INTRO
hello hello and welcome to the autism 360 podcast the 360 method a podcast where we talk about everything autism 360. each week we’re going to be catching you up with what’s going on in the program chatting with different team members and talking about all things mindset as well as exploring relevant um ideas that autism parents think about i’m your host ella bailey and every week i’m luckily enough to be joined by our mindset coach extraordinaire renee tate hello renee hello hi um and we are here to welcome you our lovely listeners welcome welcome thank you for being here um before we get started i want to um encourage you to reach out to us we really um want to hear from you want to have your um questions to answer here on the podcast and hear your feedback so please do drop us a line at hello autism360.com we would really love to hear from you some of our awesome listeners have already reached out asked us some questions um you know give us some thought-provoking comments to be able to address on the podcast and that um makes things super um relevant to everything that’s going on with our community so please do get in touch um i’d like to acknowledge the gadgle people of the eora nation on whose land uh we live and work and from where this podcast is being broadcast today and give uh respect to their elders past present and emerging um in addition this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice if you’re worried about yourself or about your child please do reach out to a mental or allied health professional
Topic of the day: Not Coping- Understanding your Child’s capacity
so today what are we chatting about renee so today we’re talking about capacity and how to manage our capacity or how to help our children not just ourselves but our beautiful children and how to help them through that so uh ella i feel like this is one that you would have a lot of experience in and um probably something that you do get asked about a lot yeah it absolutely is and i think um there can be a real disconnect between um what is a parent’s neurotypical understanding of capacity and what a child should be able to cope with and what our kiddos on the spectrum or neurodiverse children can understand i’ll just briefly define those terms that i’m going to be using um to uh to explain what we’re talking about today
Defining a Neurotupical experience
so a neurotypical experiences is what um we might term a normal experience or what you know would used to have been called a normal experience it’s an experience that’s kind of a typical way that somebody would engage with the world you know a mainstream uh experience of the world and any neurodiverse experience um is any is any experience really that differs from that norm in some way so it could be somebody who’s experiencing um well autism it’s some it could be somebody who has adhd it could be somebody who has a sensory processing disorder it’s just a catch-all term to refer to somebody whose experience of the world is in some way atypical so um that’s how i’m going to be using it so i guess there’s a fundamental disconnect between a neurotypical’s parent neurotypical parents expectation of what a child can cope with and what might be the actual day-to-day capacity of our children’s uh of our neurodiverse children’s um expectations so i think that that’s a lot of what’s underpinning some of the disconnect between um parents and children and not understanding why our children can’t cope with for example and this is something i hear a lot you might hear this too renee but at my at their age i could do that or at their age i i was whatever it might be you know at their age i could x y and z and not understanding why their child can’t have the same experience that they might have had so there’s a really popular um and kind of well versed well past um past um uh
Spoon Theory
kind of metaphor or theory that we can use um to explain what we mean when we say capacity and that is called spoon theory so you might have heard this um used in kind of um disability literature or disability research and the idea is that every day we wake up assuming you know the quality of our rest has been good we wake up with a full jar of spoons you know and some maybe some people um naturally wake up with less spoons in their jar some people wake up with more um and that those spoons um are standing for that person’s energy reserves for the day and so energy looks like not just physical energy but emotional and cognitive energy as well and each spoon represents you know the certain amount of energy that a task takes so for example in the morning i might be a really non-morning person so i wake up with a full jar of spoons but it takes me four spoons of expended energy just to kind of get out the door but renee as i suspect may be the case is a delightful full of energy presents in the morning and it only takes her one spoon to bounce out of bed and embrace the day am i writing thinking yes i i think i’m guilty of that one i knew it yes i i but i always sort of think well you know
Renea thought in spoon theory
just say i am a morning person i think that doesn’t help and you know maybe that would then reduce my spoon usage in the morning there you go content mindset exactly so that’s what it might look like to expend spoons um and so we can extend this metaphor to understanding okay well what um is our child’s doing during the day that’s taking up their spoons that is expending all these little chunks of energy and that means that at a certain time of the day at a certain point in the day or whatever somebody’s placing a demand on them in some way that they’re then not able to cope with and that’s when we see things like dysregulated behavior um you know meltdowns and that sort of thing so it really helps um in this kind of situation um to to kind of take a three-step approach but i want to check in renee does spoon theory makes sense does it you feel like it applies what are your thoughts absolutely i think it’s a really good way of looking at it and understanding that because when you start thinking about that you think yeah you know it’s like um it it makes sense that some people have run out a certain time of the day all of a sudden they can’t cope and we’re not sure why or why were they able to cope with that yesterday but not today and it’s just i think a really good metaphor for understanding um you know what happens to us and we all can relate to that on some level we all hit that point where we’ve run out of spoons at some point and we need to replenish so yeah it’s a really good explanation ella okay great i’m glad that it kind of makes sense across the board um and i think there’s um a helpful sort of three-step way that i would suggest a parent kind of engages with the idea of their child’s capacity and you know you can use the spoon theory to help you understand that and grapple with it the
STEPS USING SPOON THEORY : What does your child find easy in a day
first one is what does your child find easy or hard in their day you know as parents and especially as parents of kiddos who require extra support in some way i think a lot of us have a good understanding of the our child’s strengths our child’s areas that need growth and okay what in their day is the hard parts the easy parts the bits they need support or as described by spoon theory the parts that need you know require extra spoons to get through the parts that are replenishing their spoons etc so i would really say take a step back look at your child’s day work out okay well where are my spoony patches where they need extra support where are the parts where it’s not taking up so many spoons and work out okay well um of these activities which are the most kind of spoon um uh energy expensive ones and which ones are less so it’s just a really good idea to get the lay of the land in terms of okay well my kiddo this is just an example my kiddo really struggles with the fine motor required to do something like handwriting and i know that on tuesday mornings they do an hour and a half of handwriting and so that means that on a tuesday more of the spoons are going to be depleted by the time our kiddo gets to lunchtime than they would typically be right so we’re thinking okay well our spoon jar is far less full at this point in a day then it might be on you know another day where that particularly energy expensive activity is not going on so take a step back get a sense of the lay of the land the lay of how that your job your child’s capacity is being consumed throughout the day and kind of get a baseline of where we’re working from and it’s interesting once parents start to um critically engage with this sort of thing how they start to reflect upon their own energy consumption in this way do you notice that parents learn from what they’re doing in the program with their kids to apply it to themselves yeah absolutely and i mean for me i remember having those moments where i’d get home and go i just need a cup of tea sit down that was like my you know adding some spoons yeah so i can you know i think all parents we we all can relate to these things and i think it does definitely help make you know make it a bit clearer for what’s going on for our children i love it some some um some spoon replenishing cups of tea absolutely we love it and so um once we’ve got a sense of the lay of the land we can then figure out okay well what is our ratio of demands to deposits during the day so i’m bringing in a kind of um that metaphor of taking away spoons but then also depositing back in spoons so for example we know that say for me getting out of bed in the morning that um demands my spoons it takes them away but then say during my commute i listen to my favorite podcast i get to sit look out the window of the train look at the trees listen to my favorite podcast spoon deposits spoons back in the jar okay great so now we understand how that part of the morning has impacted my capacity to cope with the demands of the rest of the day so where is your child at what are your child’s um ratio of demands to deposits and i’ll give you a big clue on this one if your child isn’t coping with their day their demands are outstripping their deposits that’s a really easy you know you’re getting a call from school at lunchtime saying they’ve got into a fight in the playground because they can’t cope or they’re getting home from school and they’re this whirlwind of sort of hyperactive stressed energy and you just think what’s going on here it’s because they haven’t had enough energy giving capacity building experiences or activities during their day compared to what’s being demanded of them during the day and i think it’s hard for parents sometimes to grapple with the fact um or to grapple with understanding that ratio because there’s this belief that children should should um just know they should just be able to cope with x because i was able to cope with x because that’s what children cope with and i would certainly say that yes of course there are sociocultural expectations about about what people are able to do it different developmental stages but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you expect of your child if your child can’t cope your child can’t cope and you expecting them to do something different doesn’t magically build up their capacity what builds up their capacity and increases their ability to cope is doing these activities that replenish their spoons that give them energy that help them to feel like they have more to give and i think we’re all familiar with that renee’s obviously a cup of tea kind of girl i’m a walk around the block with my dog and a podcast kind of girl and i think as parents we get pretty good at knowing those things about our children about what’s going to help them to cope with getting through i don’t know maths tutoring they can get through maths tutoring if they have a little bit of zone out time with i don’t know an apple in their ipad beforehand but they can’t get through maths tutoring if we try and get them to do their homework beforehand and that’s you know just an example what do you feel is uh is applicable in that renee i i think it also helps understand why why does my child behave all day at school and then gets home and has this massive meltdown i think those things really help you go wow you know they’ve literally run out of spoons at that point and they have worked so hard um and and then you know i’ve got to that point in the afternoon where i just don’t have anything left so absolutely i think it’s looking at like you know what can i do to replenish that re like just like we would with a phone being recharged i need to plug myself back into those things that help me feel good again um so that i can be at my best and you know not only our children need to be aware of those things or we need to understand that for our children but also for ourselves because i think there’s something in that for everyone to just be aware of those things and i think if you as you said if you identify what those things are that help replenish your child um and be aware of that awareness is a big part of the solution for anything but just being aware of what those things are it’s really going to make life a lot easier um to go you know let them go and have that time to replenish and recharge and then they’re going to be so much more cooperative for the rest of the day or with whatever else is going on so i think it’s a really good um a really important one and the other thing i think is to be aware of is comparing not only to ourselves or what they should be able to do you know sure it’s a bit of a dangerous word because whenever we should ourselves we’re sort of making something wrong um so yes you know our child could deal with those things better but i think the other part is comparing to other children and thinking well why do these children they can cope with this and my child can’t and you know that comparison is something that i really it’s just so dangerous i think sometimes it’s okay to sort of gauge where should my well where will my child you know do i need to get them checked or is there something that they’re not you know dealing with but um i think just be careful about the comparisons because it steals our joy there’s a really good quote comparison is the thief of joy and i think it’s important to just understand our children help fill them up but don’t compare them too much to where other people are at because you know it’s like you don’t really know what that other child’s going through or what they’re like in other ways or what life has in store for them so just um yeah i think that’s just something to to be aware of as well around that but i love that um theory ella i think it’s a really you know helpful topic and i think the other thing to be feeding our children is what they’re doing well at like that positive reinforcement and encouragement those sort of things to me i think really help like replenish their spoon stocks like rather than oh you’re not doing that you’re not doing that what about you know you’re doing so well like this and um you’ve done a great job today managing that or just really build them up i think life can be hard enough for us um the world will knock us down in so many ways every day so i think as parents just so much positive reinforcement and encouragement um i don’t think that you can go overboard with that i think those things really
Community Question
help replenish that that supply as well yeah absolutely i love a good um gold star to give me a couple of spoons at the end of the day i think everybody does i think so and once we get that sometimes that’s all we need to really keep power on yeah that’s right absolutely um so i we’ve got an awesome question here from um sejuan in emerald so sejun says my child is so much more relaxed and happy during school holidays it seems like he just wants to stay home all the time and we would never leave the house it was up to him what should i do i hear this quite a bit you know and i think um that well i guess there’s a number of ways that i would start renee did you want to um add anything before i go on my rant go on my ted talk well look i think that i can relate to this i my um my children are a little bit the same i have to i have to say and um sometimes i think oh there’s that comparison i wasn’t allowed to just lay around when i was a child i had to be out doing things all the time um but it is a bit of a different world these days and i think that um you know i i think it’s maybe it is their time to have a bit of downtime to recharge their batteries replenish their spoons and maybe if we can look at it that way it does um help us to understand that so it yeah it certainly makes sense doesn’t it to use the holidays to replenish and so we can get through the next term and all the pressures that come with that for children um what about you ella yeah so the way that i like to think of of holidays especially when we think about school and learning is really our children’s full-time job is during the school term weekends refill our jar really nicely during school holidays we’re building a bigger jar we’re building a bigger jar by fully resting by fully allowing our child to let go of everything that they’ve been carrying around in their little bodies um all the tension everything that um they’ve been pushing themselves to engage with all term and just having a big old flop you know um and so i like to think of school holidays in those terms i totally understand sojourn that it can be frustrating you want to or you need to be out and about life continues in school holidays as much as kids might be shocked by that um and i think it can be frustrating you know we’ve got things we need to get done our kiddo’s really resistant we’re just going to the supermarket it’s not a big deal totally understand life’s got to get done um and my thought is that um in this sort of circumstance um really examine the why really examine okay well what is is pushing my kid to want it um be uh this kind of cocooned what is what is pushing my kid to want to stay home and feel this need to really kind of hibernate during the school holidays is there something going on that’s kind of chronically depleting um your child’s spoons in a way that means that by the school holidays he’s so done he’s so spent that he doesn’t even want to leave the house i think um there’s a really interesting uh and kind of something that’s really fundamental to my practice book written uh called the explosive child by dr john green and his um kind of big catch phrase is if they can they will and if a car if a child isn’t doing something it’s because they can’t you know it’s because that there’s something in them there’s something that’s holding them back from being able to engage in a way that we you know we would want to that makes them um kind of live their life to their fullest so i really want you to engage with that chat with your kiddo about why this is happening about how they’re feeling about um what’s going on at school are they feeling like um you know they want to hide away from the world engage with that don’t try and um push it away until you can really understand what’s going on for him and i would certainly say especially in these post-covert days we’ve really gotten good at making home fun you know we’ve got everything can be delivered everything can be brought to us um and we’ve we’ve made our homes these really reinforcing really um really kind of uh everything at your fingertips kind of places and i think more so than lots of other population groups our kids have really bought into that you know they sort of have all their needs met at home um why would we want to go out when there’s you know ex-wines out at home so think about um the kind of reinforcement value of leaving the house versus staying in the house see if you can set yourself up for success a little bit better in terms of placing demands um and engage with him about the why behind that behavior see if you can see what’s driving that would be my thoughts yeah and i think look i mean i had this situation with my 17 year old last week and she is very similar she she works and she’s doing year 11 and she has tutoring and so that it’s very intense the term and then you know as soon as she can um lie and relax she that’s what she seems to only want to do i did say to her i said come on let’s go for a walk and did still encourage her to get out and do some things and i think that’s the key is like encouraging them without it becoming a battle but don’t give up on saying come on let’s go and have a nice walk and i think the more that we do those things the more our you know our children start to realize that oh it is nice actually to get out and do something or do things here and there so i wouldn’t say i think it’s important to still encourage them to get out and keep active but i think yeah understanding that this it’s like when we’ve all had a holiday and a bit of down time we are fresh we are recharged and we’re so much more productive so rather than seeing it as a negative maybe it’s just changing the way that you see that um and hopefully that helps absolutely and what i’m seeing there is you um showing your daughter a new way of recharging her spoons right like she’s got this one way and you’re showing her look we can do this and this is going to build you up as well so i love that so i think that’s going to be it for this week did you have any takeaway action points for our parents today lovely renee as always just want you to have a think about what is the biggest thing you’re taking from today’s podcast and what is the the number one thing that you are going to action from that so uh it’s always important you know knowledge is wonderful but without implementing it it’s not obviously going to make the big difference for you and your family so what can you implement from that today even if it’s just one thing that you go okay i’m going to write down a list of what recharges my child or what replenishes them so we are proactive around that whatever that is i just want you to have a think about that get it happening and as i always say you know momentum builds momentum start making those small changes and sometimes it’s just those little those little one percent increases that make the big difference by the end of the year you look back and go wow you know we’ve come a long way so just um make sure you’re actioning
OUTRO
something from today absolutely so thank you again for joining us we will chat with you again next week about another topic relevant to autism parenting and until then think360. [Music] you
