Transcript - Episode 99 — SEND Parenting

EP 99: Supporting Neurodiverse Children with Amanda Ashy

Please excuse any errors in this auto-generated transcript

Speaker Names

Dr Olivia KesselHost

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. Before we start with the episode, I'd like to invite you to become a member of our Send Parenting what's Up? Community. It's a private space designed just for us. Parenting neurodiverse children can come with its own set of challenges, but it's also full of incredible moments of joy and growth. So I wanted to create a space where we can come together as neurodiverse parents to connect, share experiences and offer support to one another with no judgment and a lived in understanding. If you're a neuro navigator like me and have felt alone on this journey, then this is the community for you. Join us as we navigate this unique journey together. Join us as we navigate this unique journey together. The link can be found in the show notes or you can direct message me on 078-569-15105, and I can personally add you in Looking forward to hearing from you in the community.

01:38

In today's episode, we're going to be joined by Amanda Ashby, a clinical nutritionist, mindfulness expert and yoga teacher for children and families. Her practice focuses on whole family regulation, connection and resilience. Definitely worth a listen. So welcome, Amanda. It is such a pleasure to have you on the SEND Parenting Podcast. You specialize in helping parents and children navigate behavior, understand emotional regulation, co-regulation and resilience through practical tools and strategies, and I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today to talk about all of the above. But before we start, you, like me, sound American but are living in the UK. Tell me a little bit about your journey and what brought you into this line of work.

Amanda AshyGuest

02:29

Okay, well, it's a long story because I've been here for 20 years, so I'll make it as short as possible. So, basically, previously I worked in television. I was a television producer and director and I was, you know, as soon as I could get away from home I did, and I moved to Los Angeles where I was working in television and I met my ex-husband there. He's a British actor and we were working on the same show and we were out there. You know, he was out there for a specific job which was about two years long, and then it finished and he hung around for a bit longer and in that time we eloped to Vegas and got married why not?

03:17

You know, 24, 25 years old let's, let's do that. And and then a few months later he was like, actually I got to go back to London. You know, my life is there, my career is there, my flat is there, and at this point there was little risk involved. And I remember one of my first assistant directors said to me you know, take risks while you're young. So I said, okay, let's do it. I sold everything, and you know, and I moved to London and I lived in London for nearly 20 years. But I have two gorgeous kids with my ex-husband and I'm in a new relationship and I'm with a woman now who and so I did that whole late in life lesbian thing, which is brilliant, and we now live on the coast.

04:18

But having lived in London for a while working in television, I very quickly realized, in factual entertainment, which is what I worked in, my American sensibilities didn't quite land with British contributors and it's a very different industry here in the UK. And at this point in my career, as much as I loved it, storytelling is my passion. I am here to tell stories and human beings, you know, we connect through stories. But I decided, you know, I was really invested in nutrition and I was realizing, like these long hours on sets, high stress, long hours, bad sleep, bad eating, I was kind of like a counselor for people, helping them understand how they can change their diet, change their lifestyle, to have more energy through food and lifestyle. So I did a career change and I started studying naturopathic nutrition. So I'm a clinical nutritionist.

05:24

Um, and then in that, um, in in my clinic, I realized again, like food is is such an emotional thing and um, changing habits, is is such a hard thing to do, like what do I need? What other pillar do I need to support my clinic? And that's when I realized, like mindfulness and somatics, working with the mind and the body to, to work with our emotions and um and our, our habitual responses to life, our beliefs about ourselves, is what I needed to, to, to, to give my to be of better service. I guess is is the ultimate Um. So I did that and um, and so I have a nutrition practice, but mostly what I tend to do is work with parents and children, um, through the lens of mindfulness and somatics, to help them understand emotional regulation, to help them understand how to change behavior patterns, how to change beliefs that we've been conditioned through our emotional world to believe are true and bring in a deeper form of connection, and all of that creates more resilience in the human body.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

06:43

Those definitely resonate with me as a doctor who also, you know it's very much compartmentalized as a doctor and if we don't take emotions, if we don't take the whole body picture which sometimes a nutritionist definitely also forgotten, often in medicine as well, we miss on being able to get the kind of outcomes that you want and you know, have that wellbeing and have that kind of you can't get there without it. So I can understand your pathway, having traveled a similar one myself, and you know behavior and emotions and emotional regulation, they can just be so challenging with neurodiverse people, like across the spectrum from autism to ADHD to dyslexia. You know it's part and parcel, it can be a positive and it can be a negative, but it's definitely something that you need to learn how to navigate. You know, in terms of how we traditionally respond to behavior, I think that's kind of the first thing to unpick, because and it'd be interesting to hear your viewpoints on this because we often look at the behavior and we don't look under the hood of why that behavior is happening.

Amanda AshyGuest

07:51

And that's that's the key, because it's underneath the hood or below the surface.

07:57

You know, I think Dr Mona Delahook does this beautiful imagery of the iceberg you know the tip of the iceberg and then what's underneath the iceberg?

08:08

And so the tip of the iceberg is what you can see and oftentimes that might get misinterpreted as intentional behavior.

08:17

You know, our children are doing this purposefully, because they want to get their way or they need attention, or whatever it might be.

08:27

But underneath the iceberg is what we really want to look at, and underneath the iceberg is probably what's creating a stress response, and that will be anything from internal stimulus to external stimulus, stimulus to external stimulus.

08:49

So that's what we need to really start to understand is what's going on inside the body and that might be anything from inflammation, you know, body inflammation, because our physiology does impact our emotional world and then what's going on in the external world. You know, especially for neurodivergent children, like in the external world, being in a classroom is highly stressful and we need to consider that. And the external stress, compounded with the internal stress, is, you know, it's going to create rupture after rupture after rupture. And understanding that actually this behavior, especially from neurodivergent children, but really from all children is more than likely a stress response. And so how are we going to support them to understand their stress, to understand their emotions and navigate that world so we, as parents, can get the desired outcome that we want, but also so the children can have their needs met and get the desired outcome that they need?

Dr Olivia KesselHost

09:56

and want. Yeah, and it's so interesting because there's also an added layer to that, because there's behavior at school, behavior at home, and as a parent, you can control and control is maybe the wrong word, but you can implement things at home that maybe you can't implement at school. So I'd also like to understand, as we continue our discussion, how, when kids are having issues with, or issues quote unquote with, behavior that tip of the iceberg that you talked about how parents can manage that from a school perspective and from a home perspective, because oftentimes schools will have quite. You know, I've been actually shocked in the UK and as I've learned more from other podcast guests, about the kind of behavior. Policies that are accepted in schools are, you know, very archaic, but also some of the practices that we think are normal at home also really look at behavior in a different lens than I think. How you would coach your parents and children.

Amanda AshyGuest

10:59

So I actually I've worked in schools, in primary schools here in the UK, in London primarily, in fact in London completely for seven years and I recently just left. Because of the behavior management policies. I just got to a point where I couldn't walk by a classroom and see a child isolated outside of a classroom. One more time I couldn't hear outside of my door a child trying to explain themselves and being shut down because their opinion didn't matter.

11:33

So oftentimes, you know, part of regulating emotions is working with the intensity of that emotion and a lot of children at school, neurodivergent children especially, will mask. You know that's part of managing the intensity of an emotion when we're unable, we don't have the safety to express it and be accepted in expressing that emotion. You, you see a lot of masking at school. And if, if that's not an option for children to mask, um, if, that's if, if or suppress. You know there are loads of different ways that we handle that intensity we numb, we distract, we mask, we suppress. Um, if, if that's not possible for the child, then it's, it's going to come out, because it has to come out and that might look like and often it can come out at home and at school.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

12:30

It doesn't come out, and then you can address it with a school and they're like, oh, but they're perfect here. But no, actually it's erupting at home. And often it's not home, that's the issue. It might be actually school, that's the issue. So you almost have to become a detective to understand the causation of the behavior, so to understand what's underneath that water, what you know we are investigators of our children's behavior.

Amanda AshyGuest

13:09

You know we've got to look at their unique story, from conception to the age they are right now and map it out. You know, do a map of their nervous system and oftentimes and this is long work you know this is like marathon stuff and oftentimes and this is long work you know this is like marathon stuff and oftentimes that takes months, maybe even years, to map out their nervous system and how they got to where they are now. And so you know, looking at a lot of the families I work with, they will have a child who displays perfect behavior at school and so they really can't understand what's going on at home. Or it's the opposite At home they're okay because they feel safe and they don't want to leave home. So when they go to school, that's where the issues arise.

14:05

So oftentimes, when I'm working with parents, we will do the story, we will create what I call a parenting intention, and what this does is it's the very beginning process of that investigative work. What was childbirth like? What were their early years like and what are the parenting styles? What was your childhood like? How were you conditioned to parent? What are your emotional triggers? All of this stuff matters because if we are programmed to believe behavior is one thing and we manage that behavior in one way, then we're not going to see below the iceberg, we're not going to see beneath the surface. So a lot so it's so true, it's so true.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

14:57

I mean I've had to. I just, again, you resonate with me in that you know I had to rip up the parenting handbook that had been, you know, my, my reference for my childhood, because it, it, it, it didn't work, you know, and and it just it wasn't, it wasn't fit for purpose. So, absolutely, discovering where your own not hangups is the wrong word, but your own, where your, where your mind is coming from as a parent, and I imagine, with educators too, where they're coming from as an educator, yeah, all of that matters.

Amanda AshyGuest

15:26

You know, all of that is going to create a perception of how you witness, how you receive behavior from any child. You know, for me, for example, I knew that I didn't want to parent the way I was parented in in my home. Okay, and so what ended up happening? Because when I, you know, when I, when I was a first time mom, I, I, I didn't understand emotional regulation, I didn't understand all of this stuff like parenting as a new. We're not taught this stuff. So I kind of I kind of swung to the opposite extreme and I was doing a bit more permissive parenting because because I and I, I'm, I'm like a recovering people pleaser as well.

16:14

So, as a as a recovering people, well, I was back then so as a people pleaser and someone who was trying to do the opposite of what I grew up with, which was very authoritarian parenting styles, very harsh tactics, aggressive, all of that stuff. And then I realized, oh, actually, this isn't how my children need me to show up for them. So I had to pull in the reins and find the middle ground. And it was around that time, about three years into my parenting journey, that I started training in mindfulness and I started adopting my own practice and I started understanding the body and understanding emotional regulation and the nervous system, and so that actually helped me become the parent I am today, because in my training for my nutrition clinic I was doing the work myself.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

17:08

You know, and why don't you share with us a little bit about what, what like what, what really helped you on that journey with your parenting and how did it shift kind of cause you've talked to, you know you've had a personal experience of one extreme and then you went to another extreme and through your learnings of mindfulness and somatic learning, you changed how you parent.

Amanda AshyGuest

17:28

Yes. So, basically, what it came down to for me was realizing that it's all about connection. And I came to that, um in my, in my training, but also in my personal life, because I was, I was working through a recovery program, because I was getting sober, and um, and I um Johan Hari, who is um a journalist and a writer, um, he has this book called chasing the screen, and what he says in that book is the opposite of of addiction isn't sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection. And when I discovered that, I started crying because it resonated, um, it resonated in such a big way for me and and I realized connection. I have to connect to myself. You know that, and and that's one of the biggest parts of of nervous system regulation, of emotional regulation, and ultimately, if we are going to work with children's behavior, we have to learn how to regulate my nervous system tendencies, understanding my conditioned responses and then recognizing the same thing in my children. Oh well, they need connection from me.

18:58

And what that is connection? You can look at it from a scientific perspective and you could look at it from a spiritual perspective and from a scientific perspective when it comes to the nervous system. Really, what that means is that we're in that parasympathetic state where we're at ease, we can access peace, we feel safe, we're able to thrive. And then when we're connected in that way way, we have access to our executive functioning skills, so we have access to impulse control, empathy, problem solving, decision making, all of that. So that's kind of like the science of connection. It's like that whole body, brain unity where you feel safe so you can thrive.

19:49

When you're disconnected or disembodied or whatever it might be, then you're going to have more of that activating energy and that's more of that survival energy, that fight or flight energy. And when you have that energy you're in a different part of the brain. You're in like the emotional part of the brain or the survival part of the brain, and that's primitive, you know, there's not much cognition going on with that. And so what you're going to do when you're in those states where you you don't feel safe but you feel threat, you're going to respond accordingly. It's a very primal reaction to get angry and want to push back because we're protecting ourselves.

20:37

So when I realized that it was all about connection and regulating my nervous system so I could connect to myself first and then offer that to my children that deep level of connection which helps them to feel seen and to feel heard and to feel understood. That's when my behavior started changing. And when my behavior started changing, their behavior starts to change and again, marathon like it didn't. It didn't change in two weeks. I'm still, like you know, eight years into this, working with behavior patterns that were developed in my children when they were young, those conditioned responses.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

21:18

But we've we've done so much incredible work and we've come so far and this is what I do with my parents as well that I work with You've created let me see if I can remember this the Parent Reset Program, which is kind of, you know, sounds like what's on the tin from what you've just described.

Amanda AshyGuest

21:35

So the Parent Reset Program is it's four workshops and what I usually tell parents when we start is like I'm not here to tell you how to parent. You know that I'm here to help you understand how to be more human. Because when we can access our humanity, which comes from like this beautiful heart space that we have, which comes from when we're connected to ourselves and in that parasympathetic state, then we have all of the answers we need deep down inside of us. You know we can problem solve, we can find a resolution from our heart space, which is connected to our executive functioning skills.

22:17

So in the Parent Reset Program it's really a journey about how do I become more human? How do I look at my emotional triggers? How do I look at my childhood? How do I look at my children's behavior through? Do I look at my childhood, how do I look at my children's behavior through a different lens, like we were talking about, like what is going on with their nervous system? How can I map that out and understand their stress responses? And that's basically what the parent reset is. Obviously, we talk about all of the things about the nervous system. We talk about the vag, the things about the nervous system. We talk about the vagus nerve, the social engagement system, and we talk about, like, conscious discipline, you know, because that, as a parent going to go on this journey of building relationship with our children, Can you elaborate on that a bit more Like in terms of what you would?

Dr Olivia KesselHost

23:21

when you say conscious discipline, what does that mean?

Amanda AshyGuest

23:24

for you. So what it means is understanding what the word discipline means, which is discipline means to instruct, to teach A disciple it comes from the word disciple and a disciple they follow, because there's leadership there, and there's leadership coming from an energy of love. And so when I talk about conscious discipline with my parents that I work with, it's all from the foundation of parenting with the energy of love. So that's, you know, as opposed to parenting with the energy of fear.

24:03

And when we parent with the energy of fear, at no point do we not love our children. It's just that our fear response means that we've lost control. And when we've lost control, which our children are going to make us do all the time, they're going to activate us, trigger us, make us lose control. We're going to then have fear because we're losing control and then try to put that fear, then have fear because we're losing control, and then try to put that fear and still fear into them to get the outcome we desire to get them to do the thing that we need them to do, which is get out the door and just get to school right, to get the shoes on, to brush the teeth, all of that stuff my mother used to go my hand is itching, and what she meant by her hand is itching is that was going to get scratched on your bottom.

24:47

I've heard a lot of stories you know um as well.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

24:53

So, uh, that is not the kind of kind of discipline you're talking about.

Amanda AshyGuest

24:59

You are talking about coming from a place of love, and let me explain what that means because it sounds so woo woo, it sounds so like, you know, airy fairy, but it's it's not. It's so grounded in science, you know. And what the energy of love is, is is something that I created, which is well, first of all, we have to have awareness, and then we can take action. So the energy, parenting with the energy of love starts with awareness. So we have to, we have to be able to pause, you know. We have to be able to pause and come into the present moment, because it's in presence that we're able to connect to the heart, connect to the brain, and then we and then hold on. Let me try to remember my thing, okay, so we pause, we have to come into presence, and then what we're doing is we're getting curious. So we can't be curious about what's happening If we're in fight or flight, if we're in the emotional or survival part of the brain. So we pause, we come into presence, and then we get curious, and what curiosity looks like is asking questions. So, for example my well, let's just use this example because it's fresh in my head my daughter, she's almost 11. She's a real creative and she has a huge imagination and she's highly sensitive and she loves making videos. You know a lot of children. They're so good with technology and her thing is like making videos, putting them to music, and she wants to have a YouTube channel. And she has a YouTube channel where she doesn't show her face, which there's something about that that I'm OK with, right, but she wants to show her face, which there's something about that that I'm okay with Right, but she wants to show her face. And so my initial my I could feel it rising up in my body.

26:54

My initial reaction was no, like, no way, like there, that's too vulnerable, it exposes you too much. But I paused on that and I came into presence and I got curious and and instead I said, okay, well, tell me, like what, what do you? What do you want to do? Why do you want to show your face? Why is this important to you? And we had a whole conversation about it and it's giving me information about her desires, her needs and then what we do. So that's that's part of it.

27:28

That's just an example. So pause, presence, curiosity, that's awareness. Part two is taking action, and action is connecting, co-regulating and then showing compassion. So when there's resistance, when there's pushback, when there's refusal, that's really when this connection, co-regulation and compassion needs to come into the parent-child relationship, because they have needs and they don't know what their needs are really, especially if they're in a stress response. So it's our job to put our Sherlock Holmes hat on and figure out what is the need that needs to be met here, and how can I meet that need without controlling them, threatening them and punishing them, and how can I get the outcome I desire?

Dr Olivia KesselHost

28:23

in the same way, so in this, in the scenario that you shared with us, with the YouTube channel, and the face did it, did it.

Amanda AshyGuest

28:29

Then you connected, you understood where she was coming from and I and so she was getting upset because I wasn't saying yes right away. So she, you know, she rolled over, she hid, she went into flight. Because she was having a stress response, because my, my immediate, my not saying yes immediately is a threat. It's a threat to her creative desires, it's a threat to what she wants, to how she wants to exist in her world. So, um, so I had to maintain my regulated state. I had to manage my emotions, I had to manage my fear of my child wanting to be on YouTube at 11 years old and what that means, and and and. So I was co-regulating and we haven't come to an outcome yet.

29:17

So how we ended it was was I said okay, thank you for answering all of these questions for me. And then she said so, will you tell me tomorrow? And I said I might have more questions for you tomorrow and we can talk about it a little bit more and we'll figure it out. I might need two weeks, I might need two days, let's see. And because I've been doing this work with my children for a long time, this routine of curiosity, connection, co-regulation, compassion, they trust it, so there's safety in that. So she was willing to let that answer be okay, and so we'll see. I'll ask her more questions and I'll try to get to the root of it and you know, we'll see where it goes.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

30:04

Yeah, but you know what? It's a much better way to. It could have gone a very different way. You could have both gone at it, both been in fight or flight, it could have ended up with both of you being dysregulated and it could have ended up jarring or creating a jar in your relationship with each other. And you know there, but, for the grace of God, have gone I and many other parents, you know when. You know we each have our agendas which are rooted in in our realities that can clash.

30:35

So it is, you know, um, taking that step back and being able to, to listen and to be heard, even if the end result might never be, you know, until she's 18, being able to do it, she's been heard and there's a lot of validation in that. And you haven't just put the word of the law down, even though that's going to, I think, probably maybe be your end result. But the process of getting there and also of her, her hearing, your point of view, I imagine as well. And you know I, I was actually. My friend was on the phone with. I was eavesdropping on my daughter, not intentionally, but I was actually. My friend was on the phone with.

31:11

I was eavesdropping on my daughter, not intentionally, but her friend was complaining about her mother looking at stuff on her phone and I heard my daughter saying well, you know what it actually it's to keep you safe. You know Cause I've had a you know a conversation with her and about you know safety and why and why why moms do this. It's not just because I want to be a dictator and she's understood that and is sharing that on. So I think it's a journey that both of you are going on, with you understanding where your daughter's coming from and she starting to understand where you're coming from as well, which is, as you say, as you start out with, it's from the heart. So it's giving everyone an airtime, even though the end result in both scenarios is the same. You're probably not going to be comfortable with her at 11 being on YouTube. Some parents are I certainly am not, and we all have to set our own boundaries on that, but it sounds like that's a boundary for you and that's exactly right.