 Hello and welcome to Pukipondas. I'm Pukie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question was supposed to be how can we support our children when learning from home? But I've changed it to what should be our parenting priorities right now. I'm in conversation with Nerys Hughes and you'll see that whilst we had the jumping-off point of supporting learning at home, things got a bit deeper. My name is Nerys Hughes. I am an occupational therapist by trade. Most people don't know what that is, especially in pediatrics, but in pediatrics it's about helping kids and young people with the jobs and occupations that are meaningful to them. So the big job is going to school, the other big jobs are making friends, being able to play and then being able to take part in all of their other activities that we demand of them. So when I ask children what jobs they need help with, often they look at me and go, I don't have jobs and mums go, oh, they don't have jobs. And I say, yeah, they do. They've got lots of jobs from handwriting to making friends, to wanting to bake cakes, to wanting to climb trees. And whatever that young person comes to me with is their desire and their hopes and their aspirations, my job is to help them get through. I set up whole child therapy, which is a standalone social, socially driven, social entrepreneurial, modelled community therapy service. And we provide therapy to enable children to access their education, their social life and their community. And we have a lot of projects with local authorities, with schools. And we also work with looked after and adopted children through adoption fund and social services funding. And we have psychotherapy, occupational therapy, art therapy, play therapy, speech and language, educational psychology and play therapy in order to work together collaboratively through an interdisciplinary lens, which just means bringing everybody's ideas to the table and hopefully allowing families to access everything in a smooth and efficient way. So whether that's having those communication targets written into the psychotherapy or the psychotherapist working with the speech therapist on how a kiddo communicates better, that that's why we have everybody in the same building as often as possible, which COVID is restricted somewhat, but normally that's the aim is to have us all there together working collaboratively. Wow. So very much a child-centered approach with multidisciplinary. So our kind of jumping off point today are kind of episode questions around supporting parents or carers with learning at home. And this conversation arose because it seems that there are challenges here. So I wonder if you want to just launch into that whole can of worms. Well, I mean, I'm, I'm quite obsessed professionally with what our own identity means and what our identity within all of our cultural subgroups and groups are. And as a mum, I'm very much a mum. And you know, I have that identity and then I go to work and I put on my other identity which is manager and then I put on my other identity which is direct therapist treating therapist. And then sometimes I'm brought in as an expert witness and that's a different hat that I wear. And what I've really realised from my own personal experience of COVID is that my fancy dress books is sat next to me in one chair in one room in one place. And sometimes I can't get those hats on and off quick enough pookie to be who I need to be in that moment. And so I think this merging of our identities and merging of our roles is probably one of the greatest challenges I've observed within myself and within my family. And then hearing that from the community that we're working with so every day we're touching base with mums and dads all over the world actually not just in the UK but again predominantly here in the UK. And it's seeing those identities having to play out in such a confused way. And I think when we start to not be able to hold ourselves steady in our identity, our mental health suffers, and our ability our occupational ability to be who we want to be suffers. That probably is one of the best jumping off points of what's happening here in COVID is that mums and dads and children are being asked to merge their identities into one muddying pool. And I think that's really challenging for all of us. So they are both child and learner and everything all in their home space. Yeah, so your friend yours you're who you haven't giggled with you know laughter and joy that's happening in one place, learning and pushing yourself and challenging yourself is happening in one place. I mean one of the best rules we always have when we're assessing a kiddo is when I'm in play I communicate very differently from when I'm in a formal setting. So we always talk to families as they come into the clinic about we don't need please and thank you in the therapy room because we're in a play space and when I'm playing with you and I'm playing catch. I don't say please may I have the ball. I say, give us a ball man because that's my playful self. And what's happening when your child is set at your kitchen table being a student for their teacher and then a friend to their friend on their zoom or their WhatsApp group or their switch or in their classroom chat forum. And then they're having to have that identity with mum and dad, and they probably are quite different with mum and dad and brother and sister than they are. And when we see how children use language when they're together in their own sub social group, it's a very different form of language. And if we're having to change our language throughout the day, we are having to shift ourselves quite considerably aren't we. As soon as you see that having to change how I communicate and how I am and how I action myself and how I thrive as a human, then then our children are having to shift their identity really as much as we as the grown ups managing all of this covert stuff as well are and those shifts and fracturing become quite hard to maintain our mental health and our mental well being. That's actually quite a terrifying thought isn't it, because that's a lot to expect as you said you're finding that difficult as an adult, and I can definitely empathize with that as well. But actually we're expecting kids as young as like five to be doing this right now. Yeah. So what okay. So now you've terrified us what do we do about it. Well that's kind of how we rack it up a whole drug therapy we tell you what's wrong and then we give you a solution. Okay, okay go on. I need the solution now before I cry. You're usually going to find out what is wrong or why something isn't working for you. And that's why parents are tuning into this podcast isn't it let's be honest is because they feel that something isn't working or they want to get something better even if it is working. And I think what that is is about if we are having to do lots more things or change ourselves quite a lot to manage in the environment that we're asking ourselves to be managing whether that's parent or whether that's child, we probably need to reduce some of the expectations. And so we always talk about yes a child has the capacity and the educational competencies to maybe do a GCSE but then we ask what is it that they need in order to do that GCSE to the best of their personal ability. And that's why we have individualised care plans and individualised, you know, curriculums and differentiated curriculums inside school is because we know that children learn differently and have different capacity. And they have different capacities at different times. So I think one of the big things to do as a family because you are now emulgated into one big sort of Monet picture of every colour on one canvas is to really set the expectations of what's realistic right now and what can be put off for the future. So if if your child is incredibly academically successful, normally in school but really not managing at the moment, you might need to reflect on why they're not managing academically at the moment and bring some of the expectation down. Whereas if you've got a kiddo who absolutely loves maths, then let's pop some extra maths in there. But if that's a kiddo who loves cooking, let's try and pop some extra cooking in there. And that's where we come back to the lifeblood of occupational therapy, which is this meaningful activity. What is meaningful to you right now and what's meaningful to your child right now. And allowing, allowing some of that expectation to come down for everybody inside your household is no bad thing. It stops us feeling like we're failing. And I think at the moment feeling like we're failing is something that we probably need to reflect on more than any of the other expectations we have on ourselves. And we feel like we're failing because we think that we should be able to continue to work from home if we're employed and we should be able to supervise our children homeschooling and they should still be reaching their standards. And if things aren't happening brilliantly, that's a failing on our part. Is that the, yeah, that's a failing on our part and our children might feel that that's a failing on their part. It kind of feels like everyone else is managing a lot of the time to do. No, I mean, I mean, I was talking to Ellie and our education coordinator about this, even this weekend, we were messaging each other. And I was talking about how, what, who, who is this putting these expectations on you right now, who is putting this expectation on you as Ellie or me as Neres. Mum Gill and Dad Gill is a huge driving force at the moment. And so, you know, I'm not doing this and I'm not doing this and that's a language I think we need to avoid because guilt is a feeling it's not a fact. If we write down what the five facts of COVID are for your family. So the fact for your co family are mum and dad are both having to do an eight hour day. And your child's supposed to be doing a seven hour day at school. And then you're supposed to be doing your one hour of exercise. We've already calculated there aren't enough hours in the day for that pookie. Yeah, we've just done the some haven't we and now 16 waking hours that's not viable. So we need to bring that expectation down somewhat. So what is realistic. Well, everybody's different aren't they so you know some households are two people at home on furlough some households are one adult at home with three children, not on furlough. Some households are, you know, in a very different position some children are really good at self directing their learning and don't want mum interfering and some children want mum sat there the whole time or dad sat with them the whole time. So I think for me, I've sort of I've circled maintaining your family culture, because everything is changing around us. And so, again, one of the things Ellie and I were talking about is Ellie has always reverted to keeping her home nice and clean and making sure that everything is flowing in terms of her sort of her kitchen her hub of her home that's where her identity is rigidly fixed. So that's that's become one of her top five priorities. Mine is completely different my home's an absolute drop bag home we've got boxes building up in corners and it's not particularly clean and it's not a particular drive for me so that's one of the things I've put down on my low list. You know I can do housework once a week once a fortnight, we can scrabble it together and bang it out and that's good enough for us. But that wouldn't work for somebody who having a clean home helps them have a clean mind. So I think having sitting down and working up what your top five priorities are is far more important than me telling you what your priorities should be. The overarching priority for every family in the UK at the moment is preserving their mental health above everything else. Because even if we go back to our Maslow's hierarchy of need, our most fundamental principle of psychological well being is, do you feel safe, and are your basic needs being met. And we are allowed to start at that point of the pyramid for ourselves as humans. Do you feel safe, and are your basic needs being met. And once you've got those ticked off and you've decided what those priorities are for your well being, then you can pick in your luxury items, you know there's island discs you're, I want to bake with the kids once a week I want to have a really great Instagram post of the picture my child's drawn I want to, though for me are your luxury items in your basket of five essential things that you need day to day. You need to be looking at your family well being your family culture of what's important to you and everybody's different aren't they. So some families academic is that big drive and but but those basic needs. Actually they're not given at all right now for a lot of people are they a lot of people don't feel safe. And actually that's a really hard one you know I safety is such a key parameter of all the work that I do. But many of us just feel fundamentally unsafe right now and with good reason, a lot of the time. And then you know, are we fed clothes and getting enough sleep and all those kind of really basic needs again, not given. It isn't a given and so we have to come back to asking ourselves sort of every day at the beginning of every day. What do I need to do to meet my basic needs. That's actually our priority right now. And then it's what do I do to meet the basic needs of my child. Yeah, and that might not be education. Although education is a very broad and big thing isn't it one of the things I was talking with colleagues about recently was thinking about celebrating learning in all of its forms and actually that you know if you've got a child who has learned to cook something that's for me such a brilliant achievement and we need to find ways to find out what children are doing at home. That means something to them and brings value to them and their family and celebrating that as well as whether they got the hang of the algebra or whatever And that's that meaningful activity isn't it it's going right the way back to those core principle I'm really lucky the core principles of my profession are that human beings need to be doing and they need to feel productive to feel like they belong so coming back to that sense of identity for children. If your child is loading the dishwasher or doing some washing up and they get to hear mom and dad say well done. That's probably more meaningful than doing the algebra. But if we break down what does loading the dishwasher mean it's a motor planning skill it's a fine motor skill. It's, you know you've got a map and visually schematics. So there's there's a level of all of those academic standards within the activity the same as baking a cake pookie. You know, I've bought my child my my eight year old daughter I've bought her lots of the ready made cupcake packs, you know, just off the shelf, add an egg at the water, but she's doing her own measuring and she's cracking her own egg and she's checking the temperature on the cooker, and she's setting a timer. And at the end of it she's able to go around the home and say would you like one of my cakes would you like. And she gets greeted with a lovely big smile of wow a cake thank you so much. And what have we done we've done maths we've done socialising we've done timings we've done planning we've done motor skills we've done fine motor skills. Is that an academic activity for my argument as an occupational therapist is yes 100%. And that's the same as being able to tidy your room or make your bed or have a cup of tea with mum and learn how to make a cup of tea for mum. It's far more rewarding, and it's hitting that Mazzo's hierarchy of need of belonging and being part of a community and our communities have shrunk so how do we find those meaningful rewards in the relationships we have. If you're managing the maths homework and the online learning and you're doing a really good job of it great well done you. If you're not well done you because you've, if you've got out of bed today well done and actually if you haven't got out of bed today. Because at the minute how are you meeting your own personal. Well being, you are the only one who can decide that and I think that's what we need to be empowering the rest of our community to say is actually this is what I've got in me today, my friend posted a beautiful. I have a very different who has a me and she posted a just a little sort of photo and some dialogue mean thing that said load the dishwasher three times if that's what it takes. You know which was if I don't rinse the plates before they go in the dishwasher then they're not going to clean so they're all stacked in the sink waiting for me to rinse them. It looks like a therapist said well just put them through three times until they're done just keep running it you don't have to go any further than that just keep running the dishwasher it's okay. And I think that line of just keep running the dishwasher till it's okay is good enough for us in fact it's it's good that is good mental health making that decision to pull back from the demands that are too much for you as a family right now is definitely okay. And that's about where we've got young people who've properly lost that sense of belonging and purpose so in particular here I'm thinking about young people who had worked their entire school career towards, you know GCSEs or a levels which then haven't happened and even though maybe then the next step does I think there's this real disconnect there isn't there that they thought they knew what they were doing and where they were going and this very very clear path. They're not there and maybe the different activities they might normally have taken part in as well extra curriculally for example, aren't there and they're not able to hang out with their friends I mean, there's so much disconnection. I don't know I imagine if you're a 1516 17 year old now you might feel just really lost I mean, what can families do to help with that. I think it's reducing the demands, we can't be our child's teacher our child's therapist our child's friend our child's mom our child's dad. And we are having to be, let's be really honest about the expectation here again the list of what we have to achieve is too long for any of us to sustain or come to fruition with. So again, one of the posts that was my favorite Facebook post of the week last week was another of my friends saying, I am failing at everything. It was so nice not to have like an Instagram cake and a perfect everything picture. It was so nice to have a post of I'm failing at being an employee I'm failing at being mum I'm definitely failing at being a wife, and I'm failing at being a housekeeper, but she isn't she's doing her best in every one of those boxes she genuinely is because we all genuinely are doing our best are we not it just we might have slightly different capacity to the person set to our left and the person set to our right. And so I think what you have to do is if you're a young person really is falling apart. Go back and work out what it is that is their identity so you just said it what if you've got someone who's driven all of this time for all of this energy and doing perfectly at their GCSEs. Well, then let's have a look at doing some of the BBC bites GCSE work with them. Let's keep that knowledge refreshed in them and remind them that that knowledge can't be taken away from them. They might be waiting, but it's theirs. And for that young person who just is so disinterested in the online learning. Give your child and yourself the permission to come away from that for a little bit and say, actually, let's play a game of boggle. Let's put everything down and stop and find something we can do together. And there are going to be young people peaky that can't. And I think we have to be really realistic about if we were treating a child in the clinic we would we would carry out some baseline assessments of where that child's mental health is. And if that child's mental health is tipping over into the being unwell and not functioning, then it's about reaching out for some help and saying this has gone beyond my capacity as a mum. I need to bring in some extra help and that might be through the school. The schools have got some wonderful pastoral care available. Ringing up and saying as a mum or a dad, I'm not managing is totally acceptable. And I know for my own son he has some knowing needs and specific learning needs. So he's getting weekly check in with one of the pastoral care team where they get to carry some of that load with me. And there are those capacities at school. So I think we have to be mindful that we're not going to come out of this without some scars. And as a mum and a dad or a guardian or a carer, you might not have the capacity in the toolkit right now to come through this unscathed and that might not actually and probably shouldn't be our aim. We don't come out of trauma without changing. In fact, the eggs in our ovaries as a child changed their DNA when we experienced trauma. So why would we think for a minute that we're going to come out of this the same as we went in? We are going to come out differently. And I think accepting that our children are going to come out looking a little bit different is an important part of giving yourself the space to not get this right every time. And I think realising that we do need specialist help for some of these young people is OK and important as well. What point should we be significantly worried about our child? Because actually everything we once thought we knew about warning signs and things mean just everything's different right now, isn't it? What would be the red flags for you that a child needs either for us to reach out to the school or look elsewhere for specialist help? When would you be really worried? I think when there is complete disengagement or moderate disengagement even. Let's be really fair. The warning signs, you said warning signs not deeply ingrained inside a mental health need. So the warning signs are disinterest. So if we really can't get our child up and motivated. So if they're still motivated to go and play on their computer games, there's a level of motivation. It might not be the motivation you want for them, but it is a level of motivation. So my son is not particularly a fan of getting up in the morning, having a shower and going online to school. But he's still very happy to go and play Fortnite and play on his switch and meet his friends. So his level of social disinterest isn't that high. He is still socially interested. He just doesn't particularly like going to school, but that was probably a familiar battle before COVID. Alan probably be a familiar battle until he comes out the other side of education. Whereas my daughter is quite heavily motivated to do well at her schoolwork during a normal school day, but she's not particularly motivated at the moment because she wants us to be watching that. She gets all of her reward from the positive feedback and praise that her teachers normally afford her. So at the moment they're wobbly, but they're not suffering. Whereas I think if you're a young person really is incredibly disinterested in everything or is pulling out of the things we know they love and they like, then I would start to say those warning signs are coming. And that's when you need to decide what the priority list for them is. And what would you be doing in that instance? I'll see, you know, there is this idea here that if it gets to a certain point, we would look for specialist input. But let's be honest, it's pretty hard to get that help, right? And that can take months. And sometimes even after months, you don't get what you need. So as a parent or a carer, I'm worried about my child. I'm beginning to see some of those signs or maybe even they've been going on for a while now. And I've tried a few things and I'm a bit lost. What are the things I could be doing every day? So you've talked about reprioritizing and working out what really matters. But, you know, what might a typical day look like? How might I reprioritize my day to help my child if I'm able to give them some of me some of my time? Well, one of the things we use professionally, don't we, is sort of a morning meeting, a morning agenda. And I think that really helps a young people like what's our agenda today? And I talk about framing choices. So if I say to you right now, Pookie, what are the five things you really want to do tomorrow? You're going to go, um, oh, and if I say to you, Pookie, would you like to bake a cake tomorrow? Or would you like to make some origami butterflies with me? Which of those would you prefer? And that's what we mean by framing choices. So what I do for my children is I frame the choices they can have. And then I have the explicit rules because safe boundaries really helped me. So both of my children have to sign on for their tutorial. They have to meet with their teacher in the morning. My son is older. He's at secondary school. So he has to sign on to each lesson and produce the homework for that. And then at the end of the day, he gets to pick his reward. And I try and mix those rewards a little bit. I mix those things with family movie, family TV time, paying a board game, or having an extra hour of screen time with your mates. So he can choose those. And actually he does choose the family time as frequently as the extra computer time at the moment. He's 12, so he's done that sort of quite nice golden circle of wanting to spend time with us. He's moving away from it. He's going to talk to it preciously. I know it will be gone next year. But I think framing what those choices are. So it isn't a choice that you get up and you sign in to a tutorial. We are all having to do that. That's on our daily requirements. That's on our daily agenda because routine is essential. And the routine has just been fractious, hasn't it? Our routines look completely different. So the routine that you can bring in, bring in. So for me, that's a family meal in the evening. I love our family meal in the evening. I love my mother. That's my absolute. And the signing on to tutorial in the morning and checking your online learning every day in the morning together is another absolute. And then after that, we have some flexibility. So that's where I allow myself to sort of say to my daughter, okay, she's, she's having a bit of a meltdown over the English work. We'll take a break. We'll watch an episode. She can come back to it. And we set the daily agenda. And that's when I tell them what the expectations on me are today as well. So, you know, mommy has got a court case that she has to attend online or mommy's got a calf calf meeting, child protection meeting that she's got to attend online. There are certain requirements of my job that I just can't duck out of. And so I let them know what those are. And we have some sign language in my house as well of like, this is a no moment and this is a common spine. And my children have now got really used to the fact that they know which faces they can come on and zoom with my daughter knows who she can sort of come and hang out with on zoom and she knows when this is a very private meeting and she can't come in. So setting those boundaries every day is really important. And I think that helps because then you're getting a daily check in and you might prefer doing that in the evening before or you might prefer doing that in the morning but I think just like we have in our workplace you've got to have that check in. It sounds like communication is absolutely key here. And I think framing choices I think we give our children a wild list of choices mean Ellie. And I we did we did quite a lot of video interaction with families through health therapy at the moment and I was talking to Ellie about some of the videos we're getting in there like my daughter won't do any online learning. And then when we're watching the video, the mum or the dad is going through 20 choices and the child hasn't even said anything yet the mum's kind of negotiated so far down the line with her child the child is no longer going to say yes to anything. So I think having that firm consistent something firm and consistent in place is really important. I think also just on a tiny note, I think both for teachers and for parents and carers just knowing the power of just silence while you're waiting for a child to formulate their response. I found myself this morning so my husband and I kind of take it in turns to be the parent who is trying to work but very much on call for the children and whilst I was that parent this morning, then I could overhear my daughter's lesson in the background. And actually she's had, you know, they both have had wonderful teaching on the whole but this one particular teacher this morning had just read a passage from a book, and then asked a question about it and not got an instant response and she just kept prompting and asking more and more and I just found myself just stopped talking because you just thought you just stopped talking just allow the tumbleweed the response will be forthcoming. Yeah, and it's about processing that isn't it and again how is how is my child supposed to process those answers and so I think yeah framing the choices, giving a little bit of breathing space, you know before we also breath out let them take a breath in. And then finding something that's pleasurable for you and your children I mean having having joy and fun at the moment it's really important and it's really hard to find we're having to dig deep to find that family fun aren't we. Yeah, absolutely. I just thought about the kind of the screen time issue so some of the things I'm facing in my own family and I'm hearing many other people facing issues with as well as a that where you've got remote school honestly like that you know they might spend hours and hours and hours on a screen when you've spent the whole first half of their life saying, you know, not too many screens darling. And then there's the fact that when they then do have downtime you maybe think wouldn't it be joyous if they just run outside for a while and they want to be on the screen to talk to their friends. And, but how else are they going to talk to their friends. So what do we do narrows what do we do. That's all we have to do I have spent my entire career lecturing on why screen time is the devil in our home. So I'm a massive fat hypocrite right now yay. I, when we're working on children who can't sleep, what's first step reduce screen time two hours before bedtime. When we're working with children who are struggling with their communication what's the first rule remove the screen time. But we are not in normal. We're not in normal. So you are right, you know, my 12 year old, the only way he's going to socialize with his friends is through some device. Because even if I had a tin can and a piece of string nobody lives near enough that to function. And we don't use landline phones. It's not like when I was a kid and you knew all of your best friend's phone numbers by heart and you'd have half an hour a week. You were allowed to make phone calls and you'd have a little list of who you were going to ring at that time is it's gone. This is these are different times so. Tear up the rule book tear up the expectations on yourself when you can get them off. Yay you. And when when you need them to be on the screen time so you can have that meeting at work or you can go and have a bath or you can bring your friend do. And so, you know, we talked about I thought I was talking earlier to the team how do I, how do I lecture to parents and talk to parents about oxygen mask on first during COVID. So we've always talked whole child therapy when you say it's a whole child approach one of the first things we do say 70% parents 30% child. We have to support our mums and dads and our carers first before we're ever going to get near to making a difference to our child because I can do a wonderful therapy session with a kiddo. But if I put them back in a house that's causing friction for them. It doesn't matter does it. I have to work with a family first. And so how do we get our oxygen mask on mum and dad first. What you were talking about that balance at your house you've got one of you on duty one of you off duty and you're swatching that shift and that obviously is one of your protective factors that you put in place. But if your child having an extra hour of YouTube or CBB is going to mean that you can go and have a bath or you can go and talk to your friends I have wine Wednesday. Wine Wednesday is where I meet my best friend on the phone and we have a very nice glass of wine that we have poured ourselves and to reward my children for letting mommy have wine Wednesday they're allowed to eat their dinner anywhere they want. So you know I've got a teenager with a plate in his bedroom and they get chicken nuggets and chips or sausage and mash they're like their favorite dinner whatever they may be and they can sit and eat it watching whatever they want on their device doing whatever they want on their device Because wine Wednesday honestly is my sanity it's when I laugh it's when I have a giggle. I'm not drinking the whole bottle you don't need to bring children services. I'm having a couple of glasses of Merlot with my bestie and we're putting the world to rights and we're planning what we're going to do when we come out of COVID. And we're having a device time together and that wine Wednesday has become a little routine for children where mommy doesn't watch them and give them rules and where they don't bother mommy because the longer she's on wine Wednesday the longer we get away with screen time. Everybody feels like they're winning and I think important life skill I think isn't it massive life skill and also realizing that mommy needs to talk to her friends and mommy doesn't feel so great when she's not talking to her friends because we model for our children don't we. So I always come off wine Wednesday and they might have had a slightly later bedtime when all of the teachers and my school are like yeah now we know what Thursday is so hard. They might have a slightly later bedtime and they get to sneak in the kitchen cupboard and get sweeties and mommy's not paying attention. But it punctuates the week for us all that this is the downtime for everybody and actually mommy laughs and mommy comes off the phone cheekier and funnier and back to mom because she filled her tank again. And not just with the Merlot but with the best friend. And so I think modeling for your children what you need modeling for your children like why you're finding this hard is really important. And I think the screen time rule books just going to have to be torn up. And when we're allowed back out and when we're allowed to go and do things we're going to have to start slowly weaning our children off that highly addictive substance of screen time and acknowledging that it was a coping mechanism. Yeah. It's one of the really weird byproducts of this whole thing that my my children's like most used app is is Microsoft Teams because they're too little to have like all the social media so they just you know they use Microsoft Teams and it's just if you would have said to me 12 months ago you'll be telling your children to get off Microsoft Teams. I'm sorry what. What even what is that even a thing when I've had to learn to use the impeeky I was not a technology girl. Now like I can even do a breakout room I mean who knew this girl. I'm so proud of me and I think I think this is what I mean by the top five priorities. And I often when working in mental health and physical health with children families one of the things I love to do is put three baskets out in front of a family. In front of mum and dad and if the kids are old enough I'll do it with the kids and if they're not then I'll do it with mum and dad or guardian or carer. So that might be granny and auntie at this stage but what we do is we write down what you want to see change or what you want to see ingrained in your day to day life. What your priorities are and write them all down bits of paper hundreds of bits of paper around the table and then I give you the three baskets and the first basket is my top priorities. And you're not allowed to put any more than three or five of those things in that top priority box. And then you've got your medium priorities like what would what what do I need to work towards after I've achieved these or once these are balanced and that's your medium priority. And then you put the rest in your maybe someday might be nice priority basket but actually it's a really useful exercise to do for yourself and for your children and for your family. Because then you start writing down especially all of this parental guilt stuff that we've got going on at the moment like my children need to be doing this in their maths and they need to be doing eight hours online and they need to be doing that they need to learn how to tie their shoelaces and they need to suddenly when you've got the three to five maximum priority list basket you suddenly realize how unimportant or how you're allowed to downscale the priority of those things are. And then you can stick those three things on your fridge or you stick them in the front of your work notebook or you post it note them around your computer screen and remind yourself if you're getting those done, or you're working towards those, then actually you're okay, and working towards those is essential. And if your child's mental health is is is becoming lower ed or you're concerned about it, then pick three priorities because five is way too many goals for any young person. It's hard isn't it and I think that idea around prioritizing I mean the tricky thing with it is I think having enough headspace actually to even have that much complex thought right now is a little bit tricky. But I do think that when you can have a really clear vision of what are we actually trying to do here, and that can be super helpful in whatever role you're in I do this with my work actually so I've taken to getting up really early, I work really well very early in the morning so I get up at half five. And my aim is that by the time that I go up to the house to have a shower and have breakfast with my children that I've done enough that day that if I was not able to do anything else I would feel okay. And so I always think the night before if I do one thing tomorrow morning what will it be. And it was it was born out of all these same conversations that we're having a feeling constantly like I was failing because there's too much to do. And it's too hard. And so I had to just really scale back what can I do and how can I take control of this a bit. How many of us how many of us were on the edge of our capacity before COVID. So you know my my job was already spinning 10 plates. My life. I'm mum spin one plate for my son's been another plate for my daughter get my daughter to school on time. Hit the bake sale or whatever you know my school know for well that I am not a bake sale mummy I'll get to parents evening but there's very rarely a cake coming out of me for a bake sale and I'm very rarely the mum that's volunteered to do a school visit because I work full time. And I booked my work a term ahead because I worked at school calendar. So, but I was already spinning 100 plates. So I've had to cut some of those plates off at the knees. You know, I might not be a great friend to all of my friends at the moment. I probably am not going to be the best partner to my partner at the moment. Let's cut some of those plates down and that's what I mean by putting the three priorities in the basket three goals to work on is quite a huge feat for any human. We've got three goals at the moment to come out the other side of COVID intact with, you know, and I would say mental health for every member of the families right up there. And if there are four of you in a house that's four goals already isn't it. And we're going to have to cut some stuff off at the knees. And there aren't many of us who can choose to be the work that we sacrifice we have to keep, we have to keep our jobs, we have to keep our industries going. And that's, you know, that's probably one of your priorities is turn up to work. And as you say, you already had this protective factor in place because you were spinning so many plates. Somebody's just thrown another couple of plates that you and asked you to start spinning. Yes. Yeah. And that's it when you stop and you really think about it. It's no wonder that we're all feeling a little bit crap right now, is it. And we are going to feel crap and then so then we have to celebrate the small things. Yeah. And the small things is essential. So we are not going to change the world right now. You know, one of the things that I've really cut down on is Facebook groups, social media groups, trying to change the world. I run a social enterprise. I work in children's mental health. I'm continually trying to change the world and trying to better myself, better the world around me. Well, that's gone. It's gone. Like, I'm going to make, I'm going to get up today and I'm going to struggle my way through my massive list of things that I'm never going to get to the end of. And that's kind of going to have to be okay. Yeah. And then I'm going to celebrate the small things that allow me to say, I'm all right with that. I think actually there's something there about giving yourself permission isn't there because I found actually that when we start having more honest conversations about this, we find that everyone else thinks that everyone else is managing and none of us, you know, we're all doing our best. But actually, we put the mask on, don't we. But I found, you know, earlier on in this whole thing, I might have tried really hard to just make it all seem okay. But now, if my children are not getting on and things are difficult in the house, I would have no compunction about telling my next call if it's possible to move it. I'm really sorry, can we move this I've got to prioritize my children right now. And nobody really seems to have a problem with that, actually. Nobody does and I think that's the thing isn't it is feelings and reality what what's our feelings so guilt is a feeling shame is a feeling. We all have we all have lots and lots in us for lots and lots of different reasons. But they are feelings what is the reality are your children here are they eating a meal are they great you're winning you're winning celebrate the small things. And, you know, we're eating more chicken nuggets than we've ever eaten in our lives but so what. You know, I know that means I know I've only got two things to wash up and for me that celebrate the small things. They are we're okay. I could afford chicken nuggets celebrate those those little victories. And this is coming from the girl used to do you know like three tajins a week and my children being all over the world and lovely rare and different foods. Chicken nuggets, let it go. And, but I think celebrating the small things putting the small victories into your life. If your child like you said earlier, you know you you didn't start this meeting at this time you particularly wanted to because you were needed as a mommy more. I think it's really important if in your basket is get my children's mental health through the door. Okay, so what are the protective factors that are going to get you there. I'm not going to start a meeting short, or I'm going to set a five hour deadline for myself, or I'm going to work in the evening and be present in the day. Or I'm going to take a nap and let my children watch CBB and whatever you need and I think screen fatigue is a genuine thing as well. So I think sometimes you say if your child's doing five, six hours on the screen for school and you're doing five, six hours on screen for work. So you're all going to come off really tired, visually tired, emotionally tired. And you might not have a lot in you so you might not have games night and bake a cake night. It doesn't have to be brilliant. There doesn't need to be an Instagram photo of how perfect your life is. In fact, probably the best Instagram post you can put out is a message saying how are you all feeling today. And I think we can sometimes forget how the little things make a really big difference to our kids. So one of my daughters was having an issue over the weekend and, you know, been a big falling out with all our friends. You know, when you're 10, like, it goes from being the best day ever to the worst day of your life, like, just like that. And this had happened and she was really sad and I thought the best thing I could do was just take her away from it all. So I took her away from one screen to another screen and we sat and we watched a film together and had a cuddle. And at one point she just turned around to me and I gave her gobstoppers. That always helps. And she turned around to me and she went, thank you for making me happy again, Mummy. And just continued watching the film and I just thought, I didn't realise it was so easy. No, but also how amazing would it be to just write that phrase on your fridge and stick it on with a magnet? So next time you're having that meltdown and I don't know if you like me. I'm a real at the kitchen door around like quite, I'm quite emotionally honest. It's amazing how she's being emotionally honest. You know, maybe it is just worth writing that down. Yeah. Maybe it's worth sticking that on your fridge. Thank you for making me happy today, Mummy. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it is worth having on your screensaver the pancakes that you managed to make four weeks go because, my God, you made pancakes. Well done. Like, these are small victories. Celebrate them. Or, you know, your child went to the fridge today and took out an apple and didn't eat a bag of crisps. Go you. It's a small victory. And if you've got beautiful punctuated moments like that, have them. And don't tell yourself everybody else is in a worse position. You know, I'm really fed up with hearing, well, but it's harder for some people. So we should just be grateful for what we have. No, we don't have to be grateful. We don't have to be grateful. Gratitude is beautiful. And when you find it, hold on to it, nurture it, love it. It, you know, it's the beginning of a fire that's going to warm you. So yes, gratitude. I absolutely back, but you're allowed to have a pity party. You're allowed to have a wallow day. You're allowed to have a good old week in the bathroom while nobody's watching. You're even allowed to have a bit of a cry around your children say I'm crying because I feel like I've got too much on and I'm not getting it right. And I'm sorry. As long as you are not making your children wear the guilt of that feeling, it's okay to be emotionally honest with your children. I talk a lot at work about, you know, we had this culture didn't we coming out of the sort of the 80s and 90s that we couldn't tell children we couldn't say negative words in school like sad or angry. So I was regularly going in working in special schools where special school assistants were sort of saying to a child, you bit me and it made me really sad. And I'm like, no, they didn't they bit you and it made you really angry. And then it made you fearful that they were going to bite you again and if you say to a kid that made me a bit anxious and a bit worried that you're going to bite me again. A child now genuinely knows what the outcome of that action is. So I think it's very important to be emotionally honest with your children. There is a difference as you know from your work of making a child wear your feelings like you are so horrible you've made me unhappy. That's probably not helpful. But when you argue with your brother it makes my heart a bit sad because I love you both. And I find that really hard is an emotional honestly that I think is okay to bring into your family home. But again, if that's your culture. So if your children are used to talking to you, we're both therapists, our kids are probably really used to emotional discussions. How are you feeling today is a really normal question for us. But if it isn't a normal question in your family come back to what's culturally relevant to you. You don't have to be me and I don't have to be you. So when you're looking at advice, if you read that piece of advice and you think I wish I were that person, but I'm not. Put it away. But you don't do it. Don't do it to yourself. Don't try and be something you're not. Whereas if you read a piece of advice or you see a creative activity, you think, oh my God, I love that. Then do that because that's where you're going to find that joy. Is it something that's meaningful to you and your kiddos? And if you start trying to rip up and change up the culture of your family life right now, that dishonesty and that disingenuous approach, your children are going to know it straight away and they're going to hate it. They're going to hate it. I think that's great advice for life, not just for right now. Just, yeah, be, you know, you do you, isn't it really? Yeah. I mean, Ellie's always saying, oh, you've got an interview, the Guardian, have you got an interview with Pookie? What are your top five tips? And I'm like, well, I'm not going to dare to tell somebody else what their house should look and feel like because I don't live it. They're not my shoes. Go and pick the things that you that make you go, oh, that's great. I like the idea of that. That fits me. That one doesn't. And I keep talking a lot to my friends about just shrink your social circle. If there's somebody that's making you feel awful, or you're not getting from them what you need, go away. Come back at the end of COVID and restore that relationship if it's still valuable to you, but do not let them in. Do not let the negative voices in at the minute because you don't, we don't have capacity. We don't have capacity to hear your mother-in-law say, oh, well, when, when my children were young, I did homework with them three hours a day. Well, did you? That's lovely. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. And you don't have to have an argument about it. You don't have to tell anybody you're pulling back and walking away. Just pull back and walk away. Choose what voice you have capacity to hear today. What can you hear today? And it certainly isn't criticism at the moment. Yeah. I think, yeah. And I think that there can be an amazing number of toxic relationships actually that we hold on to out of, I don't know. I don't know why we do, but we do. And I think that's it being brave enough to actually in the same way that you're talking about all these other prioritise priorities prioritising those relationships that make us feel good and letting go of the others. I think it's really hard, but certainly that's a personal journey I've been on and it's been well worth it. Yeah. And I think all of us that are therapists and do trauma work and, you know, we've had to have when we get dragged kicking and screaming as therapists through this process of self discovery so you can enable somebody else's. And I don't think any of us sitting in that was easy. So easy setting boundaries for myself in my life. But I'm not talking about setting your lifelong boundaries and your lifelong psychological profile of you. I'm saying when you are in the Maya, don't pick up another bag. Don't open another box. You don't have capacity to deal with right now. So even in my personal, you know, because again, because I'm doing trauma work, I have to maintain personal therapy. It's a big part of good professional conduct. But I sort of I've sat there. It's like there have been gone. So here's the eight year old set next to me. So my personal journey is not going to be particularly deep today. We are not exploring my childhood trauma. Because how am I going to do that with my eight year old set next to me? So, you know, even my. So certain boxes I've had to say put the lid on right April on it right July next year. Put it away in a cupboard and say I'll deal with that later. This isn't about turning your back on your personal development or turning your back on your true identity or turning your back on your relationships. This is just saying today, I don't have capacity for this. So I'm allowed to shut the door on it. And actually COVID is putting an excuse, isn't it? I'm really sorry. I didn't have time to make that call today because I was with my kids. It's okay. It's true. It's the mother of all excuses in it. I'm sorry, but pandemic. Yeah, pandemic. Oh, sorry. I didn't feel very well. And again, it's okay. It's okay to shroud yourself while this is going on. This isn't my normal mental health advice. I'm a big fan of set your boundaries, reflect on your relationship, set the boundaries in the relationship, choose who it is you want in your life. But we're not in normal. Stop trying to be normal. I had a conversation that started off really worrying and ended up as the start of something which I think will be really interesting over the coming months with Ellie at the weekend, which was that again, in relation to this sort of sadness that she'd had with her friends and I was thinking about what are some of the things that we can look forward to in the future. And we were thinking about, you know, what things would we like to do, you know, when things are different again. And she just turned around to me and she went, you're going to, I suggested she made a list. We made a list together of things she would like to do. And she said, you're going to have to really help me, mommy, because I actually can't really remember what normal means anymore and what that would look like. And at first that just took me back and made me think, wow, you know, this has been quite a big chunk of her life and that's a really significant thing. But then I realised there's an opportunity here because normal afterwards doesn't have to look like normal before, does it? And we can decide what we want that to be like. It won't look the same, will it? But that's okay. And that might be a great thing. It's a powerful thing. I mean, we were really lucky to be involved in a project called A Little Light, which is a book about 20 potentially positive things to come out of COVID. And the article that we were allowed to participate in was about how young people are going to have very different perceptions of who the heroes in COVID were. Who were the heroes? Because it wasn't Instagrammers and the Kardashians who were off on some island. It was nurses, doctors, binmen, deliverymen. I mean, you know, my daughter now has a deep-seated love affair with Amazon because that's her end of week gift that she gets to choose. And that's another way of spending her pocket money other than doing an online purchase. So when that doorbell goes and it's a delivery guy, is it something exciting? I mean, the bitter disappointment the other day that it was the toilet paper for the office that got delivered to my house. Oh, it's toilet paper! I was like, yeah, mommy does have an office to run, a clinic to run. Sorry. And you know, the relationships we're going to have are going to be very different. The values and what we want for our lives. I mean, how many of us are going to just love going camping or being in a field or sitting in the park and letting your children play with a child they don't know again. These, these freshest, beautiful pearls of joy that we are going to value so differently that isn't necessarily a bad thing. But let's remember that at the other side of trauma, we don't come back the same. And this is a universal deep trauma. And if we try and pretend that isn't that isn't helpful to any of us, big change is traumatic. Whether that's moving house, getting married, having a baby, these are all joyful changes. Are they not? But they are dramatic changes. And you know, as a mum, you have a child, you don't come out the other side the same, do you? You're not the same woman you were pre-children. You're not the same woman you were one child to two children. You come out differently again, don't you? And then you're not the same person you were when you were raising an eight month old baby to an eight year old daughter. These changes do change us. And we should say that's okay. Like when you say what's normal, we're not coming out the same the other end. That's okay. But let's come out as well as we can be. Wow. This got deep. Bad when you have lots of therapists talking. We come to the end of our time, but I always ask people to kind of have a closing thought. And I'm going to ask you to close with your thoughts on something I haven't asked you at all about, but you like talking about, which is the special and magical powers of difference. I just wondered if you wanted to just close on a thought around that. The special and magical powers of difference. So, yeah, this is my universal belief that we, we use the word disability or different or special as if it's something quite negative. Actually, it's fits really nicely with this theme and we're going to come out differently, doesn't it. But I do not believe in disability. I believe that, that everybody has differences. Everybody has differences. And that disability is only what we as a society, we as a community, we as a community. We as a physical environment make it. It's the driving force of occupational therapy. We were saying this a long time before the World Health Organization started to talk about difference and dysfunction over disability. And I think the magical powers of difference are allowing ourselves to say this is different and wonderful. So, when I talk to young people with autism who have sensory processing difficulties, we talk about them being their spidey senses or we talk about waiting for the muggles to catch up with their magical powers. Or why they might have felt for quite a long time they had to hide their magical powers from other people because they didn't, the muggles don't understand them. And I think the magic power of difference for me is that we absolutely in our society depend on us having differences. We need to be different. I do this a lot with sibling work. You know, you are meant to have one child who's a bit louder and a bit more dewy and a bit less emotional. And the other child who's a bit more emotional and a bit more nurturing and a bit more caring. Because in a family home that means that they find their identity, doesn't it? So the magical power of difference is about acknowledging that we are not the same. We shouldn't drive to be the same. We shouldn't drive to cookie cutter ourselves or compare ourselves to others. We should drive ourselves to celebrate our differences and our abnormalities and our disadvantages are very often a double-edged sword of our magical powers. And I think looking at the power of difference during COVID is everything is different. So what magical power are you going to find in you that you didn't know you had? And what magical power are you going to find in your family that you may not have realised was there?