Why Neurodivergent Parents Are Epic

In this episode, Jodie talks about her journey from unconsciously trying to be the “perfect yummy mummy” to showing up as her real, neurodivergent self in parenting. A big turning point was her eldest daughter’s autism diagnosis, which set her on a path of self-discovery and completely shifted how she saw both herself and her role as a parent.

She shares openly about the tough stuff too — battling the education system, being on the receiving end of parent blame, and going through gruelling tribunal hearings to fight for her kids’ needs.

But what really comes through is Jodie’s belief in the strengths neurodivergent parents bring. As she puts it, “We are epic parents to our kids because we get it... We’ve got that hyper empathy on a deeper level because we feel everything so deeply.” It’s a powerful reminder that our differences can actually be our strengths.

If you’re parenting neurodivergent kids, exploring your own identity, or just looking for a more honest take on parenting outside the box, you’ll get a lot from this conversation.

You can follow Jodie’s work through her books and social channels to keep learning from her lived experience.

https://jodieclarke.co.uk/

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Jodie's books that we spoke about are: 

• Stop The World I Want To Get Off
• The Secret Life of Rose
• Young, Autistic and Burnt Out

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Chapters

• 1:01 Meeting Jodie Clark
• 1:44 The Imperfect Parent Reality
• 6:04 From Masking to Authentic Parenting
• 16:18 Societal Pressures and Neurodivergent Families
• 27:02 Fighting the System for Our Children
• 39:34 Finding Your Role in Advocacy
• 47:51 Jodie's Books and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

I'm really delighted today to welcome Jodie Clark to the podcast. Jodie is an independent specialist supporting autistic children, their family and schools, with both personal and professional experience. She holds a master's in autism from Sheffield Hallam University and is passionate about advocacy, fostering positive autistic identity and promoting emotional well-being. Jodie, thank you ever so much for joining me on the untypical parent podcast. It is lovely to have you here today. Thanks, jeremy. I start off my podcast every time with the same question. My listeners are very used to this now, but my first question to everybody on the podcast always is jodie, are you the perfect parent?

Speaker 2: 1:15

oh god, no, that was.

Speaker 2: 1:18

I had a definite straight and to the point jodie, oh god no I don't think, I don't think you can, I don't think anyone can be. But particularly when you've got neurodivergent kids like you're constantly on the back foot of you know, having to have that high level of curiosity, high level of working out what's going on around them, for them, um, one of my daughters actually is openly admitted I don't know if she would now, because this is a few years back but said that you know, usually my mum knows that there's something wrong with me before I do or that there's something going on for me before I do. Yeah, um, and we, you know, we have to get to a place of calm and then sit down and work out what that is. And you know it's sometimes, it's a combination of things sometimes, but that's so. This plus, not only that, not only do our kids keep us on our toes and the environment keeps us on our toes more so than our kids actually but the unpredictability of the environment in the world, but, um, our own needs as well.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Like I'm neurodivergent, I don't, you know, sometimes my own feelings and emotions come out of nowhere, for me as well. So I have to be constantly in check with myself like is, is this a me problem? Am I not? Am I not running? Have I not eaten today? Or do I need the toilet? Like all of that interest, yeah, yeah, I felt, and that, yeah, absolutely. Sometimes, like, for whatever reason, you don't act or respond in a way that would be the idea or perfect, but, like, I don't know, we're only human, aren't we? And I always think there's a lot to be done with that. Sometimes, you know, I'm not talking about when you're constantly losing it, but when you, when you have a moment where you haven't been as well regulated as what you'd hoped to be, able to turn around and use that as a tool to say, yeah, I lost it a bit today.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I've not properly. I need to take some time out. I'm overdone, I'm burnt out, I'm overwhelmed. My brain, you know. I quite often say my brain's getting too busy. Like I've got so much better at recognizing my own stuff, now I can just say my brain's getting too busy. I just need to step away a sec and modelling that it's okay to take yourself out of situations and take believers in.

Speaker 1: 3:39

It's so important that, isn't it, that our kids get to see that that as adults we still haven't got it all pinned. Life is going to throw us a curveball. It doesn't even matter the jobs that you're in, like the jobs that you do and I do, we still get it wrong. And the jobs that you do and I do, we will get it wrong. And model that to our kids is a really important thing for them to say that we are all.

Speaker 2: 4:00

We are not perfect, but we do recover yeah, and we do all do things, say things, behave in ways that maybe isn't the ideal at times, but that doesn't make us less of a person. And I think when we've got kids, particularly when we've got, uh, you know, our kids, who are in high levels of burnout or mental health crisis, that are experiencing frequent meltdowns or shutdowns, where they're just unable to manage people or the world, to see somebody else also experience that makes them feel a bit less like they're the problem. Yeah, um, so yeah, we just sort of yeah, and like I, I regularly joke about, like when I'm working one-to-one with parents, I'll regularly joke about the things that, like, I'm a bit crap at. But, yeah, sometimes I forget to feed my kids and they have to, like we've not had dinner, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's me do you know what?

Speaker 1: 4:56

I'm glad someone else gets that I can get so in a hyper focus sometimes that I'll get a person appear to the left of me will suddenly go. Are we having dinner tonight? Oh my god, is that?

Speaker 2: 5:09

the time. Just hope it's out from the fridge in the snack drawer. Do you know what I used to be? Certainly before I knew that I was neurodivergent and certainly before I recognised that my kids were neurodivergent, I had such high expectations and high standards of myself in parenting.

Speaker 1: 5:31

That's really interesting because I was going to say to you where's that confidence? And that kind of'm okay with this come from, and have you always been like that?

Speaker 2: 5:41

but it sounds like no, no, um, I was. I always wanted to be a mum. That was always. You know, I've never been career driven. I only ended up at university, you know, because my mate was filling out a UCAS form and I was like, oh, maybe I'll do the same as well. Nobody in my family had gone to university before me. Um, that wasn't like my natural pathway. I'd always wanted to be a mum. So, um, when I had children, I did have quite a fixed idea of what that looked like. Um, and for a long time it was partly based on how I was brought up, until, as I got older, I realized some of that wasn't great.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Um, but then I think it would look like jade when you had a fixed idea what do you know what?

Speaker 2: 6:28

it's interesting because I realize, when I've looked back once you know that that sort of journey you go on as a late recognized neurodivergent person. Yeah, when I look back over my life, what happened when I had kids is when my mask I've written about this, actually, and I'm sure I wrote about this and stop the world. I can't I'm pretty sure I did, um, I've wrote about it somewhere um, my mask came down, so suddenly I'd had a child. I was relatively young in this day and age. I wasn't young now. I was 24.

Speaker 2: 7:00

I was still very young looking um before life took its toll. Um, and I very much decided that I'm a mum now and this is all very unconscious, but this is my part of my mask I was desperate to fit into the mum world. Because I was desperate to be a mum. I had a special interest in child development and women's health and labour and pregnancy and stuff like that I always had done since I was young, like a real interest in child development and stuff. So I wanted to be at the mother and baby groups because I wanted to watch kids develop and the attachment stuff that you know.

Speaker 2: 7:37

I was fascinated with it all. So unconsciously I did what I did to fit into that world. So I always like um. And then this is no offense to to anyone, but I said I, I talked about turning myself into the um I don't even know if I got the pronunciation right, because that's how I'm not from that world that the Breton stripe, the Jules mum and my kids had to play that part too to fit into that, very probably because of the area that I was living in at the time. Well, actually, no, I wasn't. When I had my first child I wasn't in a particularly affluent area but I moved back to where I particularly affluent area, but I moved back to where I, whatever it was quite I suppose it was predominantly white and not not middle class, but sort of working middle class, I suppose, and I very much just wanted to fit into that world because that to me was the yummy mummy.

Speaker 2: 8:28

You know, it's the era of yummy mummy bags, so so it was very much like this is what, um, this is what society expects. Um, it was like organic cooking, nct classes, breastfeeding, all of that, and again, I'm not saying that any of that isn't okay, but it was this very neurotypical standard, um, very white neurotypical stuff, quite a lot of pressure.

Speaker 2: 8:57

My memory of kind of when I had my case with the pressure, yeah, so on one side of me, I was masking like a pro, fitting into that, blending into that completely, um.

Speaker 2: 9:12

And on the other side of me, I was relatively confident in my parenting. So, um, when the visit first came around to me and I was, I was breastfeeding but I was using like nipple shields and dummies and bottles and a mixture and she was all a bit like, oh, you know, you're gonna give your baby nipple confusion and I was very much like I'm doing what I'm doing okay. So on some aspects of it I was trusting my instincts, yes, and very confident in terms of fitting into the world and the world. I completely unconsciously lost myself. And it's funny when I look back to pictures when I was 22 at Glastonbury, looking very me, and within a couple of years I'm like, oh, wow, I'm very floral and very mummy looking you went down the floral route, you went, really went for it, jodie, oh god like it was, and I think in in the process, my child also had to fit that.

Speaker 2: 10:16

So my child had to look the part behave and, um, in some ways I was quite, because my child, my first child, was a girl, relatively passive and sat and played. Played she didn't really she, she just sort of stayed where you put her and a lot of time just sitting, working the world out, to the point where somebody was like, oh, she's been there before and I was like, yeah, tell me about it. I always felt that she was a reincarnation of my nan that had died a few years previous and there's a few things she said. I was like you are wise beyond your years, um, so she for a period of time, fitted that part as well. You know this very, yeah, yeah, you know, calm, quiet child, um, I know that back then, when things started to not be as easy in the world for her, that I was definitely parent in a way that would have caused harm potentially to her as a, not knowing that she was neurodivergent, not understanding my own neurodivergence and all of that.

Speaker 2: 11:35

So I carry an awful lot of feeling around the way I parented, encouraged her to mask or forced her to mask um. So I've looked back on some of that and that's been quite tricky times where, yeah, obviously I didn't know she was neurodivergent or that maybe there was. You know, I had a psychology background. So I'm going back through my child development, my attachment head. At the time when she was young, there was this whole push for like controlled crying, which I did once for five minutes and stood in the room next door and absolutely bawled my eyes out. You know when you're talking jodie.

Speaker 1: 12:16

It's almost like a mirror, because my youngest we did the same got to control crying and I sat at the top of the stairs outside his door and bawled my eyes out and so I thought I can't take this anymore. Yeah, it was awful, but there was a real push at that point, wasn't there about this control crying? They had to learn to self-soothe.

Speaker 2: 12:36

Yeah, and honestly, I did that once and it was heartbreaking. Yeah, literally for a matter of minutes, and so when things started to become really difficult, I blamed my eyes because I left her crying in her cot for five minutes and I was like, oh my God, and I think, mum, guilt is a big thing. That's experienced by a lot of parents anyway, I think it's.

Speaker 1: 13:02

It's like if something comes, they don't tell you, but when the baby's born, it camps out on your shoulder for the rest of their life going oh you should have done this. You could have done that all day. Are doesn't bring in your ear yeah, um, so I don't.

Speaker 2: 13:16

I don't know if I'm going slightly off on a tangent, but um, yeah, so that was my early parenting experience was a very masked version of myself and even though I, you know, I'd worked previously, um with autistic kids, they had um co-occurring um learning disabilities and um medical, um issues. And you know they were, they were. They were classed as complex kids although I hate that term and so their profile was so, so different. So I didn't realize that my eldest was neurodivergent until she was seven. I knew there was something previous to that and I'd gone to like health visitors and they said, oh, we think that she's having sugar dips, take a banana with you. And I've just got awful memories of her having meltdowns and me trying to force a banana in her face because, oh, then eventually they agreed to get to check her iron and she wasn't anemic. And then reception at school were like, oh, we're noticing some, you know, and all this and the other, and I'm like, yes, I know, so that's when they agreed to do bloods and no, she's fine, just put a banana in her dat. Honestly, she must have banana trauma. Just snack in her dat bag that she can go and get in the afternoons. I just convinced it was these sugar dips of you know.

Speaker 2: 14:32

No medical backing as to why that was the case, but, um, yeah, so my parenting was had to go on a really steep learning curve and nobody told me that she was autistic, like I had suspicions, and at the time I worked for the local authority in. I worked with um vulnerable young people, so I had access to people that worked um in child and adult mental health. Well, in my area there was a like a tier below that called they used to be called TAMS, so I had access to people you know, and even even speaking to them they were like no, actually one person very bluntly told me that it was my anxiety and I knew that in my heart of hearts it wasn't the issue. But it's very difficult when a professional who's a colleague tells you that, yeah, really hard, it took a really long time, like to. Once I was like I do you know what? I think I read something on masking and at the time masking was all about obviously autistic girls, and I read something and to this day I still can't go back and find what it was, but it was like it was describing my child and I literally like had a bit of a breakdown and I was like I've known this like for such a long time.

Speaker 2: 15:58

Um, so then obviously the battle to actually get her assessed and diagnosed.

Speaker 2: 16:04

But of course, once because for years, everyone gone, oh she's like that because you're like that or she only does that because you do that, but I'd always said that to me.

Speaker 2: 16:12

So once, um, you know, while I'm, while I'm battling to get her assessed, I'm also then deep diving on myself and so that journey sort of just went alongside really, um, and yeah, like you know, I'm a real. You know I work with a lot of parents that carry all of that guilt and, like you know and Kieran Rose says this all the time like you can only do better when you know better, and I have to I do feel very confident that once I knew better, I did everything I could to learn more and more and to do better and know better and, um, weirdly I'd always, always, always had a special interest in autism alongside just sort of my general work, since I was again quite young, um, which is why I started working with autistic kids when I was about 17, um, but my sort of career had gone in more towards youth offending teams and vulnerable young people.

Speaker 2: 17:14

I wish I had the knowledge I have now when I was teens.

Speaker 1: 17:18

Um, I have those moments where I look back when I think I used to work in cams and I would have been about, probably in my early to mid-20s, running a parents group. You just think, oh dear, yeah, I wish I could go back to those parents and say I'm so sorry. Webster Stratton, we used to do the Webster Stratton parenting group. Oh god, I've not even heard of that.

Speaker 2: 17:43

Yeah, don't go and look at it it's so hard because, yeah, you just, it's so hard because, yeah, you just, you know, we know that the field of autism, in terms of research, has been so progressive in such a short space of time and there's still obviously so much work to do in that area. But we were only based on everything on such old, I mean to the point where a good friend good friend, she's a good friend of mine still now, but was a colleague um, when I was saying, oh, I've got concerns about my child, she was like, bring her around, bring her around to mine. And, um, she was chatting to her and she basically did like a we, she's having a conversation with her. And she basically was like, nah, she's not autistic, she's got a theory of mind. Um, and I was like, oh, yes, yes, like, because she was explaining something about her school, but she knew that we didn't know the school, so she was explaining it so that we could understand yeah, but theory of mind, and therefore she can't be autistic.

Speaker 1: 18:44

So it's all of this it's like the eye contact, isn't it? I saw just recently in a report from a pediatrician one of the reasons they weren't going to give a diagnosis because the child gave eye contact yeah, you still see this all the time, don't you?

Speaker 2: 18:59

now we're still saying this. Yeah, I mean, I've still seen that recently as well. Oh, my gosh, like we really are still in the dark ages and something like some little pockets. But um, I don't know where I was going with this.

Speaker 1: 19:13

My ADHD head is yes, okay we were talking about your parenting and where kind of where your confidence came from so it came from.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Obviously, like I said, I'd already had a special interest, but then once I discovered, um, autistic girls in masking and that sort of autistic girls in masking and that sort of, at the time, separate field, I deep dived. I absolutely deep dived because I needed to understand my child, I needed to understand myself. Um, and it's led me to here, which is crazy like this, and I always say this is the power of autistic special interest. Yeah, and finding, finding that thing that just that you just run with and that we should always be allowing autistic kids in particular to run with stuff, um, yeah, it's just it, it's been, it's it's, it's been a journey like I don't do you know what.

Speaker 2: 20:13

It's funny because I've not ever I don't, I don't think I've ever really spoke about this in depth, but because I don't, I've never really looked back on I I know what happened in the beginning and how things started. I don't really know what's happened in between. You just jumped fast forward. My memory's shocking, perhaps shocking particularly at the moment with like hormonal changes. But even in terms of getting my oldest assess, I deep dived on various different assessments, various different professionals, various different assessments, various different professionals. I started just, I suppose, getting back in touch with me and myself and knowing that actually, if I could get back to my instincts because I always felt, I always felt my child I didn't ever not feel that, that that intunement, is that even a word? Intunement, intunement, intunement. Yeah, I was always so in tune. Yeah, hyper-empathy and all of that, I could always feel it. So I always knew when things weren't okay. And again, you know you can't always work out quite. You know what or why, and that sometimes you know. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious and sometimes it's not, but it's just developed.

Speaker 2: 21:32

And one of the big things I talk about now when I'm again either in training or supporting parents, is that societally we don't trust our kids to make good choices for themselves, or, to you know, choices for themselves or, to you know, in, in. And I think societally we are guilty of feeling that if we aren't controlling our child, we're not a good enough parent, if we're not controlling a classroom, we're not a good enough teacher, and there's so much about control. And you know, if your child's upset in a supermarket, then it's all a bit like, oh, you need to learn to control your child, and so I think that's always been had an influence on my parenting as a very masked, unknown neurodivergent person. One of the things I've posted I can't again. I'm going different directions to where my head was originally going. Um is when I let go of worrying about other people's judgments of my parenting and I got back in tune with what my kids needed and that. That made a massive difference to me, like once.

Speaker 1: 22:46

I just got to the point where I just let go of all of that bullshit, like just small but um, and it's not always easy to do, that is it, I think, because I think it's taken me a long time to get to that point and even still I'll get in a rut. And I think, what am I doing down this route? This isn't we want. We know, we know better than this. Hang on a minute, everybody. Let's take a pause, because I can still find myself down there going what?

Speaker 2: 23:11

am I doing?

Speaker 1: 23:11

This is nuts.

Speaker 2: 23:13

It's around us constantly and like it's there's so much, there's so much, so there's so much societally from I talked about. This is why I've started doing my talk on neurodivergent rewilding and I talk about all these influences around us. So we've got society as a whole and you know the, the society that we live in in terms of you know the uk, and then we've also got our communities that we live in within that. So then we've got to take into account things like intersectionality if we are from um a community of global majority, or if we live in a community that is um a social economic, um, you know, got a lower social, economic or social economic status, or if we um are entrenched in the queer community or or or whatever. So there's all these other marginalization and stigma and culture and everything that can come with that.

Speaker 2: 24:08

So, um, and I was having having a bit of a rant about this recently because, um, I was chatting to a parent that lives in a um a lower one it's one of the deprived areas of locally of where I live and they were saying that the school isn't recognizing the neurodivergent kids and there's always another reason that they put it down to.

Speaker 2: 24:34

So she was sort of saying oh, you know, there's this child that I think is neurodivergent, but they're saying, oh, it's because his dad's in prison. And I'm like what they don't get as well is the link between unrecognized neurodivergence, in particular, and addictions, adhd and the amount of ADHDers that are in prison because they've self-medicated and they've ended up, you know, been kicked out of school from an early age. Probably you know that pipeline to prison, as they call it. Well, actually you're more likely to end up because of stigma, discrimination and all of the rest of it. So actually these areas will potentially have a higher proportion of neurodivergent kids, but everything's put down to the fact that dad's in prison. Or you know, um mum, you know, left school without qualifications.

Speaker 2: 25:27

Well, she left school without qualifications because she left school without qualifications, because she's neurodivergent and nobody met her bloody needs yeah so there's, you know and that's just one community, one marginalized community um, that are just being additionally stigmatized and marginalized and discriminated against. And again, I don't know where my head was going with this, but there's all of these different pockets. So that was it. There's all these different pockets around us to influence our parenting, and then we've also got like our families and you know most families I work with there's at least somebody in the family that's going what do you mean? They're not in school or, um, you know, or you just need to, you know you're being too soft on them or they need tighter boundaries, or blah, blah, blah. So sometimes you're fighting strong family connection that can't easily be suffered but also can't easily be turned around to understand your child's experience or your experience as a parent. And then we've got things like religion you know people that are part of religious groups, and again all of that cultural stuff, um, and just there's so much that works against neurodivergent communities as a stigma and a stigmatized community, a marginalized community, um, which is why I really love all the work that's been done by kieran rose and dr amy for some reason I can't remember her surname, dr amy and also, um, another researcher called monique, who looks a lot at the stress minority model in terms of autistic experience and it's all such important research because it's so important to recognize autistic communities as being um, as a minority, as a minority, stigmatized community.

Speaker 2: 27:25

So particularly you know, it's hard enough if you are neurodivergent. But if you don't even realize you're in neurodivergence and your kids neurodivergence, you're trying to constantly parent in a way that takes you against your instincts and sometimes I will say to parents like the first thing to do is try to get back in touch with your instincts as a parent to your child and actually, if you're neurodivergent and you can heal from some of that trauma, from societal expectations and masking and all that stuff you like, we are epic parents to our kids because we get it yeah, we feel it. We've got that hyper empathy on a you, in my opinion, a deeper level because we feel everything so deeply. We're epic parents but we just have to be given the space to actually do things in a way that works for us. I love that.

Speaker 2: 28:21

Jodie, we're epic parents, I mean, you know, I started off saying we're definitely not perfect parents, no, but we can be epic we can be epic two different things absolutely I love it and it is like so much of when I'm working directly with families and, you know, particularly with parents.

Speaker 1: 28:41

It is about supporting them to be, to be to reground yeah, rewild and to go okay, like what feels good for you, what feels good for your child, and that's actually easier said than done, hugely yeah, I think even the work you know that I do around kind of you know I've been doing some work around um, the sensory side of parenting and stuff like that that you know it's easy to say, oh, we just need to do this or your central nervous system just needs that, but actually you're trying to get that in to every day when one your habits are just to do this and operate in this way. This is the way I should be doing it. There's pressures. You've got other kids to in the mix. You've got you know your own need.

Speaker 1: 29:24

It's so hard, so hard, and nine times out of 10, as parents, parents we always put our needs very low down the list. The kids always come first and I have to kind of reassure everyone. I'm not saying dump your kids needs and ignore them, but are often ours, come very, very low down the list of support that we need or how we meet our needs as well as as well as the kids. Yeah, equaling that focus a bit, isn't it, rather than it always being very, very polarized, I suppose?

Speaker 2: 29:56

yeah, particularly when you know you like listed those things like our needs, other kids and this, that and the other. But I think the most frustrating part of my role as both a parent and a professional is the biggest strain and pressure and fight that we are all mostly all in is actually getting other people to understand our kids and accept our kids and you know whether that be family members or whether that be society or whether that be, in most cases, local authority and schools. Yeah, it's so hard to be on the ground in the present, emotionally regulated, for your kids when there's this overarching battle going on that is.

Speaker 1: 30:45

I was kind of liking it is that you know my job as a parent is to keep my kids safe. Yeah, bottom line, you know. If I can feed them as well, great. But you know, safe is the kind of ultimate. And often we're in systems where we don't feel our kids are safe and we're expected to just conform with that toe the line and deliver our kids into this environment that we deep down, like you talked about, what you deep down know is actually traumatizing them and they aren't safe in those environments. And it took, you know, my son to have a complete mental health breakdown until something switched on in me that went this needs to stop. Yeah, it took me to get to that point and I knew something wasn't right. But there was all this stuff of, oh my god, I'm going to be in trouble and I've got to send him in and how am I going to get to work? How do I earn money?

Speaker 2: 31:38

all that kind of stuff was going on in the backgrounds and it's really, really hard yeah, it's, it's completely like for some, for some people, it's completely impossible like I've been in a situation where, like with my third child, you know, third time, third time, lucky I might not. I'm used to the system now I'm much more equipped to understand their experience and this, that and the other, and I'm a lot more confident in my parenting and my knowledge and everything else, um, as a parent and a professional. So I was very much like no, we're not, we're not doing this. This time we're, we're gonna absolutely. I mean, to be honest, actually, my older two, I mean I never forced my kids into school but, um, they just got to a point where, as they got older, so they managed for a period of time, whereas my youngest wasn't going to manage.

Speaker 2: 32:34

You know, preschool led to really extreme burnout. So I was battling right from the beginning, right from um reception and um, eventually I got pulled into. Well, first of all, I got told by the head teacher well, we've never had, um a child outright refuse school before I basically turned around and went. You have, yeah, experience before. Is um a parent who won't force their child into school? I said I've seen loads of school refusers on the gate. If you're going to use that term. Um I, you know, I see, I see every single morning. The difference is I'm not forcing him in.

Speaker 1: 33:16

Yeah, um and she's like, oh, but that takes a real confidence, doesn't it? And a real security in your knowledge. I'm done by this point. Yeah, yeah, third time around, jodie's on this, right, I've got it. And then um so.

Speaker 2: 33:28

So I basically said um, he's, you know he can't manage school. You know we've tried, didn't work. We're not trying anymore. When I say we tried, it was like two visits for half an hour. Bearing in mind he was still recovering from burnout and he was age four, I was like I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2: 33:45

Um, they tried all sorts of things with me. They tried to tell me that well, I had I'd registered him at a school that had an attendance policy and I either had the choice to um abide by the attendance policy or deregister him. And I went uh, no, I've actually got a third option I can fight for his legal right for a suitable education. And they weren't keen on that. And so while, yeah, while he wasn't in school, I was basically saying to the school you legally have to provide alternative provision, what I want, um. So I managed to. Well, that that took a battle, as you can imagine.

Speaker 2: 34:23

But at some point I got pulled into a attendance meeting, which was't unusual, and they basically started like reading my rights and I realised I was actually being interviewed under caution, which I shouldn't laugh about, because some parents like I know that that would put the fear of God into you, but I think I just developed this skin through trauma I'm laughing because actually I've got so much trauma from this process and and they basically interviewed me under caution and basically it was like one step before court and this was some a few years back now. So it's slightly different now. I think they just send you fines now, but I'm not too sure and you know, it was me there in the head teacher and we had to say what we'd done to try to get him into school and I was pretty didn't say much until the end and I basically said, like you said. I said you have brought me here because you believe that I am neglecting my child by not forcing him to school and you believe that that is, then, not keeping him safe. I said I'm telling you, I am here because I am keeping my child safe from an environment that will cause him harm. So you need to spin this on its head. And I said you can take me to court, but my child will not, cannot and will not be forced into your environment. That isn't suiting his needs and I will stand up in court and I will say that. So I will see you there.

Speaker 2: 35:54

And I never heard from them again. I just, I just knew that there was. I had gone to Hallenbach, like was seeing my four-year-old on the floor in terms like not literally speaking that there was they. I had been pushed to, like you said, to a point where you were like this just isn't happening. It's like something kicks in, isn't it? There's something that kicks in that actually as much as what it would have been, you know I was planning like, oh, I'll have, I'll work four days a week and I'll have a week off on a Friday, my last child going to school, um, I'll get some time to myself.

Speaker 1: 36:42

What's that maybe?

Speaker 2: 36:43

I'll go to the gym that I'll never get um. But yeah, like him, his mental health crisis was so awful and so horrendous and so heartbreaking that by the time that they'd got me into meetings it it wouldn't have mattered what they'd said. Nothing was scarier. They could say nothing more that would hurt or scare me more than what I'd been through. Yeah, that was it, um, whether it's that that's helped with the confidence, because you know, I know that I've got some level of privilege. I'm, I've. You know, I've had this sort of like late educational journey. I'm a professional in the field, I'm white, which helps um, and all this and the other.

Speaker 2: 37:35

However, I've still been in two tribunals and written plenty, uh, rid, written, wrote, uh read plenty of reports about myself, where I am the problem. I'm still been a victim of parent blame. I've still been accused of being the problem. They've still used language in reports such as mum hypothesizes that my child's name is in autistic burnout and I'm like hypothesizes. You can laugh like, yeah, do you? Do you want me to show you the research of my child? That takes every, not as much research.

Speaker 2: 38:16

I've sat in tribunal and, again, the privilege that comes with my field is that I had Kieran Rose and Libby Hill as my expert witnesses. Whoa, even they walked out and they were. Did they bother turning up? They were in absolute shock of the parent blame. I like to the point where we were all actually I actually felt bad because we came out of there and we all felt absolutely depleted and traumatized from the process. They didn't give a shit that of who was sat there. They didn't. They didn't view us as specialists um, not that I like the word experts, but experts, um, it was.

Speaker 1: 39:05

All the LA were set on doing was completely discrediting me and them and I found that I think you know, even just with the job that I do, that I have never felt so small. You know, I've run meetings. I've been in difficult meetings like they don't worry me meetings and I'm frightened of meetings. But when I started to go in as mum, yeah, and there was people talking to that, I thought you know what? I have probably got a butt ton more experience in this than you have and yet my voice was not counted. I couldn't get my voice heard. I felt very, very small, um, and totally powerless. Yeah, that was going to happen to my son and it was just awful.

Speaker 1: 39:52

And, like you know, you, we went to tribunal, um, and I've actually got a small solo podcast coming out in a couple of weeks time called tribunal trauma, talking about what that was like to go through, and I'm gonna have to edit it slightly, I'm gonna leave some of it in there, but in the middle of it I end up in tears because still, three years down the line, talking about it can have that effect on me. It was traumatic. Yeah, it should never have happened, it didn't need to have happened. No, and the trauma that that not only caused myself but my whole family. That's the other thing. People just think, oh, it's parents. They're a little bit sensitive, my whole family. I've also got a neurotypical son um that, you know the impact, the impact on him. He was in school, he's in school and he was part of that and it shouldn't have to be that way and the what they're doing to families is just yeah, but it brought us to our knees as a family yeah, yeah, yeah, emotionally, financially, the the stress and the anxiety and everything.

Speaker 2: 41:00

That's yeah, and I think you know, like you said, people just think, oh, you know sensitive parents, but actually every single parent I have contact with has trauma from fighting for their kids, some levels of trauma, um, and it is so unnecessary. You know, I don't know what the most recent stats are special needs jungler, like my go-to for this, but you know, last time I looked it was something like allays are losing 98.7 of cases at tribunal to parents. I've I I mean again like I can't think too much of it because it makes me so angry but in my most recent tribunal, which is coming up, a year ago, um, I was the la had contracted um barristers, a private team of barristers, to fight me in court, and what I was asking for for my child, I swear, was probably cheaper than the cost of these barristers that were on. Probably what? A few hundred pound an hour, yeah, all the time. And what was worse is they rocked up to court and they were shit they tried all that money, they weren't even any good I was like.

Speaker 2: 42:22

so I'm in a position as a parent and you know, not just me all parents that are going through the legal system and tribunal system, um are now finding themselves in financial difficulty, without money in most cases to to um have legal representation, yet their taxpayers money is paying for the barristers that are there to bully and fight them and harass them. How on earth in my mind and I don't know whether this is because I've got a neurodivergent brain and that sense of injustice, but for me, surely all people should be thinking this how on earth has that been made legal? That parents can be bullied when trying to get their child's human rights into place by people who the taxpayer is paying for? Because I don't want my taxpayers, I don't want my money going to them, it's just absolute shit.

Speaker 1: 43:26

It blows your brains eventually. I have to I have to be quite conscious at times to actually stop myself thinking about it.

Speaker 1: 43:33

I'm very passionate about it and passionate about it and I want, want to be able to help, but actually to protect my own mental health, I have to shut myself away from stuff and when things start to go in the media I have to step away from it. I'll read little bits and then I step away because actually I find it so traumatic to go back there. Yeah, I want to be the person that fights the good fight, but a lot of the time, sometimes just out of self preservation and my family's preservation, I can't do it and I do feel.

Speaker 2: 44:00

I do feel, um, that there are people who can do it and do do it. So you know, just yesterday I was reading something again I was at special needs jungle who have written this open letter to the guardian yeah, but this open letter in the guardian looking for signatures brilliant, like I will share that, I will support that. And there are people that can deal with what I call the powers that be or the men in suits and policies that I do not. That's not where my skill set sits, yeah, but I know that there's people within the community who do have that skill set, that and can do that work. So I feel safe that actually we all have our place in the community. We all have a there's, there's a there's space for everybody and we all fit into different pockets. We're all linked but we're all sitting in different pockets. We all have our different specialisms.

Speaker 2: 44:55

And that's when I can't like you, when I'm just like that, I can't deal with that. I don't feel like I've got anything that I can do with that bigger fight. But I know it's going on and I'll support what's going on and I'll share what's going on. And I have to do that really because, like you said, like we have to keep ourselves emotionally and mentally safe, otherwise we couldn't be doing the other bits of work that we do. Yeah, absolutely, and I did used to really struggle with that. I must say it was, you know, in in my clinical supervision. I'd be like I'm not doing enough, I need to be doing more. You know I've got all these emails coming from families and I can't help everybody and you know we need things to change.

Speaker 1: 45:41

But yeah, like we find our niche though, don't we? We find out, like you say, you're stressed or whatever it is, and then for me, I knew I had to move more away from working with the kids direct. It was too close to home. Yeah, with my own son, and now I go in at a parent level to support the parents. Yeah, that I can, I can do that bit. Yeah, I've had to move away from. You know I don't do tribunal reports, I don't nothing like that anymore, because my mental health was just taking a battering from that that I couldn't recover from quick enough to be able to be a mum or just even just me actually. Yeah, yeah, and be myself and do the things that I enjoy.

Speaker 1: 46:19

So it's really difficult, it's. It's challenging that I think I'm just aware of our time, jodie, and I think I could have you back and talk again. This because the other thing as well that I would love to talk to Jodie about and I'm hoping that she might come back is we have struggled enough to get our time together with me cancelling with you to the kids and all sorts of stuff. So, but what I'd love you to be able to come back. Maybe you will come back and talk. I've talked more about, maybe, burnout and masking, because I know for me that's a real, you know, a special interest of mine and also of yours, um, and I know we could have a great conversation about that. I think, yeah, it's touched on the sides today, jodie yeah, yeah definitely.

Speaker 1: 47:02

But what I did want to do was say that obviously jodie's got some books out there. I know, as I'm very honest with all my guests and all my followers and listeners as well, I don't do much reading. Jodie being dyslexic, reading is one of my nemesis. I just like, no, don't do it. Any demand for reading, I will avoid it. But I know you have got some books out there at the moment. You've got the secret life of life of rose. You've got. Stop the world I want to get off. And your more recent one am I right?

Speaker 2: 47:26

is young, autistic and burnt out yeah, actually, the more recent one is stop the world, young autistic, oh, other way around, but only only yeah, I think. So you're making me question that now. I can't remember. No, I think it came out just before. I think it came out november, and then stop the world in january, I don't know, because stop stop the world is owned by. I mean, I obviously wrote it, but jkp have got the rights on it, whereas young autistic are burnt out. We, we self-publish, so, which actually I quite like because we've got full control over it. But, um, yeah, so they're all out there. Obviously, the two focused on autistic burnout and the secret life of rose.

Speaker 2: 48:02

God, we, we first published that in 2021, I think and the secret life of rose is about your daughter, um not specifically um, it's yeah, I mean it, it's, it's, it's written, it's co-authored by my daughter when she was 10 and me alongside, and that was sort of her choice. She was like, ok, I'll write about my experiences and then you write like an adult bit to explain it better. And I was like, well, I don't need to explain it better because your words are fine, but I will broaden it to be relatable to more people. Words are fine, but I will broaden it to be relatable to more people.

Speaker 2: 48:38

So the book is laid out that it's um Rose's voice, and then there'll be a page and then it's, it's it's my book, but it's aimed at yes, aimed at children and young people and it's really just like a nice, easy read starter guide to being autistic. Um, you know, it talks about masking, it talks about sensory differences, it talks about executive functioning. Um, talks about special interests and friendships. And, yeah, it's just, we sort of started it because when Rose was diagnosed, I went to Waterstones and was like, oh, you know, just found out that my daughter is formerly autistic. I want to buy her a book about it. And they were like, were like, oh, and there was nothing on the bookshelves and they gave me, like this list of 100 books on autism. That, like, the lady was very helpful and she went and printed all off. There was still nothing really appropriate. And then, during lockdown, when things weren't going great with, like the you know the online education type stuff that was put in place, we just sort of started our own stuff and she'd always wanted to write a book. Um, yeah, and it just sort of evolved.

Speaker 2: 49:42

It was never supposed to be even published, it was just a piece of writing to tick the english box, um, but we wrote it and I sent it to dr luke beard and, because he was my supervisor still at the time, and he's like, oh my God, this is like the child version of the book that I've just written. This is really good. I think you should. You know, can I send it to my publisher and see what they think? And I was like really. And he's like, yeah, yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 2: 50:07

And then JKP didn't want it. They were like no, so I. Then it took me a year but I finally worked out how to self-publish it and it was so successful that, like a few years later, jkp decided they did want it. And then they've, we nearly, we nearly didn't. We were a bit reluctant to release control of it, but we did agree to a revised edition. So, um, jkp have like the rights and stuff over it. Now, um, ridiculously, I still prefer the original, even though there's more stuff in the revised. With those there's extra session, extra sections, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 50:41

I just feel like there's something sometimes isn't there about the first edition that there's a rawness to it might not be perfect it's, it's exactly the thing is so much the same.

Speaker 2: 50:52

But yeah, there was. But yeah, even like the fact that they've sort of made it a bit more glossy and the page is a bit more decorative, I'm like, yeah, no, I prefer the raw, simple versions of things.

Speaker 1: 51:05

If people are interested, they can grab your books. They're out there. I know lots of people that have read them and said how amazing they are, so I know that they are good, and just listening to you talk about them as well, it's really interesting. Actually, I'm thinking about getting something for my son, as he's settling a bit more but has always struggled with that. I'm not sure I want to be autistic. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2: 51:26

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:27

And actually whether some of this might help. And he's definitely been through burnout and I know it's the young autistic and burnout that's got other kids voices in it. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 51:36

it's been co-produced with um 10 neurodivergent young people who have experienced burnout right from the age of 5 to 17. Um. So throughout the whole book, again, there's sort of like it's aimed at children and young people, so it's all sort of laid out in smaller chunks and bullet points in our adhd friendly way, um, but throughout the book, within each section, there's speech bubbles, and every single speech bubble is the exact words that the young people have shared with me. We're obviously with their permission. They knew what they were collaborating on, um, so it's which is so much more powerful than anything I could say like so much.

Speaker 2: 52:16

I think you're doing yourself a disservice in there, jody, but I get what you say we, we are like I feel immensely proud, yeah, and immensely proud of the young people that were involved in it.

Speaker 1: 52:28

Um, yeah, for us, isn't it? When we look for other parents that get it, that have been through it, it's really important that the kids get that too. Yeah, that's the kids that get it.

Speaker 2: 52:38

I know I wrote it like I was um doing a. I was up in glasgow speaking at a conference about autistic burnout, um, to about 200 professionals, like and it was really nice and like a fantastic opportunity. It's like you know, educational psychologists and teachers. I was like, brilliant, this is. These are the people I really need to know about this. And I don't know I think I don't know whether it was from chatting to somebody at the end who was also a parent as well as a professional, or I suddenly realized I'm giving all this information to professionals and that's really, really important, but actually there's so many kids on the ground that have no idea what it is. They've got no label for it. They've got no. They don't know that this is experienced by other people and actually that knowledge of that you know that label, if you want to use that word is so empowering yeah for us as adults and parents, but so empowering for young people that I was like I can't meet every single young person.

Speaker 2: 53:34

There's not enough of us to go around. All of the young people in Burnham understand their experiences, so I need to get something out there that helps them to feel less isolated and more in in control of what's going on for them. Um and I literally wrote it in Glasgow airport, I was really annoyed to have a notebook with me. It's hard to go to WA Smith and spend like a ridiculous amount of pounds on a notebook, but you should just go to like the works and spend a pound. I just, I just it just came to me. You know, when you just get that hyper focus, I almost missed my um, I just sit, yeah, satasgow airport and came home and was like right now, I need young people's voices in it brilliant yeah so we've got these books out there.

Speaker 1: 54:23

What we'll also do is put in the show notes all jodie's links and stuff. So if you want to reach out or you want to follow jodie, you can do that. I know you're on social media and stuff like that, so I'll make sure all your links are on there and I would love to have you back and come talk about burnout and masking. That'd be amazing. Focus ourselves, because I feel like today we went oh that's interesting, let's go down that route. I've got questions here. I haven't got anywhere near them, don't yeah, this is so.

Speaker 2: 54:52

This is why it's easy for me if you don't send questions beforehand, you don't send me any questions. Yeah, I was like don't send me questions, it's too heavy.

Speaker 1: 55:00

We'll just see where it takes us yeah, but thank you ever so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. It's been great chatting to you, looking forward to having you back again. Yeah, thank you ever so much for coming on thank you very much thanks.