Siobhan Wilcox shares how her stress at her son's bar mitzvah affected him, and teaches a belly-breathing exercise to calm your nervous system. Parents' tension ripples to autistic kids, so managing your own body matters.
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Everybody. Hey, everybody. Siobhan Wilcox here. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me. This is the day six of parenting Autism, Real and draw. We had a very interesting weekend. It's Monday morning and we went to our first bar mitzvah and we, we had such a wonderful time. Really, really wonderful time. It was fantastic. My son had a lot of kids from his school there. His teachers were there, so he felt really safe and secure going. But it was funny watching how his energy runs. You know, I noticed that I started getting anxious that we were going to be late. I started getting concerned that we were running out of time. You know, it was 10 o' clock service, we needed to be there. And it was at 9:30 and people weren't fully ready. And I'm like. And he just totally overwhelmed. I allowed my energy of stress to go onto him. And of course he's like a sponge, which I believe all of our children are. You know, they're just super sensitive. Super, super, super sensitive, super, super sponge. Like, they become overwhelmed a lot when they go into environments where there's a lot of tension or arguments or heavy emotions. And this was just the perfect example of it where I had got myself all knotted up because I ended up lying in a little bit and oversleeping, which isn't like me, but. But I was really, really tired on Saturday morning and I didn't wake up to nearly 8:30. And then we needed to be leaving the house at 9:30. And normally I get up at least an hour before everybody and I start prepping everybody on their days, what we're gonna do, get all the stuff ready, get the boys to get their clothes, you know, so I do a lot of that prep stuff, but I didn't because I had overslept. And then I woke up and I was all like, ah, you know, and then you take everything, you know, as a. In my world, I took everything I knew as a stress management consultant. I threw it out the window somewhere where I went to. But the result was that my son ended up overwhelming. And I remember going, this is an exercise. You know, I spoke last week about how our thoughts affect us, but when I analyzed what I was thinking, I was creating all this for myself. I mean, I had enough time to get everything done and together and aligned. I just didn't perceive I had enough time to do it. We were in perfect time in the end. We weren't late. We even got lost on the way there. We still were on time. I mean, it all lined up and we didn't miss one word, but. And so this is another reason why I think it is so just extra important for parents of children who have children on the autism spectrum. You know, it's so, so important that we keep ourselves aligned, that we look after ourselves, that we nurture ourselves, that we take time out to decompress, to be in a place of joy and nurturing as much as possible, because the result is so obvious when we're not. And I know I'm not the only person whose child reacts like this because I've asked other, other parents and they said absolutely, they've noticed that their child is like a channel for everybody else's energy around them. And so whatever is going on, if there's a family argument, whatever, and the family gather, the child is the one that will just present it to everybody in the center of the room. They'll act it all out. They'll be like. And it won't be anything to do necessarily with what people are saying to each other. It is the energy of how they're feeling. It's that sense in the room. It's the underlying current that these ultra sensitive children pick up on. So I want you to consider that. So when I thought about it, I really realized, you know, I was shallow breathing when I got up. And normally I really, really take a lot of deep breaths. It's one of my key things to help. Help myself, you know, and one of the simple techniques, I started with learning this because, you know, when I first came to this, I had stress burnout. If you'd watched my movie or my video way back, you would have seen that, that I had stress burnout when I was 25. And so I had to basically rebuild myself. We have the technology, we have the capability. Because I couldn't even get off the sofa. I was so deeply exhausted, I had chronic fatigue, joint swellings, a lot of pain in the body, a lot of physical ailments that went with that. So one of the simple techniques I learned to just bring focus to my breath is put one hand here on the chest, and you can't really see me. I'll move back a little bit. And one hand just here on the belly. And then you breathe. Breathe as you're normally breathing. Now, if we're taking a full breath, the hand on the belly should just gently move in and out like that. Not like, but just a gentle in and out. Most of us, when we're feeling really stressed, it's just up here that there's movement because we're shallow breathing. And we breathe just into the top section of our lungs. When we're in a flight or fight response, we just kind of have this much more shallow breath. So one of the exercises I get people to practice when I'm working with them is to feel their feet on the ground, to feel their hands touching their body, to gently close their eyes. That reduces one of the senses that can distract. And just to notice where you're breathing normally, become aware without forcing, without judging, just be aware. And then as you develop the awareness of where you're breathing, you can start to see if you take a little bit of a deeper breath, just a hand move on the belly. Now, if you've been shallow breathing for a long time, you want to do this carefully because you can start to get dizzy. You're flooding your body with oxygen, you know, and you can start to say, oh, I'm feeling dizzy. I see the little stars. So if that happens, just go back to the regular breath. You're not supposed to be pulling breaths really sharply into the body. It's just basically shallow breath. Like if we notice a baby, they have this little outy belly, this little pot belly, and their belly is the one that moves in and out because that's how we breathe normally. It's just through years and years of stress response that we stop breathing that way. And our chest up here is where we breathe into. Take some deep breaths. One of the best ways of reducing your stress in a day. If you need to just walk away from a situation for a moment, go sit in the car, take a few deep breaths and come back in. Or go into the garden, take a few deep breaths, come back in. Now my dog is coughing up a herb oil or something onto the table and she's like, breathing. Anyway, I hope that serves. And so just even doing that throughout your day is so, so healing for the body, so powerful for the body, so aligning, it really, really serves. So thank you so much and I look forward to serving you again soon. And please come tune in passes on to other parents if you think it'll serve them. Visit me@autism expertsalliance.com we are going to have some free teleseries coming up there for parents and I look forward to talking to you again. Bye.
