Reimagining Parenting In A Neurodiverse World | Allison Burgess | TEDxSanRafaelWomen

I had my three kids starting about 18 years ago. Now I like to call myself a recovering type A personality, but I remember thinking back then when I was pregnant with my first that I'd be able to handle parenting like a champ. I did all the work. I read all the parenting books, all the magazine articles, and figured I'd apply the same strategies to each kid. I felt totally prepared. I'm a licensed therapist working with kids and families, so who better to raise perfect, happy kids, right? Well, shocker, things didn't end up quite the way I thought they would. And a couple of my kids were struggling with things that I didn't anticipate. Things like intense shyness, anxiety, trouble sleeping, being super picky about what they would eat or the clothes they would wear. Changes in schedule that seemed like no big deal to me would make them cry or fight with me or just shut down. I did not understand their reactions and watching them struggle and not being able to help made me feel like a bad parent that I must be doing something wrong. And so I pushed harder. First, I pushed myself harder, and then I pushed my kids harder because I thought that was the right thing to do. It was my job to teach them how to behave responsibly, to show respect, and to follow instructions, right? But we kept having miscommunications, sometimes fight. Sometimes they just said I didn't understand. All my education and training up to that point hit a wall. Traditional parenting advice just wasn't cutting it. We weren't connected, and we weren't the only ones. I was seeing more and more teens and families in my practice struggling with the same kinds of things. Parents would call me and say things like, my son and my husband fight all the time. They get into these power struggles and my son just digs his heels in and they yell at each other and we're all just walking on eggshells over here. Or I might get a call that says, my daughter's anxious all the time and then lately she started having these freak outs. Like we'll try to help her with homework or something and she just starts screaming that we don't get it and we're not helping. We don't know what to do anymore. Here's the thing. When I interview the kids, they tell me they feel disconnected from their parents too. They feel misunderstood or in trouble all the time. They wanna be in control of their emotions, but sometimes they can't. They tell me they feel ashamed when they lose control and then they say they get in trouble on top of it. Think about the last time that you lost control of your emotions. Maybe you had an outburst or maybe you pulled back and became silent. Can you imagine getting in trouble on top of that? How that might feel? These kids feel constantly misjudged. In order to cope, they either lash out. They start fighting or yelling or they withdraw. They isolate, stay in their rooms, don't talk to anybody. Often by the time they end up in my office, the compound effect of feeling misjudged, misunderstood, and not knowing how to manage their emotions leads to anxiety, self-esteem issues, social anxiety, self-doubt, depression. Sometimes they're even thinking about suicide. These kids all say the same thing to me. My parents don't get me. They don't know me at all. So these kids aren't feeling understood even when we as parents are trying to understand them. What's going on here? Why aren't the traditional parenting methods working? Why doesn't all the typical advice in the books, in the magazine articles, in the videos, why didn't those work? I tapped back into my type A skills and poured myself into researching, taking new trainings, studying cognitive development, and countless hours of trial and error, just working on methods to reconnect with my kids and helping others be the same. Here's what I found. The common thread in all these stories of all these families struggling to connect is that most of these kids are neurodiverse. That's just a term that means differently wired brain. I'm sure you know someone with ADHD or OCD or someone with a learning difference like dyslexia or autism or someone being on the spectrum. These are all people with neurodiverse brains. They think a little differently. They process information a little differently and respond to their environment a little differently. Differences don't have to be scary. While it is true that some neurodiverse people need a lot of support, others are able to tap into some amazing gifts. Teen activist Greta Thunberg calls for autism diagnosis her superpower because it gives her intense focus and passion about climate change. Michael Jordan, basketball legend, has ADHD. That allows him to hyper-focus, take risks, and drive under pressure. And Michael Phelps, winner of 23 Olympic gold medals in swimming, was diagnosed with ADHD when he was nine. He couldn't get through class without visiting, but he could swim for hours after school. According to the CDC, in the United States, one in every 189 girls and one in every 42 boys is neurodiverse. That's over a million kids. This is a lot of people. And trust me, neurodiverse people come through my office every day. Maybe they have diagnoses and maybe they don't, but I'm seeing more and more kids and teens struggling with some kind of anxiety. Maybe they come in with some traits of ADHD, like following through on things or having trouble with concentration, but they also have a million great ideas. Or maybe they come in with some traits of OCD, like needing their things to be organized a certain way so that they feel comfortable, but they always finish their projects and homework on time. Some people come in with traits of being on the spectrum. That can look like stubbornness, black and white thinking, having a super specialized interest in something, but they can also be the greatest innovator. The tricky thing is when they come in my office, most of these kids haven't found their hidden gifts and feel like something's wrong with them. That leads to anxiety and feeling misunderstood. And their parents are trying to help, but more often than not, making it worse. Outdated parenting styles are hurting our kids and hurting our family. I worked with a teen I'll call Jake. Jake is a great kid. He's super smart. He can fix anything in the house, but he can be challenging. His mom says that he's completely different from his older brother, Max, who's really easygoing. She said all the parenting things that she does with Max just don't work with Jake. For example, she drives carpool, and every morning they have the same problem. Jake, carpool time, come on downstairs. And Jake won't come downstairs. So she tries again. Jake, come on, what are you doing? We're gonna be late. Well, Jake is always dealing with his son. He likes to stretch them out in a certain way, like the steam bothered him or something, but he liked them to fit a certain way and be on in a certain way. And then if he put his shoe on and it didn't feel quite right, he'd have to start all over. Every day, it took him forever. And he made her late. And he made his brother late. And he made his carpool group late. And every day it was super stressful on all of them. Some days he would drag himself out to the car, maybe without his shoes on, but they would both start the day just feeling mad at each other. She said, look, he's 14. It's my job to make sure he becomes a self-sufficient adult. Self-sufficient adults don't have trouble putting on their stock. Self-sufficient adults are respectful of other people's time. She said that coddling or indulging him wouldn't help him when he gets up to the real world. She said, look, if I give him another 20 minutes to do his stock or I come back and pick him up later, it's just gonna perpetuate the behavior because I'm letting him get away with it. They said, you're not letting him get away with it. He's not trying to get away with something. He can't help it. His brain is wired this way. It's like if I said to my kid, I need you to swim across to that island over there. And she doesn't know how to swim. And she says, no, I'm not, I can't do that. And I said, no, it's fine, just get in the water and go. Everybody knows how to swim at your age. Versus if I just said, oh, that's right, I forgot you can't swim. Come on and get in my boat. Is that coddling? Is that indulging bad behavior? My kid can't swim. Thinking of all these families, it's crucial to consider that maybe the kid that's not getting with the program or the one causing all the frustration, maybe that kid has a differently wired brain and responds to stress differently than you or I do. Maybe he feels more anxiety than you or I do and in different ways. Think about Jake. That poor kid is stressed. He doesn't want his stock to be messed up. He's not trying to make his mom mad. He doesn't like making his brother and the carpool group late. He's trying to get his thoughts on his feet in a way that he can tolerate. And the more he tries and the faster he tries to do it, the worse it gets. And with mom yelling, and the brother yelling, everybody honking in the car, there's no way he's gonna calm down. When parents see their kids through a typical lens and they have a kid with a differently wired brain, misunderstandings happen. Unrealistic expectations happen. Fighting happens. Disconnection happens. For Jake, what was helpful was having his mom understand a little bit more about how his brain works. That getting his thoughts on his feet in a way that felt good was important to him from a sensory standpoint. And the way she could help was to validate him and manage her own frustration. She still didn't get why it was such a big deal, but now she understands it's a legitimately big deal for him. And so she can relate to him differently and preserve their connection. So when my kids were young, we always used to run into problems whenever I'd have to change the plans. Let's say I told them that we were gonna go to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and the day would go on and inevitably something would change. And I knew that we'd need to go to the pizza place, let's say, and I'd have to tell the kids and I would just brace myself for a protest or a million questions or a flat out refusal. And I would think, oh my God, why can we not just go to the restaurant like regular families? Like, why is it always such a production? Well, if you know your kid has a neurodiverse brain, like ADHD or if they're on the spectrum or something, you'll know that sudden changes are hard for them. They might've spent the whole day thinking about that Mexican restaurant. They know exactly what they're gonna order. They know exactly where they're gonna sit. There's no fear of the unknown there. Most of us don't need to rethink the whole plan just because the restaurant changed. But someone with a different brain may think, well, wait a minute, I don't know what they serve at the pizza place. Like, I don't know if I'm gonna like it and how long is it gonna take to get there, right? Things you or I may not even consider. But they need to ask the question. They're trying to manage their anxiety. I could choose to say, oh my God, stop with the questions. You're being such a pain. Get in the car, I've made a decision. Or I could say instead, you know what, that's right. I kind of sprang that on you, didn't I? Okay, what questions do you have about the pizza place? You'd be amazed at how you can resolve some of their intense anxiety because you get them. They're not ashamed. They might still be upset, but they feel understood. And when they're connected with you, they're much more likely to calm down faster and more importantly, feel good about themselves. If you notice that you are constantly locking horns with someone and nothing's working, consider the idea that their brain might work a little differently than yours. My kids aren't trying to be challenging or defiant. They're not intentionally trying to push all my buttons. They're not trying to make me mad or even trying to be disrespectful. They're trying to manage their anxiety while I'm trying to manage my anxiety about their anxiety. It's no wonder everyone feels misunderstood. And up until now, parenting styles haven't caught up with neurodiversity. I'm not a bad parent because I struggled with my kids when they were young. I didn't know their brains worked differently. There wasn't any parenting stuff back then to help me. But now that I know, I can appreciate their differences, which helps each parent better and helps us stay connected. Listen, we don't know what we don't know. It doesn't make you or me or anyone you know a bad parent. It's time that we talk about parenting in a new way, one that accepts differences because the old way is hurting our kids and our relationship. It's time we recognize and appreciate people for who they are, not for who we expect them to be. When we can start noticing differences and changing the way that we relate to others, our kids, our family, our friends, our colleagues, the more meaningful our relationship. And the better chance there is, the less fighting and deeper connection. At the end of the day, no matter how our brains are wired, we all just want to feel understood. Thank you.