Automated Transcript Episode 15

Episode  15: Decompressing during the holiday season

Speaker Emma Salt

Please excuse any errors as this transcript has been automatically generated

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Welcome to the SEND Parenting Podcast, focused on supporting, inspiring, and empowering parents and their Neurodiverse children. I'm your Neurodiverse host, Dr. Olivia Kessel. We will be speaking weekly with experts in the world of neurodiversity. No topic is too big or too small for us to discuss. We will include things like, how do you navigate education? How can you understand what your child's legal rights are to an education? Practical advice on neurodiversity, and most importantly, hearing the voices of other parents just like you. Looking forward to having you join us weekly as part of the SEND Parenting Tribe.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

It's the Easter holidays, and the kids are at home, which can be very stressful for all parents, but it is particularly intense for parents of neurodiverse kids. If you are feeling the pressure this holiday season, this is the episode for you to decompress and pick up some valuable tips to move forward and not feel so alone. In this episode, we'll be talking to Emma Salt, author of Square pegs and round holes the rollercoaster of SEN Parenting and enjoying the ride. Emma is an educator and mother of two wonderfully neurodiverse children. She will chat with us about how challenging and intense the parenting journey can be and how important it is not to compare yourself to other parents. It's okay to admit that this is a struggle. It's okay to scream. Allow yourself to feel, take care of yourself, so that you can be there to take care of your child, and most importantly, find your tribe that can be there to support you. Welcome, Emma, to the SEND Parenting Podcast. It is a real pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

Emma Salt:

It is really lovely to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Now, you have excitingly, released your book Square Peg Round Holes, and, I really want to kick this off by asking you what inspired you to write a book.

Emma Salt:

We have two young adults, our children, but both have additional needs in school and in society. It's definitely felt like we were raising square pegs in a round hole situation. We have had lots of trials and tribulations as most parents do, but I felt that there was a need for a book like mine. I found it really cathartic to write. And so it started off as a blog and then I realized it needed to be more than a blog, and so it became a book.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Excellent. And in terms of your journey as a parent to those lovely two boys and also in your journey as a parent, generally, can you share with us a little bit about, about that experience?

Emma Salt:

Yes, so, I'm also a teacher and not of any particular specialty. I seem to have ended up specializing in the Square Pegs. So, our boys did not have a particularly education oriented background and might have had special educational needs. That kind of helped me with the parenting. Our eldest has D H D and dyslexia, and he wasn't diagnosed with his A D H D till he was sixteen. The dyslexia wasn't diagnosed until he was nearly eight. But he was our first and he was our normal, and we didn't really realize how different he was to our peers as children. And I think when you have a child with additional needs, a lot of the things that they require, and that we have to deal with as parents, on a day-to-day basis aren't that different to other people's, but they're just more intense.

Emma Salt:

So he didn't sleep at night. Lots of children don't sleep at night, but he really didn't sleep at night. He would be awake all night if he weren't holding him. And this went on until he was about two and a half or three. He was always busy, always on the go, always touching things, always doing things and would get quite angry. Even at a young age, he'd get very angry if he couldn't do things the way he wanted to. Now, lots of toddlers have temper tantrums, lots of children have their fingers in everything, but it's just the intensity. But we didn't realize quite how different that was because that was our normal. So when baby number two came along eight years later, he was different in a different way. But again, he didn't sleep. He really didn't sleep. He made our eldest son's sleep pattern seem almost terrible.

Emma Salt:

But he really didn't sleep. Also, he didn't play quite like the other children played. He'd often be an observer rather than taking part. So we didn't realize that we were raising these neurodivergent children because they were our normal. Our normal was not quite the same as everybody else's. The dyslexia diagnoses came about because I was teaching, and I could see the difference at home as well as at school because our children were very good at masking and maybe being a little bit naughty to hide the fact they couldn't spell. So they were being disruptive rather than not doing well in lessons. I could tell that there was something.

Emma Salt:

So they were both diagnosed with dyslexia and then with our eldest with A D H D that was just missed. I did question SENCO when he was in year six, but we decided not to go down that route. But again, both my husband and I very busy. I'm self-diagnosed with A D H D, so his behavior wasn't that much outside our normal. So yeah, it was quite as long a journey as it is for many people. It wasn't just that we had all these diagnoses very early and we knew what to do. We were basically winging it. I'm thinking what we had was normal.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

And I think that's common for a lot of parents, including myself. First of all,, neurodiversity doesn't fall very far from the tree, So , there's a great heritability in about it. And so it does seem normal because it is your normal, you know? Diagnosed or not, and especially with your first child, there is no manual. Except when you talk to your other friends and they kind of say somethin they've noticed. Or as your children grow older and your friends' children seem to be growing out of things, and your child isn't growing out of those things. Or at least that's been my experience. My daughter's now almost twelve this year, and she still struggles with sleep. So, I have a feeling that's going to be a lifelong challenge. But, how about in the school system with your boys? You are an educator yourself, but did did anyone pick it up in school? What led you to go and get that diagnosis when he was sixteen? It sounds like you suspected it somehow?

Emma Salt:

We knew he was very busy all the time. He was always climbing on things from when he was very little. So we channeled that energy into sports. He did gymnastics, cricket, and rugby. Rugby took over our lives. As far as schooling was concerned, because I had a hint that there was something a little bit different, and because he was our only child at the time, him starting full-time school coincided with me teaching. So that little bit of extra income coming in helped pay for him to go to a private school because it was small class sizes, and lots of support. He went to a very small independent school that's not very far away from us. So for our children, because they had both been through the same schools, their struggles weren't as great as they would've been had they been in a very big school. I mean, our oldest was quite naughty. He was getting into trouble a lot. He was very impulsive. But the private school managed that. And then when he went into secondary school, I didn't realize quite how bad it was because...

Dr Olivia Kessel:

He

Emma Salt:

He hid from us how hard he was trying, his experience, how hard school was. And school didn't really tell us in enough detail as they should have done. And when he got to year 11, when he was 16, my grandfather died. My grandfather and our son were very close. And the fact that GCSEs were approaching didn't help much. He had severe dyslexia and he still does. And this really important father figure just disappeared from his life. This situation sent him into a turmoil and really pushed him to the edge. So he would be naughty at school, he was getting into a few fights, didn't always get his homework done on time. He's a real charmer, so he would just charm his way out of difficult situations with teachers.

Emma Salt:

But when my grandfather died, that just sent all these little bits of naughtiness that had been on the periphery suddenly snowballing until he became really angry and he exploded at school and and at home. And, I knew from teaching and from teaching, this isn't just an angry 16 year old. There is something more going on. And so I went to see the GP, and i had to persuade her that it wasn't just an angry grieving 16 year old. I had to be quite strong, in the GPS appointment, but she did listen. She probably saw the look of fear and anger on my face, and she listened. I referred to Cams as the diagnosis about four months later.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Wow. That's amazing. In today's world, that wouldn't have happened for a couple years, at least with the Cam's waiting list. So

Emma Salt:

I think it was just timed right. We just got him seen quite quickly. But I think also once we got into the Cam system, and I explained exactly what was going on at home with his anger and how scared he was, and how he really needed help, things got moving. And this is going back 10 years, so Cams is a lot more busy now and there are much longer waiting lists. But there are advantages to being a teacher and an educator and knowing what language to use.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Yeah, absolutely. And now he has the support and the things in place to help him, I would imagine.

Emma Salt:

Yes, absolutely. And for him, things changed once he had that diagnosis. I think this is why I've definitely changed my own opinion on diagnoses over the last 10 to 15 years. Because once he had that piece of paper that said he had A D H D, he was okay. He knew he wasn't going mad. He knew there was nothing wrong with him. Initially, he thought that there was, a brain malfunction that was making him angry over nothing. He was worried to go out in case he lost it in public and ended up going to prison. Once he got that diagnosis, he told us all of these concerns that had been building up and making his anger and frustration even worse because he had this anxiety and a lot of questions going on in his head.

New Speaker:

So once he was diagnosed, he calmed down. He was offered medication, but he refused it. He read the side effects and he decided he didn't want medication, so that was fine. So he had counseling sessions and it took a good few years. I mean, he's, he's 26 now and he's actually working with teenagers that are very much like he was at 16. He's working as a special educational needs tutor and he really embraces everything about it himself. But he also recognizes when he is experiencing, as he puts it, an A D H D week. If he's anxious or worried or he's got changes coming up, he'll just say, I'm having an ADHD week, you're gonna have to give me small instructions. You're gonna have to bear with me. Everything is gonna be sketchy this week. I'm gonna be running late this week. So as an adult with A D H D , he's using all the positive aspects to that, but he's very self-aware. So he knows when the A D H D sets in, when he'll feel the more challenging parts of it rather than just the good side.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

That's brilliant. And that's a great way to cope and to be honest with yourself and to other people and to set your own boundaries in life. That's very powerful to do as, as a young adult. So, in your book, you say how you want to give a manual for people that you would've loved to have re-read when you were a parent embarking on this journey with your two boys. And one of the things that you highlighted were some of the monumental mistakes. How can parents avoid these monumental mistakes? Can you unpack that a bit for us?

Emma Salt:

I think the first thing is that every parent, whether you are a normal parent or a neurotypical parent, we all make monumental mistakes. It has happened to everyone. So the first thing is, expect that it's going to happen. We are 20, 30, 40 years older than our predecessor generation. Things are different. So we will make mistakes. So I think we need to forgive ourselves when that happens. That's the first thing. But I think also our big mistakes have happened when we've listened to the wrong advice or when we've done what felt like societal pressure or our own peer pressure from other parents as well. So I think one of the best ways to avoid or reduce the risk of monumental mistakes is to not be afraid to walk our own path.

Emma Salt:

And a very simple example that we didn't realize until afterwards was that both our children played rugby. And this isn't in the book. This is something that came to me after it was finished, I think. So both of our children played rugby. And part of the thing as parents is that we stand on the sidelines, watch the match on a Sunday morning, the children all go in, get changed, and then they have a team tea. They all have their sausage and chips or whatever else, and they all sit together. And our youngest, who's autistic found it quite hard to go in. And our rule of thumb used to be, we'll just stay. You don't have to stay for food, we'll just stay for a drink. You need to be with your teammates. Now he stopped rugby at the beginning of lockdown, and he didn't go back.

Emma Salt:

And it's only once he'd stopped going that he said, I hated going into, I had had enough. So our peer pressure as parents on the sideline, everybody went in. It was a big team thing. You support your team, you go in afterwards. So we had bowed down to our own peers' pressure. So the other parents' pressure, the coach's pressure as well as our son's peers' pressure to go and have a drink and get bottle of soda, chips or whatever it was. But actually, that was a big mistake. One of the things that stopped him going back to rugby after lockdown, was that he just hated the afterwards. And we just hadn't realized.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

It's hard to understand, when you're not experiencing it yourself, how hard it is. I think there's sometimes been a disconnect between myself and my daughter with how hard something might be for her. And, I just think, why can't you? It's not that difficult, but for her, actually, it might be that difficult or for your son. So, yes, it's not just having a sausage and chips. It's much more than that.

Emma Salt:

It's everything's hard. And we were looking for compromise from our point of view, not from his point of view. So we thought we would compromise.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Yes, that's exactly it.

Emma Salt:

Have a go, have your lemonade or your cola, and then we'll go. It's only one drink. But actually that was one drink too many. And we looked for the compromise from an adult point of view and a more neurotypical point of view. We're not autistic. So we thought we'd met him halfway, but actually he felt we'd only given an inch. We hadn't really given anything at all. So I think we need to walk our own path, but also try to empathize. We don't know what it's like for them. So maybe, looking back, we should have listened more, we should have asked for their opinion more and their feelings more. I do think we listened quite a lot on reflection.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

When was your second child diagnosed with autism?

Emma Salt:

Well, he was diagnosed with dyslexia at seven. Again, a bit of a battle with school because he wasn't that far behind. And they were sure he was okay, but I thought I knew best. And i was right. And then with the autism, looking back, there were so many signs when he was younger. My mom had her hair dyed, quite a vibrant red when he was about three or four. And he didn't talk to her for two weeks. He wouldn't even look at her because she had changed. We even joked that he was having an autistic day. I cringe when I think I said that all those years ago. And then the final thing for us was that he went on a school residential trip. He hates staying away from home.

Emma Salt:

Even now, at 18, he hates staying away from home. Home is his safe place, so it's a massive change to stay away from home. He will stay away, but it's got to be worth that sort of social exhaustion. But at at the age of 10, he didn't like staying away from home. He very rarely stayed away, and he didn't like people staying at our house. There was a one-night residential he went with school and I saw how anxious he was. He came back the next day, I picked him up and I could see when he got off the coach that he was in such a bad place and he got in the car and he just cried all the way home. It's a two-mile drive. And when he has a meltdown, he doesn't explode like our eldest, he implodes.

Emma Salt:

He becomes almost non-verbal. He gets q really bad migraine style headache. And before I knew it, it was an autism shutdown almost. I was worried at one point that he had a brain tumor. Was it sepsis? Because he goes clammy as well. There's physiological and physical symptoms and as well as a headache. Anyway, he had this huge meltdown, lots of projectile vomiting. And and it was because he had had to stay away from home. And at that point I realized whatever it was, whether it was autism, or some other kind of severe anxiety, this was now impacting on his life. He was 10, he was a year away from secondary school. And if we didn't get help now, if we didn't get the help that he wanted now, then it would have a severe impact on him in the future because nobody would recognize or listen to us because, to the outside world, he wasn't very autistic or he wasn't very anxious because he managed.

Emma Salt:

And we got all the implosions and headaches at home. So we went to Cams and we went to our GP because we were in a private school, the referral is a little bit different. We went to our GP. i think if had explained to him how he was acting, he might not have believed me. The GP surgery was so busy and the GP was running late. My son was growling at people in the waiting room, which he'd never done before. We went into the consulting room and he crouched on a chair rocking with his hood up and wouldn't make eye contact. I had never seen him like this before and I found it really upsetting. But this was him stressed and unmasked exhibiting all these very stereotypically autistic behaviors. But that worked to our advantage because the GP took one look at him and said, it's probably something like autism. My son's autistic, I can recognize this. We were referred to cams and by this time there was a huge waiting list. So this was only two years after our eldest son, but there was a big waiting list now. So I had to do a Tim Tiger parenting program. A lot of the things they suggested to help with anxiety just didn't work.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Do you think it's interesting?

Emma Salt:

God, sorry,

Dr Olivia Kessel:

I think it's interesting, this parenting program that they make people go on. I don't understand it completely, but i, it's a genetic condition, Neurodiversity. It's who you are. And yet somehow the parents are taken into a parenting class?

Emma Salt:

I mean is pre-diagnosis, so I learned something. If your daughter has, has sleep issues, if you say to her, "well, if you can cope with waking up, if you don't wake up through the night for a month, you can have a present". It's, not a choice to wake up. They're not a naughty child waking up. It's not like they're thinking, "oh, I'm a bit bored. I'm gonna go and jump on mum or jump on dad because I want to". They're waking up and they're anxious in the night. wake up in the night with 2:00 AM thoughts and I'll scroll through social media, I'll go and make a cup of tea. But to a 10 year old, those 2:00 AM thoughts, they're just the worry. It's not something they're doing through choice. So a reward chart didn't work. And then we had to wait for the diagnosis and he was assessed. We did a form at school. He met somebody. And this was now about 15 months after we'd first been referred. So again, not that long waiting time really for Cams.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Still a long time in a child's life, you know? Yes. 15 months is a long time.

Emma Salt:

it is! And we were told that he had autistic traits. He'd ticked five out of seven boxes. So we had traits not for autism. And that was it. And I can remember saying to the guy in Cams, "they are understaffed and underfunded with huge waiting lists". This isn't a dig at cams. They do what they can with what they have, but it's not enough, but it's not their fault. I told the Cams guy that I spent the whole summer stopping our son spiraling and lapsing into depression. I have worked so hard all summer. And he turned around to me and said, "but has he lapsed into depression?" And I said, "no". And he said, "well, what else can we do?" So dismiss from camps. This is the beginning of year seven.

Emma Salt:

Christmas of year seven,...I spent the full Christmas holiday sleeping on his floor because he hated secondary. Secondary school wasn't right for him. And he was really struggling with the social side of things. And Ispent a month on his floor because he was worried about going back and he was worried about not going back. And we talked about homeschooling, but he didn't want to be homeschooled. So I made an appointment with our sanko who was amazing, who said, he needs more than we can give him. We need a diagnosis, we need to be able to put things in place. You have to go back to cams. So went back to the GP, who referred us back to Cams.

Emma Salt:

Cams saw him again and decided he had clinical anxiety, but they wouldn't reassess. So he had C B T, which was very useful. And then we were discharged again. So by this time he is in year eight. So we were discharged October time of year eight. Still no diagnosis apart from dyslexia and now clinical anxiety,. At school, they let him have a mood band. So if things got anxious for him, he could switch his band to red and the teacher would just automatically let him go outside for a minute or so and come back in. So school has been great. But he was researching, he's very clever. He did loads of researching. He was saying to me, "mom, I have autism. I I am autistic, I have autism. People need to understand me."

Emma Salt:

"I need a diagnosis. I need a diagnosis." So this is now halfway through year eight. So he was 13 and I went to our GP and they sent us back to Cams again. And this time Cams wrote back and said, "no, we're not seeing him again. Got clinical anxiety." That was only six, seven months ago. He was only assessed two years ago. "No, not doing anything." And I was just distraught. I know I walked to my mom's because I knew I wasn't safe to drive, walked through the door and I was just sobbing. So I had just showed the letter to my mom because I couldn't get words out, couldn't phone my husband. Cause I knew if he answered the phone and he heard me hysterical, he would just panic. So to my mom's anyway, went back to the GP without our son and ready for a battle.

Emma Salt:

And I wrote down everything, every symptom, every meltdown, every quirk, everything!. Two sides of A4 size paper just as my evidence. But I walked in and she said, "...yeah, but let's, let's try again." And this time, this was around April or May. I think we were referred to children's services at our local hospital rather than Cams. We got all the forms to fill in. Around beginning of July, they saw us saw our son. And we had that diagnosis, just before his 14th birthday in year nine. It was such a battle and it would've been so easy to give up. But once he got the diagnosis, i was relieved. I know, he sees the diagnosis as a lens. He has always been autistic. That piece of paper saying our son has autism, makes no difference.

Emma Salt:

That's how he is. And he sees it as a lens so people can understand him. And his viewpoint is that a diagnosis doesn't create a condition. The condition is there. If I had asthma, whether you give me an inhaler or not makes no difference. I am asthmatic. In the same way that he is autistic and our eldest son has A D H D and they are both dyslexic. That diagnosis doesn't create the condition. The condition is there. That diagnosis helps them get the help when they need to. I mean, they don't go around going, "...hi, I'm such and such. I am autistic and dyslexic, or I'm such and such. I'm an A D H D and dyslexic." They don't have to tell people that, it doesn't have to be their opening line, but when they need to, they can say, "...actually I'm autistic. I can't cope with this in this noise, or I just need to take a break." And it was quite a journey. The autism was a much tougher journey than A D H D, but we got there in the end.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Wow!. It's an amazing story of not giving up and, doing what's right for your son and, knowing what has to be done. And, and then, making sure that he got the diagnosis in the end. And I imagine that's helped him with school. It sounds like your school was pretty good actually in terms of listening to you before that diagnosis. Because for some parents, without getting that diagnosis, they might say, "...oh, it's bad behavior...." But it sounds like your school was very engaged with you, which is fantastic.

Emma Salt:

And, yes, Senco was amazing. And even in lockdown, after the diagnosis, I could just email her saying, "I'm struggling. I don't know what to do." And she'd e-mail back and say, "don't worry, you're fine." Don't worry. So school has been great. And I need to say, just in case anybody from school is listening, our youngest's issues with school is that he doesn't like teenagers and he doesn't like noise and he finds a lot of, lessons quite boring because either they're not telling him enough or he has no interest. He doesn't like the smell of a canteen. He doesn't like many things. So it's not school. Our school are fantastic and he knows that a larger school would've been a lot harder for him, but he didn't want to be home educated because he wants home to be home and school to be school. So this isn't anything about our school. Our school have been so supportive. It's just that he doesn't like teenagers and he is a teenager. So it makes life quite tough.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

It's a hard period, I think, for most kids. And then, having autism makes it even more challenging. Now, in terms of you as a parent, I know we've talked before about how it's a struggle for you, especially, hiding what's going on at home to other parents. Maybe that's a bit strong, but you know, not being able to share the reality of the kind of hardships that you're going through as a parent and how that can lead you to feel very alone. And, I know I felt that way as well and I'm sure a lot of listeners have felt that way. How have you coped with it? Do you have any advice for listeners in terms of how you can overcome that hardship?

Emma Salt:

The way we handle things with our eldest son is very different to how we've handled things with our younger son. And we certainly learnt from not necessarily making mistakes, because we didn't know they were wrong at the time, but we've done things differently. I think regarding how you can stop feeling so alone, I didn't tell people what we were going through, especially with our eldest. Because nobody said, "...oh, my 16 year old smashed a door last night, or my 16 year old got really angry last night and shouted at us." And obviously not every 16 year old does that, but nobody talked about it. And I thought I was the worst parent in the world. I thought that we were the only ones struggling. I thought we were! It was very scary, and that's part of the reason why I started the blog and wrote the book so people realize it's not just them.

Emma Salt:

So with our youngest, I've been a lot more honest and the people that don't want to listen or don't believe me, well they're not my tribe. I've had some parents that I thought were quite good friends. And they've asked, ".. are you sure he's autistic?...are you sure you're doing the right thing?." And it's like, "...well, if you don't want to be with me on my journey, then you want your path and I want my path. And if not the same one, it doesn't matter." So I think it's really a case of finding your tribe. And that might be an online community. It might be that you're on a Facebook parenting group and they really get you and that's great. I mean, I've seen some very good parenting groups and some not-so-good parenting groups.

Emma Salt:

But it's just about finding your tribe and being honest. And if you're having a bad time, say so. And I've got a really close network of friends in my youngest son's year. They're all leaving school at the end of this summer. They're all going off to university and we've vowed our New Year's resolution was to make sure we stay friends once they've all left school, because we don't want to lose that link even a little bit. So I think the thing about not being alone is about finding your tribe. And that could be other parents, it could be an online community, or you can have different tribes for different situations as well. So you might have a group of parents who you might moan with about the teacher that doesn't get any of them, or the homework or the exam pressures.

Emma Salt:

There might be another couple of friends who you can just talk to about your deepest, darkest feelings knowing that they won't judge you. For example I have a best friend who I have known for a long time, I can email her and say, "...I am the worst parent in the world, this has happened today." And she'll say, "you know, that doesn't make you the worst parent, but right now you're feeling rubbish, so I will sit with you in your darkness..." She doesn't pet me up with all this, "...oh, it's all fine...that's how you're feeling right now." So, I just think find your tribe or tribes and be honest and, and don't compare yourself either. Sometimes that's where social media becomes a bit of a challenge.

Emma Salt:

My social media presence got a lot darker after the diagnosis because I didn't want to sugarcoat life and what was happening. But I think as well, that we all have our troubles and we all have our problems and we can all listen to each other. So it's important to find your tribe who will listen to you and to support each other. And if you've got that, you feel a lot less alone, even if they don't get everything, which is why you might have slightly different tribes or groups for different situations. But I didn't have that with our eldest because I wasn't honest and I was quite scared because you don't ttalk to people about what's not going for you until you know people. For example, you wouldn't say, "...oh, it's been a dreadful weekend because this and that has happened.' But with the group of friends I have now I can, if it's been a bad weekend, we can be really honest with each other and we don't judge.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Yes, and that's all you can really ask for really in life...a non-judgmental friend who will listen to you and sit with you in your darkness, and it might take a few tries to find your tribe as well. It has been my experience, whether that be online or in person. But when you do find it, gives you an outlet so that you can depressurize yourself so... that then you can be a better parent for your child. Because if you don't let that valve off sometimes, then it can backfire and then it leads you into those moments where you feel like you're the worst parent ever because you've lost your cool and you know that that doesn't help anybody

Emma Salt:

I think just one more thing to add to that is that if you are in a tribe, you have to participate in it. I am a fixer. I am a fixer, so sometimes I have to try really hard not to go, oh, have you tried? Because I hate it when people say it to me when my children used to sleep. Have you tried lavender? Yes. Have you tried this <laugh>? So I have to try so hard when if my friends say, "...what do you think?" Then I can give my opinion. But sometimes I almost bite my bite my tongue thinking "...I can't say.. I mustn't say..." I've not given unsolicited, unwanted advice. We are okay because as a parent, you don't always want people to give advice. Like we said, you just want them to sit with you in your darkness. So we have to remember that.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

It's so true. As a doctor, we give advice all the time and I've been trained to give advice and actually I've run a health coaching business and I've tried to train nurses to be coaches and they have the exact same problem. Because they want to tell you why you should quit smoking and why it's good for you to quit smoking and what you can do to quit smoking. They never, they don't want to listen to you in your darkness of smoking, so to speak. So it's a real game changer when you are a fixer and you want to fix people. It isn't easy. But, it's a good skill to learn in life because being able to listen and not give advice is hugely valuable.

Emma Salt:

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

And your background is in education where you're helping children. And I just wondered, it was very interesting that you said education is taking a one-size-fits-all approach and children aren't a one-size-fits-all. What do you think or how do you think education is going to change or can change? Because you've been in the thick of it, but I think you'll agree that it's not working for a lot of children right now. So what would be your vision for the future in education?

Emma Salt:

Well I'm actually doing a part-time education doctorate, and that's what I want to look at for my study. That's because it isn't working. And that's what I want to look at. I think one of the huge problems with education is that policies are written and driven by people who are not educators. But we paid for private education and we paid for small class sizes and we had teachers that knew all the children. Their teachers knew all the children by name. They had lots of extracurricular activities and that worked. And I think that's what we need. We need to have a personal touch. We need to have a UK variation of the finishing model where it's a lot more family.

Emma Salt:

Families are involved in education and it's not all about testing and SATs and ticking boxes on the one-size-fits-all. Teachers have more autonomy to teach how they want to teach. As long as the children get to where they need to get to at 16 or 18, then there's more flexibility in the system. And I really don't know how we can fix education. I think that I could spend hours talking about this. I don't, I really don't ...know is my concise answer. I think there are lots of things wrong with it. And I think not necessarily children with any kind of diagnosis and not necessarily for the dyslexic or the autistic or those with A D H D or other neurodivergent conditions. I just think lots of children do not do well in a sit-still kind of environment.

Emma Salt:

And, before I got into teaching, I researched animal behavior. And I think if you look at how children just aren't wired to sit at a table from nine am and do tests every year. We are human beings and we should be living, and we should not be 'human sittings'. There's some much better meme that says it, but you know what I mean... We need to allow children to have fiddly fingers and to wander and to ask questions. We need to really inspire them to learn rather than teaching them how to learn or how to pass tests. Education isn't about five GCSEs or hitting your grade at level three at SATs, at whatever age education should be about learning to learn and learning to love learning and whether we, you know, and it really should be genuine lifelong learning, which is why I'm doing the doctorate, because why not?

Emma Salt:

Yes, why not? I think the problem with education is that we are educating for tests. And any child who will struggle to pass those tests or sit still to do those tests or to read those tests won't do well. So very early on in their education, they realize that education isn't for them. And then we start with negative spirals and then self-fulfilling prophecies and all that kind of stuff. And I would love to be able to completely retake education and make it more doing and learning and asking questions rather than doing these 10 spellings because somebody's decided that you need to be able to spell 'hippopotamus' by the time you're 10 or whatever it might be. I think there's lots of things and it would take a lot longer than a podcast for me to rant about how much I want to put things right. Maybe that's another podcast for another time.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Maybe it is. And I think it's, going be an ongoing thread in the SEND Parenting podcast because, I think, it is at the root of a lot of the challenges that all parents are facing because it doesn't work. Even as an adult, being in a room with 30 people and listening to one person, you'll see people taking out their phones, going on their laptops. None of us can concentrate yet. We expect children to do it. So it's a system that wouldn't work for us as adults. And when you hear what we expect children to do, it's kills the love of learning. It kills the creativity and it kills the love of learning that that's really what you wanna inspire them. And I completely agree with you.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

I think the best thing that could be done is to take all those metrics out, take the GCSEs out, take all of that nonsense out and inspire kids to love learning, because that's something that will be a gift that keeps on giving for their entire lives. So you know with with more people like you and me and others in the world, change can happen. I'm a firm believer on that. It takes a few small steps. Now as we're ending the podcast today, I like to ask my guests to give the listeners three takeaway messages from today. Something that they can take away from that can help them in their day-to-day life with their neurodiverse child or their non-diverse child.

Emma Salt:

Okay, so I have a list and I'll try not to make it excellent. I don't have three things to take away. I had about 20! But we don't have time for that. I think the first thing is that we shouldn't compare ourselves to others. I've touched on this already, but even as SEND Parents we shouldn't compare ourselves and shouldn't feel guilty if we are struggling when we know somebody who has children with more complex needs. Because I've done that. I've looked at friends who have got children with maybe life limiting conditions or with severe physical disabilities. And I will think to myself, "...well, why, why am I struggling?" But if I stepped my toe and you had broken your wrist, your broken wrist doesn't stop my toe hurting.

Emma Salt:

And I think that's what we need to fix. Don't compare yourself to others. Don't feel guilty if you feel that others are coping more than you can, even they've got more complex needs. You just need to take each day at a time. And if you are struggling, ask for help. And that goes back to education as well. For instance, very quickly with our youngest son academically. Now he's dropped English and he is doing science A levels. He's doing incredibly well academically, but he still struggles every single day. He's struggling with the people and the noise and the smells and the this and the that. So again, don't be, don't allow yourselves to be dismissed by any kind of professional because your child's doing okay in this, that's fine, but they might not be doing okay in that.

Emma Salt:

So don't compare yourself to others and don't feel guilty if you think that your life should be easier or that you should be coping better. It's your life, it's your path. The second thing which leads onto that quite nicely is you need to allow yourself to feel whatever feelings you are feeling. If you're feeling sad or stressed, if you feel grief when you get the diagnosis, allow yourself to grieve. You're not grieving your child. You are grieving the life that you had imagined for them. Matt Hague, the author, tweeted about his wife's miscarriage a few years ago. And he said it wasn't the miscarriage that he was grieving, it was the life he had planned already for the baby they just found out about. And I think it's not the same. Obviously, it's a different situation, but we have plans for our children.

Emma Salt:

They may not agree with our plans, but we have plans for our children. And when you get a diagnosis of autism or A D H D or maybe it's a medical condition or whatever else, our plans shift and we have to grieve for that the life we have planned definitely won't happen. And that's fine. You are allowed to grieve. You're allowed to take a minute and grieve. So allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Scream. That's the other reason why I blog because I find it cathartic. But scream into a pillow. Go for a walk. Get a punch bag and take everything out on that. Or enjoy or embrace. We had a huge celebration a few years ago because our youngest son decided he could eat macaroni cheese again. That was another food group that was a celebration, which sounds silly, but we allowed ourselves to feel this immense happiness.

Emma Salt:

Take care of you, however you need to. So be it that beer walk, mind your friends, go away for a weekend, have a bath, and shut the door and play loud music. Whatever you need to do to feel and to take care of you, that's what you need to do. And then the final one, which can be quite hard at times, is that you have to love the children. You have not the children you were expecting. Sometimes it can be really frustrating and you can see it going back to food, because that's a major issue in our house. I'll see families where the children are eating vegetables by choice. And that's fine. So you need to really love the children.

Emma Salt:

You have, not the children you're expecting. And remember that the diagnosis was always there. All that piece of paper is doing is giving you the lens so that other people can do that. Whether you choose to have your child diagnosed for autism or not makes no difference. If your child is autistic, they're autistic. If they're not autistic, they're not autistic. That piece of paper does not change your child at all. So yeah, the last one is love the children you have, not the children you're expecting. And just remember that that diagnosis has always been there. Your child didn't, our son didn't suddenly become diagnosed. He didn't suddenly become autistic at 14. He always was He always was autistic.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

I think those are excellent takeaway points and you know, so, so true. And it's very powerful message to parents and I think it will make everyone feel a little bit less alone hearing that and, and taking it to heart because, those messages are really powerful. And for everyone that's been listening, I will have on my website, your book and, access to that book. And it's on Kindle Unlimited, so you can, if you are a Kindle Unlimited individual, you can get it for free. And if you're not, then you can purchase it. But all of those details will be on my website. And it's been a real pleasure having you on the podcast today, Emma, thank you very much.

Emma Salt:

Thank you for having me. It's been lovely.

Dr Olivia Kessel:

Thank you so much for listening. Send Parenting Tribe Emma's four takeout messages are important to hold true this holiday season. Don't compare yourself to other parents. Allow yourself to feel, take care of yourself and love the children you have not the children you were expecting. Don't forget to go to the send parenting.com website to find Emma's book, Square Pegs wishing you a calm Easter holiday and looking forward to you listening next Thursday.