Part II: Helping Neuro-Divergent Kids Thrive…and their parents, too! with Courtney Edman

In Part II, Courtney delves into the common misconceptions that keep a kid from thriving. Neuro-divergent kids often get classified as behavioral issues and struggle with the shame of “not trying hard enough”- and there’s plenty of shame and judgment thrown at parents and their parenting. In this episode, Courtney welcomes us to collaborate with our kids and to embrace a more compassionate curiosity for our kids, ourselves and the less traditional and known path. Taking the shame out of our parenting can help our kids journey. In a world leaning into diversity, let’s embrace neuro-diversity and learn more about the virtues of an exceptional brain that might just reveal some super-powers.
“...if a child is dysregulated if They're in there, as they refer to it, their downstairs brain, their lizard brain, there, you can't use logic with them. And so often, as parents, we try to use logic with our kids when they're emotionally dysregulated. And it's just not going to work. So we have to start with getting connected with them first and helping them get to a calm state because when they're in a calm state, they can then at least access their frontal lobes, they can access the executive functions that they do have. And they can think logically. So if kids are in a dysregulated state, we first just have to offer them compassion and CO-regulate, and the CO-regulation requires us to be calm. And so in order to connect, we have to be calm, we have to be patient. And we have to be forgiving in the moment and understand that this is a brain-based disability, this is a brain-based moment in which they are dysregulated. And they can't control it. And they first and foremost need someone to just care enough to say, let's just breathe, let's stay calm.”
“...they have to feel heard, we need to give them a voice to help so that we can understand where they're coming from, they can understand where we're coming from. And then we look for the win-win. And we invite their ideas for solutions. And we keep having that back-and-forth conversation with compassionate curiosity. And we meet remaining calm, which helps them remain calm, and helps them feel validated, because we're naming back to them what we hear, instead of just being directive, we're getting curious and figuring out, because when their brains work differently than ours, our solutions may not work for them. And we may not have thought of solutions that they're going to think of that actually can work as a win-win. Because their brain thinks differently than ours. And they might come up with a solution. And we need to honor and give it a chance to work and see what happens. Because magically, they might be able to actually do something that's a win-win that we hadn't thought of. That was their idea. And so that's sort of the concept.”
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