Episode 53 Festive Episode

Please excuse any mistakes in this autogenerated transcript

Dr Olivia KesselHost00:08

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. Happy Boxing Day.

00:52

The day after Christmas, santa has been the presence of being unwrapped, the food has been eaten, we're all feeling a bit fuller Memories of love, magic, laughter also tears, fights, tantrums, anger and making up. All bundled together, some dark times will become Christmas legends to be retold in the future. I remember when my younger brother, with ADHD and aspiring to be a chef, came home from university and my mother asked him to follow this new recipe she had, where you cut up a turkey so that it cooked faster and was moisture than any other turkey. Well, my brother didn't read the instructions and he hacked the turkey to pieces. It was no longer roastable. My mother did not respond in a great way, crying and screaming that Christmas is ruined. My brother took off on his bike down the street. My mom eventually did follow him and chased an unknowing stranger down the street on their bike, screaming Antony, come back here. Anyway, at the time it felt like Christmas was ruined. But now, when we look back at it, literally most of my family laugh and laugh almost to tears, especially for that poor man being chased down the street on Christmas Day by my mother. But whether your Christmas was good or bad or somewhere in between, it will soften. The memory will blur the edges, the drama will be blurred and eventually it will become a fond memory because you were all together. Whoever your family is, however it's made up, you were all together.

02:37

I remember this time last year when I was wondering should I launch the Send Parenting Podcast before Christmas or after Christmas. I wasn't quite prepared enough. I had to release three episodes when we launched. That was the advice I had been given, so it was going to be a bit of a rush to get it all done before Christmas. So I decided to wait and launch the Send Parenting Podcast in January after Alexandra had gone back to school, which took a bit of the pressure off and also allowed me a bit more time to procrastinate in terms of getting everything ready. It was the right choice for me to do, and what a year it has been. 2023 has been amazing.

03:20

A big thank you to all the guests who have participated in the Send Parenting Podcast and to all of you people out there that have been listening and who have been contributing and reaching out to me. I feel like I've gotten to know a lot of you personally and I really want to say thank you for sharing your journeys with your children. As much as I hope you've benefited from the Send Parenting Podcast, I didn't realize how much I would benefit from all the knowledge and experience and other people who are walking this journey with their wonderfully wired child, just like me. I was thrilled, if I have to think back, you know, in the first month of the podcast you know, to get 30 downloads I think it was and that I had 60 followers from the Send Parenting podcast on social media platforms, and I look now at the data and it blows my mind really. I mean I think by the end of this year, we'll probably be at 12, 13,000 downloads and over 2,000 followers. You know we there's a community of us out there and I'm glad that it's growing and that we're learning from each other.

04:31

I am so excited about 2024. You know it holds the same excitement to me as last year. My mind is bubbling with ideas of what we can explore next year in terms of Send Parenting podcast. If there's one thing I'm sure of we will not run out of topics, we will not run out of ideas, we will not run out of solutions to help us navigate this world with our wonderfully wired children, and I want to wish you a nice, calm rest of 2023 and really look forward to what life will bring us in 2024. And no matter what challenges lie ahead, we know that we have each other and we can face anything together. Thank you, thank you.