Day 2 Parenting Autism Real and Raw with Siobhan Wilcox

Hi, everybody. My name is Siobhan Wilcox. Welcome. It's early on Tuesday. Oh, gosh, I'm losing my days. It's early on Wednesday morning and hair's wet. Sorry, just out of the shower. But that's okay, right? This is the parenting autism reun draw. I'm the founder of Autism Experts alliance. And really, you know, I'm a little tired this morning because my son was up last night, my younger guy with nightmares at 4 in the morning. So it trimmed my sleep pattern off. So I normally, you know, get up a little bit earlier to make, to make my videos. And I found myself a bit sluggish and laggy this morning because I didn't have that rush of energy. But I decided, you know, my passion is that I get up and I serve everybody else in the house. I make everybody's breakfast, I make everything for everybody. And the last thing I do is have a shower and get dressed and wash my own hair. But I decided to shift that pattern today. And thankfully you say, because I am in my pajamas and I have my hair washed because it really needed it. So. But you know, when we start shifting our own patterns that we run, when we start putting ourselves a little bit first, and that's not saying that I didn't care for anybody else in my family as well because I find that, you know, when I do that for me and I choose to wash my hair, put some makeup on, get myself ready, I feel better about the day as it unfolds because I've looked after me. And that kind of shifts things in our brain a little bit. You know, it shifts things in my brain. You know, I was learning a lot about the brain at the weekend and I've studied the brain in depth because of my background as a stress management consultant and looking at how our thoughts and our patterns really affect our day to day living, our anxiety levels, our focus, how we feel every day. And so, you know, we have our left brain, which is our logical brain. It is, you know, it's supposedly trying to help us the whole time. That's what it's doing. It's trying to be that helper. It's saying, oh, I can get you out of this situation. We just need to be logical here, we just need to be logical here. We just need to be logical here. And it's the one that tries to organize. It's the one that's really wired for rote learning. And then we have the right side of the brain and the right brain is the creative brain. It's the non logical part, it's the part that wants to go with the flow, man. I always think it's the hippie brain, right? The right brain is our hippie brain and the left brain is the non hippie brain. It's the much more accountant analytical, methodical brain. So if when we find ourselves, you know, not being in our own flow, not being in, not putting ourselves in any way at the front of the line to look after ourselves, the logical brain is the one that's running that. The logical brain is the one that's saying, well, it makes much more sense now if we get all the lunches made, it makes much more sense now if we get all the breakfast put in together. It makes much more sense if we actually put on two washes and fold the laundry, walk the dog, wash the floor before we actually look after ourselves. Because that just makes much more sense. Well, the creative brain is going, hey man, what about us? I think we could do with a shower this morning. I think it could be nice to put some makeup on. And so I decided, you know, to get up a little earlier so I could do that for myself. So I normally would get up at 7 and instead I got up at 7, 6:30 this morning so I could have that extra time to have that shower to put my makeup on. I haven't got to dry the hair yet, but that's okay. But it felt really good to do that for myself to carve out that little bit of time. And even though I know I was up in the middle of the night with my son, I still was able to say that I'm worth it to do that little piece. And of course some days it may be I'm worth it to have a little lie on too. So just this morning I had decided that I was going to dedicate myself to nurturing myself in that way because I had an intense day yesterday. I had to. My youngest son, we were trying to get him IEP services, occupational therapy services through his school. And that was a two and a half hour, two. It was even longer. It ran over meeting with all the therapists and the principal, his teacher. So that was quite intense. You know, you're sitting there, it's an intense situation, hearing all this data about your son, all this testing about your son that's been done. You're trying to put puzzle pieces together and figure pieces out. And then I went from that into trying to getting through some of my own work in my day, my own. I'm writing a book for Self care for parents I was working on my book and then I went to a meeting at the regional centre which support families of parents or children with autism. And I needed to go to a behavioral intake meeting there for an hour in a room with lots of people again, all asking questions about their children and trying to get services for their children. You know, when we take it. That's the one thing I noticed when I speak to any other parent who are parenting a child on the spectrum or any special needs child, that they spend a lot of time sitting in offices, attending meetings, talking to therapists, much more so than anybody else that I know that is just parenting irregular in inverted commas, non special needs child. You know, I know it is an absorbing part of my day, but I've decided that even in each of those moments when I feel like, oh Lord, I have to go and sit in a meeting now for an hour and that I could be doing something else during that time that is, you know, important to my business or important to making money to support my family, that, you know, I just shift into gratitude. I just try and shift myself into a place of real gratitude for the fact that I'm able to receive services, that I'm able to get this amount of support. And it shifts everything inside me again, I'm shifting from that logical brain, that left side of the brain that wants to be focused on the I should be, I should be, I should be because that's where that I shoulds run from. And I shift into gratitude. And gratitude is from the right side of the brain. The gratitude, the creativity, the flow. So one of the things I do very much in my day is I'm grateful every evening when I go to bed, for all the small moments in my day. And when I walk around, when I walk my dog every day, I'm very grateful for my surroundings, for the plants, the trees, for that moment, for the air, anything that I, the people I interact with on my walk. I just bring myself into places of gratitude each day. And I find that helps me stay much more in the flow, much more out of the part of me that goes into the I shoulds, I shoulds, I shoulds, which I. It has never been a serving place for me. So that's it. I gotta go. I gotta go get everybody's breakfast and lunches ready for school and I gotta go make my protein smoothies. And it's been so wonderful sharing with you today. I would really love your comments, your feedback and what you do in your day to stay in flow. If there's any pieces in your day. You're aware of that, you stay in gratitude. It will be really super to get all that feedback from you because I think together we can create support for each other. You know, it's not just about one person's insights and. But as a collective of parents, we have so much incredible information to share, and I'd love you to start sharing it here. And so thank you very much for taking the time. Have a blessed day. Goodbye.