114: Amanda Diekman | Radical Acceptance and Low Demand Parenting

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Today we're together with Amanda Diekmann, and, amanda, it's a pleasure to meet you and I look forward to our chat today. Welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm really glad to talk to you all.

Yeah, I have wondered where to start. When I read your homepage, some of the words popped into my mind and I was like, oh, that sounds wonderful. And the two words was radical acceptance. I like that. So if we can start there, what is radical acceptance to you? And I really I love those words. It's like accept them radically with a lot of love.

You got it. Yeah, I mean there's a whole body of work. I'm thinking of Tara Brock and others who've done a lot of writing and teaching on radical acceptance. But I like that. You asked what does it mean to me? So I'm not going to talk about the people who've taught me theoretically. I actually really want to talk about my kids.

Actually, last night I, sort of accidentally, I was watching videos of the kids when they were little, with them and we were laughing and enjoying how cute they were. And then, um, I just kept going after they left the room and I and I accidentally watched a video of one of my kids in a really difficult moment. Um, I probably at the time recorded it to show some therapist to be like, what is going on here or like this is the kind of behaviors we're dealing with. I don't normally record their hardest moments, but it really caught me off guard. I was in this like very oh, they were so cute mindset, and then I suddenly was watching our hardest stuff and I was transported back there instantly to being so confused and overwhelmed and trying so hard to do it right and consulting all the experts and feeling very like my kids were a project I had to fix and that season lasted longer than I wish it did. When I look back, I have to have a lot of compassion for younger me and how I was trying to do the right thing and I was participating in a wider parenting culture that says consult the experts, do everything the experts tell you to do. But it wasn't until it all like the bottom, really dropped out.

When my middle kid turned six he went into autistic burnout, which I didn't know was autistic burnout I had. I didn't know he was autistic, I'd never heard of burnout for a six-year-old. But it looked like all the classic markers of good childhood and good parenting, like feed them healthy food, make sure they get exercise, be polite to your parents, go to school Just the basics of fall asleep at night instead of staying awake all night. To me at the time, the very few expectations that I might hold on to were just absolutely impossible. The very few expectations that I might hold on to are just absolutely impossible.

And in that season I was faced with a decision like is this a colossal failure or can I love him just like this? And I found in myself this really clear knowledge that the way I'd been doing it was not working, and his little six-year-old body was telling me that, in every way possible, this is not working for me, mom. And so then I practiced this other thing, which was okay what if you are good enough, just like this? What if I can love you just like this? What if you don't have to change one singular thing to be exactly right for me? Change one singular thing to be exactly right for me.

And that, to me, was when I first, viscerally in my body, felt radical acceptance. I felt what it was to say you don't have to change, I'll be the one who changes. If the world isn't ready for you, then I'll become the activist and advocate that could be one small piece of making the world a safer place for you to land. And it changed my life. And ultimately, I think that that is the heartbeat of everything that I do is from looking at that beautiful child and saying I choose you just like this.

So that was a real turning point.

It was a massive shift, also tracing back. I mean I was a very perfectionist child who was trying desperately to be safe by meeting all the expectations and doing everything right. So I didn't have any like legacy of my own story for this kind of disobedience against the status quo, for saying no, I'm going to do things my own way. I mean there were countless nuggets along the way that I had that in me, but my dominant paradigm was like do it right at all costs. So to make this kind of shift, it was huge.

It sounds massive, so had you learned about the idea of radical acceptance before, or did you feel it first and then learn it after?

Well, I am an ordained pastor, so my tradition educationally and theologically is the Presbyterian church, and I served as a pastor for 10 years. That isn't a central part of my identity anymore and I'm in many ways struggling to be a part of something called the church in the way that it's expressing itself today. But I think that at its best, Christian theology is trying to express a God who loves us radically and accepts us just as we are, and so in many ways I had many, many reps at that. I had been trained in that for three years at a master's degree and taught about it every single week from the pulpit and at the same time, when it was really on the ground here with me and my kid, it felt like an entirely different beast than I'd ever confronted before.

I have to do a little bit of thinking. I just didn't have the Christianity in my matrix there Because at its core, basically, it is radical acceptance. But there is a difference between the spiritual movement of Christianity and the systematic organized religion in institutions. Yeah, and we haven't talked about this before on the podcast. Actually I don't know if we should go down the route of the religious one or the spiritual one. Maybe we should do a second of that and prepare a little better and continue with the acceptance of our children and how that's.

Yeah, the interesting part I would like to continue from. It is like how some people do their religion. It's the same. I sometimes see how people do their parenting in the base of what comes from the inside. There there is the deep love, there is the. If we talk Christianity, then he took the children to him and everybody was accepted and loved like they were. And as a parent, when you're standing with your newborn child, you just feel a very, very deep love and you feel the connectedness. But then what comes after is the fear of fitting in, is the fear of doing right, is the fear of what would the neighbors say? There's so many of these things that affects parenting and when I look back at the areas of being a father, I'm not proud of. Some of the things they have in common is it is when I have been afraid of being embarrassed in front of other people it's deeply rooted in me.

It. It's also where Celia and I can have argues if we have any. She can say whatever she wants to me when we are home, but if she says it when we are out and about, something happens in me and it just gets so much. There's something deeply weird in me I still have to work with. That is the what would the neighbors say? Or they're afraid of the judgment. And when it comes to being a parent and then choosing homeschooling, unschooling, living with our kids at home, like you also do, then in the first couple of years of being a dad with my kids home, now I'm at ease with it, but the first couple of years, oh my god, the fear, yeah. So how was it for you to take that shift of being a mom?

who lived with. Can you say more in control? Or you wanted to control how your life was, to saying, okay, I will love them how they are? What about the love of the neighbor? Were you afraid how you would be judged? Where were you?

Yeah, absolutely, it's an interesting one. So there's two pieces. I was deeply with you that I lived part of my life from my own experience and part of my life from other people's eyes, imagining what they would say and do, even in our own home. I would imagine, well, what if someone saw this, or what if they did this when someone saw? And so, even when I should have been safe from that gaze, I brought it in myself and it was really crippling to my innate wisdom, to my ability to trust myself, which I think is one of the biggest things that's been stolen from us.

I don't want to blame individual parents for this reality, although our own story obviously comes into play and we do have agency here. But man, as a parenting culture from the beginning, especially I'm speaking as an American when we are first going to the pediatrician's office, even before our babies are born, when we're just kicking ideas around with fellow pregnant people, there is such a pervasive sense of there is one right way to do this Are you going to be a good mom, are you going to get it right? And if you get it wrong, the judgment is really intense here.

And what does it look like to get it right? I'm just culturally curious. I mean, I don't know how different it really is.

Right. Well, I mean, it's very hollow, so getting it right. Typically here looks like your kids obviously go to school, but they do well in school. They both get good grades but are also sort of simultaneously popular well-liked, with lots of friends getting invited to everybody's birthday party, maybe a leader in class and then at the same time are involved in a couple of well-chosen, well-balanced extracurricular activities that they genuinely enjoy. I mean, it's impossible. Like, as I'm casting this, you're probably like wait, this is not a thing. It's not a thing, but it's still leaders no they can't all be leaders Exactly.

It doesn't work like that, um, and then at home are respectful, responsible, kind of do things the first time they're asked around the house, kind to their siblings.

um, masked around the house, kind to their siblings growing towards independence and getting a good job one day Sounds a little stressful Sounds, international though, I mean, it's not the same we would expect for children in Europe.

It's the same, the same picture. Okay, well, that's good to check.

It could be that the reality looks different or the way to handle it, but it looks like it's the same. There's a difference in the extracurricular thing that we saw when we visited the States versus in Denmark, where it's more you bike there yourself. There's a lot of differences. But this getting it right, doing it right, how is the successful child kind of the?

same roughly the same roughly yeah and the I I was largely that child. I got it right most of the time. I had pretty epic meltdowns at home over some of the pieces and I certainly was very extreme about my doing in a way that there's this sort of when I was at I went to Duke University in the early 2000s and there was a movement there to define something that they felt like was really toxic, especially for women on campus, really toxic, especially for women on campus, and they ended up naming it effortless perfection, that that was what was supposed to be done, that you're supposed to get it all right but never break a sweat, never let them see you struggle, and that was something I was never particularly good at. The effortless part, like it took me a ton of work to achieve that level of perfection, but I was going to do it one way or the other. And I married a college professor, kind of like at the top of traditional academic success, and so you know, everything pointed to us at least trying to live into this vision of goodness. And yeah, at the same time, when you talk about neighbors, it's so great because then this other thing was happening. So when my oldest was two, before my other two children were born. We moved into an intentional community in the city that we live in, right downtown, so everything's very walkable and there's 14 houses, about a hundred neighbors and we live with. Our intention is to center the experience of our neighbors with disabilities, and so many of my neighbors are disabled. We have a explicit practice among us of care and centering of that lived experience and so we have all kinds of different types of disability and experiences of disability, level of support needed.

But I learned from my neighbors over and over and over again that this picture of the good life that I've been handed is not the only picture and in fact there's like real cracks. I knew it, but witnessing them living a very different truth and pulling me into that was really powerful. So the biggest thing that I learned was that independence is utterly a myth and that interdependence is the good life. That's what we're actually made for and that makes sense theoretically to me. But witnessing my friends who need certain kinds of support in order to move through their day, that there is no part of their identity that could believe in the myth of independence Because I think I could believe it, I could pretend it, that I could do this by myself. But that's not their truth. There's things I can't do for myself that I need other people to do for me, and witnessing that neediness between them as the most beautiful expression of humanity like what better way is there to be in the world than to deeply need other humans it just changed everything for me.

And, of course, this is my kids' only reality. They only know what it's like to be unschooled in a community of lots of disabled people and so, yeah, they didn't ever have a world where that lived experience was on the margins, like it's always been at the center for them. So then, when I discovered that, oh, we're all neurodivergent and I don't know whether some of my kids are going to live independently in the long term or whether they're going to want to and that's just already a part already apart they're like oh well, I've got 30 neighbors who are beautiful, thriving adults, who live in community, either with their parents or with other adults, because that's what they need in order to survive and thrive. So, yeah, it's kind of like I had this imaginary neighbor view that was judging me, but my real neighbor view was like welcome to the party, this is the good life. Well, what a gift.

I know it is, and, of course, my husband and I made the decision to move here. So there was also a part of us that was like, yeah, we don't want the right. You know we were acting like we wanted all the regular thing. But people that want the regular thing don't move into a community like this.

What an amazing context to live in.

It's really special, it really is.

I was thinking about. You said when your second child was six years old, he had an autistic burnout. What does that mean? I don't think all my listeners know what it means and I don't think I could define it, so maybe we should clarify what that actually looks like because that was your big turning point right it was yeah, yeah, um.

In context, it was also in the fall of 2020, when all of our supports fell out.

Everything fell apart, yeah right.

so it's not a coincidence that that that happened for us. In fact, um, I know a pretty massive cohort of kids who went through a similar experience. Their families didn't know they were autistic. They'd been just kind of like struggling along. We had a lot of supports. We had speech therapy and occupational therapy and a babysitter and a really lovely play-based preschool. It was all great and I think that's what was kind of like holding life together, great. And then and I think that's what was kind of like holding life together and then when all of that fell apart and we were just home together, it was, it was really really difficult. So what?

Autistic burnout is a fairly new concept. The research is maybe in the last 10 or 15 years and I think that now we're expanding it to neurodivergent burnout, as it seems like it's not a uniquely autistic experience and probably so. It has three characteristics. Burnout tends to come with a rapid or sudden decrease in skills. Rapid or sudden decrease in skills. So for an adult it might look like you can't cook dinner anymore, you can't do a meeting, can't take notes. You know that kind of like you, just the things you used to be able to do. You just can't. For my kid. He couldn't play in any kind of back and forth manner. He couldn't eat. It almost always impacts basic needs. So he had a narrow, but not that narrow diet and he went down to only being able to eat pretzels and Nutella in that period of time for a couple of months. That's all he could eat, and then he couldn't leave the house, he could hardly leave his room, he couldn't talk anymore. He had been very verbal and then lost all that verbal communication. So that's the first piece and it looks different for everybody. But it's either a patterned decrease over a pretty short period of time or for us it was from one day to the next. Just one day he had the skills. The next day, boom, it was gone.

The second piece is pervasive exhaustion and again, for adults you kind of expect that to be like laying in bed or you wake up in the morning and you still feel tired. But for a kid it looked like, um, like his emotional register. Just there was nothing in the tank, so any tiny provocation led to just a huge overflow of explosion. And then the third piece is a dramatic increase in sensory sensitivity or sensory volatility. So that just is like really on the body level. The brain is no longer able to process that level of stimuli. So for him, he couldn't hear, he couldn't listen to us breathing or like the tiny little mouth noises that you make as you're preparing to speak, things like that. Those were no longer tolerable For a lot of kids that can't wear clothes.

They'll have to be naked for long stretches of time. Lights having only a dark, cave-like room is the only possibility for functioning. So it's a really severe reality for those of us who experience it. But, like you pointed out, it's also really hidden For most people whose kid goes into autistic burnout. They don't know what it is when it starts, and that was our reality as well. You figure it out as you're like what is this?

I have no idea. It sounds like almost if you're a parent to it, you would be like you would be freaked out, and if you don't have the tools, you might even just think my kid has gone mental and there's something wrong and I need to fix it immediately. Drug it, do something, fix it Right.

I can't just let this happen was the feeling yeah, right I can't just let this happen.

It was the feeling yeah, yeah, right, which made it all the more difficult to do the thing that I actually needed to do, which I think this is important to say. For burnout, it can look also, depending, you know, if, like a teenager, you would think, ooh, this is serious, massive depression, and it's often co-occurring with depression and anxiety. But what's really important is that the treatment is almost the opposite of what you would do with either depression or anxiety, and that pursuing traditional treatment is really destructive for the person who's trying to heal because burnout is essentially like too much for too long trying to heal because burnout is essentially like too much for too long. And what you need to do is give that person a really substantial I call it a cozy nest, but like a really substantial margin for them to.

If they if you know, if it's sensory stimuli is too much for them, let it go. Don't try to like, push their edges. They need a really wide berth around them of like. We will not cross your boundaries, we will keep you safe and if you pushed your teenager into some sort of an inpatient treatment or you have to talk to somebody about this or opposite action, which is a classic for depression. You know, your body says rest. Well, that means you need to get up and move. All of those things would be really unhelpful for that person and can be what exacerbates it beyond. Just um, you know, a really scary and difficult time, but not not a life-ending time, but it can easily tip.

Amanda, to be honest, as a dad, part of me, when I look back, would have handled it with a lot of shouting and just to say it like it is, because there's probably someone out there who's like how can you give that amount of space and have that amount of trust? Can you give that amount of space and have that amount of trust? Because my own inadequate, inadequate yeah, difficult word for me my own lack of being able to fix it would come out as aggression maybe, or like trying to shout the child to at least behave or something. So I think many people have that. So how was it to put a brake on the? I need to fix this right now and I cannot fix it with force, right? How was that?

Well, I think in some ways, what saved me is that I am autistic too and there's some part of me that really recognized what was going on with him, like when I wasn't so terrified, when I wasn't like I have to fix this, when I was really more with my empathetic what would this be like for you?

Like what? When I wasn't like what is going on so I can fix it. But when I was genuinely like what is this, what is going on here? I, I, there was some kinship I could recognize. Oh yeah, when the world is too much, a part of me needs to retreat. And when, when people ask me questions that I I'm not ready to answer, a part of me wants to just yell at them, to shut the F up, like he was doing to me. You know, I, I, there was a, a kinship there. I was like, yeah, there's a part of me that feels that way and I could see that if all my resources suddenly left me overnight, I would be only that part, that's all that would be left, and that really helped. I mean, it was a big part of how I got diagnosed and how he got diagnosed as I went down a rabbit hole of like, wait, if you are, then I am. And so we ended up both getting diagnosed autistic a month apart. Um, and the other thing that really helped me is that I began to see. So I just tried some stuff, because, like what can you do? You know, of course I tried a lot of wrong things, like I tried forcing him into the car, I tried only bringing him food that he wouldn't eat, and you know it, just everything escalated. And so I thought, like what if I just let things go? Nothing had prepared me for that in my parenting culture. Like no one ever says let things go. Like the big worst thing you can be is permissive, right, and so I was like, oh, but I feel like I can't just keep expecting more. He's telling me this is all too much.

So the for our first success was breakfast. Our old routine was like you have to come downstairs, you pick out your own cereal, you sit at the table and you eat it, and it's just, it was the worst time of day. That's actually what the video that I stumbled on watching was a breakfast meltdown, and I thought, what if I could just drink a cup of coffee, get my other two kids fed without anyone getting seriously hurt, like how great would that be? That's kind of where my expectations were at that point, and so I just started with little things. I was like, okay, you don't have to come downstairs, you can, or no.

I started with come downstairs but I made like a little barricade around him so at least he didn't have to see his siblings while he was eating. And then we backed it up Okay, you can eat your cereal in your room. But then the sound of me pouring the milk was true, or it was opening the bag, I don't know. Something was like it was a sensory trigger. So then I started preparing the bowl of cereal outside the room and then bringing it in, and it felt like, cause, I think the big fear that parents have is like, well, if I start letting things go, it's just going to snowball, and then they're never going to be able to blah, blah, blah again. And so at first it did feel like that Cause. It was kind of peeling the onion, like, okay, now you can't sit at the table. Okay, now you can't even pick your own cereal. Okay, now you can't even pour your own cereal, right.

But what it actually was was finding it was getting back to his actual capacity instead of all of the pushing past that he'd been doing. And it turned out his actual capacity was eating the cereal in his room, which was a real victory, because it wasn't pretzels and Nutella, and and also my other two kids could eat peacefully without being hurt, and I got to drink my coffee. I was like, oh my gosh, what a huge win. Okay, breakfast in the room works. And then I just got curious like, well, if we can do that, what else can we do? And so we just started letting go, letting go, letting go and figuring out where his real capacity was.

Someone had me do an exercise where they were like write down 10 things that you know he can do, and they were like open your eyes when you wake up in the morning, like pee when I carry you to the bathroom. They were very low bar kind of things, but there were 10 things on there that he could actually do, and that was helpful to start to define things positively as well, not only in what we were losing, but in what was still there. And then what we saw and this is like the big message that I want to share is that the big, scary thing that everybody tells you is going to happen. It didn't happen. He didn't. He isn't stuck in his room demanding that I bring him everything, demanding that I bring him everything. He healed and he grew. His capacity increased. The more I accommodated him, the safer he felt, the more he was able to do, and that continues to be the the main. The bar we live by today is when you're safe enough, you will thrive.

Congratulations. Sounds like it's been a rough and long journey.

I'm prouder of that than anything else in my life. You must have been very afraid I was. I was. I was terrified, and so many parents are, and those are my people. You know, if people are listening and they're like, yes, like I hover at the edges of every community waiting for someone to mention how bad it can be, because people will just toss out there like, oh, does your kid like pinch their sibling? And you're like pinch, like that would be great.

We're way past pinch, that would be on the positive list. You can pinch your sibling Perfect.

It was just a pinch you know. So, anyway, those are my people. That's what I end up attracting. The folks who are terrified feel like they failed, like nothing works and like they're the on the outlier of what many experience, which make you take it really serious and and give that space for healing.

But I'm then thinking about you, with the story you're telling about giving radical acceptance, giving love, giving space. What about all the ones who live the normal life?

Yeah.

And it just makes me afraid that we oversee the whole specter of where children are hurt in this demanding way of being a parent we have in, as you say, in this parenting culture.

Yeah, so what you're saying is if you're not autistic and you don't get a burnout. You might still be hurt by that way of parenting.

Oh, yes, oh, you might that's what I was thinking about as well. Yeah, because that way of parenting where there is this kind of rule book that you have to come down from your room and you have to pick out your cereal, you have to pour it yourself, you have to eat it at the table at a specific time in a specific way, you probably have to be dressed before and there's a rule of toothbrushes before or after all these things, this is top-down parenting and for an autistic child that can just be two million times over the top. But that doesn't mean it's not wrong for everyone.

You got it, man. Yes, I love what you guys are saying. I know and I'll get that from my vantage point People will be like, well, I get why I need to do this for my autistic child, but my other kid no. You know, I need to keep pushing them and I'm like no, you know. First of all, really look at them, because they'll be oh, they're doing fine. Well, can we back up and really look like how do you? How fine are they? Have you asked them if they're fine? Are they? Have you asked them if they're fine?

And even if they say they are, one of my favorite questions to ask my kids is what's the worst part? I just want to really explicitly give them permission to tell me what's wrong, because I think that there is again. And our kids want to please us, they're hardwired to want to make us happy and some kids, especially if we're talking about these kids that are suffering silently. They're doing well on the outside and on the inside things are not okay and they're not even if they can't imagine a different world, where their parents don't control every aspect of their life, but they still know in some part of them that it doesn't feel right, that they want something more, and I've never met a kid that's been highly controlled, that I've met with and worked with, who hasn't on some level wished that things could be different. So I like to give my kids a lot of permission to tell me.

The worst part and where we started with some of these demand drops was around my yelling at them so like owning that I was doing something I didn't want to. I said, look, I'm yelling at you with what we called my big voice, because sometimes I don't actually get loud, I'm just really intense and that is just as scary, even when it's very quiet. So we named it my big voice because I would try to wiggle out and be like I didn't yell and they were like, well, it was scary, uh. So I said I'm going to try not to use my big voice. I really, really don't want to, but I need your help. Like, what are what's the worst part about when I use my big voice? And when I use my big voice, I need you to start to say, like we agreed you weren't going to do that. So, and then we made, outside of the moment, we made an agreement that if I was using my big voice because they weren't doing something that I thought that they were supposed to do. We agreed I was going to let it go. So then, in the moment, if it got hard, I was empowering them with agency to talk back to me and I think that that's a really small but important shift that parents can make.

In the beginning, as you're deconstructing this hierarchy of parent control is to if you want more, right Like we can't change the world for parents that don't want more. But I think parents want some parents, the parents listening to you. Now they want more than this, but they've only been given this one paradigm is giving our kids trust our kids that I've become the parent I have, because I became the parent my kids needed and I trusted them to tell me what they needed and they knew man and they've helped me, and not in a parentified way where I'm putting too much on them or I'm asking them to be my caretaker or you know I own the work. But I trust them in the moment if they say you said that you were going to let this go and now you're forcing me, so our family language is forcing. If they ever feel forced, then they say you're forcing me, so our family language is forcing.

If they ever feel forced then they say you're forcing me and that's a reminder that I'm using my power or I'm using control and that we're going to back up and we're going to let it go until we have genuine collaborative agreement and they don't feel forced. And if they ever feel forced, then we stop. And I mean man giving kids that control and that power like they use it for good. I think we have this fear that if we give our kids more control or more power, that they're going to, you know, go off the rails and I have not found that to be the case. I mean, certainly they do, but so do I. So we're human, we're allowed to go off the rails sometimes, but on the whole I think they can really. I've found that my kids can really be trusted to own more power in the family dynamic and to hold me accountable to my better, to my best self.

Well, if you can let go of a specific way things have to be, then there is more to say that things go wrong. Well, that means you'll have to have a clear idea about what it is when it goes right. Yeah, so if you open that box up a little bit and say, okay, but my idea of what's right might not be the only version of right, well then it doesn't go wrong when everyone in the family has a voice. I think it's funny how, even in this conversation we're having with each other and we're clearly on the same page we still use this language kind of we allow our children to have some power, whatever you know, we let them have control as if it was ours to take. I mean, it's, there's something wrong with the whole linguistics of it and and it.

I know you don't think that way. Actually, it's just the way we. We can somehow get it, but it's hard because it's such a deeply rooted way of thinking about children and parents and our responsibility and our role, and so I get it. I'm not criticizing you, me or anyone else for using this language. It's just it's in there in the language and it's funny to look at. Yeah.

I also wanted to mention. So we came from the autistic burnout and how that points clearly at some problems in parenting. And then you said very clearly how this is not right for anyone, or we maybe both said and these other children it might look like they're thriving, but probably they're not, they're just adapting. I also have a big heart for the parents, because if you have to live your life with that kind of control, you have these awesome humans around you whom you love with all that you are, and yet you have to enforce all these things and you have to be in that policeman, control, systematic, organized, perfectionist role. You have to be a version of yourself you don't want to be and you have to ruin on a daily basis your relationship with the most important people in your life in order to arrive at that success situation.

And I think I feel sorry also for the parent, because they're just you know it's just on the backbone, they're just rolling with the culture, they're just doing what they think is right and they have this fear that you talked about before. You know, if I let go just a little bit, all falls apart. So you, you're based on that fear, you're holding on to your power, you're holding on to your structure. You're holding on to that cereal box and you're not pouring it because the child has to do it, and if he doesn't pour it himself, it will all fall apart, which is oh my god. You could just sit down, chat, you know right?

maybe not even have breakfast, whatever right you know, say he's intermediate fasting, then it's problem solved I know I love the way that you brought in the cost to the parents of like you're destroying the relationship with the most important person in your life. I think that that is so true. It also is destroying your relationship to your own intuition. I think a lot of parents have an urge to let things go, and then they shove it down with a lot of shame and oh, I can't do that, and fear. And then that deep intuitive sense of like this doesn't really matter. Deep intuitive sense of like this doesn't really matter. Why would this relationship need to be one of like zero-sum game? We have an intuitive sense that it could be okay to let this go, to say you know what, this doesn't even matter to me the cereal and all of that. And then we deny it, we push it down, we wrap it up in fear, and so then we're less and less connected to ourselves as well. You know we're also destroying our relationship to our own intuitive knowing.

I think we could reframe letting go, and that would help a lot of parents if they didn't have to think about it as something they've been holding on to, working hard to keep in place for however many years, and now you're letting go. That feels like somewhat a waste. But how about just changing the paradigm to stepping into some sort of flow, starting to cooperate, embracing intuition because that's what it is? Yeah, talk about it as a letting go, but really it's not. The letting go is the smallest part, but the big part is to start living in real connection with these most important people in our lives, and including ourselves. Real connection with what do I really see here? What do I really feel? What do I really think is right today? Yeah, so I think that might just be helpful for anyone.

What I find in working really closely with parents is that in the beginning it does feel like letting go, and a big part of what the method that I'm trying to get down on paper is what are the mechanics of letting go? Well, like, what does it actually look like to release an expectation durably, consistently, over time, and to slow it down enough to break out like each individual movement and how that adds up into an overall symphony. I think that what builds over time is everything that you're mentioning and that it quickly, the paradigm quickly shifts. But for me, there is this middle moment where I describe it like you know the old cartoon where the guy like runs off the cliff and then like for a second they don't know that there's no ground underneath them, and then they just start to drop. It's like that initial run off the cliff where there's like nothing underneath you anymore.

I mean, the great thing is like you free fall and you realize, oh, this is actually life, like I wasn't meant to be back there, I meant to be like in the wide open or whatever. You, however you want to like recast it, but but there is this like divestment from dominant parenting culture moment that a lot of people. It's kind of like how de-schooling is an important part before you can get all the way over into like and we're good with whatever you like, have to pull out all the ways that that other dominant mindset is in there. And I feel like for what I'm trying to do is stand right at that edge, at that initial spot where people kind of run off and be like I got you, let's figure this, let's take these first steps together.

Well, maybe that's the good transition to asking the question you usually ask yes, amanda, I would love to continue the talk and I think we should do so at another point before this episode. Um, then, some of the things we have talked about you call low demanddemand parenting, and if people want to get to know more about you, the work you do and low-demand parenting, where should they go, where do they find you and how to get hold of you?

Well, in addition to being I guess it's maybe the second proudest thing I am, besides helping my son heal from burnout is writing the book Low Demand Parenting. So it's in a book Um, it's only in English, but there there's print, kindle and audio book versions all over the world. And um slowly but surely working on translation into a couple of other languages, and that is probably the cheapest and best condensation of my thoughts into one place. But you can also find me on the internet. I write and share as Low Demand Amanda and I have a podcast the same name as my book, low Demand Parenting, and on the topics that we were talking about today, there's one podcast in particular called I can't quite remember the name, but it has to do with how permissive isn't really a thing and it's my deconstruction of, like how the original research came up to believe that this was permissive and then why I don't think that matches with modern neuroscience.

So if people are like, wait, but I do think this is a problem, that might be a place to dig a little deeper and learn a little bit more about how we've been conditioned to believe it is.

That's wonderful. I will put the links in the show notes. Absolutely, Amanda. It was a wonderful talk I really enjoyed it.

Thank you same to you. It was an interesting conversation, thank you.