Episode 70
This week we have the fantastic Rebecca Avern to talk all about acupuncture and how it can help our neurodiverse children! As a doctor trained in the UK, we start our conversation on the discussion on the benefits of using Eastern and Western medicine in conjunction with one another. We discuss how acupuncture offers solace and support, tackling emotional dysregulation, sleep disturbances, and an array of challenges that often accompany neurodiversity.
Rebecca shares a number of anonymised stories of neurodivergent clients she has helped using acupuncture and how we can tailor acupuncture to young people and children. This includes gentle, needle-free options and allowing the children to lead their healing experiences, moving at their pace.
This episode exemplifies the benefits of nurturing a multi-practitioner environment, and the power of a collective effort to create a healing space where children and families feel supported and understood on their journeys toward well-being.
Link to Panda Acupuncture Clinic
Link to The Little Acupuncture Room
www.sendparenting.com
Episode 70
This week we have the fantastic Rebecca Avern to talk all about acupuncture and how it can help our neurodiverse children! As a doctor trained in the UK, we start our conversation on the discussion on the benefits of using Eastern and Western medicine in conjunction with one another. We discuss how acupuncture offers solace and support, tackling emotional dysregulation, sleep disturbances, and an array of challenges that often accompany neurodiversity.
Rebecca shares a number of anonymised stories of neurodivergent clients she has helped using acupuncture and how we can tailor acupuncture to young people and children. This includes gentle, needle-free options and allowing the children to lead their healing experiences, moving at their pace.
This episode exemplifies the benefits of nurturing a multi-practitioner environment, and the power of a collective effort to create a healing space where children and families feel supported and understood on their journeys toward well-being.
Link to Panda Acupuncture Clinic
Link to The Little Acupuncture Room
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. In today's episode we'll be speaking with Rebecca Avern, founder of the Panda Clinic, specializing in pediatric acupuncture, and the Little Acupuncture Room, which is an affordable alternative to her private clinic. We will be discussing the power of acupuncture to help regulate our neurodiverse children and how it can be used in different forms of neurodiversity.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Acupuncture actually doesn't always mean needles, which I thought was super interesting. This was an incredibly insightful chat and really offers another holistic approach to support our children navigating a really challenging world. So welcome, rebecca. It is such a pleasure to have you on the Send Parenting podcast. I know as a Western doctor that you know I really believe in the synergy between Eastern medicine and Western medicine and you know that's where sometimes the magic really happens and I know, you know, in the case of my mother very personally, when she was going through cancer care, acupuncture really got rid of her pain. You know, it controlled her pain for her and it got her through her treatment. And so I'm really fascinated to have you as a guest today to discuss how acupuncture can be used with our neurodiverse children and help them with some of the challenges that they're facing. So super interesting topic and I guess I'll hand it over to you now. What was your journey to becoming an acupuncturist and how did you end up working with children?
Rebecca Avern:agree with you that the synergy between Western Orthodox medicine and Eastern medicines is really where it's at, and I think it's a great shame that very often they're not used together as often as they might be, because they both have very different strengths and weaknesses.
Dr Olivia Kessel:It's interesting because you can almost be in one camp or the other, and it was such a pleasure, refreshing, to meet you, because we share kind of that viewpoint is they're not in isolation of each other. They can, you know, be used synergistically.
Rebecca Avern:Absolutely, they can most definitely. So yeah, I found acupuncture really by chance. I was very lucky. I feel very fortunate to have found it early on in my life. So I grew up in a very conventional family where we definitely only used orthodox medicine, and then in my early 20s I'd had quite poor health and I just happened to meet an acupuncturist who suggested to me that I try having it and I came out of my first session feeling that it had done something to me that nothing had ever done before to me, that nothing had ever done before. And I went into my second session rather embarrassed really, saying I'm sure everybody must say this, but I think I want to study acupuncture and my acupunctur really. So that was 26 or 7 years ago. So I qualified 23 years ago.
Rebecca Avern:It's a three and a half year training and I started out treating predominantly adults but had a few children come in now and then and I very quickly saw how very well children responded to acupuncture and actually in many respects they respond more readily than adults and in Chinese medicine we would say that's because their qi or their energy is far more dynamic and they haven't had kind of years of bad living to build up all of those patterns of ill health. So I then embarked on some postgraduate training in pediatrics, on some postgraduate training in paediatrics, and I began to see more and more children and I got to the point about a decade ago where I had so many children to see. I decided to hand over my adult clients to other practitioners and to focus 100% on paediatrics, and I love working with children. I have no regrets about that. No day is the same.
Rebecca Avern:It's endlessly interesting. I love being around children. I learn so much from them and over the years I've seen more and more children who are neurodiverse, some who have a diagnosis of ADHD or autism or dyslexia and some who don't. And I would say at the moment approximately 50% of the children I see have some form or degree of neurodiversity, and I have seen how much we can do to help them. That's amazing. So I mean maybe it would be helpful to share, olivia, some of the main reasons that parents might bring their neurodiverse children for treatment.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, absolutely.
Rebecca Avern:So I would say probably the number one reason is their emotional dysregulation, which is something that acupuncture can really help, and some of the other reasons they might come are that they're not sleeping very well, or that they feel very anxious, or that they're struggling to concentrate in class and struggling to pay attention concentrate in class and struggling to pay attention or maybe that they're hyperactive. And then there may be concurrent physical symptoms like bowel issues or headaches, for example. So there are lots and lots of ways acupuncture can help, but those are some of the most common reasons that children are brought to me.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I think a lot of our listeners will relate to a lot of those challenges, as I do myself that you know it's part of our lives, so to be able to find something that can help alleviate some of those symptoms for the child is amazing. So what's the process like? Like if I were to come to you as a parent with my child. You know what does the process look like and how do you go about it.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, that's a really good question, because I think that it's hard sometimes for parents to imagine how it's going to work, as it were.
Rebecca Avern:So the first thing that I always do is spend quite a lot of time chatting to both the parent and the child, and almost my first priority, I would say, is to put the child at ease and to start to build a therapeutic relationship with them where they feel safe, they feel like they can trust me and they understand that nothing is going to be forced upon them that they don't feel happy with, and we chat about any issues they may be currently having, both emotionally and physically. But before that, I always start by asking a child who they are, rather than how they are, and what really matters to them, rather than what's the matter with them, so that I want to relate to them from their kind of healthy place where they feel good about themselves, rather than from their pathology. And, as I'm sure you know, a lot of kids with neurodiverse issues. When they come in, they may already have picked up the feeling that there's something wrong with them or that they're naughty or not good enough.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah.
Rebecca Avern:Not good enough, yeah. So I feel like just relating to them from that kind of good place is a good place to start, and so during that process of questioning, which will also involve taking a full case history going right back to birth, I will be in my mind gradually forming my kind of Chinese medicine diagnosis, and I will be doing that based on what they tell me and what the parent tells me, but also how they tell me and their complexion, and even the tone of their voice and their eyes and the way that they move and a lot of kind of subtle diagnostic signs that we use in Chinese medicine.
Dr Olivia Kessel:You look at the tongue too, don't you? Yes, absolutely yeah.
Rebecca Avern:So we look at the tongue and we take the pulse on both sides. So we're not just feeling for the rate of the pulse but we're also feeling for what we call kind of qualities on the pulse. So it's like the shape of the pulse. And then I will ask the child if they're happy to get up onto my treatment couch, or they can have their treatment on a beanbag or they can sit on their parents' lap. Whatever they feel most comfortable with is fine and the actual treatment. So a lot of people mistakenly think that acupuncture is just about needles.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I must say I was guilty of it before talking to you. So you know, cause I would probably say I would ruled out acupuncture for my child because of that fear of needles. And you know we can't, I can't even get her to do you know the, the flu vaccine, you know. So it opened my mind to the possibility. So, yeah, how do you get around the needle question?
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, it's kind of the elephant in the room, isn't it? Yeah, so so there are. There are two kind of important things to say. So the first thing is that the needles that we use as acupuncturists if we use them, are incredibly fine so they're about the same breadth as a strand of hair and the needles that we use with children are even finer than those that you would have if you went to see an acupuncturist as an adult, and the needles don't need to be retained. So we use a needle technique on children where the needle is gently inserted and then immediately withdrawn, so there's no need for the child to lie still for any length of time. And if we're using needles, we might use as few as two or three per treatment. So I think sometimes people have an image of someone kind of lying there with 40 needles in them.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Like a porcupine.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, yeah, exactly, and it's just not like that. But there are obviously lots of children, both neurotypical and neurodiverse, who are anxious about the idea of needles and are not ready to try them, which is fine, and are not ready to try them, which is fine. So, and we use little seeds and magnets that we can put on acupuncture points to stimulate them, which are completely painless. I have a low level laser pen which can also be used to stimulate the acupuncture points and we burn some herbs, not directly on the skin, obviously, but just over the skin. That's a process called moxibustion. So there are a plethora of ways that we can give a child the treatment that they need, and I always go very slowly so that as the child builds up their trust with me, I gradually find that they're 99 times out of 100, they're gradually open to trying more of these modalities and actually most of the time a child will eventually decide on their own that they'd like to try a needle.
Rebecca Avern:So I saw a child yesterday. It was their third treatment and initially they had come in and their mum had explained to them what acupuncture was about and I think they thought it was just about needles and they sort of came in announcing to me that I'm not going to let you put a needle in me, that's fine, we don't have to. Then, uh, yesterday on their third treatment, they came in and said I want to try a needle today, rebecca, and they did and they were like, oh, that was fine and they were happy to have some more, and they went away feeling really kind of proud of themselves. So I think, giving the child the kind of agency in the situation, knowing that there are other things we can do if that doesn't feel right to them, but that often they come to needles in their own time anyway, it sounds brilliant because what you're doing is you're building up the trust of the child and you're allowing the child to lead, which often doesn't happen in healthcare.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Frankly, we torture children. So it's a much better approach and outcome, and it sounds like the kids probably feel such benefit from the treatments that they become more bold in terms of what they want to explore.
Rebecca Avern:Exactly, they vote with their feet and I always feel like if the child doesn't enjoy it or if they don't get benefit from it, they're going to resist coming. And you know parents have too many battles anyway, so they're not going to want that to be another one. So I think you know they do vote with their feet and most children really not only feel the benefit but they really enjoy their sessions too, and that's hugely important. And of course it would be counterproductive if their acupuncture sessions were another you know thing to get out.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, exactly, and I mean I think it's also important to point out, olivia, that you know, just with any form of medicine, it's not for everybody. I can't help everybody, sadly. That comes through my door as much as I would love to be able to, and you know, in that case I would normally say you know, let's just give it a small number of sessions and see how we all feel. And then you know, it's up to you whether you continue, but the vast majority of children like it and benefit from it.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And you've talked to me about what the principles are with the five elements and how that relates to the superpowers of a person, which also kind of exist in the world as well.
Rebecca Avern:And we call them the five elements fire, earth, metal, water and wood. So they're different from in the Indian system, which has four elements, which is slightly different, and these I like to think of them as the seasons inside us. So we all have a part of us that is active and enthusiastic, like you know, like the summer, and we all have a part of us that needs a lot of rest and wants to go kind of inward and become slower, like the winter for example, and one of the things that as acupuncturists we try to do is to create harmony between all of these five elements within a child. So if I just briefly kind of run through them, to explain what you.
Rebecca Avern:But if the fire element is not quite balanced, that can tip over into impulsivity and a kind of over-enthusiasm that can be difficult for other people to be around.
Rebecca Avern:So when I'm talking to a parent and a child and impulsivity comes up as an issue, I will say to the child we can turn this thing that's causing you some difficulties into your superpower, because we can just take the edge off some of that enormous kind of enthusiasm that you have and turn it into something that can really serve you in life, because we need enthusiasm and passion to do well in life and the power of the earth element is to have empathy for others. But sometimes when the earth element isn't happy, that empathy can turn into taking on the worries and the needs of everyone around us and feeling quite burdened by it. So again, we can talk to a child about helping them to get to a place where they still care and they're an amazing friend and they notice when someone needs help. But to prevent that from becoming something that becomes a real worry for them, that they're sort of lying in bed at night, you know, thinking about.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Unable to sleep or anxious.
Rebecca Avern:Exactly. And then with the metal element the superpower of metal is the ability to be really thorough and meticulous and organized and detailed about things turn into unhelpful perfectionism which can mean that the child actually finds it hard to start anything. They feel that nothing they ever do is good enough. So again, we can bring balance into the metal element and help them to be, you know, wonderful at doing something really well, with a lot of detail and thought, but that not becoming something that actually stops them from being able to do things or stops their enjoyment from doing things.
Rebecca Avern:And then the water element. So the power of the superpower of the water element is to have a real kind of drive and ambition and a desire to succeed. But when the water element is imbalanced that can mean the child feels overly competitive. They're kind of hypervigilant, always striving for more, never being able to kind of rest and come down into a more kind of parasympathetic state. And finally the wood element. The power of the wood element is kind of assertion and a kind of natural ability to be a leader. So when the wood element is well balanced, what we call wood type children are often the kind of children that naturally take on a leadership role in their sort of group. But when the wood element isn't happy or balanced, that can morph into an inflexibility, a sort of controlling nature. So again, if that's the issue, we can help to bring that to a more balanced place where the child is healthily assertive and expresses their needs, but it doesn't tip over into being kind of controlling and inflexible.
Rebecca Avern:So I hope that gives you some idea of what I kind of mean by those superpowers.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Absolutely fantastic and it really well explained, because it shows how you know nothing is good or bad. It's. You know it's getting the right balance and the right what's the word? I'm looking for the right alignment, I guess what's the word.
Rebecca Avern:I'm looking for the right alignment. I guess Absolutely. And you're completely right. Very often what's causing the issues and the most difficulties is just the flip side of the coin of something that can actually be the child's superpower. And from the Chinese medicine perspective, we will pick up that imbalance in the pulses on the tongue in the person and we can just flip the coin. When I say flip, that sounds like it's kind of instant.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Obviously it's not instant, but we can help gradually turn that difficulty back into something that's actually helpful for the child an ADHD brain that's very, very loud to some degree, but also has areas of inactivity, which is causing the executive function issues that arise with ADHD. So balancing that is a big part of acupuncture as well.
Rebecca Avern:Very much so.
Rebecca Avern:So yes, in children with ADHD, in children with ADHD we would say that what Dr Giroli described as their I think he calls it their loud or their noisy brain. We would say that that's because some of the acupuncture channels are taking an excess of yang energy into the head, Yang is the kind of hot, active, restless part of ourselves, and then the sleepy parts of the brain are parts where there's not enough yin to kind of support the functioning of the brain. So, yes, that's another sort of framework we use to balance yin and yang in the brain but also in the body, and in one sense you could say that's really kind of the fundamental thing that all acupuncture treatment is heading towards, like that perfect balance of yin and yang, which is constantly in flux and gets disturbed by all the kind of stresses of life. And of course neurodiverse children have often many more stresses than others might. But we can really help to bring about regulation within the system and within yin and yang.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Super interesting. And you know um, I I did pre-ask you to think of some case studies because I think that would be helpful for our listeners to kind of. You know, um, how does it work? What, what kind of progress you know when you're aligning these systems. Now we understand them, how long does it take? Well, you know, could you share with us some of your case studies? Obviously not using the children's names, but you know that could illustrate it for us.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, of course, yeah. So, um, I've been treating, I'll just change the names.
Rebecca Avern:So I'll use a name, but I'll I'll change it. So I've been treating um a girl who I will call Claire, who's 10 years old, and she came to me because when she came out of school at the end of the day, she was very dysregulated and the first few hours at home were very, very difficult. She would be expressing hugely intense emotions and that was obviously very hard for her, but also having an impact on her siblings and her family as a whole, and she also really struggled to get off to sleep at night. So she was kind of going to bed at a reasonable hour but taking a couple of hours to drop off, so tiredness was sort of becoming part of the problem as well.
Rebecca Avern:Exasperates that's the wrong word, it makes it worse.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Exasperates. That's the word, that's the word.
Rebecca Avern:Yes exactly so from my perspective. My diagnosis was that she had a lot of excess heat in her system and she's the most amazingly articulate girl and she actually said to me it feels like I have a volcano in my body and sometimes I just can't stop that volcano from erupting. So my treatment and she didn't want to use needles at first, which was fine. So we started off with some of the other modalities. I mentioned to you that my treatment was focused on reducing the level of heat in her body the excess yang would be another way of talking about it and the first thing that she noticed was that she began to drop off to sleep more easily. And after, I would say, about the fourth session, her mum told me that the period after school was becoming a lot easier. By Friday, by the end of the week it was still quite difficult, but for kind of Monday, tuesday, wednesday, things were a lot better.
Rebecca Avern:By about session five or six she told me she was happy to try a needle. She now I just use needles. She loves them. They help her to feel really relaxed, loves them. They help her to feel really relaxed. And I've been seeing her for about three months. I started off seeing her for weekly treatments and she's now coming to me every fortnight and she is reliably getting off to sleep within kind of half an hour. Um, and the afterschool times have gone. She says that you know, they used to be like 10 out of 10 bad, and now they are kind of two, two to three bad.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Wow, that's a remarkable change.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, so she's responded. You know really well and I think my sort of understanding of what was going on for her is that she was doing an amazing job of keeping everything together in the classroom. You know she was very well behaved and doing all her work, you know concentrating, but there was a real cost to that kind of restraint and the masking that was going on for her. And she doesn't have a neurodiverse diagnosis. But her parents have told me they suspect she probably is on the autism spectrum but they've just decided at the moment not to get that tested. But it's something that they're kind of constantly, you know, questioning whether that would be helpful for her to have that diagnosis or not.
Dr Olivia Kessel:You know it's interesting. I got some advice the other day from someone who said you know what, even if you're just questioning it, put yourself on the waiting list, because it's going to take so long that at the end of the day, if you say you don't want it, that's fine, but it at least gives you more options. So just something to think about with your clients, because I hadn't thought about it that way. But it leaves doors open for you. Whether you're not being forced into it, they don't mind if you drop off the waiting list later, but it gives you that potential. And then how long? That's a really good piece of advice. This little girl she's been going every week. Now she's going fortnightly. I mean, is it something that she's going to do for eternity, or how does that work?
Rebecca Avern:Yeah. So my expectation is that very soon we will extend the gap between treatments further and we will then get to a frequency that feels manageable for the family and that keeps Claire in a good place. So for some children that might mean just literally an occasional top-up treatment, maybe sort of three or four times a year. For other children they may feel that unless they come every month that things begin to slide, that unless they come every month that things begin to slide. Some children get to a place where they feel they don't need to come anymore, but then I let them know if they go through a stressful time or when they're moving up to secondary school it may be worth coming back for a few sessions then.
Rebecca Avern:So I'm very much of the mindset that it has to feel kind of manageable for the family, because if getting to the appointment, you know, is just another stress, then again it's counterproductive. But so I work with the family to kind of find a balance that feels like it's going to be. You know it's going to keep the child in a good place, but it also feels kind of manageable long term. I mean I would say that when treating neurodiverse children, because sadly they do live in a world that's not really very well set up for them really very well set up for them. So they have more stresses, they tend to need more longer-term treatment than another child might, but that isn't necessarily, you know, high-frequency treatment. You know, we try to get to a place as soon as possible where we can drop down the frequency of the treatments.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, so you know it makes sense that you would have to maybe go more ongoing and then have those top-up sessions as well as when needed and very personalized to the child and their situation and what they're going through in life Exactly so.
Rebecca Avern:For example, adolescent puberty is a time when often things get more difficult. So if I was treating a child when they were seven or eight, then I may not see them for a few years and then they may come back when they're sort of 10, 11, 12 for a few more sessions, for example, and in terms of like how a parent you know finds a good acupuncturist, and you know your clinic is based in Oxford and I will include your details and we'll go a little bit into different models as well in a bit.
Dr Olivia Kessel:But how does you know what questions does a parent need to ask to make sure? Because I know personally speaking going to acupuncturists, there's some that are really good and there's some that have not been good. So, like any practitioner, really, you know so and you really, I mean the way that you've described how you are in your clinic just seems like gold standard. You build that trust, you let the child lead. You know I would feel very comfortable coming to your clinic with my daughter. So how do parents who maybe don't live near your clinic, how do they find a good acupuncturist?
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, that's really important. So there are two things to say. So there is a directory of pediatric acupuncturists that I've created and I think you have the link for that.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, I'll include that in the show notes of this podcast so that parents can access that.
Rebecca Avern:Yes, and that's still relatively small but it's growing. But we do say on the directory if there's no one in your locality, please contact us and we'll try and put you in contact with someone someone. But in the UK really the most important thing is that the acupuncturist is a member of the British Acupuncture Council, because that will mean they've trained at an accredited acupuncture college where the training that they get is monitored and assessed by an external body. And so, in terms of an acupuncturist that treats children, if you can't find anyone on the pediatric acupuncture directory, I would go to the British Acupuncture Council website and find an acupuncturist in your area and contact them and then, if they don't treat children themselves, they may know someone that does. But that British Acupuncture Council directory is the sort of the main one for the whole of the UK, is the sort of the main one for the whole of the UK and then if people are listening in other countries, they would need to find the professional body of that.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Most of our listeners are in the UK. Okay, great, so we don't need to worry about that.
Rebecca Avern:Yes, so I mean. Pediatricacupuncturecom is where the UK directory is for acupuncturists who've trained to treat children.
Dr Olivia Kessel:That's brilliant, cause that's you know that's a real important point to get across. And then you know how much does it cost? Like if a parent was thinking about this how much does it cost? And maybe in that answer you can also describe how you've got two different models actually of how you run your clinics to address that kind of the difference in cost.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, yeah, so I have a private clinic where I work on my own, see children one-to-one, and it depends on the area, but the range of cost would generally be something like between 60 to 80 pounds for an initial session and perhaps between kind of 40 to 50 pounds for follow-up sessions. I also set up a low cost clinic in Oxford for children for the reason that I understand that it's not always possible for families, particularly at the moment, to afford the normal kind of rates for private treatment, or maybe they can for a short period of time but not for as much time as the child needs. So at that clinic we allow families to choose what they pay, starting from £20 per session. So we have families that are able to pay more and that essentially kind of funds, the families that aren't able to and that's called the Little Acupuncture Room and I work there with a team of other trained acupuncturists who are trained in pediatrics.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And you described to me that the model's a bit different because you don't necessarily have the same clinician and how it works. But there's benefits to that as well in terms of some of the points.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, exactly, so there's a team of six of us and at any clinic session two of us will be working. So it may mean that a child sees maybe two or three members of the team. So when I sort of describe that, I can imagine people may be thinking, oh, but you know, how's that? How's that going to work? My child's not going to manage seeing different people. But the first thing to say is that as a team we work entirely cohesively so we communicate between appointments. So if I was to see a child that my colleague had seen last time, we would have their notes accessible to all of us and we would probably have a conversation as well. Have a conversation as well. But it normally works out that we can create a degree of continuity, because we are open two days of the week and there are only certain members of the team that work on Saturdays and others on Tuesdays.
Rebecca Avern:And we explain to the families very clearly as we go along. You know, you've seen me today and you may have met my colleague who's working with me. It's actually going to be them that's going to be treating you next time. So we do a lot of explaining the system, as it were, and we treat children in a big room so sometimes there may be two or even three children in the room at one time, so that we find normally works really well. We see children looking at other children having their treatment and thinking, oh well, you know, this seems like a child-friendly place and they seem okay. And we also have a separate room where we can take a child if they don't feel happy being treated in the main room. And we've had a monosyllabic teenager being treated at the same time as a very, very chatty, hyperactive seven-year-old and the hyperactive seven-year-old gets that teenager talking and they kind of strike up a sort of mini friendship and it's been magical the way that the children sort of help to they're balancing each other out, yeah exactly, exactly.
Rebecca Avern:Um, so yeah, so it it. You know again that system doesn't work for every child, but we work really hard to make it work for as many children as we possibly can and most of the time it does work really well.
Dr Olivia Kessel:And the proof is in the pudding. You know what I mean, like when you hear the stories and the magic happening and stuff like that, and the thing is then it makes it more accessible. So price isn't limiting kids being able to get treatment or the amount of treatment they might need.
Rebecca Avern:Exactly, and that's really important to me, that you know, in an ideal world this would be available on the NHS, you know, but we know the world is far from ideal, so this is a good sort of interim measure while we work on the ideal.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, and considering how the NHS has dealt with emergency rooms and other appointments, it might be better suited outside. Well, that's very true.
Rebecca Avern:No, no, no, no, no. That's true as well. I mean, there is this constant kind of argument within the acupuncture world of you know, if we were more integrated within the NHS, we may be told that we can only see people for 15 minutes and they can only have four treatments and all the rest of it. So yeah, yeah.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Yeah, double-edged sword, so to speak. What are? Your views on parents, because a lot of the podcast guests who come on my show, like you know, a lot of the advice that we've been given is it's really important to regulate as a parent, and actually doing self care for yourself is what sets you up for success with your child and that you can change the way you are. And I would imagine you know acupuncture can really help with parents as well. Do you ever treat parents as well, or how does that work?
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, so you're absolutely right. There's actually a saying in Chinese medicine treat the mother to heal the child.
Rebecca Avern:Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, this saying is written in the classics that were written a thousand years ago, you know, a thousand years ago, and there's a very deep kind of understanding that parent and child are sort of one energetic unit. So if one of them is dysregulated it's going to encourage dysregulation in the other. So it can be a vicious circle, as we all know as parents. A vicious circle, as we all know as parents. Um, so, yeah, we in my low-cost clinic, um, when we have the capacity, we will treat a parent there, sometimes at the same time as the child. Um, I have a colleague in the same place who runs a low-cost clinic for adults. So if we can't treat them then we will refer them to her or to someone local to them. So we definitely will encourage parents to do what they can to help themselves to regulate. Yeah, and obviously, because we're acupuncturists, we think acupuncture is one of the best ways of doing that.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Well, and also, like you know, it's good for modeling for your child and you, that you know you're both doing it, it's not just them. I think there's a multitude of benefits from it, and you know I love acupuncture. I mean it's just you just feel like you, you feel like you've had a massage. You know, like after having a massage or a long bath, you just feel very. Zen is how.
Dr Olivia Kessel:I would describe it, you know so you, you, you feel like you're floating a bit. You know, I think that's the experience you had and what drove you into your career.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah, no, exactly, absolutely yeah. I've not found anything else that creates that amazing kind of feeling. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Well, that's fantastic. It has been so great and you've shared so much information today. But I love to end our podcast with if you could give three top tips to parents that are listening out there that they can put in their back pocket and take with them. On this topic, what would you say?
Rebecca Avern:Yes. So my number one tip we just touched on actually was going to be look after yourself in order to help you and your child. So we talk about chi bubbles. So chi, very roughly speaking, is the kind of life force within us, it's our kind of energy, and mom and baby or main caregiver, whoever that may be, and baby and child are one chi bubble.
Rebecca Avern:So I think that as parents it's so easy to feel particularly if we have a high needs child, to feel guilty when we do what we need to do. But I would say it's the opposite of guilty. It's actually necessary and it's going to help your child probably more than anything else that you do. So that's my number one tip. Number two tip is perhaps a strange one. If you have a child who is prone towards feeling anxious or hyperactive hyperactive feel the temperature of their feet. Very often their feet will feel cold because all the yang, the hot energy is up in their heads and it's not where it should be, kind of down in the bottom of the body. So keep their feet warm.
Dr Olivia Kessel:That's super interesting because you know, my daughter has freezing cold feet and she is anxious and hyperactive, yeah. So now when I say, put on your slippers, there's more of a reason to do it.
Rebecca Avern:Definitely Always wear slippers or you know those really kind of cozy socks that they wear these days. One of the things we do in treatment is we hold this warm herb I was talking about over an acupuncture point on the bottom of the foot. We view it as extremely important in these kids who are anxious that we warm up their feet, and it is amazing, the warmer their feet become, the more their anxiety reduces. So there's a definite kind of correlation.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Almost socks in bed is a good idea probably.
Rebecca Avern:Absolutely Definitely. And my number three tip would be with a child who struggles at bedtime, struggles to get off to sleep, bring bedtime half an hour or an hour earlier. Because if we go back to yin and yang, as the day goes on, yin, which is the kind of calming energy that helps us go into sleep, gets lower, and as yin gets lower, yang, which is very active energy, gets higher. So if you can preempt that kind of spot where the yin is so low that the yang is so up here in the head, and get your child into bed earlier, they are likely not only to get off to sleep earlier but actually to then sleep better for the night.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Oh, interesting.
Rebecca Avern:Yeah. So I know with older kids that can be challenging because they have a thing of oh, I'm not, I'm too grown up to go to bed at eight o'clock or whatever. But it can make a huge difference just moving bedtime as a bit earlier in promoting the ability to get off to sleep but also staying asleep off to sleep, but also staying asleep.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Those are the three amazing tips that people can use right now. They don't even have to, you know, while they look for the acupuncturist that I know that they're going to book after listening because I know, after speaking with you, I'm convinced that you know it's something that I'm definitely going to pursue with my daughter as well, because it's a no brainer really if you can really help with some of that emotional regulation anxiety. There's so many benefits to this.
Rebecca Avern:Absolutely. I think it can be one of the support tools that the child has in their life that can really make a difference to them. And one of the things I love about treating children is they then know their whole life that acupuncture is there for them. They know that's something that they can go back to. That helps them whenever issues come up. You know which, as we know, they do throughout our lives, don't they? So it's just nice for them to kind of find that early in their life really.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure having you on the send parenting podcast and I will have all of your details, um, located in the episode notes and on my website too, so that if people want to reach out to you specifically or to your um list of providers, they can access that.
Rebecca Avern:So thank you oh, thank you very much. It's been lovely talking to you.
Dr Olivia Kessel:Thanks, olivia thank you for listening send Zen Parenting Tribe. I wanted to encourage all listeners who haven't yet signed up to my email address. Please do so. All you have to do is go to wwwsendparenting my website and sign up your contact email details. My website and sign up your contact email details. I would really love to send you the top most impactful episodes from the last year of the Send Parenting podcast. Wishing you and your family a great week ahead. You.