 It's going a bit further, I mean, did you have any difficulties when it came to parenting with me? And I guess like, was there any like individuals, any kind of, I don't know, speakers or role models or parenting groups which kind of informed your opinion because I feel like a lot of parents nowadays, especially with, you know, the types of practices that a lot of autistic people feel very negatively towards and don't agree with. Whereas my experience of parenting from your side and also your style of teaching, it seems to be a lot more kind of holistic and a lot more individualized as opposed to like trying to fit everyone into programs and setting like very stringent milestones and things like that. So, yeah, difficulties perhaps with parenting me about certain things and what kind of informed that. Okay, so why didn't we were leading up to type noses and type noses, I read and read and read everything that was out there and I think one of the biggest, the biggest influences was reading Anna Kennedy's book and not stupid, which was an amazing book if you ever get to read that. I'm an ambassador to Anna Kennedy, if you want to go check out her work. I was very pleased that that happened, it was like coming full circle, really. Yeah. Also, Tony Atwood, because he particularly looked at Asperger's, which Thomas was diagnosed with at the time. We've come under one umbrella of autism, but that was a diagnosis, so that's what we looked at. I also read a lot by Wendell, who was Wendy Lawson, who did a lot of work on relationships and kind of sexual health as well, because I knew obviously Tom was going to go into puberty, kind of thought there would be other things coming up, pardon the pun. Sorry. You're the worst, like you and Dad, you're the worst for that kind of stuff, something about your generation or something. Swiffly moving on. Yeah. So when I just read and read and read and then obviously was using a lot of strategies in my teaching and read a lot about approaches, a particularly kind of scrinching approaches, particularly coming maybe from America's, the ABA and so forth. Yeah. I think a lot of listeners will know what you're talking about. And it really wasn't for me and I just thought actually we have to go from the child and just strip back and know what the child needs and how we relate. So it was more of a relational approach to parenting and to... Which is how you parent anyway. You wouldn't. Like with... Yeah. It was more explicit of everything we did. We made it explicit, you don't do this because when we're here we do this because and we taught you EDMs because one day I said to you, you know, you put a tile in your pocket, Tom and you jumped a mile. We taught you because you were very literate, so we taught you a lot about EDMs. So we did everything very literately, kind of like... We were cats and dogs. We were cats and dogs. Absolutely. So we were kind of after settling to your own flow and I know I said to you, I actually know you were in your book bed and you said to me, Mum, would you change me? Would you take my autism away? But it was a really random question. I think you were about 12. It's a very deep question to ask. It was a really deep question you threw me, really. And of course I was like, no, because you would appear, you know, you wouldn't be Tom and why would I change it just like your brother? I think that's... I think that's just like, it's just, it's something that I think, you know, I think that sort of approach was quite important for me. I mean, I went through stages of absolutely hating autism and myself and I kind of blamed a lot on it. But I think, you know, you're right. It's like, if you make someone not autistic, you're changing their brain. Like, they're not the same person. Like, the reason why I'm so keen for identity first language and things like that, because, you know, it's not like I've lost an arm and that I used to have an arm and it's something that, you know, it's, I guess it's somewhat a part of my identity in a sense. But like, it's not as so tied to who I am as like something about my brain that's different. It's not a disease, it's not a disease, you know. It's a different way of wiring, different way of looking at things. It's a very useful way of looking at the world as well through different lens. It really is. We were talking to you tonight, weren't we? We were talking about normal, weren't we? Like, that really shouldn't be a word called normal. Because there are so many different variations, you know, we're all unique. We're all fingerprint, we're all different. We're all unique. So what is normal? You know, how do you define that? It really shouldn't be a word, should it? No. And I think there's two ways of kind of looking at it. I mean, I find normal to be a very negative term. I agree. Normal is not a compliment or a validation. No. Like, the most, you know, you want people to be interesting and to have different views on things and to be able to add something to like the melting pot of humanity. It's not like, like, if we're all the exact same person, we would never get anywhere with things. Like, and a lot of like the big visionaries and stuff in the world, you know, they're often different from most people. And I think for me, a lot of like my mentality around it is that, you know, I see being strange and weird and quirky is a good thing. Like, it breaks up the normality of boring everyday life and it allows you to, you know, if you meet someone who's vastly different from yourself, it can often be quite illuminating to like see how they like look at the world and what they think about things and how they behave. It's... I do, I do, you know, because I think there is a stereotype around like autistic people being really fascinated with like objects and things, like... But I really kind of... I didn't really identify with that kind of thing because I remember like reading stuff from like Temple Grand in talking about, you know, we're more fascinated by objects than people. But I've always, I don't know if it's something that you saw, but I've always been incredibly like fascinated with understanding how other people work, like... Well, I think you've always kind of had that need to understand that the people don't pick them and that's been a big motivator in you to find a... like your social skills, but I think not all people have that. But it's just like we're always told, you know, you teach one person, but one child with autism, you teach one child with autism, you know, everybody is so different. Yeah. But I think some of the things you're doing and the things you're talking about, you know, if you don't have those difficult conversations and kind of challenge things, people never change their thinking, so it's good to challenge and it's good to kind of talk about things that might be really difficult, you know, and kind of promote arts and strike a conversation and a discussion about it. Is there anything else that you wanted to add about the difficulties or...? Yeah, I think it's a common one for a lot of parents to sleep. Oh, yeah. So when you were a baby, you were very routine and you slept beautifully. But as you got older, obviously, I didn't know about melatonin at the time, but... It's such a big thing with autism, isn't it? It's a huge thing, but you wouldn't go to sleep. You struggle to drop off to sleep once you're asleep. You're okay. It's the same in adulthood as well. Yeah, so... You used to kind of lay on the bed with you, but you were very sensory. It was like, okay, stop. Go for it, everyone. So Thomas would always grab you, whether it was me or his dad, he would always grab your mouth and kind of squeeze and squeeze your lips. It must be a sensory thing that would eventually just drop off to sleep and it was... I mean, it went on for years and years. And so in your teenage years, really, that you got prescribed melatonin and it helped for a short time, but it's not like that. It's taken you still to struggle with your sleep. I hope, you know. And we've tried everything, haven't we really? Yeah, it's just... I think it's because I'm so wired, like I'm so cerebral about everything that I do. Like, if I stop doing things and try to relax in the typical way, I just get really irritable and bored. And like... It's like my entire day from waking up to the evening. It's like I'm always thinking about something and doing something. And when it comes time to sleep, it's like, I can't really break out of that. That kind of way of being to a point where my brain calms down and that I fall asleep. But I mean, I think for me, like the most... the things that helped me a lot were having something to focus on that didn't require me to think, really. So I still have like somewhat of a focus on it. It's like, nowadays I'll, you know, turn my phone down to the lowest brightness and turn on like the orange light stuff. The night screen thing on my phone and just like watch a video or play like a mindless game. And that seems to help a lot. I think that's probably reflected in a lot of things in life. Like the way that you know, like they say a lot about you know, go with the flow. Go with your gut. Never work for me. Hey YouTube, just popping on to say if you have enjoyed this podcast clip so far, why not check out the full episode which you can find on my YouTube channel on Spotify, Google, Apple pretty much anywhere that you would want to find it. And if you have enjoyed this please make sure to like, drop me a subscribe if you want to see more stuff from me and drop a comment down below because it really does help the algorithm. Other than that, you can check out my Instagram which is in the link tree down below in all of my videos. There's daily blogs weekly updates on the podcast and lots of other stuff that you won't find here on YouTube. Hope you've enjoyed this clip and I'll let you get back to it. It almost always causes me a lot of distress and it just doesn't work. It's too, it's too loose. It's not literally if it's got a kind of stress. It's also based on emotion as well and I think around, especially when I was younger, I didn't trust at all. I remember looking at like my friends and people around me and just thinking, I mean socially I was behind, but I could still recognize that some of the behaviors that people were doing and how they just did stuff because they felt like doing it or they just instantly did things and I found that really confusing. I didn't understand why people did stuff without thinking and knowing why they're doing it. Thinking it through, yeah. But I know you never switch off because even when you're in the bathroom you're always listening to research or audible like you and you never stop. You're always working and then you get the burnout that's the only drawback is is the burnout. Sensory overload sometimes when you go to events and so forth and you do really well and you've socialize really, really well and you know you have a good time but in the next day you're just white to help completely. Yeah, that's social mattery. Absolutely and you just need to have that bound time and people need to understand that part of this family just need to not take it so personally really it's not that they don't want to talk to you it's just that actually you just need that almost that reset isn't it? Well we have like a friend of the family who's like that's like an autistic daughter and I absolutely love her and you know whenever we interact or something we'll have probably like an hour where we'll chat and stuff but then after a while we'll just kind of just sit in silence and just like play with some or watch something or it's interesting like with that because it's I feel like some parents they feel like they have to do stuff all the time or they have to teach them all the time or get them involved and be like really on top of them and stuff and I think sometimes they obviously like all of the time the best approach is to kind of you know try and help them experience different things but also you know feel okay to withdraw and pull back when you need to sometimes you just need to back off and stop talking and a lot of teachers find that with autistic children that when they're having to melt down they do more they say more, they ask them questions more people come around than yeah that's really interesting actually just back off yeah they're kicking you because they want you to move away and they can't verbally say it at that point so yeah it's really important yeah it's really interesting when I went to these specialities teaching and stuff like obviously in some areas I wasn't so good with you know because I just didn't have the experience with teaching kids and no understanding like I think I found really hard with the thing that I found really hard with teaching is being more authoritarian in the way that I act I found that really hard to do but I remember like there's been quite a few times when you know perhaps a kid that I was working with who you know they were struggling with something and the way that they dealt with it was by going towards them and separating them from people whereas what I really tried to do with them was to say that look okay most kids they're not allowed to go out of the playground and go to this area but it is quieter does it help you and does it sound better or like you know when I saw that they were getting overwhelmed I was like do you want to go to that area that we go to and they just kind of sit and they count like the stones on the pavement and you know regulate themselves but also making them aware of how what they're doing is helping their emotional state as well because I think there is a tendency sometimes with autistic kids to try and take the reins a little bit with stuff rather than like teaching them how to do how to like regulate themselves and what to do you know another thing introduce stimming to them like some you know quite often you have situations where teachers all try and suppress their stims but more often it's they don't introduce things it's not like they go and say hey would you like a vigil or should we get some lights to the classroom or should we make like a sensory den or like they don't have that like proactive understanding they're just thinking about all the schedule all the school schedule we have to get this piece of work done by then or not wanting the child to look different we used to get tells a lot we don't want to make them look different it's like for all different and this helps me and I think it was really interesting what you were talking about with the emotional coaching that's a really powerful way of getting children to identify their feelings and regulate them or again be literal and commenting and saying I can see you look tense I can see you're shaking I can see you're kicking because you want me to go away and that's because maybe you're angry or maybe you feel frustrated labelling the emotions so that actually they can do something with that and they start to connect what do we do when we feel this we do this that helps your last tense so we try that one yeah I think that's important it's a really powerful thing to do rather than just surprising everything yeah actually giving it a label and a name yeah definitely