Neurodiversity is a super power not a problem | Elaine Halligan | TEDxBonnSquare

[Music] parenting it's a topic that connects us all whether we are parents or not all of you here are someone's children all of you here will have some thoughts some beliefs about family life and for me I am mum to two wonderful now adult children and I can honestly say it's probably the biggest role I'll ever play in my life being a parent and as a parenting coach I'm a bit nervous admitting this but I have a huge confession to make and that confession is I haven't always enjoyed my time as being a mum I have to be really honest with you in the early days I found it exhausting the wildering messy complicated I frequently got things wrong I made so many mistakes and I kind of didn't recognize myself when my children just didn't listen to me and I ended up screaming like a banshee when they just wouldn't follow my instructions and I don't know if your parents there whether you recognise how frustrating it is when your children don't listen to you and this is a picture of my son Sam as a baby and 23 years ago when I held him in my arms I never ever imagined that one day I would be shouting at his beautiful little face but somehow I just didn't recognize myself and I turned into a screaming Banshee so I invite you to be really honest with me and I'd love you to put your hands up if as a child your parents ever did this to you did they ever nag you yeah at repeats instructions over and over again yeah remind you to get the homework done tell you off for having the floor drove on your bedroom floor yeah I did all of these things and I cajoled did your parents ever bribe you threaten and perhaps even punish I did all of these things I just didn't know how to get the best out of my children I didn't understand their needs I didn't understand my sons to implement I think once I even threatened to cancel Christmas I know that was harsh I was gonna ban my children from the internet forever and I think once I just wanted to ground my son till he was 24 I found it really really exhausting and I didn't understand my son's inborn temperament and it took us a long time to work out that he was very sensitive extremely impulsive which means there was no self-control button an incredibly intense in his emotions and and very very quickly he became labeled as the naughty one and it started early at nursery school I would be met at the nursery gates and it would always be mrs. Halligan we have not had a good day an age three and a half my son would be given a report card of he's not listening he can't sit still he's aggressive with the other children and so very very quickly he was almost written off and labeled as the naughty one it was an emotional roller coaster ride with many and what I call low parenting moments and I call those my ell PMS and I've had lots of them and one particular LPM I'd love to share with you as many years ago and I remember this incident as if it was yesterday and this LPM was on a London train on a cold dark winters night and Sam and I were rushing and from our timeout behavioral centre rushing home and we boarded this train and it was incredibly busy and it was deeply unpleasant very crowded but we were lucky enough to grab a couple of seats and as we sat down I could see that all the ingredients there were for a perfect storm Sam was cold and he was hungry he was tired and everyone around on the train was just desperate to get home everyone more tetchy than the other just wanting to get home and Sam suddenly in the seat starts kicking he starts kicking his leg and I say to Sam stop it and yet there's a lady standing there and he's kicking his leg against her stop it Sam don't do that III asked him several times and he continued to do it and it looked for all intents and purposes that I was completely out of control which I was and that my son was dysfunctional I pleaded with him i nagged him III bribed him I threatened him I said stop doing that to this lady and quite naturally the lady standing there was getting more and more upset her Tut's and her half's and she was visibly upset and suddenly she turns to me and she says this what your son needs is a darn good smack he needs discipline I didn't know what to do with myself I felt so embarrassed I didn't know what to do and suddenly on this packed London train whereas so much is making eye contact with another passengers frowned upon I find myself standing up and I'm making a speech to everyone and I say to them I'm dealing with a child on the autistic spectrum I I need your support not your judgment as my son is differently wired he's not being a problem he's having a problem but the last thing in the world I'm going to do is smack my child for having a problem now will someone just help me leave the carriage at the next station well you can imagine the silence was excruciating no one know knew where to look or where to put themselves and then suddenly this lovely passenger I think it must have been a father just said yeah when you leave that poor lady alone she's doing the best job she can and then suddenly the whole carriage descends into a heated argument about how should we discipline children how little we know about autistic spectrum was I doing it right or wrong and in his smacking and effective form of discipline you see everyone on that carriage was judging me and my son based on his behavior he was labeled permanently silly for locking himself in a cupboard at school for five hours I'm stupid for at one school setting the fire alarm off he was labeled naughty at another school for letting the farmyard animals out M had this romantic notion at this school where there was a lovely farmyard of animals some chickens and some hens I think there was a goat and a sheep and Sam had this idea no no no these guys should be living back on Wimbledon Common so he let them out it was you know he had it good intentions but they didn't go to Wimbledon common they migrated down to the busiest arterial road in London the a3 and so Sam aged five and a half was responsible for causing traffic chaos there is a Buddhist monk called tick net Han and he says when you plant a lettuce if the lettuce doesn't grow you don't blame the lettuce you don't shout ooh the letters say what a naughty lettuce what a stupid lettuce you look at the conditions the lettuce is in does it need more water does it need less Sun or does it need a different fertilizer but you don't shout or blame the lettuce but our Sun was permanently blamed to such an extent that by the age of seven he had been excluded from three schools in so many years and he was written off by those who should have cared for him three school expulsion z' in three years we just didn't know which way to turn and I'll never forget a friend calling me who worked at the local education Authority and she said Elaine is everything all right at home she said I've just seen Sam's name is on the list of children missing from education how had it come to this my husband and I sought professional advice and we were left with conflicting professional opinions and so many diagnoses it left Sam as the alphabet kid he was diagnosed with pathological demand avoidance oppositional defiance disorder we didn't know who to trust or believe our traditional education system here was desperately trying to take our beautiful circle and shove it into a square and it just wasn't working and every day at school was deepening the damage by making Sam more stressed and more anxious but I just sensed that actually Sam was a good person I sensed he was misunderstood I sensed he there was something there that we had to find and he was like a rock covered in mud but if we could just wipe back the mud I sense that we would find perhaps a sparkling diamond so what did we do well we didn't understand Sam we didn't understand his behavior we didn't understand his temperament so we sought help and I can honestly say that was the best thing we could have done the positive parenting support we got as a family it transformed our lives it transformed our son's life and it gave me a completely new career as a parenting coach and I haven't looked back since and when we started to realize that Sam's main issue was severe dyslexia then the magic started to happen because we started to have more empathy and more understanding with where the behavior was coming from you see all behavior is a form of communication all behavior has a cause so what did my husband and I do we started to speak to Sam differently we started to notice that the small steps of improvement he made the progress the effort the attitude as opposed to the end result and his self-esteem grew we started to listen and validate all those feelings of anxiety frustration anger and and we gave him other ways to deal with his emotions in other words we made him a more emotionally intelligent and we also gave him chores to do in the house we started to build up his independence and self-reliance to enable him to become a young man who could really think and act for himself you see when your sense of self-esteem is strong only then can you start working with your strengths and accept those weaknesses without it lowering yourself worth so Sam became a young man who really thrived with his creativity his problem-solving strengths his resilience because of course he'd failed so much in his life and the proudest day for us as parents / Toni and I was when Sam finished his formal education as head boy that's him standing there in bright yellow trousers I have to ask you gentlemen how many of you would wear bright yellow trousers but here was a young man truly comfortable and in his own skin he left school went into the workplace and suddenly with his skills or problem-solving and creativity he became an adventurer and he did something truly mad called the Mongol Rally in 2015 he drove from London to Mongolia as you do 18,000 kilometers across Europe at the Caspian Sea through deserts and all in a 1.2 liter Skoda car my anxiety levels went through the roof and when he came back I knew life was never going to be the same again and the following year he did another what I call death-defying adventure this time something called the rickshaw run I don't know whether you've heard of it it's mad you have to be mad to do it and you drive the equivalent of an 8 horsepower lawnmower from North India all the way down to Kochi and Kerala and you do it in a tuk-tuk the only difference this time is that little trip took at the ends the orange one with the New Zealand and the Scottish flag and held also his sister Izzy Sam sister Izzy and also me that little face in the back was me and I can honestly tell you my hip flexors have not recovered since it's not easy pushing yourself into a rickshaw like another well-known dyslexic Sam today is an entrepreneur and he is in his most joyful zone working to his strengths he's at his happiest when he is working on his classic car business buying and selling Range Rovers and Land Rovers so what's the moral of this story well if you are sitting as a parent with a difficult child let me tell you there is always hope in the face of adversity and if you perhaps have a child who's different or neuro-diverse biology is not destiny but first we need to stop this blame game and the next time you see a parent really struggling with a child just stop press a pause button reframe and think just perhaps this child is not being a problem but maybe they are having a problem why because all behavior is a form of communication thank you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 38,305

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Children, Men, Mental health, Self improvement, Self-help, Youth

Id: ybaXjnA8iwk

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019