Siobhan Wilcox shares her grief after her autistic son's three-year school placement ended due to escalating behavior challenges. She explores why crying helps: it releases stress toxins and rebalances the nervous system. She also discusses nutritional factors like magnesium and manganese that affect emotional regulation.
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Hey everybody. Siobhan Wilcox here, founder and creator of Autism Experts Alliance. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's day 13 of parenting autism real and raw. I haven't been on for the last couple of days because honestly, it's been an exceptionally intense couple of days. You know, my son has been at a non public school place by our district and he's not been doing good there. He's been there for three years and he was doing phenomenal. But since Christmas, for some reason, which we're still trying to get a hold on all the different components of that, he has not been good and good. His behavior is very, very aggressive. He's been overwhelming a lot. He's been just very challenging in that environment. And on Thursday we just were told, we basically, you know, they don't think they're meeting his needs and we don't think that it's the best placement for him either. But after three years, it was really challenging to hear that as well. You know, you're always hoping something will shift, something will change. If we just try this, it'll all come together. And I know it will all come together for him. I know we've got working with biomedical doctor, working with the psychiatrist, working now with wonderful behavioral team, but it's the moment right now that matters. And when he's at school, he just can't keep it together. Bless him, you know. So the song Cry Me a River just kept going around in my head all week because I have not stopped crying, really not stopped crying. I've been crying for hours and hours and hours. And it brought me back to that first moment of diagnosis. It brought me back there to the amount of grief that came through. And you know, I decided this is, this is okay. I learned a long time ago that it's actually good thing to cry. You know, I was not brought up in a culture where that was deemed to be a good thing. And as we know, men aren't supposed to cry, right? You know, big boys don't cry. I mean, what are being fed into our cultures for so long? Yet tears are very healing for the body. They're healing for the body, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, even physically. They're healing for the body. And with writing my book on self care, I had decided that I was going to do some research on grieving and tears and the whole piece that goes in with that. And of course then I end up two days crying and crying and spontaneously crying as well. Sometimes I'm sitting there and then I'm doing Okay. And then I'll just like all it comes out, you know, I mean, it's so challenging when the world starts to really dissolve around you. You know, when you make so many decisions based on education and placement. You move house to be close to the school, and then all the other schools you're looking at are now in the complete opposite direction, away from where you just moved house to. To be close to their school. You know, there's all these. These small things you don't even think about as big part of the picture, you know, all the families you've created, relationships with that you mightn't get to see so much now. Although one of the things that I've been very blessed with is that this is my son's third school and that we're still in touch with people from his first school. Much more so we're in touch with people from his second school. Just last night, I spent a night with my girlfriends and their sons all together playing Minecraft and geeking out. And they were all people from his. The school he went to for first or second grade. So friendships can't hang in there if. If it's a solid enough friendship, is what I've discovered. But the piece on tears I wanted to share with you is. Research has been done on tears. I mean, if you lock those tears in and don't let them flow when they really want to or. Because I've been crying in front of so many people this week, you know, I've been talking to different administrators and therapists and psychotherapists and psychiatrists and just dripping away. The faucet sound in the eye is not good. It's been really, you know, it has a human connection. People understand where you really are at when you're in that moment. It's not like you're trying to be someone you're not trying to be. You're just there, you're open, you're vulnerable. There's a connection piece. You know, there's a connection piece. This is me is going to start crying again now. So the other piece around tears that is really healing for the body is on the physiological side of it because they have done some incredible research that discovers that when you cry, you release stress toxins from your body that have built up in your system. And they've taken people that cry through irritation, such as onion peeling. They've taken tears from people that are really in a place of grief or stress or vulnerability and are crying because of that. They've discovered that there's actually Toxins show up in the tears and that it's a way for your body to release these stress toxins from the body. So that's really powerful, very healing. And you know, that's a huge reason to want to cry. You know, it helps to rebalance the nervous system, it helps to get rid of the stress hormones, it helps to bring yourself back into that relaxation response. And after you've had a really good cry, which I know so well this week, your body feels tired because it feels almost at an exhausted level. So I've had to go just lie down. You know, I say I want to stay up a bit later, but I can't, I just, I gotta get into bed. But if you are in a really highly stressed state, you have a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress in your body, your body doesn't sleep very well because you're like this, you know. Another something else that's been found in the body that really adds to stress levels is manganese. And manganese can be part of anxiety and stress. And if it's over produced in the body, I mean it's necessary for body regulation. But if it's over produced, it's the same way that if you under produce, if you don't have enough magnesium in the body, which you get from your calcium and magnesium supplements. And magnesium coats the nervous system of the body, so when you're depleted in magnesium you feel more stressed. Sometimes people think manganese and magnesium are the same, they're different components. You need magnesium to coat your nervous system when your nerves start to feel jangly. I always tell people they need to take some calcium. Magnesium, very good together because they actually help the body absorb each other. They're kind of like they have bind together and another component that's leached from your body when you're stressed is calcium. So when you cry a lot, manganese is released from the body which also adds to the stress levels in the body. So it's got so many healing qualities to it. Guys, I want, I want just to say to you that, you know, yes, in many of our cultures we are told not to cry. You know, I remember when I was a child, I was crying over and I was older, probably in my teens and my. A girl that was in my class, her brother had been killed and they lived 10 doors away from me. And he was small, he was 5 or 6. And I didn't know him very well. I knew him to say hello to him and he chased her ball out. And you know, unfortunately a car was Coming. And it was very traumatic. And I went to the funeral and I came home and I cried and cried and cried. I remember my grandmother looking at me. It's a bit of a tough cookie. Fantastic lady with a tough cookie, like, why are you weeping? Why would you cry? You're being pathetic. There's nothing to cry about. You didn't know the child. Just get on with it. And I'm like, well, no, I'm sorry. This is very sad. I'm gonna cry, you know? But there is this peace in some of our cultures where pain has been so intense for people that if they feel as they start crying, they may not stop crying. You know, people that have lived through different wars sometimes suppress that emotion because the trauma and the grief is so deep. But I have discovered for myself that I eventually do stop crying. It may appear at the time, like, I'm not going to. I have cried for, like, 12 hours solid, but eventually I stopped. Eventually, it just turned off somewhere inside and. And that. It is a release. It is a healing. It is a natural state. It is important for the body. It helps bring you back to rebalance. And honestly, if those around you cannot handle you crying, which sometimes happens, just go in the wardrobe. Which is what I did this week again, me and my beautiful wardrobe. I just got in the wardrobe, lay on the floor, and I cried. Closed all the doors so that nobody could hear me because I didn't want to upset my children, but I needed to get it out, and I just cried. So, my friends, I'd love your comments. I'd love to know if you found crying to be healing for you. I'd love you to share this with other people if you feel they need to hear the message. Have a blessed and wonderful day, and I will talk to you again soon.
