Neurodivergent Conversations | Autism, ADHD, AuDHD, PDA, Emotional Regulation, SEND parent, Meltdowns, Special Needs Parent

** Sign up to the Beautifully Wired Summit for FREE** She was 21 years old before she found out that most people do not love their job. Angela grew up in a family where her dad fell in love with cars at 12, shined shoes outside a church for a quarter a go, bought and fixed up his first car at 16, and built a life inside the thing he loved. Nobody sat her down and explained any of this. She just absorbed it. Find the thing at 12. Charge for it at 16. Build the career. So she did. First book of poetry at 7. First novel at 12. Writing other people's papers for money at 16. And then a 30-year career as a ghostwriter with more than 2,000 books behind her. It wasn't until a friend's dad's retirement party, when Angela earnestly asked him when he first knew he loved insurance, that she found out the rest of the world was not operating this way at all. What she describes, of course, is monotropic focus. And here is why I wanted to talk to her about it: going all the way down the rabbit hole builds a kind of confidence you cannot get anywhere else. Angela says she has imposter syndrome about plenty of things, but never about writing. Which is why she is so firm that a special interest is not a reward and should never be used as one. Her advice for the 10-year-old in an Oxford pub with a stack of books about German tanks was simple: fill the house with German tanks. We also talk about the harder side, which nobody warns you about. Special interests move on. Sometimes right after you have learned everything about skateboarding, or bought the expensive Yu-Gi-Oh card, or rearranged the bedroom. There is real grief in that, and Angela names it honestly. Then she takes us somewhere I found genuinely brilliant, which is autistic culture. We talk about autism almost entirely in medical language, and yet for most of human history it was simply the way certain people were. Angela has boiled it down to 10 pillars of autistic culture, and she tells a story about her grandmother, cut glass and an encyclopaedic knowledge that came from absolutely nowhere except pure, deep interest. GUEST LINKS:  Check out Angela's Substack GET THE LINKS The Unfinished Idea Website Join the Unfinished Community  Exhasuted to Empowered Follow me on socials:  INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK SPONSOR LINKS:SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow. Seeds by Orchard App - App Store Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Register for the Beautifully Wired Summit: Understanding, supporting, and celebrating ADHD and Autism in girls and women. If you started out with a clear picture of the kind of parent you'd be, and then real life quietly dismantled the whole thing, this episode is going to feel like someone finally gets it. This week I'm joined by Carrie Grant, mom of four (one of whom joined their family through adoption), an autistic mama herself, and someone who has run a support group for more than 300 SEND families for nearly 15 years. Carrie talks about the moment she “jumped ship” from the parenting she'd planned to a completely new way of doing things, and how that shift was less a few tweaks and more a total worldview change. We get into what it means to become a “professional parent” overnight, learning the acronyms, writing the endless emails, holding two worlds together, and how she and her husband David landed on different pages for a while before finding their way back to the same one. Carrie shares the reframe that stuck with me most: our kids don't rise up into our world, we grow up through theirs. She has zero interest in making her children look more neurotypical, and so much interest in who they actually are. We're also honest about the hard parts. The mornings that swallow whole hours, the days you barely recognize yourself, the loneliness of feeling like no one around you understands. Carrie's answer to all of it is community, the kind of people you can sit with and just say “this morning was hard” without explaining a single thing. She talks about holding space, being held in mind, and why other SEND parents are, in her words, the most amazing parents she's ever met. And if you're running on empty right now, her take on self-care alone is worth the listen. Spoiler: she gives you full permission to ignore the advice that doesn't fit your life. Come sit with us. It does get easier, and you are so far from alone in this. GUEST LINKS:  Grab Carrie's Book Follow Carrie GET THE LINKS The Unfinished Idea Website Join the Unfinished Community  Exhasuted to Empowered Follow me on socials:  INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK SPONSOR LINKS: SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've ever had that quiet little feeling that something with your child is just a bit different, and you couldn't quite put it into words for anyone else, this episode is going to feel like a deep exhale. This week I sat down with Karla, who taught for 15 years in mainstream schools, moved into specialist neurodiversity settings, and then walked this whole journey herself as a mum. She works with parents in that tender, confusing space before there's any label or answer, and she breaks down the five stages so many of us move through without realising it even has a shape. We talk about that first nagging feeling. The way we explain it away (it's been a busy term, it's COVID, they're just tired). The dismissal stage, where you start voicing your worries and people look at you like you're imagining it, which Karla says is hands down the hardest part. And then discovery and understanding, where you finally stop and think, no, I've sat with this long enough, I'm going to trust what I'm seeing. I also share my own GP-told-me-it-was-my-American-accent story, because yes, that was a real thing someone said to me, and we get honest about how quietly we hand our power over to the professionals in the room and start losing our own voice. The thread running through all of it is simple: you are the expert on your child. Not the playground mums, not the age group, not the assessment table full of people. You. And once you get into the SEN and EHCP side of things, where the system is stretched so thin and the urgency just isn't there, that voice matters more than ever. If you're sitting in the messy middle right now, exhausted and second-guessing yourself, Karla has a message near the end that I literally soaked in while she said it. Come sit with us for a bit. You're not doing this wrong, and you're definitely not doing it alone. GUEST LINKS:  Follow Karla here Grab the ND Parent Guide GET THE LINKS The Unfinished Idea Website Join the Unfinished Community  Exhasuted to Empowered Follow me on socials:  INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK SPONSOR LINKS: SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're hearing this, my family and I are in full wedding celebration mode, because one of my brothers is getting married. And while we are beyond excited, I know that for a lot of us a wedding invite can land with a stomach drop instead of a happy dance. In this episode I walk you through exactly how we prepare our neurodivergent kids, and my own nervous system, for big family gatherings like weddings. These days stack every tricky thing on top of each other all at once. A new place, loud sounds, bright lights, itchy clothes, unpredictable timing, and a whole lot of social demand. Once you see what your child's nervous system is up against, it gets so much easier to know that a hard moment is not your child being difficult or you failing them. Then we get practical. I share how we preview the day so it stops being a mystery, how we handle clothes and safe foods, why planning your timing and breaks in advance changes everything, and how one simple message to the host ahead of time can open up a quiet space when you need it. I also walk you through my on-the-day toolkit, what to do when a meltdown starts, and the one short sentence to keep in your back pocket for those well-meaning but not-so-helpful comments. If you've ever quietly braced yourself before a big event, this one is for you. Leaving early with a regulated child in your arms is not failure. It's a total win, and you are doing a great job, mama. GET THE LINKS The Unfinished Idea Website Join the Unfinished Community  Exhasuted to Empowered Follow me on socials:  INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK SPONSOR LINKS: SEEDS: Download the free SEEDS app and take one small step today: plant your first seed and see what God can grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SIGN UP FOR THE REGULATED HOME WORKSHOP! TOTALLY FREE WITH REPLAY. Her son signed his first word back after a full year of her signing to him. One year. At a fridge. Asking for milk. If you have ever been told "have you looked into Makaton?" and then felt your stomach drop because that sounds like one more thing to learn, this conversation is going to feel like a big exhale. I'm sitting down with Kaley, a Makaton tutor and the mum behind @sign_possible. Her son Rui was diagnosed with low muscle tone and global developmental delay at one, and autism at four. He wasn't hitting milestones, wasn't babbling, wasn't pointing. A speech and language therapist suggested Makaton as a bridge to communication when he was two, and Kaley went all in: she and her husband did the Level 1 and 2 course, then got the nanny, granddad, and both of his nursery key workers on it too. She is honest about the middle part, the year where nothing came back and she nearly gave up. She is honest about how overwhelming it felt to be handed what looked like a whole new language while everything else in life was still happening. And she is honest about the thing that made it click: she stopped trying to learn all of it and picked five signs. Rui is seven and a half now. He said his first word at five and a half. It was "me." Then "mummy." Then "yes." I'll be honest, I learned a huge amount in this one. I know a little ASL but I really didn't know much about Makaton, and Kaley breaks down what it actually is, how it's different from British Sign Language, and exactly where to start if you're sitting there thinking "okay, I think this is us." ⁠Check out her resources Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices