Solving Disconnection & Creating Connected Relationships (for Couples & Parents)

42: Parenting Kids With Special Needs with Anouk Briere-Godbout

• Jason Polk

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How do you manage kids with special needs and your relationship? 

Why is looking at your expectations of a parent an important thing to do? 

We will discuss these topics in today's episode with Anouk Briere-Godbout, as well as grieving and understanding why it's important to know where your partner may be. 

Anouk is a mentor and support for parents of "emotionally intense kids" for whom nothing in the “general parenting advice” seemed to work. 

She helps parents quit feeling like you’re failing at parenting and empowers you to feel confident in trying different things that fit your kids’ needs. 

Anouk's website, Family Moments, and link to her free Mini-Course. 

Jason:

How do you manage kids with special needs and your relationship? Why is looking at your expectations of a parent an important thing to do? We will talk about these topics in today's episode, as well as the topic of grieving and understanding why it's important to know where your partner may be in the process. Welcome. This is Healthy Relationships Signals for Parents, the podcast that saves your relationship from parenthood. My mission is to help parents have a thriving relationship and be great parents at the same time. My name is Jason A. Polk, and I've worked exclusively with couples as a therapist and coach for over nine years. On this podcast, I share my experience professionally and personally, as well as those of our amazing guests. Speaking of amazing guests, we have a Anouk, who trained as a social worker, and now is owner of Faamily Matters. She is a mentor and support for parents of emotionally intense kids for whom nothing in the general parenting advice seemed to work. She helps parents quit feeling like you're failing at parenting and empowers you to feel confident in trying different things that fits your kids needs. She supports you to trust that you know what's best for your kids and family. Without further ado, let's hear from Anouk. Can you share a little bit about your mess and how it has become your message?

Anouk:

Sure. I have teens, so I've been a mom for 15 years now. And when I was... Parenting my older two and they were little, I was, that mom was trying to do everything, like, all the things at the same time. It was not working, because perfect parents don't exist, and doing all the things is not a good idea if you want to stay sane. And so I was taking on way too much, and I have, and that's why I'm... Doing what I'm doing. I have emotionally intense kids. My two oldest now are diagnosed with neurodivergent. And my third will Most certainly be eventually. She's just too young. And my husband is not diagnosed, but I diagnosed him, so I'm, I was living in a neurodivergent house, which I'm, I do have a neurodivergency, but different than the norm, the general that we hear about, which has not lots of impact on how I work. I was not in I was not knowing any of that when I was parenting my youngest and they are two year and three months apart, which is, I would say common spacing, often people that have kids two, three years apart. But honestly, like I was completely overwhelmed. I was completely yelling all the time, not in control of anything. I was the Asking my son, like the older one, thousand and thousand times the same thing, but not following through because I didn't add the energy, or motivation, or knowledge, lots of the time to have him follow through for things. I also was working as a self employed when my daughter was born and here we are lucky we get I got around a year of my parental maternity leave which I know is much more than in the U. S., and lots of other places. And real quick, and like you're in Quebec. Yeah, I'm in Quebec, Canada. And it's, in Canada we have the longest maternity and parental leave. It's split between both. We can split like a part is just for the, for women who give birth to recover, but the other part, it can be separated between both parents, no matter who gave birth. And my son, I had taken that leave, but my daughter, I was like, I'm working from home. I can just go back really fast after that, which I did, and it was a very bad idea. I won't ever be able to know if I had a postpartum depression but I completely burned out. So I would say by the age my daughter was six months, I had the feeling I was alone at home most of it. And my husband had been with me all summer because he was on leave too. There's a specific. Leave for the other parent, which is five weeks in general. And plus his vacation, he was with me all summer, but I felt like I was alone all summer because I was completely burned out. So I was burned out for a few years, I would say, of my beginning of my parenting because I was trying to do the, do everything and I wasn't taking care of myself at all. So it took a while, and at some point I just broke and I had to change things because if I was continuing, I would not be able to continue like that. And so I started to... Really clean things up, really simplify my life. Let things go. I was at some point in, on five different board of organization or school or things like that. I let those all go. I was volunteering all the places. I was at school. I was at home with my kids full time, but I was also working. Like it was ridiculously too much. And we don't need to do all those things to, for it to be too much. Honestly, with little kids, just being home with little kids sometimes is too much. It's because it's a lot. Yes. I understand. I'm sure you do. And I also turn. I have a lot of L tissue, chronic L tissue that I discovered in those years. So I was forced to take care of myself for those reasons. I also had to miscarriage in that. process. And then secondary infertility for a few years. I was not getting pregnant at all for no reason. I finally got pregnant at the point where we thought it was never gonna happen. So there's a big age gap between my second and third for that reason. But yeah, all those things. so I slowly. Switch things up and simplify things and focused back on me. I also did my master in social work in the process, which was helpful a lot because I learned things that I honestly don't know how parents who don't have the training you or I have can do it. I find it so helpful as a parent to have those kind of trainings. So yeah, I at some point I stopped Doing too much, and I focused on doing just what was necessary and took care of myself. And I would say this is the most boring, so often said advice, but it's just true, we need to do that.

Jason:

During that time of going to social work studies. Were you starting to come out of the burnout?

Anouk:

I started to, yeah, during the process. I was not done necessarily, but it was because it was a slow process. If you read on my website, it might sound fast, but it was not fast. It's not something that happens overnight. It took time. But in the beginning of my studies in, it was, I was still, and that was part of the mess because it was a lot. Studying full time with kids and working on the side is a lot. Yeah. So it was part of the problem at the beginning. It took me time but I, at some point I just had no choice. Like when you hit the bottom, you just need to make a change.

Jason:

Yeah And what I was hearing, and please correct this, the time where you were at the bottom, so to speak, you told yourself, I'm not going to try to keep doing everything.

Anouk:

No, it was not like I, I would say I cleaned up everything. I cleaned up my house. I don't know if you know the KonMari method, but I went all in with that. Nice. Took so much stuff out of my house because I was drowning in material and things. I'm not a minimalist by any means, but I was drowning with little kids. They grow, you have so many toys, so many clothes. And being in a highly neural diverse house was the only one really. Cleaning everything. Yeah. My husband's trying, but it is still hard for him. So I would say it was hundreds of bags of stuff that I took out of my house. It's crazy when you start that process. And I did the same with everything, like with my, the people I was with at that point I got social media. I, I. closed. It was before Instagram. I closed my Facebook account. I like my Facebook account is not that old for that reason. I closed it at that point. And I stopped looking at the news. I start, stop seeing some people I add in my circle that was, were negative for me. Like it was a cleanup of every aspect of my life that I. Dialed back like volunteering. I was volunteering at five different places. I kept one and stopped the other ones and I was working but very minimally because I was Studying full time and so yeah It was really like a cleanup of everything and stop trying to do it all and be that perfect parents who was doing everything from scratch and like the, and I don't know if it's like as much of a pressure for dads in general, it's a bit less, but moms have that tendency of putting a lot of pressure on themselves to you go to a birthday and you need to do everything from scratch, bring that to thing that was like handmade or do the cake for the birthday and all the decoration yourself and things like that just And there's no reason to do that, like I, right now, like the other day I had a friend share a picture of the super pretty cake she did and she said, Oh, it was super easy and I said, my cake are easy. They're coming from the bakery. Yours are not. And those, that's the kind of thing that I would have never been able to do back then. I would have felt like a bad mom for doing that. Now I'm like, I, my mom was the one doing the cake. So that's a bad example because she was doing the cake for my kids, but any other things I was trying to do myself. And so now I just go to the bakery, buy the cake for my kid's birthday, and I don't mind, it's not important that you're not a better or bad parent because you buy a cake or you buy balloons instead of doing homemade things for birthday decoration, or if you send your kids to school with. Store bought food in a container instead of doing the lunch from scratch all the time and order a pizza five days in a row because you're just burned out. It's okay to do those things. You, it doesn't make us a bad parent, but that's what I was. I was there, I thought that was being a good mom then to the point that I was not parenting my kids. I was just trying to be the perfect mom and doing it all. So yeah.

Jason:

Yeah. And you mentioned that in your website too, I guess your process you shared, with that realization. Changing up your expectations of, and let me share a quick quote you have on your website. We don't fail in our parenting, we are failing in our expectations of parenthood. It's very different.

Anouk:

Yes, it is. That's what we think parenting should be. The perfect parent should be. But it's, and it's a lot of socially constructing. We've been taught and we see everywhere that's what a good parent is. The exact definition is different for each of us, of course, but there is that pressure on parents and the pressure is still very different for moms and for dads, socially. Depends also where you live, of course, and the family background that you have. But for example, for me, my mom was working from home. She was working, but she was at home. For example, I never had to go to camp when I was a kid during the summer, because my mom was there. She could just check us and make sure we would not hurt ourselves. And so that was something that I was expecting to do, even if... I was working full time outside of my house, which made no sense, so like sometimes we just, we need to adjust those expectations to our reality too. And having an intense kids, there's some things that I could not do that my parents were doing with me because for example, now my four year old. I cannot leave her unattended. She will just go out, she will do something that she should not be doing. She will put herself in danger. At four, I would not have been doing that. So it, it really depends on the reality we're in and kid, like the kids we have. So that's also something. But the parenting expectations socially that we have integrated in ourselves is unrealistic. We have a book here that is given to every expecting parents and it's like the Bible for expecting parents with all you'll die. Seriously, it's just not possible. It's just not doable. You need to change your expectation of what parenting should be in order to not feel like you're failing all the time.

Jason:

So you found what works for you. In terms of how you want to show up as a parent. And also, it seems that you found, in a way, your own practice. You mentioned on your website photography that allowed you to incorporate mindfulness And also you shared and feel free to correct us some of your work instead of doing All these things for your kids in terms of I'm going to make a cake from scratch. I'm going to focus on really being present with my kids.

Anouk:

Yeah, and just like kids don't need us to be entertaining them all the time. And also they don't need us to be present all the time. Just be there. And for me, photography was the answer. And it doesn't mean it is for everyone, of course. It's just, photography for me is the hobby. So it was a way to take care of myself that I could do with my kids. Because the way I take pictures, it's a documentary way, which means I just follow my kids. I just take what they're doing. I'm not asking them to pose or smile at the camera. And by doing that, because I was trying, I do yoga on a very regular basis. I was trying meditation, I'm... Really not good at that. And like I was trying that mindfulness, that presence, I was not able to do it. I was always in my head with that list of thousand things to do. But for me with a camera in my hand, that was the answer because I was able to focus on just what was there. And I find it easier with a camera than a phone because. You have that little viewfinder, you just see what's there. You cannot see what's around you. And you're not distracted by everything else. It can be done with a phone, but it's easier, I find, with a camera. Because it really narrows our focus. I started to just focus on what they were doing, and asking them more questions, and focusing on that. And sometimes they will do something fun and I will just drop what I'm doing like cleaning or cooking or things like that and I'm just gonna go take pictures of what they're doing for a few minutes. It would take me one minute out of what I'm doing but before using photography I would not do that. I would, look was fun but I would just continue doing things that were like taking care of the house. But then when I go I Give them some attention, and we cannot give them attention all the time. It's not realistic, and it would not be a good idea anyway. But by doing it at some moments like that, just positively also, because we tend to give a lot of negativity attention with kids, but it's just like being interested in who they are and what they're doing. And that was helpful for me too, because as a parent, it was feeding my knowledge of who my kids are. And that's what I do and how I support my clients and parents I work with is helping them know, like understanding their kids better, no matter the diagnosis, no matter who they are. And yes, diagnosis can be useful, but. Just knowing our kids better, it's helpful to support them better, because honestly, I truly believe we cannot support each kid the same way. And for me, the parenting advice, like a general parenting advice that we most often hear, it works for some kids, for sure, but not for all the kids. And when it doesn't work for your kids, which was my case, you doubly feel like you're failing because you're trying those things, you're trying and you're trying, it doesn't work. So you feel like you're the problem as a parent. And then, because you're not able to do it. But once I stopped trying to apply those recommendations, and sometimes, and I've seen that with countless parents with kids with special needs, even the professionals that are helping, are not helping the right way for that kid. And so the parents are trying to apply things that were are recommended, but it's not working. And they're not giving themselves the permission to follow what they know of their kids because they're specialists telling them what to do. And so they're trying to follow that, but they know their, it doesn't work. The parents know the best what their kids need and sometimes we forget because we've been trained to listen to everybody else to our mom to our In laws to our aunt to our friends to the specialists over the internet, which are more or less specialists sometimes And so like we forget to listen to ourselves And our kids like if we listen if we observe and if we know our kids we'll know what works and what doesn't work and it's okay If that special said you should be doing that and it's not working for you. It's okay. It doesn't matter You choose what works and you let go of the rest. Yeah, so it seems like a lot of your program Or how you support clients is with the idea of flexibility Yeah, you know it's like maybe and feel free to correct us, kid first and then we'll see what works I would say kids and parents first, because if the parents doesn't take care of themselves, it's not going to work. Like the classic, don't yell at your kids is the worst advice in the world. Because just saying that won't make us stop yelling. I know I've tried for years, like I tried, but if you're just trying not to stop and you're overwhelmed and you're tired and you're overworked and you're, it's not going to work. You will yell because you are not regulated. So you need to regulate yourself to calm yourself. And to take care of yourself, the classic feeling that we cannot pour from an empty cup. It's just plain true, I'm sorry to say it. And we don't do it. And parents in general are bad at that, moms in particular are extremely bad at that. And we think to put our kids first, yeah, but we don't put ourselves first. Sometimes I will even go as far as saying... Parent first, then kid, because if the parents is not regulated, it is not, and it's too tired, they won't be able to support their kids or help their kids. They do their best still, but it's not going to work and I know it's not realistic and in real life we always put our kids first, let's be honest, but the perfect world that would be that the parent is well this week I had one of those days for, I hurt my neck and I was really in pain, but like a weird diffused pain and I was like. So impatient all day. I was not able to be patient at all with my kids. I was on edge and I see myself doing those things, which I was not able to see myself doing that before. Now I know and I was like, okay, there's something going on. I'm not feeling well. And I'm. Like, I'm not good and I'm not a good parent right now for that reason. but that day I decided to just lower my expectation of that day. Through nothing. Let my kids look at TV as much as they wanted because I was not able to do anything. I'm not like, I will let the dishes pile on the counter and I will. Let go because I cannot do much more than that. It's I'm letting go. Yes, there's some days where the kids will eat anything, wear anything, and they can feed on chips and cookies all day, and look at the TV, but you know what? It's one day. And sometimes it's five days, because you're feeling like crap for whatever reason, you might have lose a loved ones and you're allowed to feel like crap for a while and do minimal work for a while. It's okay. And it's not like we, we put their expectation on ourselves that the routine must be perfect, that we need to feed all the groups of food to our kids all the time. If we do that over the course of a week, it's okay, it doesn't have to be every single meal. The kids are going to survive and if it's something that goes for a while we would need support for sure. But if it's once in a while, it's okay, like nobody's going to die. And yes, you might have a bit more difficulty the next day because they will expect the same thing. But also, it's okay to say today, it's a special day, we're doing that. And tomorrow we're back to normal. Yeah, for sure. No, I love it. And coming back to the mission of this podcast,, one way we stay well, one way we take care of ourselves is to continue to work on the connection between us as parents. And I want to talk to you because you shared with me earlier and it's approximately 70% of parents of special need kids get divorced. And do you have, if you're comfortable sharing, how have you and your husband managed? Here's a two part question, or things that couples that do incredibly well together what do they do? The numbers I have are from here, which I'm sure are different in different places, but I'm expecting them to be similar In general, here it would be around 40% of parents that will get separated, maybe a little bit less. But parents with kids with special needs is closer to 70, but like in special needs can it puts a lot of strain on parents. I honestly, I didn't know I had kids with special needs. I didn't know that they were fitting that category until recently when they got diagnosed. But I worked as a social worker with lots of kids with special needs and sometimes very high needs. ALT, the ALT condition that were really serious. Some of my. My patient died while I was working with their parents. And so when we have kids in general, but with kids with special needs, like everything is amplified. So everything that is hard for a couple, in general, will be amplified when we get kids. And everything will be even more amplified when we get kids with special needs. Because we get to like we have decisions to make all the time. We are working a lot against... The social norm against what we think we should be doing as parents. We are more tired lots of the time. And I'm talking very broadly here with any kind of special needs. Some parents will be in hospital for months and months. And with one parents at home, the other one. In the hospital some parents might have lots of therapy with their kids. And so often one parent will lower or just stop working and the other one needs to compensate. So one parent will be all the time with medical professional and therapist and things like that. And do the therapy at home and apply the recommendation and the other one will be working because. We need money. And that will often create an even more separation than it will normally because the parents who's as even more of the load of that kid or those kids. Also as the bad news from professional that they need to come back home with and share with their partner, which is also very hard thing. So I would say one of the thing that we often, in general recommend, but I really recommend is if you have appointments for your kids it's okay. And realistically, if. The both parents cannot be there all the time, like it's not possible, but if at least the parent who's not there most of the time can be in the like critical appointments when you get results, when you get diagnosis and things like that, so they get that information first and they can ask their question, which will most likely be different from yours because every Okay. All of us, we have different questions, and especially if they're not there often, those information will be weird more for them than it is for you, because you're there every time there's a fight. And so it's important that they can be there at least sometimes, and I know it's not always possible, if it's not possible to be there, the professional can call them, to explain things on the phone instead of the parent having that load to bring all the time. And sometimes there's, the parent who's not there doesn't. Understand the level of importance of what's going on because they don't have the feedback of professional all the time. Those are things that I saw a lot with other families. And what works the best, it's boring, but it's communication. I'm sure it's a topic that you cover often, but it's communication. And it's also accepting the fact that we are living things differently. Having kids with special needs often means grieving. You're grieving different things. You might be grieving the kids you thought you have, the parents you thought you would be, the couple you thought you would be, the future you thought your kids would have. You're grieving lots of things, and you can be grieving more and more things as things go on, depending on what's going on. You might be grieving relationships around you because often some people will just disappear because it's too hard to be there for you. So you can be grieving lots of things, and often both, and it's, I would say it's very rare that both parents grieve the same things at the same time, the same way. Being able to be there for the other parent. Even if they're not at the same place, and we know that grief, sometimes someone can be mad and it's like, why us? What's happening? It's or it's my fault or things like that. And the other parent can be in another state of grieving, which is like more acceptance and it can really clash or denial, which is probably the artist when you have one that is accepting and the other one is still in denial, it really can be very hard and very clashing. So it. Being able to accept where the other parent is and meet in the middle, or just let the other one go through and support each other in that process, even if it's not the same it's not going to be the same the chance is really slim that it's going to be the same process. Being patient with each other and often parents don't realize that they're grieving and that they both are not grieving the same thing. The number of times I explained that to a parent that was complaining against their partner. And I explained that and they were like, Oh yeah, that might be this or this. They might be in that stage because it's that this is or this is happening. And more often the parent who's not coming to the appointments will stay in denial longer. So it's hard for the parent who's we need to do this and we need to do this and we're going to do this. And the other brands like. Nothing's going on. We don't need help. It's hard. That would be tough. Yes, but that's often the case that what's happening and it's denial to protect themselves. It's a way to protect our feelings, to protect, because it's hard to be there to have. It's something that is very difficult sometimes when you have kids with special needs. Depends always the needs, but yeah, it can be hard and lots of parents who are not the two foot in it every single minute will be more easily in the denial state. to protect themselves, which is okay. And some people will be very active to protect themselves. It's their way of reacting and being in action and things like that. Being able to understand that we all experience it differently and communicate at where we are, what we're doing, what's happening, our feeling, asking for what we need, not expecting the other person to guess what we need.

Jason:

That's always a big one. Because there's a lot that comes up with that. Why should I ask? That means I'm doing extra work. But it's really important. We're adults and it's important to ask for what we need. I want to share like a, you mentioned two miscarriages, my wife and I, we experienced one a few years ago and we were in different stages of grief. I think it affects males and females differently from my perspective. And I was like, okay, that stinks. Let's get over that. But she wasn't there. And we had to slow it down to talk about it, communicate and accept that we are in different stages. I think that's really important.

Anouk:

The grief and it makes even more sense with a miscarriage because when you add the child, when you were bearing the child, you were more in connection with that child Almost every person who lost a baby, we feel guilty. Like the mom, the pregnant mom will feel guilty. They will, even if we know it's not our fault, we always ask ourselves, what did I do wrong? What could have I done differently for it not to happen? And it's normal. And that will happen too. Often with kids with special needs, if there is a genetic reason for the kids to be the way they are the parent who has that gene, who transmitted that problem, even if they might not even know before the kid was diagnosed. Sometimes the parent has that inside but doesn't know. And just because the kid has some problem, they will get tested and then they'll know. But that parent often will feel. guilty and the other parents can feel resentment again and sometimes it's not even conscious. It can be like in the subconscious. We don't realize that we're feeling that way, but it can also be part of it. The grieving process is the same for everything in life that we've lost someone or that we love lost the. expectation of something. And kids with special needs, that's what's happening. It's still a grieving process. It's the same grieving process as if we have someone who's dying, but often it's a grieving process that keeps on giving because there's always new things to grieve. And you might not have finished your first grieving process when you start another one.

Jason:

Let me ask, and this is a little bit off topic, but something I've been thinking about of late. You mentioned guilt. Does Guilt or maybe like we're really hard on ourselves. We're like, hey, gosh, this is my fault. Does that? or interfere with the grieving process. And of course we may have to define what the grieving process is. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or it's too esoteric question.

Anouk:

Good question. I would say, yeah, it's part, I would say of the grieving process. I would say it goes into the part of why this happened to me or it's, or it's not fair also, like somewhere in that. But I would say when we feel guilt, I would say, it's. Maybe in more in the why part of the grieving process, it's part of it. I don't know if it's going to make it worse. Probably if we stay there, but it's like anything in the grieving process is we stay in one of the state for too long. At some point it gets pathological and we need help. But yeah, it's I think that it definitely is part of it, but if we stay there, it definitely will be a problem if we keep thinking it's our fault. I did add a mom that, I'm not going to go in detail for confidentiality reasons, but she had a first child with difficulty and it was a kid that would never be on his own he will always need parents and she thought if I have another one, then someone will be able to take care of him when I'm not there. And then her second child also was with special needs and would not be able to do that. She was feeling like it was her fault and she had wished for that second child for the wrong reason. And like that was a guilt that I think when I met her, the second one was. Maybe five, and she's been feeling that guilt for five years. And I would not pretend that it was gone when we start working together. It's probably gonna still be there a little bit. Maybe forever, we talked it through. I think she made some progress, but it's was everything. Like she was just feeling the guilt in which she was not able to move on at all with the process because of it. Yeah, sometimes it can be a problem.

Jason:

No, that makes sense, it sounds like some of her work And I know this is not a case consultation, I can't help it, I'm a social worker, I know I'm going to say, but it's like continuing to cultivate a relationship with that guilt. It doesn't necessarily go away but can we cultivate a different relationship with that, with our guilt, with the trauma? That was a quick sidebar, so thank you for your patience.

Anouk:

That's definitely a good way to look at it. And I often say, I've worked with different professional and different therapists like physical therapist or commissional therapist speech therapist and often they will call the social worker. I'm not a licensed social worker anymore. I don't work in the public system anymore. But when I was, they would call us because the parents were not compliant. Often that was because the parents was not applying the recommendation or was missing a lot of appointments without calling or just cancelling them all the time. And I've yet to come to meet a parent that where you sit and you... Talk things through you don't find a reason why there's always a reason behind that non compliance, and I'm using air quotes here Because I don't consider it being non compliant. I really consider it the parents being in distress or in denial and I often say that like as long as your denial It's not interfering with what you need to do to help your child. You can stay in denial. I don't really care. Because some parents have been told their kids are never going to walk. And they don't want to believe it. And I'm like, you know what? We've seen it countless of times that kids that were, that parents were told it's not going to work, they end up walking. So keep believing. I don't care. As long as you're doing what the physical therapist is recommending, stay in denial. It's not a problem.

Jason:

Yeah. All right. Yeah, I like that.

Anouk:

So it's also like you were saying how you look at it. You can decide that you don't believe what the doctor is saying. If you're applying in everything to help your child, there's no problem there.

Jason:

Yeah, definitely. I Wanted to ask you if you could give a definition of an emotionally intense kid. Yeah, cuz let me share two. I have a five and a half year old and She can be emotionally intense. But If you could give it a go.

Anouk:

Yes. Sure. So emotionally this is not one Specific thing I would say is Kids that are more intense in their reaction than what we expect kids to do. And what I love with that term that I came up with, is that when you say that to people, you instantly know if they have One kid like that or not because those who don't they just don't get that they just don't get what I mean They're like what doesn't they and those who have one instantly it resonates So that's why I really love that and it can encompass lots of things the first we see like maybe we think of more easily is the kids that will Be very like intense in their reaction will cry will whine a lot will will be very like, it can be physical, can be aggressive sometimes, very aggressive. Like some kids will, it will kick, will broke things. And there's two profile, I would say, and of course it can merge. But there's that kid who you're sending the kids to daycare or school, and you're expecting the school to call you every day. So there's that kid who goes in the same pattern as at school also, or sometimes more at school than at home, but in general, it's everywhere with those kids. And so it's the kids that will disrupt in school, that will be very noisy, that might be aggressive sometimes, that might react intensely to anything. And there's also the profile that is more subtle. School or daycare will see that child as the perfect super calm child at the back of the classroom. Some teacher might not even know who that kid is if you talk to them after I had that experience with it. The English as a second language, because English is a second language here, a teacher that my, one of my kids had for four years, when I went to meet her the fourth years, she had no idea who my daughter was. There's those kids and then at home, they will explode. At home, they are crying, they are being very intense in some things. There's two experiences that parents get with that. The one who just explodes at home, often they feel guilt and they were like, what am I doing wrong? Why the kids are like, everybody is that's the perfect kid. What are you talking about? They're not believing you. But in general, what happens is that the kids is, and that's often the case with neurodiversity, but it can be many other things, the kids is keeping it all together at school or in public in general. And then when they're in a safe space, they're losing it because they cannot keep it together anymore. So the classic masking on their first neurodiversity is that would be that like the kids is masking in public, but at home, they're not masking anymore. And so everything that they. kept in the control during the day, they're exploding at home. So they might sleep very poorly, they might react for those you offer a plate and it's the right color of plate and you'll have an outburst of 15 minutes because of the color of the plate, things like that. So this is like the other pattern. The first, when you have a child who explodes everywhere, but you're judged everywhere by everybody as a bad parent because you cannot control your kids is not well behaved, but it's not behavior. Those kids are struggling. They're not feeling good. The same way as us when we're not feeling good, we're not regulated, we cannot take care of our kids. If kids are not feeling good, they're not regulated, they're overwhelmed, they're overstimulated they will explode because they cannot control themselves. And so some kids are able to control themselves in public. then they will explode at home. Some cannot control themselves anywhere. And those are kids that might not, but some might at some point get diagnosis of anxiety, they might have trauma other mental health issues. Neurodiversity is often that, it's rare that kids who are neurodivergent are not a bit intense.

Jason:

Yeah, that's great and super helpful. And Anouk, I'm of our time. I feel like we can talk for like hours. You have so much information. This is like really. lack of a better word, cool information. I'm really enjoying this conversation and super informative. Say someone is like, Anouk I need help, how can someone work with you?

Anouk:

Right now I do one on one support mostly. I do have a membership that will be available in the fall and November. That's what I'm hoping for. Because I think being in a group, that was, that's the goal of the membership, is group support, is very useful. Because most of parents with emotionally intense kids don't. And because there's shame and judgment around that. And so I want them to know they're not alone. And me, daughter, parents are living the same thing. And so that's the main way. I also have on my website a free course to start to parent more easily those intense kids. So if people want to start there, it's a first step. And also I have a podcast on the same subject. So they can also go listen, it's Parenting the Intensity. Hopefully we'll have you over at some point.

Jason:

Great, love, love to be on there.

Anouk:

And I'm planning a kind of a retreat. I'm still working the details, but for next year and early in 2024 or so to regroup lots of different people in the field that can. Give some information and support to people to parents. That's what the book for now

Jason:

that sounds great Super excited

As always, if this has resonated with you, please like, and share this with someone who could benefit from this advice. Thank you so much for listening

Jason:

and you know as the more support you can have especially with emotionally intense kids the more you can communicate with your partner The better your relationship is going to be, and the more resources you will have to be that, we're not trying to get caught up in the expectations, but to be that quote unquote healthy parent,

Anouk:

yes, definitely. Yeah, and it's not perfect that we're not looking. It's not perfect. Yeah, totally. And sometimes we. We're looking to the best we can be that day. And it's not the same all day, every day. I like that. Be the best parent you can be that day. Perfect. Sometimes it's very good. Sometimes it's okay. Totally. I have been there. It's not good at all, but that's okay. Next day is going to be different. Yeah. Awesome. And this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. Very great talking with you.

As always, if he knows someone who could benefit from this advice, please share. And also give us, like, thank you so much for listening.