20230415 – Responded to a question – 2023 April 15 – Thoughts from a parent of neuro divers children – VLog

Some initial context:

2023 April 15 – Thoughts from a parent of neuro divers children – VLog

Helpful information links:

link to the eugenics info around DSM 1 – Click here!

“Frederick Wines Publishes the ‘Report on the Defective, Dependent and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the United States,’” The Eugenics Archives, accessed March 13, 2020, https://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/timeline/51509d49a4209be523000009

Subtitles – Raw unedited

all right all right all right my um oh my it is flying it is people it’s April 15th it is Saturday where we are at and uh dropping my spouse and three of our kiddos off for their weekly gym

time my wife uh does uh Kids Care kids club at the gym we do that for trade for our family membership so that is a verbalization from me to remind myself I need to get active so normally I talk about autism they talk about neurodivergence I talk about

my adventures in being a dad and the observations and things that I am seeing I’m not a clinical person I have no training and I have no skin in the game of Professional Training however I’m a professional consultant in a different industry and my kind of play title is be amazing I never know what I’m being involved in and I often have to find solutions to those problems doesn’t make me qualified to deal with mental health issues or Behavioral or anything along neurodivergence having wonderful you know spicy Offspring and a spouse has been probably the biggest source of growth in my journey but anyways there’s been some stuff that have come up and there’s a couple of questions that I’ve seen and kind of this uh recurring theme that I want to deal with um

your dog is on your lap it is a distraction and you’re driving

we got a little teacup and barking at a German shepherd and now the German Shepherd is in the person’s lap ahead of me so fun isn’t it Canada is like dealing with um your neurodivergent kiddos and trying to parent and raise them and sometimes they just do these wacky crazy things and you gotta adapt and figure out a way to do that so in one of the groups I’m in I see this question a lot and it’s a hamster wheel over and over and over question and boy do I have opinions about it but I want to share more context in my opinion um but the question is along the lines of how do you um is there something else other than screen time that you can do to help the kids well in autism especially in particular to my situation I have two kids with the profile of PDA and don’t get me started on the DSM five or six now because the six is a noun I just learned from some pretty um frustrating information and context around what was used to formulate the first dsm-1 in the United States and the dsm-1 was strongly founded and directed because of eugenics and the concept of eugenics um weren’t in that thread of the preferred uh perfect whatever then mental illness was part of that philosophy what a slippery slope how horrible so anyways when people say well PDA isn’t accepted in the the DSM you know five well you know what well according to Civil Rights Act in America of 1964 neither is bigotry or you know all those things against preferred not preferred but you know populations without voice so I won’t go too far down that rabbit hole but the DSM is frustrating so we do know for sure that we do have two kids of our three autistics that have PDA so the question of is there something else other than screen time so the difficult thing I find and I observe when people are doing that is most the time um you know we’re in this kids do too much of it in by and large sure whatever they do have an ADHD component there’s a lot of compelling evidence that shows that um you know what it does to the brain receptors Etc but that’s not an absolute that doesn’t apply across all things I think the thing we have to learn to adapt to as parents is is that their primary coping mechanism or coping skill how deep is the child’s library or toolkit of coping skills so imagine if you are a generally neurotypical person and you have this preference whatever it is

if that preference if somebody came and decided to take away that preference from you and let’s say that this is a generally trusting person you’re just you’re kind of doing your own thing somebody asked something you didn’t go there because in your mind you’re thinking hey um and whether you communicate it or not doesn’t it’s irrelevant you know you’re thinking I’m gonna finish up what I’m doing and at the end of this fine I’m going to move on now let’s switch that to the little kiddo that is in their primary mechanism they’re soothing they’re stimming with it whatever the reason is behind what they’re doing is a neurodivergent kiddo at whatever range of spectrum they have ADHD odd autism anything you know sensory seeking sensory soothing sensory processing slowdowns disruptions whatever it may be

we want to take away threat screen time because it disrupts everything else well why is that such a big deal that it disrupts everything else and this is a core question I’m having to ask myself because I come from the model of you know hey discipline determination I’m a practicing triathlete I’m big into stoicism and I believe you know practice and action is where that’s at but if we were teaching a child and we were trying to teach them a concept in English or mathematics calisthenics for example some movement in body motion

if a actor a subject a child a learner

is not getting a certain principle tool foundational element outside of the school structure because we’re assembly of mine our assembly line oriented I’m sorry I really don’t like the assembly line concept anymore but a little fun note it’s my observation that the assembly line was proudly created by a neurodivergent person trying to keep neurotypicals in line and well it’s been freaking fabulous the problem is the extra 20 outside the bell curve right so I don’t like uh the assembly line application as an absolute course is an efficiency expert than I am I have to use those things and sometimes I have to you know I’ve played the 80 20 models you know what where can I get the most bang for the 20 that’s the most problematic or can I make it so I can get 80 of the work done so that in the 20 I can put more effort into the 20 doing those things so I kind of think along those threads I’m dyslexic that is my neurodivergence um and so often I observe and see opportunities for something called transference it’s a psychological term and so I like to try to take those principles that I’ve learned in other applications and cross apply them within reason where they work and then try to make things apply

so if we’re trying to change the amount of screen time that a child especially that’s mirror Divergent has

I find and observe most the time we we skip a critical step for them we don’t help them build a foundation of either transition or of self-regulation to help them understand that they’re the agent of autonomy that is dry driving the switch even if it’s encouraged from us like really they’re adapting that that’s the whole thing like their skill set to be able to adapt to what their preferred autonomous Choice was and then we’re asking them to change and adapt yes please come to a full stop you can come to a hard stop I don’t care who you are in my neighborhood please don’t T-Bone me because you didn’t give yourself enough time to do what you needed to do oh okay so back to topic

it’s frustrating when you have the beautiful sunlight right there the mountains of winter that are getting ready to melt

um anyways

they don’t need to be cranky I can be cheerful right it’s a Saturday and you gotta sometimes stop pause and catch yourself so similar to what we’re doing as a parent and I bring that out because in the parenting moment sometimes we have to have that quick realization with our child like I just demonstrated probably pretty poorly to most

to reframe to recalibrate

and now how do we change that opportunity we want to change screen time it’s the child’s primary soothing coping whatever stimming whatever sensory if that is their skill if that’s their preferred thing and we say we’re going to change we’re going to alter we’re going to make that go away

we’ve just put them in threat response and think about how emotionally intact as a neurotypical how you deal with things following one of my neighbors who’s on a bike and as a cyclist I firmly believe we got to give each other a lot more space three feet isn’t enough and that’s the or one meter that’s the general kind of law or laws that’s out there um

so I think that’s the the most big foundational fumble or misstep that we often make as caregivers and believe me I’m horrible at it as well I often go into strict authoritarian mode I want you to do X thing because I said so because I’m the one that’s making that I’m the one that’s in charge I’m the one that you’re supposed to be listening to and this sunlight is awesome um I’m the primary so you need to listen to me so I’m going to switch over and change views for a second foreign switching views a little bit um and I thought I had my headphones but I don’t so hopefully this audio comes out good um so really having that realization that are you doing this because of something that is the most beneficial for the child and that point of view and I’m not saying that the child is the one that’s in control but how do we reshape or recalibrate the moment so that we can actually build and so that we don’t do something that is out of threat response or kind of more you know I’m the leader of the pack you know if you think of behavioralism and take it to even at the animal level like with you know Oscar or whatever his name is um but if you choose to do gentle parenting if you choose to use like more reinforcement oriented models positive reinforcement um we often miss that step of a reframe and recalibrate and refocus especially when the child has gone to threat response and then the wonderful traumatic associations that happen that they’re going to have to deconstruct later in life um when they’re not even realizing that’s what’s going on right um Ergo half of uh the various Generations today and all the triggers and blah blah blah and we have access to a lot more information so you know sure the good old days when people say oh yeah the good old days well you know when you beat people in the submission sometimes um as a parent it is the most rewarding but the most frustrating right like I don’t know that I I can’t say if I knew everything that I knew today would I still have children I mean yes absolutely I would definitely there’s very little in my personal life that I would want to have a redo or change because that’s just the way I roll I understand I’ve come to that headspace of knowing that that’s part of everything of life so when I put that in the context of like autism neurodivergence ADHD all the fun that is there

you know the success circle is

um having failure is part of that cycle so anyways just I think that we often miss that opportunity to reframe to recalibrate take us out of that emotional Warfare space ourselves so that we can get into a better space that we can dis or de-regulate not deregulate but help de-escalate the situation situation so that we can find Opportunities and not always kind of move to this Extinction concept because the screens themselves aren’t horrible they’re not bad I’m sorry they are tools yes do they interact with their brains and neurons and everything and potentially create triggers Etc that’s going to be different for every single child and you know what we’re doing as we give them a family or non-traditional family or whatever model and environment for them to be able to potentially grow and have success or failure or you know to be able to experiment and learn

the most difficult lessons are often learned by yourself and as a parent I think that’s one of the the most difficult things because we know we’ve seen things and we often overstep and go through the boundary and because of that unrealistic expectations become future resentments whether it’s from our side or from the child’s side so um anyways just some thoughts observations some context I am saying this more as I would invite those that are in those situations even in non-neuro Divergent environments when you find yourself you know getting emotional especially in parenting you know stop reframe rethink about you know I stand in traffic you know we hear a lot in my Triathlon world what is your why if your children are your why then why are we trying to force a square peg into a round hole if they are not finding the concept slow down re-teach re-establish redevelop that relationship of trust when a child is in that threat response and we are supposed to be the the place that they come for comfort the safety place and we’re the ones that are the terrifying thing what a Mis message that they must be receiving their brains grew the screen time extinct yourself from the moment you put yourself in time out that is what is the hardest thing to do I find as a parent is putting myself in time out walking away we had a situation this week that got pretty heated with my 17 year old PDA or

had he listened to the advice we probably would have stayed away from a lot of fireworks that happened between him and Mom luckily I was in a space that I was pretty well regulated and didn’t get overly emotional but even still it got a little hot and man and sometimes all these things I’m talking about just don’t work and so part of the successful Circle the circle of success I see it is there’s aspiration and there’s two options in the circle if you hit failure then you try again until it loops around and goes to success and then you just keep repeating that hamster wheel over and over and over and over and over again thank you Ryan holiday um

I have four kids they’re the most brilliant little freaking creatures they’re both are crotch goblins and her crotch trophies

some days I want to do this to their face behind their back and most times in those moments you just your heart melts and it is the most endearing most difficult most challenging but is the absolute most rewarding thing that I’ve ever done as a human outside of my relationship with my wife and for that I’m grateful and I am grateful that I have another thing which is Triathlon for me which gives me all the head space to be able to really put into experiment practice Etc through my stoicism and all of the things that come in life my experiences my wisdoms lessons learned failures Etc and to put it into a practice that helps and so I share my observations here and hopefully this might help somebody that comes across it or reminds me when I come across this as well cheers folks have a great day