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Speaker 4Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket-emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Mary-Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. I cannot believe we're literally days away from the beginning of 2026. Where has the last 12 months gone? There'll be more on that in the new year. But as a sort of an entry into your new year, here's a compilation of thoughtful, popular, top tips and strategies that you have enjoyed in 2025, that we sort of feel will be a great way to kind of get you set up and best suited to give you that absolute bumper best start in 2026. So, I hope you enjoy the compilation we've put together. And I can't wait to share more episodes with you in 2026. So, until then, Happy New Year and enjoy listening. I want to say thank you to all of you. I want to start with a quote that I've just happened to have seen today, which is from Eileen Collins, who's quoted today. She's the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft, who has said, it's harder to be a parent than a space shuttle commander. In your experience, given that, I guess, the founding of Mumsnet happened at the time when you were a new mum, what do you think?
Speaker 5Well, I think that was partly why, you know, we started Mumsnet, was because, yes, it's hard, but more to the point, we don't get any training. And I imagine if you're a space shuttle commander, I would hope you get some training. And so, it's this being thrust into this position, which is incredibly important. You know, you are shaping people's lives without any really formal sort of guidance. So, we have our networks and we have our mums and we have our role models. But what I was finding back in 2000, way back in, well, it's actually 1999 when I conceived of Mumsnet. Because my network were not at the same stage as me. My mum had, you know, done it a long time ago. Things had changed a lot. And what I wanted to do was tap into the wisdom of others who'd been there and done that, you know, just before me, really. And that was the spirit of Mumsnet and why we started it. And that's why it's still, you know, that's really what it's doing today, is allowing people to tap into the wisdom of others.
Speaker 4And it's just been phenomenally successful when you think of all those that have come and gone. And gone even after Mumsnet has been founded, who've really tried to build communities and nothing in comparison. What do you think is the sort of the secret sauce that you've had to the longevity of
Speaker 5it? Well, I think there are a couple of things. One, I think is that's really important that sort of gets missed is you can be anonymous on Mumsnet. And as a result, you can speak the truth. So, that means both the people asking questions and the people answering can be really honest. So, the sort of quality of interaction is, it's different to other social media types like Facebook. You can't really have an honest conversation about how your middle child is the work of the devil on Facebook, you know, or that your mother-in-law's a pain in the arse or all the rest of it. So, it's actually being able to be really honest and that creates all this amazing relatable content. So, most people on Mumsnet are not actually posting, they're lurking, they're consuming. And they're consuming all this amazing. All these amazing threads about people's everyday lives that are really honest and truthful. So, that for me is one thing. And I think the other thing is we have always taken moderation quite seriously. So, we've trained our moderators. We've moderated according to a philosophy and given them quite a lot of leeway to be pragmatic and to be sensible, but also to keep the conversation civil. So, I think that's been something. And then the third thing I think is that it's a female-dominated platform, which is a highly unusual. And it does mean, I think, that people are sort of more open to discussion and ideas. There aren't, you know, these few very loud voices dictating what's going on. So, that's been a helpful thing. So, those three things, I think, are why we've survived the vicissitudes of, you know, running a platform. How
Speaker 4do we empower young people to view their disability as part of who they are and not a limiting factor?
Speaker 6It's a really good question and it's something that I think about so often because I have two disabled children. I'm disabled myself. My children are seven and ten. My ten-year-old in particular is of an age where, you know, I mean, all kids experience this. They just want to fit in. They don't want to stand out, you know. And as I said, all kids experience it, whether it's disability-related or related to their hairstyle or the latest gadget that kids have got or, you know. So, I think it's a really good question. How long they're allowed to stay up before bed or how much screen time they get. They all want to fit in, right? In some way or other. And there's, there are, even if you fix one thing, there's always going to be another thing that their friends are doing that they're not doing and they want to be able to fit in. And I kind of view disability as one of those things. Arguably slightly more important than screen time in terms of conversation. But, yeah, like it's, it is one of those things and it's something that I think when I first started parenting, I was very keen to, you know, make sure my kids really accepted and loved their disabled selves so that they would never feel like that. But as I've grown as a parent, I've come to realise and appreciate that life isn't always like that and that actually it's much more realistic to have a very up and down journey with your disabilities and with how you feel about them, especially as a child and especially as a child. Especially in that period of life where you're not, you don't feel confident to stand out. And so I think reducing the expectation both on children and on adults to teach them to be totally okay with themselves is, is important. My book, How to Be Disabled and Proud, I was very, very keen to have this subtitle or at least kind of sort of okay with it because I wanted to acknowledge that actually it's very, very, very hard to be proud. Of being disabled when you're a child and that's okay because I wouldn't expect anything less in a world that, that treats you so harshly. And so, um, and there's a bit in the book actually, um, where, um, I have, uh, my amazing illustrator, Jaleel Hudson, uh, plotted a, um, like a graph and, um, and I was like, this is how I feel about disability on any given day. And it goes up and down like this, right? Because maybe in the morning, I've, I've fallen over and I, I fall over more often because I'm, I'm physically disabled. Uh, and that's been really embarrassing and I hurt my knee. And then in the afternoon, a little old lady patronized me, patronized me, patronized, patronized, I don't know. Anyway, whatever, patronized me. Uh, and then later on some school kids laughed at me and each of those junctures, I felt a bit not very good about being disabled. But then at other points, I like connected with one of my disabled friends and we had a really good gig. about something. Or, you know, I experienced, like, amazing joy when I saw another disabled friend doing something that they really loved or I went swimming and I absolutely love swimming as a disabled person because it's such a freeing and like beautiful form of accessible sport for me and so those kind of things make me feel great to be disabled you know and and that can happen in any one given day so I think yeah it's really really hard first of all or impossible even to for a disabled child to be frustrated by being disabled and so as I said before you know we all want to fit in right and one of the things that disability can do is it can mean that we are limited in how we interact and join in with activities with other children so let's say for example when I was a kid I was terrible at football and that's because I can't run fast I've got very poor coordination and very poor balance and so I was very very bad at it and that used to really frustrate me and then and there are millions of other examples just like that for people of all different disabilities and I think we don't want to have to do things differently but I think one really important thing that helped me and that now actually is really really helping my kids is connecting with other disabled children and doing these things with them as well because so often we are the only or one of just a couple disabled kids in a class and maybe maybe or physically disabled kids in a class maybe they're disabled in a different way to us and so we don't have this crossover and we're the only kid that is bad at football and that feels rubbish and we just wish that we could play football with somebody else who was on a level playing field and being able to connect with disabled sports groups and disabled activity groups and disabled social groups is so so important and so key not only for being able to interact with people that have a range of disabilities but also just for feeling like we can be part of something in more of an equal kind of way I think that's really really key and I think it's really helped me and it's really helped my kids to appreciate that they are actually really really good at loads of things it's just that they are comparing themselves to unrealistic standards for who they are I think we have a very narrow view of what the being the best actually is capitalism kind of teaches us that achieving well and being healthy is the epitome of being a successful person and I think that's really key and I think that's really key and I think that's really key and I think that's really key and I think that's really key and this is then reflected down through the education system as well and we only have to look at a school's time schedule to discover the number of competitive sports or achievements or activities a child of the month a kid of the week who got 100% in their spelling test it's just endless kids are constantly being pushed to be the best they can be but as I said we have a very narrow view of what the best actually is and very few people are actually are that and so I think if we taught children to be the best they can be we would have a very narrow view of what the best is and so I think if we taught children to value and if we ourselves as adult worked on valuing people's achievements and contributions regardless of the output there would be a lot less pressure and a lot less grace and a lot more celebration therapy's
Speaker 1biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s. offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at grow therapy.com slash a cast that's grow therapy.com slash a cast grow therapy.com slash a cast a cast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan and one of the
Speaker 4startling bits of data that i'd stumbled on recently was that 20 percent of children who are starting school are being referred to speech and language therapy and is this in your view related to the fact that we're not i understand in lots of ways when when um i remember back when my children were younger were tiny tiny babies and you almost felt slightly self-conscious doing the whole having a conversation with this this little being that could really not really say anything but i knew because at that time i was doing my phd all about language development i knew it was really important that even though they were saying nothing that this whole you know modeling and the turn-taking would have such a profound impact but do you see that connection between why we're getting so many young children starting school and being referred almost immediately to speech and language
Speaker 7therapy yes i do um i think we've got two million people waiting to support this and i think it's a really important thing to speak to them and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important and the reason being is you know we talked about it a minute ago that we go to restaurants and children are put behind ipads we people do it at home as well children learn by listening to and engaging in language so they will learn by watching other people have conversation as i mentioned earlier just holding even a four or five month old and it'll babble to you and you can babble back to it and then it will know to wait for you before it babbles back to you you know an infant will learn to speak to you and you can babble back to it and then it will know to wait for you through engaging in all these processes and through being present when we put a child behind a device we're removing them from the real world the evidence is that they don't learn anything from a device under the age of two so as much as apps are marketed to these infants for speech and language development the evidence is that doesn't support that so the child needs to be present in the space with you to develop their speech and language so it's if you imagine that putting a child behind a device is kind of like locking them in a dark cupboard they may as well not even be there with you because you're not interacting with them they're not interacting with you they're not seeing anything that's going on in the world around them they're not able to learn from any of that anyway so it's it's that's how it's how it's harming their their development yeah and i'm
Speaker 4guessing what we're then seeing if we're looking at it from this perspective of the dopamine if we're also looking at it from the perspective that they are created the application of the devices themselves to be very easy and intuitive to learn so young children are not taking very long at all to be able to understand the swiping mechanism and the addictive nature of the immediacy of the notifications and the responses do you think that that's why we're also seeing children's attention spans at school decreasing and decreasing and their ability to listen and focus is becoming more problematic i do
Speaker 7and uh i don't even think that's just with children i i do believe that we've the rise that we're seeing in difficulties with attentiveness across the lifespan is related to our addiction the addiction and withdrawal cycle to our devices um so we've wired these addictive brains in these young uh young children young babies so we've given them lots of high volume of dopamine at a young so the brain's looking for dopamine now the dopamine on on a device comes quickly you know every 10 seconds if especially if you're on a social platform for example or youtube or something every 10 seconds you can swipe you get something new dopamine dopamine dopamine even if you're doing a mass challenge you do it so you get the dopamine you're you're searching for dopamine all the time now when that child goes to school you're not going to be getting dopamine that regularly but the brain is looking for dopamine and dopamine is looking for dopamine and dopamine looking for the dopamine and when your brain's searching for dopamine it can't focus because it's looking for the dopamine everywhere so this is why our attention spans are waning we are now a point where children struggle to focus for a whole episode of a tv show so that's even just a 24 minute tv show that's what the evidence says teachers tell me that they have to break down their lessons into 10 minute chunks because children can't sit still for long enough and this is the minute they get into school so there is one there will be the argument of people saying well they don't need to focus you can use ai for everything now but you can't have a relationship or a friendship or anything meaningful without attentiveness you need to be able to focus on what someone's saying you need to be able to listen you need to be able to remember information about that person you know that your relationships are built
Speaker 4like that but that so drives our behavior doesn't it whether neurotypical or neurodivergent child doesn't it it's that whole everyone is judging me they are assuming that i'm a parent that has lost control and my child is being i'm allowing them to behave in a socially unacceptable way yeah do you think think that that's almost got worse is that almost more of that than there has been in the past because you know we do hear sometimes people who've you know children have had massive meltdowns in supermarkets and people have come up to them and said you know I think you did a brilliant job so we do sometimes get that but I almost feel like that concern about judgment and shame is even more amplified than it has been before.
Speaker 8I don't know if I've spotted that really but I think it's so hard you know you just it's you have to practice that thicker skin don't you you know I'm a people pleaser it doesn't come naturally at all and you know it's hard with family as well I think it's just something you have to do really no matter how tricky it feels but I think I think it's that the neurotypical world there's rules to it and often when we think about this what people want us to do is for our children to abide by rules that work for people with different brain types and I think those rules aren't always logical and I think you know there is a problem here that if you're asking let's say neurodivergent or autistic children to abide by rules that aren't logical don't make sense for them I think that's really stressful for them because I think for particularly for autistic people but I think for neurodivergent children people and possibly neurodivergents as well if something is logical makes sense there's a kind of security there so I think autistic people cling to logic because it helps them in a sort of uncertain world it makes things more predictable so I think if you're demanding that autistic child follows rules that don't make sense for them I think that's a really difficult place for them to be in so I think because I'm autistic and ADHD I always had this slightly flexible slash approach to the rules but you know I think let's let's be the shield really as parents from society's judgment you know and teach your child yes we all live in a communities and we definitely do need to bear other people in mind and we can't just behave as we like all the time if there's a negative impact on other people but at the same time if your behavior isn't hurting someone else yeah even sometimes if there are rules in place we can live in a way that's right for us totally
Speaker 4and we're not responsible for someone else's sense of discomfort yeah yeah that's their discomfort but actually living within that what we need
Speaker 8is is that important piece isn't it and I think that's one of the things I notice the difference between happy neurodivergent adults and those who aren't I perceive one key difference is that the people who aren't happy are not good at identifying their challenges in a specific way and they're not good at identifying their challenges in a specific way or and that means they haven't come up with strategies or or get support and they don't ask for help because they feel like they should be able to do everything and so they fail and then beat themselves up and think that they're a bad person a lazy person an inconsiderate person whereas happy happier adults are the ones who have been able to identify what they struggle with come up with strategies for it and also work out what are the things that I just never get no matter how many brilliant strategies I've got and just give myself a free pass for that yeah and I think as parents if we can be part of that process of helping your child identify what their struggles are and come up with strategies in a kind of brainstorming way then you're you're equipping them for a future where they can do that for themselves and is that
Speaker 4the strategy that you then use when it came to then easing your son back into school well I
Speaker 8mean he's been out for 18 months so what he did go back to school and then it didn't it didn't really work so what my strategy for that was I took the view to him yeah I'd love you to go back but if it doesn't work for you it doesn't work you know we realized we were on this thing we couldn't control really yeah so he he is about to start at a special specialist school and yes I think at a specialist school this is I'm hoping that is going to be part of the process it certainly will be part of my conversations with him
Speaker 4yeah and how did you because I think there will be a lot of parents listening that will would really love to get the the children in that position to be able to get into the specialist school because the neurotypical schools for some just simply cannot and will will never serve them yeah was yours an easy transition an easy well I don't actually I take that back there's never an easy yeah but were you able to straightforwardly demonstrate that and that the local authority were therefore able to do that or were you battling again in terms of then getting that put in
Speaker 8place the the second time was easier in order I had a almighty battle with my eldest son you know we ended up paying for a lawyer going to court spending twenty thousand pounds because because the local authority was going to send him to just a school that no one you know no one thought was okay really but the second time I think because I'm clued up I think I'm going to have to go back to school and I'm going to have to go back to school but also I think because my son had you know stop being able to go to school I think we got lucky do you know I think that's what scares me I think it comes down to blind luck because I think someone senior in the send department at my local authority became familiar with my youngest son case that I mean I'm only guessing here because it was a much more straightforward process and I was thinking oh my god is this local authority just like revolutionized how they do things but I know from other parents that is not a consistent process and I think that's what scares me a lot I think we yeah just got lucky but also at the same time I think you know I think there's so many children that don't have that breakdown which can precipitate everyone to examine their needs and what support they really need and in a way that's worse yeah potentially because uh they just go through their lives never getting the support they need and maybe internalizing things or things are really bad for them but they've never exactly reached crisis point so look I wouldn't it wasn't an easy process no I think it's a very difficult process and I think it's a very difficult process I worked very closely with CAMHS we were fortunate to have a good experience with CAMHS I know the system you know and in my book actually I tried very hard to create a really good resource for parents trying to work out how to navigate it so I knew about how to build the evidence that we needed and working with the professionals to get the evidence that we needed but it no it wasn't straightforward at all and I'm scared actually because what little we do we don't know how to you know of this big reform that the department for education is planning is that they want fewer kids in specialist schools and that terrifies me because these big comprehensive secondary schools they're just fundamentally not okay for autistic or neurodivergent kids you know it is like building schools for wheelchair users and not including ramps in it you've got a sort of hostile sensory place for people and you're just shoving them in and unless they do something drastic and they're not going to be able to do something drastic immediately I just think it's going to do an immense amount of harm yes I was going to say
Speaker 4because we're still slightly waiting on bated breath to find out what those reforms are going to be but there's always always that anticipation that it's going to be much more restrictive and what really upsets
Speaker 8me is that they've looked at the situation thought oh it's almost like they think too too many specialist school placements is the problem whereas in my mind it's abundantly clear they've built too few and they've built too few and they've built too few and they've built too specialist schools yeah and okay if we want to have more neurodivergent kids in mainstream you know that could work but we need to make schools smaller we need to make them more neurodivergent friendly and none of that's going to happen overnight
Speaker 4no not when you've got as you say these huge academies with five six form entries for each year group oh it was going to be it was
Speaker 8going to be 10 form entry that they were sending my eldest son the local authority sending it was more kids in one year than was in his entire primary school so yeah these schools are going to be enormous yeah that's a whole other conversation we can
Speaker 4have jesse but that i don't think that would serve any child 300 in a year yeah it's just it's not serving for any of you who are interested in psychology or have even sort of dug deep at any level in terms of psychology and developmental psychology there are numerous psychologists that have proposed all sorts of different theories that complement and some that don't complement around the ages and stages that our children go through and they're not going to be able to do that so i think it's going to be through into adulthood around that sense of self i have chosen to use a particular set of theories that have been really informative as part of developmental psychology and into therapy to support young people and adults that i feel really resonates and really speaks to the challenges that i see day to day when i'm working with families and young people and also when i'm working with what i hear and see in the research that i read and also in my experiences talking to teachers and child care providers and also talking to pupils in schools so i want to talk a little bit about what identity is i want to talk a little bit about these developmental stages and then i want to touch on what we can then do as parents given that we have this information in terms of helping our support our children in terms of helping them navigate these specific stages so that they come away with a good sense of self-identity. The nitty gritty of this we will cover within the webinar, but you will have loads of content here that you can use, that you can digest and that you can then work through. So when I'm talking about identity, I guess it's the identity is what we give ourselves. It's how we see ourselves. And what's important that when we think about how we create this sense of identity and who we become is that it doesn't happen in isolation. We don't ponder who we are and then create this identity in a vacuum. It is what we call a social construct, as in we develop it in the context of us as human beings and how we see ourselves socially amongst others. So that's really how our sense of identity is created. It isn't one that we sort of sit and create for ourselves. So it relates to our separateness, but also our connection. It relates to how we see ourselves within the social dynamic of humans. It's a sense of how we learn to relate to others within our social groupings and within our family, within our communities, and then how that then feeds through in terms of how we create and then maintain relationships. Beyond that. So I want you to be thinking about this. So when we're looking at supporting young people in terms of helping them with their identity, we have to remember that it's not just how they see themselves when they reflect on who they are, but how they see themselves in that social context. So when we think about it, I want us to be thinking that this happens, that sense of identity and that sense of becoming me happens, develops over the lifespan. So when we start looking at some of the stages, and I'm looking specifically at Erickson's psychosocial stages, he talks about identity developing over a whole lifetime. And when I look at this, so much of it resonates because there are stages that are there from midlife, and then there's stages, as he would deem Erickson, obviously his theories were in the 1970s. So old age was 65 and above. Whereas maybe nowadays we might think of old age as being in 80s and above, but it's something that develops over a period of time. And so it speaks to us at different ages and stages. One of the key tenets of the way that Erickson sees these psychosocial stages developing is that we almost at various different stages, and I'll talk you through these shortly, is that there is at the core of that particular stage is some form of conflict. There's a conflict, there's an oppositional thing. So for example, one of the very first stages in infancy, the conflict is between trust and mistrust. So the idea behind these is that what happens is at each of these different stages, our children are navigating either one polar extreme against another as part of their development. And if they successfully navigate that particular stage, the result is a virtue. It's a strength that comes that they kind of take, imagine it almost as if they are accumulating. If you were playing a game, a video game, they're kind of accumulating tokens along the way. And those tokens are all part of creating this person that they're going to become that will be really true to who they are. And it will become much more apparent as we go through about these various different stages. But in essence, what I want you to be thinking about is that there are these conflicts that are occurring, they're exact opposites. The successful navigation of that stage means that they come away with this strength. And if they don't successfully navigate it, they come away with a challenge that they then take into their next age and stage of development. Now, that doesn't mean that we can't then resolve that challenge that gets taken away with them. But it just means it really helps us identify almost when we're thinking about it in terms of how do I help my child who is displaying X, Y, or Z, we could almost go back to that when we're talking about identity to do the different stages and then resolve it that way. It will all make sense. It might sound a little bit difficult at the moment to understand, but it will all make sense as we begin to dive deep within this. But we want to kind of look at it in terms of developing these strengths. So let's dive in. What I will do to help make this, to clarify this, is that we will be sharing a table which outlines each of the stages in terms of the ages. It will outline the basic conflicts, it will outline the virtue, and it will provide a very small description to help you be able to understand it. Before I start, one important caveat is that so much of psychology, is based on absolute ages. So I'm going to give you some ages around various different stages. Please don't be overly wedded to these. Don't worry about them being that, oh my goodness me, my child is right in the middle of this, because it's a bit of a flex, because our children sort of develop at different rates. So these are guidelines rather than very specific things. Get a new car now and keep the holiday cash
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