults I might see in therapy in their 30s and 40s saying I'm living my parents' life, not mine. I've never been able to actually assert myself as an individual. So I mean, I think when you have a neurodivergent child, you often come up against that quite early on. You know you come up against the difference.

18:48

Maybe in babyhood you come up against that I was planning to have a baby I could take everywhere and who I could put down to sleep.

18:51

And look, I've got this baby who will not go anywhere and has to be in a sling every moment of the day. Or even you know I wanted to be carrying them in a sling and actually my baby is like no way, I'm not going anywhere near that sling. So you are confronted with the reality of your child's separateness from you quite early on. But I do think that even parents who have the more compliant children, at some point that needs to happen, whether it's when they're 18 even, and they don't want to go to university, or they don't want to study the thing that you thought they wanted to study. I think you have to go through that process of thinking oh, you know what? They are actually their own person, a completely different person to me, and they are going to be able to make their own decisions, and I can't control that, and I think you can call it grieving or you can call it adjustment, but I think every parent has to do it at some stage if you're going to have a healthy relationship with your child in adulthood.

Dr Olivia Kessel

19:40

Yeah, well good, I'm glad I got that out of the way. Exactly, you're just ahead. You're ahead of the game there. Well good, I'm glad I got that out of the way.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

19:44

Yeah, exactly, you're just ahead.

Dr Olivia Kessel

19:45

You're ahead of the game there. And in your book you talk about this concept of the pressure sensitive child, which I really liked, that, that nomenclature you know, versus the other names that it's been called. Yeah, yeah, can you describe to me what that is? And also, you know you, you touch upon how it's trans diagnostic. So it's not necessarily one neurodiverse condition, it doesn't even have to be a neurodiversity, you know. So I'd love to to to hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak, because I really liked that in the book and I liked how you explained it.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

20:14

Yeah, so we? I really deliberately wanted to take a step away from diagnostic categories because I've worked with so many families who will be thinking you know, parenting, traditional parenting strategies don't seem to work for my child. But we don't have a diagnosis, or I've been told that they aren't demand avoidance. So does that mean it's just bad parenting? And I, you know, it's like you always come back to this place. Oh, it must be just bad parenting. You know it's like you always come back to this place. Oh, it must be just bad parenting. And I think there are a group of children, but there are a lot of children who, for whatever reason, are born or perhaps become in very early babyhood, more sensitive to other children to than other children. So maybe they're more sensitive to their emotions, their internal feelings, they're more sensitive to noise, light, voice, whatever, and for them the kind of normal good parenting stuff feels really aversive right from the beginning.

21:13

So, you know, just being left to cry for any length of time feels really distressing for those children, whereas for another child it might not, or being on their own for any length of time feels really distressing for these children because they're really sensitive and they've got a small window of tolerance and that could be due, you know it could be due to their genes, just being born that way, or it could be due to something like having a traumatic birth or having difficult experiences in those early years. We don't know, just a sense. But I think there are lots of pathways to this kind of pressure sense there's not one road to it.

21:51

But it's not bad parenting. Yeah, exactly, that's the one road that isn't there very early on, and when you're there, you can give an example of seeing a going to another family's house and they've got a book out for them.

Eliza Fisher

• 22:04

Chores to do for the week and rewards that can be given at the end of it, and this is amazing.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

22:09

It's like a magical period I've been in this house in my child managing a book.

Eliza Fisher

22:12

So I think we often are really in tune actually in knowing what's not going to work.

Dr Olivia Kessel

22:19

Often we blame ourselves, don't we, which kind of skips us from being in tune with ourselves.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

22:25

I think there's something about saying okay what do I really know about my child? Because they're so often the voice that people have where it's like, well, maybe that's you know. Because they get told, don't they? Oh, you're just, you're just being over anxious about it or you know they'd be fine if you just let them get, let them get on with it, and that they won't be. And it's sort of trusting. That's something Eliza often talks about just tuning in to parental intuition of what you actually know about your child. And I think people usually know they know from very early on of their babies that things are not working as the books say they should.

Dr Olivia Kessel

23:01

Sleep is a huge one there.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

23:02

Sleep is the thing, really, isn't it Sleep? When they're there, it's like hang on a minute, this baby is meant to do these things and they're just not doing them.

Eliza Fisher

23:10

Um, yeah we talk about that in the book, don't we the the, the sleepy baby? You know the parents that just sort of feed this child and then let just put them down drowsy but awake.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

23:21

drowsy but awake. Oh, I was like, yeah, you put them drowsy but awake, and suddenly they're not drowsy but awake, drowsy but awake. I was like, yeah, you put them drowsy but awake, and suddenly they're not drowsy at all anymore. Just put them down and their drowsiness is gone.

Dr Olivia Kessel

23:33

I mean just even putting the child down. That was never going to happen, and they made the child cry and I think that's the first inkling for me that parenting books weren't going to work for my child was. I couldn't, it was. The crying was never going to stop, it was just going to escalate and escalate. You know, it was Exactly.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

23:48

Exactly, it just got worse, didn't?

Eliza Fisher

• 23:51

it, yes, exactly.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

23:52

And there's this kind of idea that just kind of start to, you know, get calmed down and you'll be like, no, that isn't what's happening. It's just that we're escalating and escalating and escalating here and then everybody's really upset. And what is the point of this?

Dr Olivia Kessel

24:05

and then it goes on for years and years, and years, and years and years and years. You know when people are no longer discussing the course and you still are that's true.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

24:15

Actually, the sleep is particularly one of those things that people stop talking about, don't they? When you're, when they're tiny, it's all about are they sleeping? And you're embarrassed to say, actually, my nine-year-old, I still lie down with them every evening. My 12-year-old still needs help going to sleep. And again, it's one of those things where the parents who are putting in the extra mile feel bad about it or feel ashamed of it, or worry that their child is abnormal, worried that and they're getting it wrong and it's their fault.

Dr Olivia Kessel

24:43

Yeah, yeah, it's so true, and so you know. I think we've done a great job of describing which children don't, you know, follow the parenting books as they're supposed to, and which parents can't abide by them either. So in your book, you give us a new way to look at things, which is really refreshing. Low-demand parenting and I mean, there's so much to talk about in low demand parenting um, where to start, I guess, um, what would be a description that you would give my listeners? And and then we can start picking out some of the the more intricacies within the book do you want to go for that one, naomi?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

25:17

okay. So I think low demand parenting is active and involved, but not controlling parenting. So we're trying to um, essentially, if you're thinking about having pressure sensitive children who have a very small window of tolerance. They respond really badly to emotional pressure, to pressure to do things to be controlled by other people, and when that happens when people try and control them, they put demands on them, they go into this well, basically, a state of high stress, and you can live a lot of your life with them in a state of high stress not much fun and nobody's learning very much. So, because you can't learn very well when you're in a state of high stress, you're just surviving. And so what we aim to do with low demand parenting is reduce those demands so that the child can stay in their quite narrow window of tolerance, because that's the place where they can learn and the aim is that over time, their window of tolerance will gradually expand.

Dr Olivia Kessel

26:18

People sometimes say Can you explain, naomi, the concept of window of tolerance Because you do a good job of that as well, because it varies from child to child Totally.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

26:25

So basically, the idea of the window of tolerance is just that we all have a kind of bandwidth within which we can manage the stresses and strains of everyday life without losing it effectively. So we can manage. You know, we can manage the all the different changes that we have all had to manage this morning just to get here into this podcast, all all the kind of different messages going back and forth, all the flexibility that was required, without any of us quite losing the plot. We might at some point something might happen that might push one of us over and we'll be like you know what. I just can't cope with this anymore. My capacity to manage the situation has been exceeded. So the way I would see it is once your capacity to manage a situation has been exceeded, you're out of your window of tolerance.

27:09

With a child, that's generally shown either by a huge meltdown or by refusal to do anything, non-compliance, or by a complete shutdown, kind of like I can't do anything, stop talking. And with children it's often more visible than it might be with an adult, because we've all learned to hide it. We've all learned to not show the rest of the world that we are losing the plot in public generally, um, and so what we're trying to do is to help children stay in that zone where it's not a zone that has no stresses and strains, it's where the demands don't exceed their capacity to cope, so that they can learn really, because it's just about so, you, because that's what we want for our children, isn't it? We want them to be able to learn and grow, and if they're always in a zone, if they're always in a state of high stress, they're not going to be able to learn effectively yeah, that's where that kind of disconnect is, because in traditional parenting.

Eliza Fisher

28:08

It will be much more about saying to that child you know, other children can manage this or this is easy for other children, why can't you manage it? Very much, removing that and saying that we are alongside that child and we're going to work with them to make these things okay for them and work within the parameters that work for them. And that's how, over time, that expands. So you know, I think I'm always thinking about the other side of things and potentially what other people might say. So other people might say, well, low demand parenting is just doing nothing. Can you're just letting them get away with it. But this is much more about a long-term, different way of approaching things to allow them that capacity over time for them to change and grow and evolve. But you know it's it. It takes time and that's why I love the fact that we've got active involvement in it, because it's very much not just leaving a child to it. You are very actively involved, but in a very different way to traditional parenting.

Dr Olivia Kessel

29:10

Yeah, and it's. You know it's so easy as a parent because of the judgment I think you feel from society and from family and from friends and from people in your life, but then that pressure you then put on your child as to why can't you do this? You're this age. Other children can do this, you know, and you need to stop that. You need to actually, as their parent, instead of focusing on what other people think, you need to actually put that barrier up and see what your child needs in the here and now.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

29:36

Yeah, because essentially anytime, you put pressure on, you're likely to make things worse, and I think it's a very pragmatic approach to parenting. It's basically like, let's think about what I was doing, and I think this is where it's really informed by my training as a psychologist, because one of the things that we were trained to do was you know, you try something, you try an intervention, you give it a bit of time and if it's not working, you reevaluate, you go back to the drawing board, you try something else. And I was like when I had my children. I was like but this isn't built into parenting. Nobody says, okay, try this out, if it's not working, go back to the drawing. They're just like keep going, keep going, keep going, it'll be the right thing to do. Um, so I think it's more about, yeah, kind of connecting with that. Okay, this is clearly not helping. So what might we do that would help instead?

Dr Olivia Kessel

30:21

I love the story, actually, of little Jim that you have in the book, who licks that. You know he takes another sweet and he licks it, yeah, and what ensues is weeks, weeks of torture for both Jim and his parents in terms of sticking to their guns about the consequences of having that extra lick. You know, yes, we can really dig our heels in In parenting kind of books that's what they tell us to do and then we get mad at our children who are actually digging our heels in and parenting kind of books that's what they tell us to do and then we get mad at our children who are actually digging their heels in just as firmly.

Eliza Fisher

30:51

Exactly yeah, and I think that ultimately, the you know, the more serious element to that is we create this disconnect, you know, and if you're talking like you know, no one's saying about therapy, there's no way therapy works. If there's that disconnect is, is there.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

31:04

You have to get Just keep going, do more of this. No, it wouldn't work.

Eliza Fisher

31:07

People wouldn't be going to their therapist if it was not working. You know they didn't have this kind of working relationship. And that's the same with the parent-child. You know this is about creating that relationship again so that it works and it works for everyone. And I think that's the lovely thing when we speak to families that they can really come out of that very fractious home life. And no one wants to live in a home where it's fractious. You know it's miserable.

Dr Olivia Kessel

31:31

Absolutely. And you talk in the book about communication because often, like parents who are going to be coming to your book, you know we've been experiencing this for a long time. We've tried home remedies, we've tried things you know ourselves, we've tried things, you know ourselves and you're at a point where you know you might have a really disruptive relationship with your child, where anything that comes out of your mouth triggers, you know, anger and frustration on both sides because you've gotten into this vortex and neither you know, you don't know how to get out of it. So I loved your chapter on how to deal with communication. Yeah, I was going to say you don't even have to say anything.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

32:08

I think you can just come into a room and you can be annoying just by your. I think I. I don't think there's a story in this book, but in my other book I have a story of a, a teenager, who says all I need is to come downstairs and my parent looks at me and that's enough. They are. I know already what they're thinking and I know already that it's. I'm already annoyed. Um, or they just say morning, and that's enough as well, because it has all this agenda behind it, all this load but we don't realize we do often just go in there all the time with an agenda, don't we?

Eliza Fisher

32:36

you know, we, we, we do it as parents. We can't help ourselves. We are very, we are full of agenda, and so we go into that room and they know that the only thing you're going to do is either ask me something, want me to do something, yeah, or roll your eyes at the state of the bedroom floor.

Dr Olivia Kessel

32:54

So how do you mend communication with your child? You know, how do you? You know you talk about the pressure paradox. How do you? You know, how do you get out of it?

Eliza Fisher

33:05

I think it's slowly over time, isn't it? It's a readjustment. I think once you start to bring in other elements to that relationship again, once you start to seemingly begin to remove some of that pressure for that young person, I think that that slowly brings in the other elements of that relationship again, and that's what's wonderful to see. You know, this isn't a quick fix, this isn't something right do xyz and then you. You know this is a real changing of how we approach parenting and our children and slowly, over time, you see that. You know, we talk about the window of tolerance and capacity, but we see that kind of capacity for even our own interactions with our children to broaden, um, because we've taken that pressure off it, um, and they see that they can see a difference in us it's rupture and repair, isn't it we often psychologists often talk about?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

34:01

you've got a rupture in a relationship. You need to repair it, and there are different ways to do that. One is just simply apologizing for being annoying to start swallowing swallowing the bit of you that says hang on a minute. That was completely reasonable request, um, and. But also I think a really important part of it is trying to join them and do things that don't have an agenda. So joining with them, doing the things that they really like doing, rather than expecting them to come and do the things that you like doing with them and it just being okay to just do that thing together.

34:38

I think so often as parents, you know when things are going well with our child, when we're maybe relaxed with them. Often parents will take that opportunity to have the chat about how this is, you know, how you're feeling about school or how this isn't going well, and it sort of pollutes that time for children. I think and I've definitely been, I've definitely done this in the past with my own children where my daughter, who's very good at telling me when I'm getting it wrong, um, will say things like I don't want to go in the car with you because you're going to try and have a serious chat with me, and I was like, okay, no, chili, you're on to me. There will be no more chats in the car. In the car we can just talk about cats, which is what she really likes to talk about, and I promise you I will.

35:22

There's a lovely illustration that Eliza's done of a parent with their mouth zipped up, and there's sometimes I really sometimes I think of that motion. In fact, I sometimes do it in front of my children. I'm like, yes, sorry, you're right, I'm not going to talk anymore, we're just going to be together. And it's so hard to drop that agenda, isn't it?

Eliza Fisher

35:38

it's well, it's part of you know us and our conditioning as parents too, because it feels like we're not showing that we care. You know, we think that that's showing that we care by asking those questions, but actually they can be quite unhelpful. So it's really reframing all of this stuff and thinking of other ways to approach things. But it's very difficult when you and I think most of us as parents are we like to fix things, we can't help ourselves. It's very difficult to you and I think most of us as parents oh, we like to fix things, we can't help ourselves. It's very difficult to pull back from that and as well realise that that doesn't mean that there is negligence to that or less involvement. It's just a different way of being involved.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

36:18

I read a nice thing actually in a different book about teenagers, which said that we expect our children to attend the meetings with us that we want them to attend. So you know we're available at this time and we want them to come and talk to us in this time. They like to set their own agendas and they like to have. It was just using the analogy of meetings, it didn't really mean meetings. They like to do that in to their own schedule.

36:41

Often, eliza often talks about this 11, 30 at night or when you are right in the middle of doing something else really important. That is the moment when they come and they're like I need to pour my heart out to you now, except they don't say that they just start talking and you're like, oh gosh, right now. But I think a lot of the communication thing is just being open and available for those moments to arise and just accepting that they are going to be on their schedule rather than your schedule probably it's so true though, so true I got told, though, years ago several times don't have a conversation late at night because they'll and I think that's when they want to talk, yeah, but I think they'll be sort of more tired and overwrought and more emotional.

Eliza Fisher

37:29

But I can't think of a time they wouldn't rather talk than late at night.

Dr Olivia Kessel

37:35

Sometimes I'll say to my daughter I'll listen and then I'll say, well, let's talk about it now, but let's also talk about it in the morning as well, because actually we're morning people. So in the morning, just by nature of having the sleep and waking up, life looks a little brighter. It's still there, but you know, and you know we can sometimes. You know, but she needs to talk about it before going to bed to get it off her chest, and then you know. But again it goes to trying to find those solutions and fix them. You don't need to do that is what I've learned you just need to listen. And then the next morning maybe we can talk about you know solutions or how we can deal with it together. But yeah, and you talk about in the book also, how do you deal when they just say no and they always say no, you know. And then how is you as a parent? Do you get beyond the no?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

38:16

Well, I guess the first thing is to ask yourself whether you really need to get beyond the no, because it depends what that no's about. Not all no's are equal. Beyond the no, because it depends what that no's about. Not all no's are equal. Some no's are entirely reasonable, and I do always celebrate no's because I think I think sometimes the no's are what is going to get our children through adult life, in the sense that I think many of us as adults, and particularly perhaps as women, learned that we weren't allowed to say no, and a lot of conventional child rearing is actually about showing them that they're not allowed to say no and that you know these things are just how it is, and so I actually think in adulthood I see the not being able to say no as more of a problem.

Dr Olivia Kessel

38:57

So I think it's interesting that in childhood, that's really interesting because, you know, I've only learned to say no, like recently, like in the last two years, and it's not consistent. Do you know what I mean? I will, I will say yes to things I should never say yes to, you know.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

39:10

Yeah exactly, I'm the same. I find it very hard to actually say no. And Eliza talks about this, don't you about quitting? How hard it is to quit as well.

Eliza Fisher

39:20

Yeah, we're not. We don't celebrate that, do we? We don't celebrate, we don't look at that and think someone's tried something to see if they like it and genuinely like it, and then have decided they don't like it and that's really good because they've explored that. We just think that they've given up. But how are you meant to know if you like something unless you try it? And that's a huge step to try something, and you're certainly not going to try something again if someone is disappointed in you for giving up. So it's like why are we not celebrating quitting?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

39:50

it's a brilliant thing yeah and say no, because actually, yeah, I think it's a skill and I think some of our children have it really, really, really well developed and also none is a really good way of don't you know, don't?

Eliza Fisher

40:06

I mean don't dismiss the no, but also see the no. That can be also a way it's basically sometimes saying I'll think about that and we never think about things. We rush into things as adults saying yeah, sure, and then think, oh, why did I say yes to that? Saying no. It gives our children time to think about it, because if we're doing these different approaches, we're giving them space to also change their mind and to come back on that that's a really important point, isn't it?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

40:33

because it's I think I write about this in the book it's about not taking that no as necessarily the definitive answer for all time, because I see parents doing that sometimes. You know, would you like to do this? No, okay, but, and then you cancel it. But actually if you just see that no, I call it the automatic no. It's just a kind of automatic shield coming up, like I need a bit of a shield here. I need a bit of defense against what you might. You might be going to try and make me do or want me to do, um, but actually that doesn't necessarily mean that I won't think that in an hour's time maybe I'd like to do it, as long as I know I can say no. And I think that's the absolute key thing, that pressure sensitive children need to know that they can say no. And if they know they can say no, they can say yes. But they can't say yes if they think they're not going to be allowed to say no.

41:24

It all gets a bit convoluted, but I think it relates to what Eliza was talking about with the quitting.

41:29

You can't try out something if every time you think, right, if I go and try out whatever it is brownies or swimming or anything I won't be allowed to quit it. So essentially it's safer not to try it out at all, because I might be stuck doing this for years and I won't be allowed to quit because I'll be shamed. Even if my parent maybe says, yes, you can quit, there's often an element of shame that comes with oh, you want to give up, do you? Or you're giving up again, or all of that kind of stuff. So I think we have to work really hard to let our children say it's okay to say yes and it's okay to say no, and I'm going to keep on holding those options open for you, even though you might be actually saying no, no, no, I'm going to keep on just holding those options open, but not in a pressuring way, because that will make things worse, but just in a okay, yeah, that's fine, we'll just. You know, we'll keep going and see what happens.

Dr Olivia Kessel

42:20

Yeah, no pressure and but it's still there yeah which is uh, as you say it's, it's good for life because it it gives. It gives autonomy and it gives children, uh an ability to feel safe within their decision-making process you know and gives them that space. Yeah, which we don't, which we don't?

Eliza Fisher

42:38

sometimes give them that space and I know I've said it a few times about this being kind of long-term. You know this is long-term embedding that you know. Then for young people they can get a sense of really what works for them and what doesn't. You know what feels okay for them, what doesn't. Do I really like this? How many adults do we meet that come out of jobs going god, that was awful and I did that for years and years and then I realized it felt awful for me and I didn't like it at all. Well, wouldn't it be nicer if people got a sense of that stuff?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

43:05

earlier on. Yeah, so many women get to their 40s and they're like I don't think I've ever made any decision because of actually what I wanted. It was all just because what other people wanted of me. And I remember that very much at school, the kind of you're making your decision because you know that other people will approve of your decisions, rather than actually what do I want. And that's quite a radical thing actually to be allowing your child to say okay, I'm going to help you connect with that sense of what do you want to do and what do you enjoy and help you learn that through your childhood and then hopefully have a happier life because of it.

Dr Olivia Kessel

43:39

You know what I mean. It's amazing.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

43:42

No outcome.

Dr Olivia Kessel

43:43

orientation Olivia it's amazing no outcome. Orientation Olivia.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

43:52

It's about the process.

Dr Olivia Kessel

43:59

I mess up all the time on this. Do you know what I mean? Like cause I? It's like you almost go, you revert back into gear. You both are very good at it. I know you live it, you breathe it.

44:04

I struggle, you know I, I struggle. I almost have to slap myself in the face and be like come on, olivia, it's like learning a whole. For me, anyway, it has to be done because it's what works, but it's counterintuitive to everything that I've been wired with. So, having that long-term approach and taking back all that pressure and that it's, it's hard, it's really hard. But the proof is in the pudding and you know it's amazing how the, how children respond when you do do this. And you know my daughter will even congratulate me on, on on it sometimes, or or ask me to. You know, mommy, you're not doing it, you're not doing well, now, okay, because you know when, when, when behavior happens.

44:50

You know we, we, we, we take it personally with our children instead of saying like, okay, what, what, what, what is, what is my role in this and how can I make it easier for them. We take it as that we're bad parents from and that's how we're viewed. So it's. You know we've got a lot of conflicting messages that we've got to sort through as a. You know it's interesting that this has been a light bulb. But you know, when you watch the programs I don't know if you watch like dogs behaving badly and you know the Graham comes to instruct the owners how to, you know, solve the behavior problems with dogs and 10 times out of 10, it's not the dogs that have the problem, it's the owners, and I would say that maybe it's you know. The same is true here with parenting. Maybe it's just you know us, we're doing it wrong, you know, and if no, we're not doing it wrong, olivia.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

45:41

No, but I know what you mean. We can do it differently.

Dr Olivia Kessel

45:44

Doing it differently, getting getting our messages, getting our priorities and our messages wrong and not understanding. You know our children Like we're not understanding ourselves, I guess. Oh, my God, I'm digging myself a hole and I'm just going to jump right into it. Help one of you two.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

46:04

No, I know what you mean. We look for change in the wrong place. We look for change in the children, and I see this all the time because I'm a psychologist. People come to me and say please can you change my child. They don't say exactly that, but that's what they're saying please can you help me change my child.

46:20

And pretty well, always I start with let's think about what you're doing and let's think about how we can accept how your child is. But also that doesn't mean accepting that they are always going to be violent and aggressive, for example. That means thinking about how can we work with this rather than work against it, because you know already that telling them that their behavior is unacceptable or putting them on the naughty step isn't working. So what can we do differently? And I think sometimes you can pull in a professional almost as an extension of the naughty step. That sounds a bit weird, but it's a bit like. You know, I can't change them. Can you change them? Can you make them more compliant? And of course, my approach is generally what? Why is compliance so valued? Let's's value the non-compliance. Let's you know, let's see these children as change makers and as ideas of a different way of doing things if we're ready to listen to them. Yeah.

Dr Olivia Kessel

47:15

And I mean it's from reading your first book, naomi. It's blown my mind and it's really, as you can tell from how I've been speaking on this podcast. I'm still working through it all, but it's powerful and the proof is in the pudding, because when you do have a child that's having emotional outbursts and they are getting violent, and it is really tricky and you're wondering how you can change your behavior and then instead you use this lens and then you see that you take the pressure down, you see that the incidence is decreasing and you see that the impact that it has on your child, you realize, okay, that was just a, that was a reaction to the environment. It's not that they're inherently a bad child, which is what you kind of think a little bit in your head, yeah yeah. So I think it's very liberating, low-demand parenting and it's also scary.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

48:12

And hard work, really hard work. I think that's the other thing that you know. We have a nice illustration of us that Eliza's done of us holding up a flag saying not doing nothing. Do you want to talk about that one, eliza, about the not doing nothing thing?

Eliza Fisher

48:25

Well, you sort of mentioned it a bit earlier, but I think it's the that it's. It's seen as that you're not doing anything. You know you're, but by by not instructing or telling a child what to do, then what's the alternative? What you just do, nothing then, and you let them get away with it. And that's absolutely not what you're doing at all. You're working very, very hard underneath it all to do. It's quite invisible what you're doing. A lot of it, you know it's not really seen.

48:52

There's a lot of internal stuff we're doing to kind of prep ourselves in how we present things, how we communicate um and how we get things okay for them into a place that is manageable for them. A lot of that we're doing behind the scenes. But it's an awful lot that we're doing um, but it's just not really seen. And then for others, I suppose if they're measuring it on on very um, typical kind of success, then they'll probably say, well, you know you're, you're not getting those either. So, despite doing all this stuff, but you don't have a certificate or a sticker.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

49:33

Yeah, it's like um, I always say that if, when it's all going well, when low demand, parenting is going well, it's completely invisible, it's when it's not going well that it becomes visible and that's when everybody's that's. And the irony of it is is you're paddling madly under the surface, trying to get you know, keep all the ducks in order, really keep everything okay. And yet other people like, oh, you know they're fine, what are you worried about?

Dr Olivia Kessel

50:01

and they don't see all those things that you have put in place in order for them to be fine, and that you're doing that all the time and that that's really hard work and that kind of segues nicely into a big topic which I want to touch on before we run out of time, which is screen time, because actually that is one of the tools that you can use to help make your environment of your child better, safer, can push boundaries for them to be able to do stuff, and other people can look at you and say, you know, I'll speak from my own sandpit.

50:32

You know my partner will say, oh, she's on the screen so much. She's on the screen so much. You know, and thanks to you, naomi, and the book that I read of yours, I have a totally different viewpoint on it. You know, and actually you know, I'm going to make him read your book, because it's a different way of looking at screen time and I would love you both to share your views on this, because I think it's important, because we hear so much negativity about it and it's actually a really valuable tool as well to help navigate low demand parenting and also it's just a different way of looking at it.

51:04

I'd like to hear from both of you actually on this one.

Eliza Fisher

51:06

I think that what you know, it gives a huge amount of autonomy to young people and it's a way that actually takes enormous amount of pressure off for them. You know, they can look at dinosaurs or trains or whatever their interest is, without that so much of a gaze over it or a pressure. They can go at their pace, they can explore things. It's also a way of playing games and doing all of that where they do feel quite autonomous and if you think in their lives there's not an awful lot of autonomy, um, that is a is is an opportunity for them to have a lot more more autonomy and and take that pressure off and it's not just inherently bad, you know it's not you know we?

Dr Olivia Kessel

51:48

we just we were programmed to think that screen time is bad time and it's not inherently bad. You know it's not.

Eliza Fisher

51:53

You know we, just we were programmed to think that screen time is bad time, and it's not. We can get other things done and you know that's fine. But we can also use screens as a time that we can be with them. We don't need to segregate that out, that our child is on the screen and then we we we don't communicate with them or get alongside them. It can be a really good opportunity for you to spend time with them. You know, even if you're not very good at a computer game, just sitting there, maybe even doing it really badly and making them laugh over that, but it's a time that we can still be side by side.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

52:33

Um, and connect with them, and it's connecting with them in a place that they are choosing and that they often get to be. They get to be the competent one, don't they? I often say my role in video games is to be the useless one. I always lose um, sometimes so much so that my children won't play with me anymore because they say it's boring because I always lose um. Sometimes so much so that my children won't play with me anymore because they say it's boring because I always lose um. But that's the place where they can be the experts and they can show me how to do things, and they and when we were, they were younger. When my children were younger, uh, we did play a lot of Minecraft together and that was just an amazing experience. Some of my best memories of when they were younger was playing on with my Minecraft together, and that was just an amazing experience. Some of my best memories of when they were younger was playing with Minecraft together, because we would do things like we would do imaginative play and we don't value things like imaginative play in the context of a video game.

53:21

We tend to have, as you say, olivia, this very negative view of screen time and I actually think the whole concept of screen time is unhelpful in terms of it puts together loads and loads of different things that children do as if it's one thing, but also it gives us the impression that the problem in quotes with screen time is time, that you know they should be only doing it for a certain amount of time a day, as if it's kind of medication, like a dose or something. But but actually 30 minutes of exercise yes, 30 minutes is exactly 30 minutes of screen time is okay. An hour is, you know, not too great. Six hours that's really bad. But you know my screen time is off the wall in terms of how much time I spend in front of a computer.

54:04

And I think we need to look beyond the time and beyond the screen and ask ourselves what our children are doing and what function it has for them, because I think for a lot of children it can be a place of great autonomy, as Eliza said, but also a place of peace and calm and of a safe environment.

54:23

There's an illustration in the book I think it's in the book which I really like which is a family gathering no-transcript, no-transcript. So you know everybody kind of thinks, oh well, the best outcome would be that child sitting at the table playing with everybody else, but that maybe just isn't possible for this child at this time in their life. So really the only other option is child not there. And probably because child isn't there, parents won't be there either, because child can't be left with somebody else. So actually what's happening here is you've got a child who's able to be in the room because they've got their portable safe place with them, and whose parents are able to be in that room as well, and yet we tend to see it always through a negative lens.

Dr Olivia Kessel

55:31

I went to Sunday lunch last weekend with some friends, some new people, and I said I brought the devices with me and my daughter, she socialized in the beginning, and then she looked at me, she goes. I think I've interacted enough now, mommy. I said I think you have too, go on, put your headphones on. And then they're looking at me like you know what is this, who is this woman? And I said you know she's done enough, now it's boring conversation and she needs to go. And they're like oh okay, you know, I'm like, you know.

Eliza Fisher

56:01

It's gradual, isn't it?

56:10

Because that's a huge leap to have a lot of young people to be asked to one sit at her table, because a lot of young people to be asked to one sit at her table, because a lot of them struggle with that anyway, and then two, as soon as they do, all the family are going to ask lots and lots of direct questions at them.

56:16

You know, the device is a way that they can sit there, they can be present, but they won't have that coming out, they won't have those demands, and so we have to kind of think of it, how it feels for them and how we make it accessible for them and comfortable ultimately. And I think, yeah, we just always see these devices that they're kind of a negative, and I think, you know, there's something as well where I speak to families and they'll say, oh, the child's just in their room for eight hours a day on a device, and you think, well, that's their thing that they really like. Is there any way that you can meet them alongside? You know, go in that room and hang out and and and look at that device with them, because it's what's interesting them and, you know, show that interest ultimately is a way to get alongside them and create that connection, and also what are they doing?

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

57:04

I think I. The other thing that sometimes surprises me is I'll talk to parents or say you know they're on their iPad for eight, for eight hours or something, and I'll say what are they doing? And they'll say I don't know. I think it's a waste of time. I don't, I don't ask, I don't find out, and that's like it's the only area. You know. We talked about good parenting, tm and what it is.

57:22

Screens seem to be the only area where the good parenting is non-involvement, lack of interest. You know, if you said my child's really into reading. They spend hours every day, paper time reading lots of different bits of paper. I have no idea what they read, I'm not interested. I've told them I won't buy them any books, you know, because they're just wasting their time with paper. But with screens that's fine, you know, it's a good parenting marker.

57:51

I've talked to parents who, often my talks about screen time, have come up to me and said you know, I really like playing video games, but I have never played video games with my child because I don't want to encourage them to play video games and I and I'm like you're missing out on such an opportunity to just enjoy playing video games with your child because you both love them, and I think it's really sad that this negative message effectively puts this disconnect in again. Where this is something and then we complain about it, we say oh look, they're isolating themselves, they're doing it on their own, but they're doing that because we're not showing an interest.

Dr Olivia Kessel

58:26

We're not, because we're on our devices. Yes, we're on our devices.

Eliza Fisher

58:29

what we're saying on our devices scrolling exactly and it was interesting when you were talking earlier about the my playing. You know games with your children and and how you've got really good memories of that and I, you know I have the same. When the external world was not accessible to us for a period of time, we spent so long playing. We would imagine we could buy any animal. We'd go on every rescue page. We'd pick them out, we'd give them names. We'd go on estate agent websites, pick our dream houses, analyze. You know we had loads of fun. We would go on shopping things and look at the deal of the week and what we would pick. We did loads of things and it was really, really fun.

Dr Olivia Kessel

59:11

Yeah, yeah, I think you know, I think we get confused also with screen.

59:16

As you say, we don't know Screen time is this big blanket for everything and you know there's social medias on screens and you know that.

59:24

You know that has a whole you know, I don't, I, we don't have social media because I can't, I'm, I'm dreading that time when we have to go there. But she's young enough now that I can just say no, we're not going there and no, we're not going to have it. But then you know that's when it starts. So I think then you have to, you know, and having that healthy relationship with your child over their screens and being able to sit and join them in their screens and know what they're doing, then hopefully we'll set up some of I'm hoping you know that will help set up that they can then come and talk to you freely about when they do get on social media and they get negative comments or they get messages that they shouldn't hear, that they then you have formed that digital relationship with them where they feel you're not wanting them to put it down and not wanting to share with you and, as you say, the parent, you're not connecting with them at all there.

Eliza Fisher

01:00:12

Yeah, and that's really important that you keep that door open to be able to have those sort of conversations where they're not going to feel judged and for pressure sensitive child, there will probably be quite often a default of thinking that they've done something wrong. So it's really important that when we have conversations, that they're not going to feel like that, because we want them to be able to come to us and we want to be able to share things and so being able to be there. Obviously there are going to be things at times that are going to worry us, but how we present to them will be one where it's non-judgmental and that they can then discuss those things and perhaps we can bring in other scenarios that we've heard of to bring those conversations without putting the pressure on them. So talk about other people and such and such said this about social media, and then let them come into that conversation without feeling there's pressure on them.

01:01:07

It's really important that they don't feel that they've done something wrong, um, when we're having these conversations and potentially hide it away, but it's, it's always going to be hard because it's all. I think one of the big things that's really important with this is I don't think we can ever take. We are still parents will who have to make our own judgment calls ultimately. You know we can't say do this and it will be fine, we will. There's always going to be tough things that we have to make those decisions ourselves as parents and what is okay and isn't okay.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

01:01:40

Yeah, I think it's about the fine cuts, isn't it? It's like what you're saying about social media, you're making the judgment that your daughter is not ready for that yet, and that's okay, to make that decision based on what you know of her and what you know about social media, but that doesn't have to mean you cut out everything else that she does on a screen. No, we do lots of them.

Dr Olivia Kessel

01:01:59

We play Minecraft. I mean she. I mean I listen to every name of every horse she's ever found. You know I mean we spend hours on it, but you know it's and it's her social life, she, she connects with people at school who she doesn't connect with in the playground. They have their. They don't they kind of ignore her in the playground, but online they have they. They they're in Minecraft and they have this incredible. They, they role play. They have a wonderful time together and it's, it's made, it's bridged a gap for us. So I love, I love technology, but she's not ready in my mind for social media yet.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

01:02:28

You know, and I think again, that's one of those things that when we think about it as screen time, we lose those fine cuts, and I think you need to be able to say you know, this is great and this is kind of enhancing your life right now. This bit isn't, and actually and I think Eliza was saying about stepping in. So I think, yeah, it's about delaying things like social media perhaps, but it's also about being able to say, okay, you know, there's some really nasty bullying going on, say in this discord server or something. I think actually you need to step away from that because I can't see how this can be resolved. Um, so it's big and when you're involved, you can do that kind of thing.

01:03:04

And it's not like you know you have to stop playing. It's not like we have to. You're only allowed 15 minutes a day now. You're being punished. It's not like you know you have to stop playing. It's not like we have to. You're only allowed 15 minutes a day now or you're being punished. It's not a punishment, it's that actually, right now, this is exceeding what you can manage and what I can manage, and so I think we need to make that decision.

Dr Olivia Kessel

01:03:20

And you know, and I think it's just it just is refreshing as a parent to hear those words written and spoken about, because it is a part of our children's lives and it's a part of their lives where they really flourish, I find, and to have people be so negative about it, it's now refreshing that I can point them in a direction of exactly what chapter they need to read before they next talk to me. So thank you both for writing that. I'm going to use that chapter a lot in my life. Now, before we wrap this up, there's one last thing which I think a lot of listeners, including myself, have thought about. You know, with our children and I mentioned it to you earlier, naomi, you weren't here, but it's about this catastrophizing. So you know, like, how can we manage our fears about our children's future? And I think all of us have those fears. So I'd love to hear from both of you how we can manage it.

Eliza Fisher

01:04:12

It's a big one, isn't it? It is, I think, understanding that it takes time and some of us take a long time to get where we need to be. I mean, I've only started traveling in the last few years. I've only this is the first time in my life as a 45 year old, I've lived on my own. Only this is the first time in my life as a 45 year old, I've lived on my own.

01:04:33

You know, we get there when we get there and I think that support through that, without judgment and shame I think we talked earlier about shame. I think shame is um is one of those things people carry for a long time through their life and it's not one that I think brings any benefit. So, I think, allowing children to develop at the stages that they do you know, we talked to lots of families who have children still in their bed until they're teenagers. They get there when they get there, but you know it's important that they feel okay about that and whichever path they take and it may be, like we said earlier, being a quitter, as I was, trying things out until you find what works for you and that's okay, that's fine, yeah.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

01:05:13

I think it's about knowing that there are no guarantees with parenting ever so, even the parents who think they've, you know, who appear to have the children who, for whom everything seems easy at school or it all just seems to stack on top of each other. Again, as a psychologist, I know that often the wheels come off at certain points, and not predictably. You know people who seem to be everything seemed to be fine, and then they there are different transitions as they go through growing up, and each transition can be difficult and brings new demands and I think sometimes you know, like particular starting schools, a transition, moving to secondary schools, a transition, leaving secondary schools, a transition. Each time there's a transition, there's the potential for things to go wrong or right and actually I think sometimes as parents we're kind of hanging on for everything to go right and I actually think that the most important mindset shift for me has been things aren't going to always go right and my job is to be there alongside them as they go wrong as well. You know, it's not to make everything go right because actually, again, some of the some of the young people that I have worked with who've had the most difficulty and I mean kind of young adult people now is when everything has kind of gone right and then they've maybe got to the first job or they've left home and suddenly there's been something that hasn't gone right and they actually don't have the tools to cope with it because they haven't had that practice.

01:06:45

So one of the big mindset shifts for me was when things went really wrong with my children when they were younger and I mean, you know, spectacular meltdowns, all this kind of thing and I would always think to myself OK, this is an opportunity for them to learn that things they have to see that things can go wrong, and that I'm still there and I'm still going to be there at the end of it, and that I am still there and I'm still going to be there at the end of it, and that I am reliable with them and you know they, each time this happens, they will be able to look back and go. Yeah, that was really hard, wasn't it? But my parent didn't lose the plot in the sense that even and even if they did lose the plot, which obviously is going to happen sometimes they were still there. They, you know, they apologized to me, we made it through, we came out the other end and I think those experiences, those repeated experiences of things not going well and of coming out the other end, are really important growing up experiences.

01:07:45

And we just can't, we cannot put our children on a trajectory to happiness and success Any child. We cannot do that, and I think we talked a bit about that earlier at the beginning, about grieving, and I think that's part of letting go of that process, is something that people sometimes talk about as grieving and saying I can't, I am not, my child is not going to go on this track I had imagined for them, and I think there's almost no child that goes on the track track I had imagined for them and I think there's almost no child that goes on the track that their parents imagined for them. And, as I said, if they do, I think that's a problem because you need that child to be on their own track. You don't want them to be on the track you have laid out because that's your track, not theirs.

Dr Olivia Kessel

01:08:24

Yeah, I mean, it's liberating both of your words and you know it's. It's letting go of that fairy tale, which is just a fairy tale, and life is messy, and you know it's. It's who's sticking by you when it gets messy. That really matters in life, yeah, yeah.

Eliza Fisher

01:08:39

And a lot of those things that I think people perhaps externally value, such as, you know, exam results and getting a job and getting married and doing all those things. That's not really seeing the other side of it, and you want your closest people to you to really see you, don't you? And see what's going on for you though those other things are probably to please the neighbors. Really, you know you want to please you. You know you want to have your, your people with you, don't you that really see you and see those successes, whatever they are, because they might not look like those kinds of successes, they might look quite different.

Dr Olivia Kessel

01:09:15

Yeah, that's really great. Now I end most of my podcast, as you're both aware, having been on the show before, and I did forewarn you three top tips, either together or separately, that you would give my listeners to take away from this podcast about your book, about low-demand parenting, that they can put in their back pockets and just remember.

Eliza Fisher

01:09:35

Well, I think, carrying on from the catastrophizing I think I'd put in there observing giving ourselves lots of time to kind of stop and take stock. And I think often we're in a kind of quite a frenetic situation, often with sort of whether that's with school situation or whatever's going on, and I think actually just taking a step back and taking a bit of an overview of the situation is never a bad thing. Luckily, a lot of these systems that we're working with are incredibly slow, so it gives us lots of time.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

01:10:08

Oh, a nice reframing, I like that, eliza, luckily they're slow, so it gives us lots of time to. Oh, a nice reframing. I like that, eliza. Luckily they're slow, so it gives us loads of time.

Eliza Fisher

01:10:13

Yeah brilliant, but it is. It's taking giving ourselves that opportunity to stop. And I think often we, you know and I'm I'm terrible, you know have been historically at trying to fix and feeling terrible if I'm not able to fix in that moment. And it is a real pulling back from that and and just okay, let's take a moment with this and and and see how it goes and and it's not going to make us look like a terrible parent for doing that either. I think that's the other thing. We think we have to kind of go in all guns blazing all the time and at 100 miles an hour.

Dr Naomi FisherGuest

01:10:50

But we don't, yeah, and I would say I think the key really of low demand parenting is starting where your child is not where you think they should be or who they think you think they should be and then doing more of what they love, so joining them, getting alongside them and doing the things that they love doing, rather than the things you think they should be doing. And then the last one, which I think is actually often the hardest, is to celebrate what you are doing as a parent and to look after yourself and to put yourself in the picture as well. And we've got a nice one of the illustrations that Liza's done is a parent patting themselves on the back, and we find that really hard to do, I think. But it's often the reality that nobody else is going to pat you on the back for what you're doing, that you're not. Your child, maybe, isn't getting the external accolades of other children you know, posting on Facebook about how they've won this prize or done all this kind of thing, so you don't get that reinforcement of wow, well done.

01:11:48

So you need to do it for yourself. You need to say I sometimes one of the things in the book. Actually, I have this exercise where it's kind of like tuning into something, to what it feels like to do something well and to imagine that at the worst times so um, one of the images I used to imagine was actually dancing with my children. I can't dance used to dancing but I can imagine dancing and I can imagine doing this kind of dance where it's like, as they meet me with the next thing of challenging behavior, I'm meeting that and we are kind of doing this dance together and I can feel good about that. I can feel you know we're going to do this and we're going to come through it and it's going to be okay and I think that stepping into that position for yourself as a parent is probably the most transforming thing you can do.

Dr Olivia Kessel

01:12:34

Yeah, it just it changes your whole mindset. Yeah Well, thank you both. Those are great tips and it's been a pleasure to have you both. And thank you for dealing with my neurodiversity and, you know, asking you to be on a podcast before I've actually invited you and all the other fun stuff that we've had to deal with today. But it has been an absolute pleasure to have you both on the podcast and I would highly recommend all my listeners going out and buying your book when the Naughty Step Doesn't Work, and I think just the title in itself. If that resonates with you, you know it's a book you should read and it totally resonated with me. So thank you both for joining us today.

01:13:09

Thank you, naomi and Eliza have a fantastic offer. If you pre-order their book in the next 24 hours, they're offering a free ticket for a live webinar event based on the new book that we've been discussing today, scheduled for tomorrow, october 9th, at 7.30 PM to 9.30 PM. You can also buy tickets for this webinar. As usual, I think it's around 16 or 17 pounds. Links to purchase both the book and details of the live webinar will be in the show notes. Thank you again for listening Send Parenting Tribe, wishing you a great week ahead and also reminding you to send me a message on WhatsApp so I can add you to our private Send Parenting community. I look forward to hearing from you you.