Episode 48
Eliza is a successful neurodivergent illustrator, author, co-author, and mother to a neurodivergent child. In this episode we talk about her experience of unmasking her own neurodiversity along the journey of parenting her child. We talk all about the exhausting and empowering experience of being a parent, and draw insights from her book on Pathological Demand Avoidance. Expect inspiring conversation about schooling differently, self-discovery via art, guilt-free self-care, and the crucial role of a safe parent to counterbalance more hostile external environments.
This episode promises to leave you inspired, affirmed, and looking at your own parenting with a fresh perspective.
Click for link to Eliza's New book: Thumbsucker
Click her for Eliza's blog: Missing the Mark
Click for link to Eliza's book: Can't Not Won't
Click for link to Eliza's book: The Family experience of PDA
Click for link to Eliza's book: Thumbsucker
Click here for Eliza's website
www.sendparenting.com
Episode 48
Eliza is a successful neurodivergent illustrator, author, co-author, and mother to a neurodivergent child. In this episode we talk about her experience of unmasking her own neurodiversity along the journey of parenting her child. We talk all about the exhausting and empowering experience of being a parent, and draw insights from her book on Pathological Demand Avoidance. Expect inspiring conversation about schooling differently, self-discovery via art, guilt-free self-care, and the crucial role of a safe parent to counterbalance more hostile external environments.
This episode promises to leave you inspired, affirmed, and looking at your own parenting with a fresh perspective.
Click for link to Eliza's New book: Thumbsucker
Click her for Eliza's blog: Missing the Mark
Click for link to Eliza's book: Can't Not Won't
Click for link to Eliza's book: The Family experience of PDA
Click for link to Eliza's book: Thumbsucker
Click here for Eliza's website
www.sendparenting.com
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.
Dr Olivia Kessel:In today's episode, we will be joined by Eliza Flicker, a late diagnosed neurodivergent illustrator, author, co-author and mother to a neurodivergent child. She has written a New York Times bestseller, can't, not Won't, and a family's experience of PDA. We will also today be discussing her upcoming book Thumbsucker, alongside her blog entitled Missing the Mark. Eliza is always looking for new ways to help parents feel seen and heard. Please join me in listening to her journey navigating neurodiversity. So welcome, eliza. It is a pleasure to have you on the Send Parenting Podcast. I am really looking forward to discussing not only your journey with neurodiversity but also your passion for highlighting the struggles of both children and parents through your illustrations, through your written word and also through very personal experiences. So welcome.
Eliza Fricker:Thanks, thanks for having me.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So I guess the first thing I'd like to ask you is could you tell me a little bit about your journey, both personally and as a mother? I know that's a big question.
Eliza Fricker:That's a big one. Where do we start?
Dr Olivia Kessel:with that, you have the freedom to choose.
Eliza Fricker:I don't think you start to explore your own neurodivergence until you've probably been through it with your child. But I always say that for me that wasn't an exploration that I could go on when I was in the system with my daughter. I think my early sense was that going into those meetings, going into those school buildings for me put me immediately back into a mindset of high alert. So that mask I double mask.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Can you double mask, triple mask, I think so I think yeah, because you're doing it for your daughter on top of doing it for yourself, right yeah?
Eliza Fricker:I had a real sense when I was going through those meetings of thinking I don't want to be found out. I don't think I knew that it was because I was autistic. I think I just had that sense very early on I don't want to be found out. So what it did was made me ramp up the perfectionist. So that was always there for me, the perfectionist, but that really accelerated it. I would be baking cakes and cleaning and doing all this stuff too, to a point that was beyond what was necessary, if you like, and in the meetings that presented as someone who was an enormous people pleaser and foreigner.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, that had to be very tiring. I can't imagine that stress, that you know, putting that stress upon yourself really.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, it's really, really exhausting and then I would have these sort of complete overwhelms when I was in my safe space at home, you know, just feeling completely done in by it. I think I just resorted to sort of watching reality TV was all my brain could kind of cope with to offset that stuff. But yeah, it's enormously overwhelming doing that and enormously exhausting and it certainly, like I said, wasn't something that I could explore at that time my own neurodivergence. It was only later, through my work, that, meeting people, I felt immediately comfortable and immediately safe with that. They were conversations I could have without. I mean, you know I'm a visual communicator, but without kind of having that fear, I guess, of being slammed into the lockers like at school, or humiliated or, you know, pulled up or shamed. Really it felt very safe with these people and that was when I started to explore it for myself and ultimately it was liberating.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, a painful journey to get there. But yeah, and it's amazing how our children help us with that self discovery and it's, you know it's not uncommon because you know it. You know in our generation or I'm probably older than you, but you know it gets weaved under the rug. You know you've used, I think, your illustration or your art has been an outlet for you. Did you find that beneficial? As you were before you were kind of on the journey to self-awareness, was it or was that later on that it became a release for?
Eliza Fricker:some of your. It's a release. It's something I used through childhood. I've always drawn. My dad was an illustrator, so we used to draw together. It was it's always been a comfort to me, if you like, and then it really became something I used as a way of communicating. Later in life it really helps me to process experiences. If I can write and draw that, that really helps me to process it, and I can't process it at the time. So for me it's a kind of after where I can use that as a way. As a way and it feels quite I know that word gets banded around, but it feels really empowering to do it as well, because I think often we're trying to put those frustrations and upsets in the wrong place. You know we put them in emails to people who ultimately probably won't listen or aren't going to be able to change those things. So for me, being able to draw those often with humour feels quite empowering to do that.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And I think when you can look at something with the lens of humour, it almost diffuses it. You know what I mean, Even if you're someone who's not even doing the drawing. When I look at your drawings and you can have a little chuckle, it takes that sting out of the situation.
Eliza Fricker:Oh, absolutely, and it's. I've grown up with it. My dad was a political cartoonist, so that's what he did, you know that's what he did with the newspaper. So I learned it really early on. You know, to see the humour, to see the ridiculous and stuff is is brilliant. It does, it brings it down an notch or two, doesn't it?
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, so what, what came first for you, eliza? Did the blog come first? Did the writing, the books come first? Which which came first in your career, or did they come together?
Eliza Fricker:No, I was just drawing it and I met, I knew an editor in Brighton and we, we met up and she was like I think you should put this out there. I was like, you know, put it on a blog just see if people look at it, because it's really good. Thanks for the drop. I don't think anyone's going to be interested. No one else has got a kid that can't go to school. Little did I know. I didn't think anyone else, you know, because that was what we were very much. You know. That's the sad side of it. No one said to us when we were going through it there's loads of families like you. You know they still don't.
Dr Olivia Kessel:They still don't in schools. You know, you know no.
Eliza Fricker:No, I mean, that's incredibly isolating and isolation is not good for us to feel that when we're a family going through that. So, you know, this editor that I knew was saying put it out there as a blog. And I was like, okay, and I think it was Fran Morgan that used to run SquarePix. Okay, she shared some of it on Twitter, I think, and then it just kind of took off. If you like, people were really engaging with it and I was like, oh, and then I would still have that feeling because I've always had this, you know, late diagnosed autistic women sort of getting in trouble. So sometimes I'd post these things and think, am I going to get in trouble for this? And then you know it was okay.
Eliza Fricker:I didn't get in trouble.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And you found probably quite a lot of people who were actually experiencing exactly what you were experiencing.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, I think on Facebook. Now it's 41,000 followers on my Facebook page.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Wow.
Eliza Fricker:And about 15,000 on Twitter.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So yeah, I'm not that lonely mother at this full gates anymore, and it's lovely seeing how people interact on my Facebook page.
Eliza Fricker:That's really really nice to see. It's you know I can't always keep up with all the communication on there now, but I've seen how people support each other on there and that's a really nice thing to see.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I guess feeling alone I know I felt it myself it's a terribly dark place to be when you think that, and especially with those feelings of you know you've done something wrong and you know that you're so alone within this. So tell us a little bit about your journey with your daughter and it inspired you to write. You know your book Can't, not Won't and your book on PDA Pathological Demand Avoidance because you know you really you bring it to life and you bring it to life in a very personal way.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, and I think that's something the illustrations allow for. I was really aware that when you were a parent there's a lot of dos and don'ts and telling you what to do, and I think that it's really nice to use illustrations because it's a lot softer than that. It's actually bringing that real life and the humour into it. So it softens it and it's just more relatable.
Eliza Fricker:You know, a lot of pictures have me sort of clearing up cat litter and things like that and the phone ringing and that being that phone called you waited three months for, and you know I wanted to show those bits that I think are quite difficult to show when it's just written. And also, you know they're quick, they're fairly quick reads and I know we always are buying hundreds of books and we never have time to read them. So I wanted to kind of give that instant engagement to the stuff that I write. So yeah, the PDA book is really to kind of, it's very kind of person-centred, but it's very much about validating those experiences that families have and that can be shown through those real situations I've drawn and just hopefully helpful for families to really think of different ways they can approach things, because I think we all try doing things. The Dr Noem Fisher and I call it the good parenting TM trademark. We all try the good parenting until it doesn't work. You know.
Eliza Fricker:We try it and we get to a point and we go this doesn't work. So this book is really to help parents kind of consider other ways to do it and get to a calmer, happier place, because I think that that's something we lose, which is very sad when our children are struggling and we're struggling. We lose that connection and ultimately it's all about getting that back.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, and you know I've talked to Dr Noem Fisher about this as well and it's really resonated with the listeners is you know, putting your child's emotional wellbeing above everything else? That's not what parenting handbooks tell you, is it?
Eliza Fricker:No, I mean, there's no parenting handbooks like that, which is why we're writing some at the minute Excellent. But you know, I remember standing in Waterstones looking at bookshelves, going no, no, no, because very early on you have that sense it's not gonna work. Before you can kind of formulate that and move forward and try something else, you're looking at this stuff, you're going to those coffee mornings and parenting groups and looking at those books and you're thinking this isn't gonna work.
Eliza Fricker:I know it's not and that's not cynicism, that's our, you know, instinct as parents. We know it's not Very difficult when you're doing it, though, and trying it, and it's not working.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And you're feeling like a failure and you're feeling very alone because you do feel and the school system makes you feel and everyone in those coffee mornings seem to. Oh, my child's sleeping through the night, my child's eating everything on its plate. My child is, you know, doing X, y and Z and you're like looking at going, no, no.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, none of that. So you don't have those markers, where do you go? Most parents I speak to, the real struggle is not having those markers of you know. We don't have those bits to tell us we're on the right track or we're doing things right. So that's difficult. That can feel a little bit like we are just sailing without what you know oars or whatever we need to sail about. That's what it feels like often for us. We don't have those markers and we've got people coming out at all angles saying this this, have you tried? This Is that, are you doing this? So you do. You know everyone's kind of seeking that to support us and get their own validation and we can't give that to anyone, let alone ourselves. It's tricky, very tricky.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And the pressure you feel from society to behave normally or have your child behave normally if they're having meltdowns that you know aren't quote unquote age-appropriate. You know how you, you know how you manage those, and I think your book does a really good job of illustrating, literally, that you know there is a way to do things differently and you can have better results, which is exciting to hear that you guys are gonna think about doing some different parenting handbooks, because the magic, though, is when you do do things differently and you do speak to people like yourself, people like Dr Fisher, you do see the magic happen with your child, because, although it's completely different, it works, you know, and you might have to try different things, but it it connects with your child in a way that other methodology at least for me has never worked.
Eliza Fricker:And I think that's what I try and get across, even in car and not won't is you know when, ultimately, you're just trying and trying and trying with one system and that is not sustainable and I think what we have very much still is a narrative that it's school or what school? Or we're off the cliff edge, yeah, and it's. We kind of have to go. I know a lot of people, probably in the autism community, don't like the terminology grief, grieving, because they don't like to say that about their autistic child. But I'm saying it in the context of we have to let go of what our preconceptions of parenting and what that will look like and the narratives around that trajectory, if you like, where our children are going to go. We very much have to let go of that and that's something that I put into car, not won't.
Eliza Fricker:There's a scene in there where I'm sitting on the beach with my daughter's father and that is that moment. I really, really remember that there were two moments, that moment when we sat on the beach and we really said this is it now? We knew it's a very poignant moment when you know you and your child is no longer going to go to school and you're going on a different path. Very, very poignant. Still, you know, even though we're happy and we're in a different place, when I look at that moment, it's still the one that really kind of still resonates, actually just knowing, ok, we're going somewhere completely different to all those families we knew, all those kids she's grown up, we're going to play group and it's going to be totally different.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, and it's that going off piece and it's trusting yourself. But, as you say it's, there is a grief. It could be, and you know, I've experienced this as well in terms of you want your child to be normal, you want them to have the easiest life possible, and it is perceived until you learn more and you've gone through it and you're at the other end and you realize that actually the whole world isn't going to, you know, crash down on you and your child isn't going to not amount to anything, because I think all of those thoughts do go through your head because of the stigma, because of society. It is changing, but it hasn't changed completely yet. So you really have to to grieve what you thought was normal and then redefine what normal is going forward. And it's liberating, as you say, when you, when you, when you do it, but it is a process and I think all parents go through it.
Eliza Fricker:And I think maybe you know, I've just started to think that now speaking to you, maybe also it's, you know, my late diagnosis, perhaps because I was anchoring on to these things very much, to kind of keep on that kind of neurotypical landscape of life, you know, getting married, being a mother, doing school, baking cakes, cooking for family. You know, maybe I was hanging on to those things too. So maybe it was a kind of double layered thing you know to go through. I don't know, maybe that was playing into it too for me, yeah because there's a self-realization there that you know, it becomes clear.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I didn't even know what neurodiversity is and I'm just diagnosed dyslexic and, you know, have ADHD traits, but I don't. I never, I never, I never felt that that was my who I was. Do you know what I mean? And, like you say to you, you you've had to live in a neurotypical world without understanding your value, just as who you are, instead of trying to pretend to be something that you're not. That, yeah, that makes sense and I think it's great because I think it is a movement, this neurodiversity movement, and it is in my mind.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It is similar, you know to, if you looked at homosexuality, like 20, 30 years ago, my mother used to say to my brother she'd be like, oh you know, because she wondered if he was gay and she's like, she went to the Royal Ballet, had, you know, lots of gay friends, but she said it's a hard life. It's a hard life for you if you're gay. I love you and I accept you if you are, but it's a hard life. You look you fast forward to. Now, you know, strictly, come dancing, men dancing together. It's absolutely normal having family. There's nothing abnormal about being gay anymore. You know it's not. It's, it's not where it was, just even 20, 30 years ago, and I think neurodiversity is kind of going along that trajectory too. So at some point parents won't look at oh my child is autistic, oh my child is dyslexic, oh my child as a grieving process, because it hopefully will be just part of our normal human variation. That makes us the wonderful people that we are.
Eliza Fricker:But we're not quite there yet. Yeah, and I think at the minute we're in a strange. There was quite a famous psychologist on Twitter who said something controversial but about the sort of diagnosis and why do people sort of anchor onto that as their identity. But I think what's happening is we're kind of getting two conversations overlapping in that and actually they need to be separated out because I think for late diagnosed people, it's absolutely important to know this stuff.
Eliza Fricker:You know, when you see women talking about being misdiagnosed with all kinds of things through their life and then finally you know, finding out that they're autistic or ADHD and how much difference that's made to how they're able to see themselves and others to see them, I think that's very different from when we're talking about children and young people where hopefully, like you said, eventually we won't need to diagnose because we will just meet our children where they're at. You know it's very different for us, products of the 70s and 80s growing up, where our parents were like what is going on here. But we will have that information for future generations, we will understand that and we'll be able to parent accordingly and I think it will be very different. But I don't think we can dismiss the importance of that diagnosis for late, late, late diagnosed adults, I think.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And I would even argue, right now we're not at a place where we can't not diagnose children either, because the school system is not designed for kids that are neurodiverse at all. And actually that's one of the topics I wanted to ask you about. Was you know, because you've gone down the different route and I think more and more parents now are deciding I'm not going down the education school route and I have to say Dr Fisher completely blew my all of my preconceptions up in my head. When I read her books I was like I never thought about it that way. I thought I was intelligent, but actually no, like you know, and if I could do it over again I would have done things differently. But you know it's more and more parents are taking their kids. It's a huge thing now because it doesn't work in schools, and I'd love to get your your views on it as a parent.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, and I'm still not. You know, I'd like to say that I could. I could say definitively do it this way and this is the way to do it. And I can't, because I have a child who is extremely sociable and actually that's the drive and that's how she thrives, is through her peers and those really good friendships. I don't think she would have wanted to be at home with me as a teenager. She enjoys being sociable as I do. Actually, you know, I do it in the way that works for me.
Eliza Fricker:So I can't say for all children being at home is the answer. You know many of us. That connection is just so important. You know, those friendships I had early on, you know, formed my life in a really lovely way, and so I think to isolate children potentially from those friendships and relationships if that's what they thrive off, but equally they're not going to thrive off them if they're in an environment that is impactful and damaging to them. So it's it's still very complicated and I think what we actually do need is just different places of learning you know when we models are kind of democratic schools.
Eliza Fricker:We almost need, like these kind of youth clubs, where kids can just go when they feel like it pop in, pop out, do some bits, leave, go and do something else. That's what we need for those kids. We need those kind of different options for learning and we need them really early on. I think it'd be brilliant if you know from that sort of school age you can just extend that nursery period. Parents can be around pot, ring around in the kitchen or reading a book. You know, we just don't need to go on this kind of standardized system.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, I think there's the, the push as they get older, when they're still young, to succeed in GCSEs in, you know, english, math, science, which might not be where any of our children are going to end up, because they might be creative, which you know. Those things are getting cut in school. So I agree with you, like I think the education system needs to change. But it's such a it's such an immovable object. It's so challenging and a lot of parents are forced to take their kids out because there aren't options of other schools, you know, which is sad. There's just not enough independent schools in the UK right now.
Eliza Fricker:No, and I think that's you know, that's a pretty miserable situation to be in, where families are kind of forced into a situation that's kind of like that'll do or that's all we've got. You know, and be like that. You know everyone this idea of kind of us not wanting our children to have an interesting and fulfilling life. Every parent wants that for their child but right now we don't have many options and you know, even the O-TAS, which can work for some kids or, you know, work for some amount of time, it doesn't work for all kids. You know, particularly when you've got a 15 year old, they don't always want to be at home. You know, they want to be out there doing stuff with their kids, you know.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I mean COVID, taught me I would never be able to self educate my child in any way, shape or form, and I would probably do more damage to her than the school system.
Eliza Fricker:if I'm completely honest, A lot of our children don't respond to us at all, do they? You know we are the parent and we all said don't know a lot, according to them.
Dr Olivia Kessel:so it's a tricky situation and it's a tricky situation when a third of kids in school are going to fail because that's the algorithm. Is that failure? So you know, I've got one friend right now whose daughter has just turned 16 and she's looking at what do I do after school and what options do I have? She's severely dyslexic. She's probably not going to pass for English, you know. So where can she go? You know, and as a mom trying to figure out those next steps as well, it's difficult because our society isn't set up for it.
Eliza Fricker:No, and you know I talk to a lot of women who we all talk about, how we would kind of get these burnouts. So you know a lot of us as late diagnosed women were kind of high achievers, the A graders, but we would have loads of days off because obviously we were, you know, we had all these ailments. I mean the amount of just ask a late diagnosed woman. They're like, were you an A grade student, always having tonsillitis. Yeah, okay, I don't know how we would have managed in this system. Now I would not have managed, to say, in doing maths and English till 18, no way. You know, I didn't even pass my maths GCSE but I've done okay without that. But they don't want you to know.
Eliza Fricker:You know others to know that I don't know if I'd have got through that system without doing art, without being you know, without you know. I used to go to maths and just be like I was in top sets and I'd be like no interest, and they go, just go in the art room for an hour and I'd be like, yes, I'd go in there. I don't know if they'd let you do that now you know, probably be stuck in isolation.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I shouldn't even laugh because it's not funny, but yeah, I've seen those pictures of those boots.
Eliza Fricker:They're pretty yeah.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, I just was talking to Dr Chris Bagley, who you know as well, who you know was talking about the prison pipeline from you know, being put in detention, being put in isolation. It's just, it's, it's. It doesn't work, is that's the sad thing? Is it doesn't work and it causes trauma. So it's just, you know, it's something that really needs to change in England fundamentally. It's not right. Yeah, it's much better to be sent to the art room and go and have some freedom.
Eliza Fricker:Strength-based, isn't it? So that's a teacher saying, okay, she's not having a great time here, but she can have a positive experience for the last hour of the day by going to the art room. Yeah and so that's where we flip it. We're like we can flip it so that we encourage the positive experiences around learning.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And the self-worth because you're, you know, you're, you're a talented illustrator. So it's, it's you know, it's confirming what you're good at and what you're passionate about, that intrinsic motivation that is so important in learning.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, I mean I've gotten my next, but thumbs up, I've actually got a page from one of my old school books in there which is just absolutely covered in doodles, and I said that was the only way I could concentrate in class was to constantly doodle. But I know even that's not allowed in in school that that stopped and I think, oh, my goodness, I don't know how I'd have got through.
Dr Olivia Kessel:So tell us a little bit about your book. It's coming out in November. I'm looking forward to it. Tell us a little bit about it.
Eliza Fricker:So it's called thumb sucker, because that was my comfort and my Stim as a child and my go-to was sucking my thumb, and each chapter is Is Titled after things that I was called so One of them's warrior, one of them's hypochondriac to, one of them's fussy, one of them's spoil, and they're all just different names that I was given by various people as a child who Saw how I presented and gave me names accordingly.
Eliza Fricker:So you know it's the idea behind that is to just Hopefully get people to kind of rethink how they approach children and and and their presentation slash behavior.
Eliza Fricker:So I've drawn things around each of those names and those experiences just to help people kind of reconsider how they see children, because obviously when you're Growing up, like I was, as you know, in the 1980s there wasn't much knowledge of our understanding of neurodivergence and it and I was misunderstood.
Eliza Fricker:So the idea really, when I put it to my editor, was that it would be for parents to consider their own neurodivergence and I wanted to write something that felt quite safe and gentle to consider that and also to kind of consider it from different angles, because obviously we know the medicalized model of Of diagnosis, but this is looking at it slightly differently, through a different lens, um, and then we put, put some samples of it out there, and then a lot of families were saying, oh no, I actually understand my child better, so I'm like brilliant.
Eliza Fricker:So it's kind of going to work, hopefully on two, two levels, for for parents to consider their own neurodivergence, but also, um, to perhaps see their children in a more empathetic light, which is what I'm always trying to do any way of my work get a bit more empathy in there and an understanding, and also from a society's perspective too, because, um, it's easy to judge you know, um, and if you, if you understand, then you're less likely to judge, if you, if you have that understanding of what might be going on um yeah, and I think also there's not.
Eliza Fricker:You know I'm not, you know there's a lot with my parents and that interaction in there and I I don't I'm not sad or cross with them at all because, um, actually, they did meet me, whereas a lot of the time, you know, I had, um, very restricted eating and they Would make me those salad cream, sandwiches and pancakes and and and do that stuff for me without a fuss. Um, they were just worried about me when I was having those meltdowns. You know, we would go on holiday and I would just stop eating and just be having meltdowns and that was incredibly difficult for them, you know, to see this distress when it should be a happy time. They didn't know what was going on, they didn't have an understanding on it of it, but In a way I was probably more fortunate than most they were. They were pretty laid back with me and that that saved me, actually, the fact that they were like that with me and didn't put those expectations.
Eliza Fricker:I think I did a post recently saying I think they were the original low-demand parents back then. Um, they were pretty good. But you know, I equally, as a child, I was Very aware that I impacted on things. My distress impacted on others and caused others distress, and that's how that's. That's hard to know you that that was.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's unintentional, you know I don't think you can be held responsible for that. You know, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's. You know it's, it's how hard it was for you. You know, um, not for, uh, you know I'm. I think all children and you know it makes me so sad, in schools too, they want to do well, you know you want to behave for your parents. There's ultimately, all kids really do want to do that and it's just sometimes just not possible, you know. So I think understanding that is, I think, a lot of the listeners who are parents who've had the diagnosis of their children and without a diagnosis themselves, or even looking at themselves, it helps them to understand, you know, and have empathy and To understand what's going on, so that that frustration or you're causing this, you know because there is, you know why can't you? Just, you know, well, maybe they just can't.
Eliza Fricker:So it gives it, it opens up that window to be able to yeah, I think actually my parents, you know, they definitely had a sense that something was going on, because my mom said she used to take me to the doctors quite quite a lot About this, you know, in my meltdowns, and they just use say, it's because she's very bright, she's easily frustrated because she's very bright. There was no. You know, that was it.
Dr Olivia Kessel:The medical profession has a lot to answer for.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah but that is also very early on. I was hearing that About being very bright and that was a huge pressure for me all through school. She's very bright, she's very bright, she'll go to university, she's very bright. That cause enormous Internal pressure on myself. I'm not sure it's something that's actually great for kids to hear is what I'm trying to say. And you're very good, very clever and you've got what I still hear about my daughter, but she's got the potential. She just applied herself. Uptily pointless.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Well, and you know what else is interesting. I mean there's many people who go to university and actually make nothing of their lives and go to postgraduate school. There's some people who just collect degrees like you collect, you know, I don't know course and ornaments it's. You know it doesn't necessarily define, and and again it goes back to our earlier discussion of emotional well-being of our children is probably if we can fundamentally Build that foundation around them, that's what's going to put them in the best Steve for life. Not, you know, scoring really high on GCSEs and making it into Oxford and Cambridge, because a lot of, a lot of People then burn out, you know, and have mid-breakdowns in later life.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, yeah, and I think that you know that was something I was fortunate with. You know I did have my dad work from home. He was there at the end of the school day. We're going play computer games or do drawing and you know I definitely had someone to offset the External world, the external environments. You know I had that safe person to do that with and you know I was really fortunate and I think that that's something. I think we lose a lot of that and that's something when I speak to Families, when I do consoles is they're really wobbling. They don't really see the value in what they bring to that. Most of the value is from us as parents and we lose that. We're moving these systems and we've got professionals involved and actually we can do an enormous lot Just being a parent and meeting our children's needs. That is gonna offset a lot of the the environments that we have to experience as humans.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It gives that good grounding and I like and I think which book was it that you wrote? I think it was in your PDA book. You wrote about guilt-free self-care. You know and we were chatting about it before we got on this podcast how important it is actually to to be that grounded parent yourself to be able to provide that environment for your child.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, and I again, you know that's something we've talked about in the webinars, naomi and I do. You know, I think we we feel so much guilt as parents and we think, right, I can't do anything, I can't go out, I can't do stuff. And actually Even through when things are really tricky for us, I still made sure. You know, I went and exercised, I had people around for a cup of tea or whatever. I I kept those things because I knew it was really important that my daughter saw that I was an enthusiastic Person who was integrating and doing things and energised. Those were the things I knew would be really important for her to see. It wouldn't be helpful for her to just see me Miserable at home not doing anything and that would also make her think that she kind of had created that. You know, I wanted to carry on doing stuff and and being Excited by life and that was, you know, something that I could bring when I couldn't bring much else.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's amazing that they pick up what we model much more than what we want try to teach them. So, which is a double-edged sword if I really think about it. A little bit of a pressure on Anna's appearance.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, when there's actually when there's all the Real observant types. So you know, my daughter knows when I'm, what my phone voice she's like. She knows how I'm on the phone to you by my voice. So she's like only you're on the phone to know that.
Dr Olivia Kessel:They're clever. They're very, very, very clever. Well, thank you so much. I have one final question for your lives, which I ask all my guests, which is, if a parent could take away three things from your pearls of wisdom, what three things would they be?
Eliza Fricker:I'm gonna say keep that sense of self Really kind of ground into that and think about who you are as a person. That's gonna be really important to your child, that they will love to see that in you. They don't want you to lose who you are. Be you fine even if you've lost it. Figure out who it is again. That's gonna be really important. Fun bring fun. You know this stuff can drag us down.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I know.
Eliza Fricker:That Be you know, have some fun muck about. That has saved us over and over again. And what would be my third one? I'm gonna steal my friend Liz's line, which, no me, always says it's really grim. I don't think it's grim at all. This is this school bit. This education bit is one small part of a whole life. Our job is to get them through it with the least collateral damage.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I like that. It's almost like it's an obstacle course you have to get through, but you know what. You will get through it and it's just a blip in the whole entirety of your life.
Eliza Fricker:I'd love is to stop that being impactful on our children. Yeah, you know it's not that important you think it is when we're in it. It's not and there's no.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Stuff make such a. You know, oh, you have to, you have to, you know, if you don't, if you don't, and so it, you know it, and actually people go on and have wonderful lives, you know.
Eliza Fricker:But they don't have wonderful lives if they're massively traumatized and miserable and depressed, and yeah, so take, take. I think we need to believe in ourselves a lot more as parents and what we can, we can do for our children. It's not all the systems, and you know we, we can do a lot of stuff ourselves.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And there's a lot of support out there and you know the, the courses that you offer, that your name, you offer not only to be accessible, they're not that expensive either. So you know you have access to resources because it it is a shift. You know, I do find for me it was a shift and I think it sounds like it was for you as well. It's a shift in how we, how we parent.
Eliza Fricker:Yeah, absolutely, and I, you know I can't say that I didn't. You know I had trauma, I had massive trouble. You know it was Truly truly dreadful when we went through it and it was eight years of truly dreadful. But you can come out the other side and you can completely remodel things. You know I had a meeting the other week that was a little bit triggering, to say the least, but I actually said in that meeting we don't, we don't do this stuff anymore, we don't have these meetings, we've stopped this world. And that felt really good to be able to say that, because you don't have to let it in, you know, to let all that nonsense back in once you've got rid of it, you can, you can start over. I can imagine the reaction on their faces when you said that You're asking what the notes are like after that meeting.
Eliza Fricker:That's in our past, we're not going there again.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Very liberating, I think that's a great way to to end the show. Thank you so much, eliza, for coming on this end printing podcast. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening Send parenting. Try, please, if you haven't done so already, rate the podcast in your preferred podcast platform. This really helps with their algorithm to make this podcast available to more listeners. Also, if you haven't done so already, please follow on Instagram at send parenting podcast. Wishing you a happy week ahead. You.