Speaker 1: Just a note, this episode does contain explicit language.
Speaker 2: Oh would you like a glass of wine?
Speaker 1: It's a sunny Sunday afternoon and I've rocked up to
Speaker 1: a get together in East Auckland at the beautiful home
Speaker 1: of Natalia and Peter Parsons.
Speaker 2: We're just having a little bit of a mum's ketchup
Speaker 2: out here.
Speaker 1: The mums are so lovely, but it's actually their partners.
Speaker 1: I'm here to see. This is a dad's support group
Speaker 1: which Peter started for fathers of high needs kids on
Speaker 1: the autism spectrum. But the guys have gone for a
Speaker 1: walk in the nearby bush. It's what they call chicken time,
Speaker 1: where they can talk confidentially about whatever's on their mind.
Speaker 1: Peter's wife, Natalia says that for many of them, this
Speaker 1: group is a place of refuge.
Speaker 2: That's is Jordan, and you can see that they love
Speaker 2: being here and having a beer and catching up and
Speaker 2: just being noticed. And it really broke my heart to
Speaker 2: hear that some of the dads say that I have friends,
Speaker 2: that it's hard to have friends, and it's hard to
Speaker 2: have friends. Are understand being a special need parent is
Speaker 2: so hardened so many, so many ways. But there are
Speaker 2: glimps of happiness in our lives that we just have
Speaker 2: to grab and hold on to otherwise we stop living.
Speaker 2: And what's the point, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Kioda. I'm Sonia Gray and this is no such
Speaker 1: thing as normal theories too. I am diving into the
Speaker 1: complex and fascinating world of neurodiversity. I'm not an expert,
Speaker 1: but my daughter is neurodivergent and a few years ago
Speaker 1: I was diagnosed with ADHD. In the series, you'll hear
Speaker 1: from experts and from many wonderful people who experience the
Speaker 1: world in a unique way. We're looking at neurodiversity from
Speaker 1: the inside. This is the first of two episodes focusing
Speaker 1: on parenting and neurodivergent child parenting. Yes, of course it's rewarding,
Speaker 1: but it's tough, and when your child is wired differently,
Speaker 1: the tough bit gets multiplied. The challenges are layered and
Speaker 1: they are numerous. What these parents need most of all
Speaker 1: is understanding and support. In these episodes, you'll hear from
Speaker 1: a range of parents who are on this road. It's
Speaker 1: a road with no roadmap. They all agree this experience
Speaker 1: changes you profoundly. There are great unexpected rewards, but it
Speaker 1: is a PhD in parenting.
Speaker 3: I've got family, I've got close friends, We've got a village,
Speaker 3: you know, friends that are always willing to help out,
Speaker 3: but at the end of the day, they will never
Speaker 3: fully understand how tough it can be.
Speaker 1: It's Peter. He started this support group two years ago
Speaker 1: with a simple post on Facebook, and it's grown into
Speaker 1: something quite beautiful. The guys here come from vastly different
Speaker 1: backgrounds and walks of life, but they see each other.
Speaker 1: It's far though. The idea came when Peter stumbled upon
Speaker 1: similar groups online but they were based overseas.
Speaker 3: Just seeing the conversations that were being had with these
Speaker 3: dads on these other platforms, I thought, man, we need that,
Speaker 3: you know, we need a space, like a safe space
Speaker 3: for dad to be able to just to chat and
Speaker 3: talk about the struggles, you know, the small victories that
Speaker 3: to anyone else would be like, oh, that's nothing, but
Speaker 3: twice it's like, man, my boy said, it's first word.
Speaker 3: It's that sort of thing. So when I put a
Speaker 3: post up there two years ago, I was blown away
Speaker 3: by the response, like hundreds of messages, but it was
Speaker 3: mostly from the mums, the partners. The thing with Dad's
Speaker 3: is like we struggled to open up and share. You know,
Speaker 3: it's always been a battle in society for us. And
Speaker 3: all these guys, like every one of them have turned up,
Speaker 3: they've all said the same thing. It was so hard
Speaker 3: for them to come to the first visit. But then
Speaker 3: once they're here and they see you know, what we're
Speaker 3: doing and what we're sharing, what we're talking about, They're like, man,
Speaker 3: these guys are all on the same journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. It's so hard to find people that understand
Speaker 1: because unless you're living it, you can't quite comprehend. It's
Speaker 1: not just the day to day stuff. It's the worrying
Speaker 1: about the future, it's grief, It's all these things so true.
Speaker 4: That's so true.
Speaker 1: Peter's son, Jordan, is eleven. He's a sweet and gentle kid.
Speaker 1: Jordan is autistic with global developmental delay, and he's nonverbal.
Speaker 1: My daughter's challenges are very, very different, and I can't
Speaker 1: even pretend to compare them to this situation. But Peter
Speaker 1: and I both understand the grieving process and the pain
Speaker 1: of knowing your kid will struggle in the world, and
Speaker 1: we talk about the initial denial.
Speaker 3: The first few years were probably harder and seeing people say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I wouldn't change my boy. You know, he's
Speaker 3: find the way he is and I'm like, hell no,
Speaker 3: this is how can you be happy with the fact
Speaker 3: that your child is non viable? But like you said,
Speaker 3: as the years have gone by and Jordan's grown up,
Speaker 3: and it's like, man, he is an amazing kid.
Speaker 4: You know, he's got a harder goal.
Speaker 3: He's taught me so much around empathy and because of him,
Speaker 3: you know, I've got to meet all these great guys
Speaker 3: and you know, just created this whole new community, you know,
Speaker 3: whereas if we weren't going down this road, you know,
Speaker 3: we wouldn't be doing any of this. You know, we
Speaker 3: wouldn't be meeting all these families and trying to help
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's hard and it's humbling, but it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of real ay, and you know there will be
Speaker 1: many other people getting together on a Sunday afternoon around
Speaker 1: the country. But when you come to somewhere like this,
Speaker 1: it's like you can't pretend everything sweet, you know, so
Speaker 1: this dad goes straight away, all the pretense goes, which
Speaker 1: is I think beautiful.
Speaker 3: It is it absolutely is It absolutely is like like
Speaker 3: we went for our walk and we had a little
Speaker 3: catch up. You know, the dads were just sharing the
Speaker 3: battles you go through and always straight into it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: There was no surface talk or you know, just dad's
Speaker 3: being vulnerable, being honest, just you know, sharing each other. Well,
Speaker 3: this is what I did. You know, when my son
Speaker 3: is going through their struggles and it's great to hear
Speaker 3: the encouragement as well. It gives them hope.
Speaker 5: When my son was first diagnosed, we had no idea
Speaker 5: what autism wants.
Speaker 1: That's Mac Ponneu, another dad in this group. His five
Speaker 1: year old son Matthias, is autistic.
Speaker 5: So it was a lot to deal with at the time.
Speaker 5: Like we were told that if we don't get a diagnose,
Speaker 5: we won't get any supports, Like that's the doorway to
Speaker 5: getting you know, supports around him. I said to my wife, well,
Speaker 5: what do we do now. You know, when you become
Speaker 5: a first time parent, you have all these ideas. I
Speaker 5: want to play basketball with him, I want to throw
Speaker 5: the ball with him. You make up all these plans
Speaker 5: in your head and then you get thrown in the deep.
Speaker 5: All those dreams just gone out the window. It feel
Speaker 5: like you have to start all over again. I needed
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks just to circ all that and
Speaker 5: just to take everything in. And after that two weeks,
Speaker 5: I had to step back from a lot of things
Speaker 5: I was doing for work to focus on my boy.
Speaker 5: And I knew that that will be the best way
Speaker 5: forward for us. And when we couldn't get any answers
Speaker 5: or not even a response from the ministry, and couldn't
Speaker 5: get any of those supports, we had to go and
Speaker 5: create those opportunities ourselves.
Speaker 6: It's definitely come up families sharing with me a lack
Speaker 6: of trust in the system.
Speaker 1: Willow Sainsbury is an educational psychologist. I got in touch
Speaker 1: with her after reading a research paper she'd done on
Speaker 1: the experiences of parents with autistic or ADHD kids. But
Speaker 1: she tells me this was a second study. It came
Speaker 1: about almost by accident.
Speaker 6: So I started looking at cooccurrence and my first research
Speaker 6: project was very quantitative, so very mathematical. I was looking
Speaker 6: at exactly age diagnosis and how much later it was.
Speaker 6: But at the end of that very quantitative, mathematical study,
Speaker 6: I asked three questions and I never expected to get
Speaker 6: the response that I did. And my three questions were,
Speaker 6: what was helpful about the diagnosis process, what was unhelpful
Speaker 6: about the diagnosis process? And what would you like researchers
Speaker 6: to know?
Speaker 2: Good questions?
Speaker 1: Thank you? What were the answers?
Speaker 6: Well, the answers were pages and pages of writing, and
Speaker 6: they were the last questions in my survey. And I
Speaker 6: don't know if you've ever had to do one of
Speaker 6: these surveys, but sometimes you can get really tired by
Speaker 6: the end and you just want to get it done.
Speaker 6: So I was really impressed and heartened and also humbled
Speaker 6: by how much parents had taken the time to write.
Speaker 6: And because of that, I thought, right, this has to
Speaker 6: be published as well, have to get these voices of
Speaker 6: these parents out as well. So strange enough, it was
Speaker 6: almost an incidental study. I had ethics approval to us
Speaker 6: these questions, but I wasn't necessarily expecting an entire research
Speaker 6: paper to come from these three questions. But it was
Speaker 6: because of what parents had taken the time to write.
Speaker 6: Well for starters, the question that what was helpful actually
Speaker 6: strange enough, many parents had written nothing at all. But then,
Speaker 6: of course what they said was unhelpful was heartbreaking. I
Speaker 6: must submit that I would occasionally break to go have
Speaker 6: a glass of wine and approach it the next day,
Speaker 6: because some of them did bring me to tears pages
Speaker 6: that they had written about the journeys that they had
Speaker 6: been on with their child and just the and the
Speaker 6: wait times and how heartbreaking their journeys had been, and
Speaker 6: how long the journeys had been, and also there wasn't
Speaker 6: a lot of resolution that now things were all good.
Speaker 6: Number of parents are just started with swear words as well,
Speaker 6: the system is can we surround this podcast, you can
Speaker 6: swear that the system is fucked, the system is broken,
Speaker 6: the system is shit. So and then would start to
Speaker 6: explain why I did occasionally get some of them writing
Speaker 6: their stories and there was a natural resolution and that
Speaker 6: they'd said that they're now their child is thriving, but
Speaker 6: a lot of them said, and my child continues to
Speaker 6: suffer in the system.
Speaker 1: Mac member of the Dad's Autism group, agrees that the
Speaker 1: supports just aren't there.
Speaker 5: You go to get a diagnosis and then you basically
Speaker 5: just get dumb in the system. You go out and
Speaker 5: find things out yourself.
Speaker 1: And other parents apparent resources.
Speaker 5: Exactly, you shouldn't you shouldn't feel like that you shouldn't
Speaker 5: have to rely on other parents to get more information.
Speaker 5: This is why a lot of parents fall through the
Speaker 5: cracks because the lack of support and lack of understanding,
Speaker 5: and just lack of people having the empathy and also
Speaker 5: the time to actually fully understand. So most families go
Speaker 5: through diagnosis and ins like that's all we could do
Speaker 5: for now, and then when we ask for services, you
Speaker 5: have to make more appointments, which is quite overwhelming for
Speaker 5: families just to go and do one appointment to get
Speaker 5: to the appointment, yeah, just to.
Speaker 1: Get there, and then you have such high hopes with
Speaker 1: each appointment. This is the thing, and then they just
Speaker 1: dismiss you, or they're not listening to you, or they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's see how it goes.
Speaker 5: We got told next time, don't bring your shopping list.
Speaker 5: My wife and I wanted to understand what is out there,
Speaker 5: what is available, what do we need to do next?
Speaker 1: Don't bring your shopping list. That's heartbreaking, but it's actually
Speaker 1: the kind of thing parents here all the time.
Speaker 6: In my study I talked about the main theme was
Speaker 6: a battle theme that you that parents repeatedly used adjectives
Speaker 6: around battle, so they would repeatedly write fighting the system.
Speaker 6: It's a constant battle. No one tells you that you
Speaker 6: daily battle all the different organizations, or.
Speaker 1: You get the diagnosis finally after waiting, waiting, waiting, you're
Speaker 1: sent out and there's no next steps and you're like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be like a medical diagnosis. Now
Speaker 1: you did this and someone will call you about that.
Speaker 1: That that that that, and it's that was I think
Speaker 1: my lowest point where I went I finally got the diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I'm still alone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the second battle for support again. Parents said that
Speaker 6: they thought that after the diagnosis exactly like you've just
Speaker 6: explained on it, there would be support, and there just
Speaker 6: was nothing. It was a desert of nothing. And there
Speaker 6: is some examples in our system where we've tried to
Speaker 6: put in place. So for example, I know the autism
Speaker 6: coordinators have done a great job up and down the
Speaker 6: country after a child get an autistic diagnosis trying to
Speaker 6: then give support for the FARO. But wouldn't it be
Speaker 6: great if it was across the board and communicated with
Speaker 6: the school so that that wasn't the parents hating to
Speaker 6: come in and share the messages. And also I think
Speaker 6: that parents are exhausted and then they go in and
Speaker 6: share the messages and they see in the education system
Speaker 6: a number of old fashioned ways of thinking about these diagnoses.
Speaker 6: So then you start another battle for your child's education
Speaker 6: and for what that might look like. I think as well,
Speaker 6: to be fair to teachers, teachers are also thinking about
Speaker 6: how underresourced they are and how they're going to fight
Speaker 6: for teacher ades and more support in the classroom.
Speaker 1: There are some great practitioners and educators out there that
Speaker 1: change lives, but it's sometimes it's luck who get there's
Speaker 1: no kind of meeting that far. No where they are
Speaker 1: at is so important. Most of the dads in the
Speaker 1: autism group knew early on that their kids' lives would
Speaker 1: be different from the picture they had, but often the
Speaker 1: neurodivergence is not obvious in kids until later, and loving,
Speaker 1: well meaning parents have no idea their kid is struggling,
Speaker 1: But then the fallout can be dramatic.
Speaker 7: That decline from being okay and positive to us with
Speaker 7: a child and serious crisis was probably six weeks. You know,
Speaker 7: we went from thinking a little bit of social anxiety,
Speaker 7: we're just getting adjusted to school, to we need some
Speaker 7: really serious help.
Speaker 1: Broadcaster Francisca Radkins's daughter was thirteen when a mental health
Speaker 1: crisis turned everything upside down. That was two and a
Speaker 1: half years ago, and it was the toughest, most confusing
Speaker 1: period of the family's life.
Speaker 7: Like we were so clearly sitting in the doctor's office
Speaker 7: and the doctor going, you need some help. I would
Speaker 7: go private. Public system's going to take too long to
Speaker 7: get into. Here's the name of a couple of people,
Speaker 7: but you just need to ring around. Here's some pamphlets
Speaker 7: on anxiety and depression, and hey, look, if you're really
Speaker 7: worried about your child, you need to call the police
Speaker 7: or go to the ED. And I remember something going,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, what And I can remember walking from the
Speaker 7: from the doctor's office to the reception and going feeling numb.
Speaker 7: You know that feeling when the adrenaline hurts and you
Speaker 7: just go numb. And I was going, Okay, we've got
Speaker 7: a really big problem on my hands here. But I
Speaker 7: have no idea what to do. I have no idea
Speaker 7: where to start. I don't even know how to look
Speaker 7: after my daughter today or tomorrow. Let alone solve this.
Speaker 7: What was ahead of us.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When you see that you were given some pamphlets in
Speaker 1: the same conversation that you might have to ring the
Speaker 1: idea about your like pamphlets.
Speaker 7: And you don't know what's wrong. No, it's kind of
Speaker 7: and what you start learning, especially around neurodiversity, is it's
Speaker 7: not one there's not one thing. There's lots of connections
Speaker 7: and you know, and what I now know is that
Speaker 7: it was just going to be this really long process
Speaker 7: to kind of unravel it.
Speaker 5: All.
Speaker 1: The masking and coping were classic signs of undiagnosed ADHD.
Speaker 1: It's such a familiar story for so many girls and women.
Speaker 1: The masking hides this stress they're feeling, and it's a
Speaker 1: long time before neurodivergence is even considered. Francesca says they
Speaker 1: were lucky to be able to access private therapy before
Speaker 1: the diagnostic process. Eventually, ADHD was identified along with some
Speaker 1: other neurodivergent profiles, but the process wasn't quick.
Speaker 7: And so that took us a year. We were accepted
Speaker 7: into the public system in July of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 7: and we had our first appointment in February twenty twenty three.
Speaker 7: So that's how long you have to wait, and that's
Speaker 7: just heartbreaking. If we hadn't been able to get that
Speaker 7: private help before that, I don't know what would have happened.
Speaker 7: To be honest with you, I don't know where we'd be.
Speaker 7: We realized that our daughter had probably been struggling for
Speaker 7: a lot longer than we'd realized, but she had just
Speaker 7: been keeping on going. All of a sudden, all that coping,
Speaker 7: all that masking she had been doing her entire life
Speaker 7: no longer worked.
Speaker 1: When you sent me through. You sent me through a
Speaker 1: really comprehensive background on your daughter. WOTS was wonderful and
Speaker 1: I was actually in tears reading it, and it just
Speaker 1: reminded me a lot of my situation. The Tira, the
Speaker 1: absolute Terrra just that really steep kind of declined, but
Speaker 1: you know, it just happened so fast, and you're like
Speaker 1: they're going to fall off the end of the world.
Speaker 1: Tell me how that.
Speaker 2: Was for you that period.
Speaker 7: I felt like I was floating. I felt like I
Speaker 7: was on a cliff and I was sort of stepped
Speaker 7: out and I was just hovering. I was just hovering
Speaker 7: in the air, going okay, okay, I'm gonna or like
Speaker 7: a swan. You know, that's just sort of gracefully, you know,
Speaker 7: moving across the lake. But underneath my feet we're just paddling.
Speaker 7: I think you're in fight and flight mode twenty four seven,
Speaker 7: probably for almost two years. It's not It's not good
Speaker 7: for anyone. About a year in I was just exhausted.
Speaker 7: By that stage. Things were pretty bad at their worst, probably,
Speaker 7: and my daughter could not leave at the house, couldn't
Speaker 7: even stand in the window of our house for fear
Speaker 7: of being seen.
Speaker 1: Francisca says that, without a doubt, this was the worst
Speaker 1: period of her life. I've talked to so many mums
Speaker 1: about this, the sense that you've somehow failed as a parent,
Speaker 1: that no matter what you do, how hard you work,
Speaker 1: all the research, all the love you give, it's just
Speaker 1: not enough. I ask Peter Parsons if it's the same
Speaker 1: for the fathers in his group. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: the dads feel like they're failing because it's their job
Speaker 1: to look after their family?
Speaker 4: Definitely, because.
Speaker 1: Sorry, you take your time.
Speaker 3: He's a dad, like it's your role, Like it's ingrained
Speaker 3: in you to be a provider and a protector for
Speaker 3: your family. And when your boy is non verbal and
Speaker 3: he can't tell you what's wrong, you can't help but
Speaker 3: feel like a failure sometimes because you can't give them
Speaker 3: what they need.
Speaker 1: In the group, do the guys feel able to share
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, because that's it. Yeah, they'll all
Speaker 1: feel it, won't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like in the back of your mind,
Speaker 3: you're always worried about the future, you know, because who's
Speaker 3: going to look after your child when you're gone? And
Speaker 3: that's always and the dads have all shared that, every
Speaker 3: single one of them. That's always a worry in the
Speaker 3: back of their mind.
Speaker 1: Tell me you said Jordan's got a heart of gold.
Speaker 1: Tell me their beautiful, wonderful things about Jordan.
Speaker 4: You can be tearing up again.
Speaker 3: Gosh, he's he's the definition of a of a gentle giant.
Speaker 4: Like he's very.
Speaker 3: Tall for his age, but that could will not hurt
Speaker 3: a fly. He's very laid back, he's very you know,
Speaker 3: his teachers love him because he's just so easy to
Speaker 3: look after.
Speaker 1: What gives him joy? What what does he.
Speaker 8: Love to do?
Speaker 3: He so he loves So he's eleven, but he's still
Speaker 3: into like Frozen, like Minions and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: And he loves to go to the movies. That's his
Speaker 3: favorite thing. Really, Yea, he loves to go to the movies.
Speaker 3: So we've seen like that Despicable Me movie, that's come
Speaker 3: out like at least ten times.
Speaker 4: But it's his.
Speaker 1: Thing, you know, So he is not good enough to
Speaker 1: sit here and watch Eddie wants to go to the
Speaker 1: movie there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's going to be in the movies.
Speaker 3: So he'll grab my phone, find the Holts app and
Speaker 3: then open it up in your point to the movie
Speaker 3: and I'm like, okay, we're going to the movies again,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: So that gives us hope.
Speaker 1: What would you like society to know too?
Speaker 9: What?
Speaker 1: What would help.
Speaker 3: Hm? It's it's a tough one because at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, when you're non verbal, like you can't
Speaker 3: tell people what you want and what you need going forward.
Speaker 1: Well, even who you are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's exactly, that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: There's almost no space to go. Let's find his thing.
Speaker 3: It's a very good point, like saying, like you just
Speaker 3: get caught up, you know, that's the day to day
Speaker 3: struggle that to be honest with myself, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: he's got a speech device. He tells us what he needs, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but what does he want? How do we find a
Speaker 3: way to really get to know what Jordan wants and
Speaker 3: who he is and what he's excited about.
Speaker 4: So that's that's a very good points, such a good point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what But that's the thing. You guys
Speaker 1: are so stuck in it that you don't have the
Speaker 1: space to think that, but the rest of us could do,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like, even if I
Speaker 1: can't speak to Jordan, you know, I've just was with
Speaker 1: him before, Like I get something from that interaction. And
Speaker 1: that's I think missing from the story. A lot of
Speaker 1: the time, the narrative becomes, oh, we're just giving to
Speaker 1: the disabled all the time. I feel that a lot
Speaker 1: of these kids are invisible to society unless something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: and then then it's like control your kid or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, when my daughter used to have frequent
Speaker 1: meltdowns in public, it was the people that came and said,
Speaker 1: what can I do to help? And I just wanted
Speaker 1: to hug them and just shower them with love because
Speaker 1: you know, you're panicking in that moment, because you know,
Speaker 1: I sometimes I had my other daughter. You don't know
Speaker 1: how you're going to get out, you don't know if
Speaker 1: they're going to hurt someone. You're embarrassed. This face it
Speaker 1: the bit of humiliation in there. It's horrible. And when
Speaker 1: someone can just do something like what can I do?
Speaker 1: How can I help? Simple things like that, Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: totally totally.
Speaker 3: And that's that's what gives me hope as seeing all
Speaker 3: these different support groups, organizations and even what you guys
Speaker 3: are doing, because the more awareness we get out there,
Speaker 3: the better the chance we have of people that are
Speaker 3: there don't live our lives.
Speaker 4: We're able to see, hang on, let's not.
Speaker 3: You know, be so quick to judge and say, oh
Speaker 3: this person, well, this child is just being you know,
Speaker 3: like a brat, like it's just misbehaving. So it's the
Speaker 3: more awareness we can get out of there, the better
Speaker 3: chance we have these people saying that instead of being judgmental,
Speaker 3: we should be jumping in there and saying, like you say,
Speaker 3: how can we help.
Speaker 1: Francisca Rudkins says having a neurodivergent daughter has completely changed
Speaker 1: her jesys. Now she's more empathetic and compassionate. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: been an adjustment, a huge one, but you can see
Speaker 1: the positives.
Speaker 7: It's really hard when you look around and your child
Speaker 7: isn't living the life that everyone else's kids living, and
Speaker 7: you thought that you'd be living, But then what I've
Speaker 7: got from the experience I've had with my kid. Not
Speaker 7: doing some of that stuff is actually really awesome, you know,
Speaker 7: like there's a whole lot of benefits of being in
Speaker 7: an environment where you're not doing a whole lot of
Speaker 7: stuff that you don't really want to do. It's just
Speaker 7: because you have to do it and everyone's doing it,
Speaker 7: and that's the way school works, and that's the way
Speaker 7: social world works and things like that. So the thing
Speaker 7: that a lot of people tell you first up, just
Speaker 7: love your child. And it's a lovely thing to say,
Speaker 7: but I didn't understand it at the time. It made
Speaker 7: no sense to me. I'm sending there, going to the doctor.
Speaker 7: I'm here because I love her. I'm urgently trying to
Speaker 7: get her help because I love her. Loving her is
Speaker 7: not that's not practical, that's not helpful to me. Now,
Speaker 7: that's not telling me how to deal with a kid
Speaker 7: who is you can't get out of bed in the morning.
Speaker 7: I don't understand. And what I worked out about six
Speaker 7: months later was that whole idea that the love's going
Speaker 7: to mean something a bit different. Now, It's going to
Speaker 7: mean that you're going to accept and that you're going
Speaker 7: to learn and You're going to adjust that, You're going
Speaker 7: to listen to your child, that you're going to be
Speaker 7: there for them. You're not going to try and solve
Speaker 7: every problem. You're not going to tell them how to
Speaker 7: get better, on what to do. You're actually going to
Speaker 7: accept that on a daily basis, your kid is trying
Speaker 7: to do the best they can. Might not look like it,
Speaker 7: but they are, and you're the one that's going to
Speaker 7: tell them, well done, It's all okay. They just need
Speaker 7: to know that there's one person there not judging them,
Speaker 7: not telling them what to do. And it took me
Speaker 7: a long time to learn this doesn't matter. Still love you.
Speaker 1: Staying on your kid's team, that is crucial. You'll hear
Speaker 1: more from Francesca Radken in next week's episode. She has
Speaker 1: a wonderful insight and I am keen to share it
Speaker 1: for now. I leave the last word to the Dad's
Speaker 1: Autism group.
Speaker 5: Most of the time, we're so caught up in our
Speaker 5: lice at home and providing that supports around our kids.
Speaker 5: That's why it's so important to me to be here
Speaker 5: and to be myself.
Speaker 10: But you come, if you revitalize, you're good for another
Speaker 10: few weeks and then you start going downhill, and then
Speaker 10: you evenother catch up and then you keep on going.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 10: If I have a bad night, I can message a
Speaker 10: group in the morning and you'll be someone replying back saying, hey,
Speaker 10: been through it before.
Speaker 9: I hope that I can share something with one of
Speaker 9: the dads, because the dads man, they man the amount
Speaker 9: of information and things that I've learned, but also what
Speaker 9: they shared is.
Speaker 4: Like, man, who am I you complain?
Speaker 3: I'm just grateful to be in a possession where you know,
Speaker 3: we can provide a safe space for these dads to
Speaker 3: you know, to come and share. Like every single catchup
Speaker 3: we've had, we've had new dads turn up, you know,
Speaker 3: and the stuff they share about, you know, some of
Speaker 3: it's really wrong. It's tough times. And when they say that,
Speaker 3: you know, they've never been able to offload like that before.
Speaker 3: Just it just makes it so worthwhile. Times like that,
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, dads can see that we can
Speaker 3: still be parents that have great friendships and have a laugh,
Speaker 3: have a beer, and you know.
Speaker 4: Just enjoy life.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, and in a deeper way,
Speaker 1: I reckon in a realer way. Absolutely, next time on
Speaker 1: No Such Thing as Normal? Why News at six presenter
Speaker 1: Melissa Stokes.
Speaker 8: They don't understand that this is just our reality. It's
Speaker 8: not our parenting. I can do a whole lot of
Speaker 8: things that you've done with your kids, but it just
Speaker 8: will not work with mine.
Speaker 1: If you like this podcast, please rate and review it.
Speaker 1: It helps people find it. No Such Thing as Normal
Speaker 1: as produced and presented by me Sonia Gray. Nathan King
Speaker 1: is the editor. Aren O'Connor and Mitchell Hawkes are executive producers.
Speaker 1: Production assistant is Beck's War. The series is brought to
Speaker 1: you by the New Zealand Herald and Team Uniform and
Speaker 1: it's made with the support of New Zealand on Air.
Speaker 1: New episodes of No Such Thing As Normal are available
Speaker 1: every Saturday wherever you get your podcasts.