Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Now, I hope we're returning back to the subject of school refusal and what to do as parents, how can we help and support our children. In part two, we dive deeper into Ruth's story, specifically about her daughter, and actually there is so much that we can learn from that experience, from the whole journey, from things seeming incredibly bleak and challenging, to really the incredible sort of hope, I think, for all parents who are currently struggling with this or feel that they're teetering on the edge and unsupported in terms of how to help their children. How they might then see hope and a future that is going to look significantly brighter. So, without further ado, here we are with Ruth and Kate. So, when did the journey cross and you?
Speaker 2So, I was very fortunate to meet Kate, but I have to also credit my daughter here. What we did when she couldn't manage school and it was very clear she was going to be at home and we worked out it was going to look like home education. At first, there was kind of the panic, are we going to have to give up work? I can't teach physics. We were trying to divvy up the timetable between my husband and I. We were really keen for her and she was very keen to keep studying. She wanted to take 10 GCSEs. She was ambitious. She wanted to have a career in science. She knew all of this when she was young. So, we really wanted to facilitate all of that for her. So, we quickly started sort of ringing around, making phone calls and we thought we're going to need help. We're going to need teachers. We are going to have to fund this, which is a whole other conversation, but we realised that, and we had a lot of support from family with everything, which was phenomenal for us and very lucky for our daughter too. And we made three appointments in London to go and meet with agencies that had tuition and homeschooling options available of varying degrees. It was still, I think, a stage in the industry, Kate will know more about this, where it was still quite normal. It was quite new, I think, to a lot of home tutoring companies to be offering a full homeschool programme. But we found three who felt that they could do that for us and were able to walk us through the different curriculums of GCSEs and I had lots of phone calls. And then we decided actually that our daughter needed to be involved, that she actually needed for the first time in her schooling to have some sort of a say. Now, this was running really counter at the time to what the head of the school had said to us. She'd said something very. Very powerful. She'd said, don't give your daughter the keys to the castle. That was her fear. I understand why. Yeah. I don't think it was a terrible thing to say. I need to emphasise that. I understand she was worried about us handing too much agency and responsibility to a child, whereas the parents really do need to hold the structure. But actually, I thought about it. I thought, actually, this is the moment for my daughter to perhaps start thinking about what building her own castle would look like. She was mature enough to think. We needed to support it. So we took her with us to meet the agencies, and she knew that this was what we were looking at. She participated in thinking about it. And when we went in to meet Kate and her team, it was pretty instant, actually, that my daughter looked so relaxed. She was made to feel incredibly welcome. She was treated as alongside myself. My husband and I as an equal participant in the meeting, which was very different, actually, to the other agencies that we'd spoken to. So she was brought into the process from the moment she walked through the doors at Enjoy Education. And she was asked this question, which really has stayed with me since, which is, if schooling was going to really work for you, what would it look like?
Speaker 1Oh, what a powerful question.
Speaker 2It was phenomenal as a mum to hear my daughter being asked that question, because I was very impressed that they were bringing her in in this way, because they could see she was a child who'd been through a lot and had suffered. And it was a very stabilising thing to ask her. It also brought her in to the next stage of her education, really created a beautiful bridge into home learning. You know, we're going to build something together. What would you like? But also, I was so interested to see how would she answer? And she had a lot to say. And that was, you know, it was a. It was a real revelation, actually, that moment. So that was our first meeting.
Speaker 1Oh, my goodness. So you clearly, just in that question, are all about working with the child.
Speaker 3It's all about the child. And I have to say, it wasn't me who asked that question. I have to credit my colleague, Felicia, who's a wonderful, wonderful being. And she, I think it's all about looking at that moment in time and where a family is at. Whenever a family comes in to have that initial meeting, it's. It's a big moment. And we are absolutely open to whatever comes through that door. So many different. You can imagine different situations, different family relationships, just complicated situations often. And for us, it's absolutely about making sure our family is comfortable because we want to get under the skin of what is our educational role here? How can we serve this family? How can we get into a better place than we are right now? Because it's certainly not. It's not a good energy when the meeting starts because everybody's, you know, it's a traumatic situation often. And as I say, it's not normally elective. It normally is a crisis situation. We more often now, which I'm delighted about, do get families who are electing homeschooling as and when it's appropriate. I can come on to say more about that. But generally, it's much more that my child is being asked to leave school or my child cannot cope at school or like it has to be the now. And I totally get that. And, you know, it's. It's very difficult to make these kind of preemptive decisions. Sometimes life is easier when it just is now. This needs to be the way. And so what we really seek to do in that first meeting is understand what success looks like for that child at that point in time. Education lies fully dynamic. We will evolve, you know, that child and with that child and their journey. At the same time, we need to understand what the first step could be. Could it be that actually we want to go skateboarding for an hour a week and that is somehow the hook back in? And that's a real story for another day. But that was how we really engaged with the student to get them back into some kind of learning. Is it that actually it's a highly academic student? Their biggest fear is the fact they're actually falling behind and we have got to get education back into their framework. Yes, we can fit in other appointments, maybe mental health appointments, whatever that is. Of course, we can be flexible. That's our absolute middle name. But what is success for that student? And really for that student. And often we really seek to speak to the student. If they're of the right age, aside from their parents as well, because again, you know, we all try our best, but parents sometimes can speak on behalf of their child. And it's really interesting to then speak to the child separately with the parent's mission, obviously age appropriate. But that's really what's a successful first meeting is as we all need to feel heard, to feel seen, to feel that we can show up and be who we are. And that's sometimes back to the masking that's been already described and talked about today. Masking is, of course, what all of us need to be able to do. And I think the level to which that can go is so debilitating. And then very quickly that can unravel. And I think, you know, it really makes a lot of sense when Ruth was talking about the masking. We've got families who are saying the school just don't get it. They think we're just making this up. And depending on that, obviously ethically, but some families have asked their child, do you mind if we actually film a moment and we show the school? Because it's only when that happens that you can actually. Say to school, this is what I'm dealing with every day after school. This is not me being a difficult mom, difficult dad, difficult, whatever. This is real. And this is, this is our reality of our child's experience right now. Um, let's, let's see what we can do.
Speaker 1Yeah. And I, I know a lot of families that have, have found themselves resorting to the video because they feel that they've got no other way of really being able to communicate that. And I think with the masking piece as well, how much of it. Do you see where we've got a neurodivergent burnout? Because that looks very different to this notion of just school refusal.
Speaker 3It can be so different. And also I do think, you know, gender aside, but male, female, gender transitioning, whatever is happening to that student, it can turn up in so many different ways. You know, we talked quite a bit today about girls for obvious reasons due to Ruth's daughter. At the same time, we have many, many boys who are, who are really struggling. And I think that ultimately, as I say, what, what I really seek to do and what the, what our, what the team at NGO education really seek to do is try and unpick where, where is the biggest problem here in that it's still an obvious question, but is it actually the home environment? Is it the school environment is like, what's going to work for this, this child? Is it that actually their home life is so complicated? How does that then serve to take them out of school to put them into a more complicated home life? How's that going to work out? You know? And so it's really about, you know, a listening B understanding if there are other professionals are involved and this is where i think the other big big uh success of homeschooling is about full collaboration and that can be working with the psychotherapist uh whatever the team is who is already working with that student and really understanding and being able to communicate and link up on a weekly if not daily basis depending on what's appropriate but understanding where that child is at at that point in time it's not about putting a homeschooling program together and then saying have a have a great time it's absolutely not that it's about evolving as i said with the student and understanding what their needs are and is that you know is homeschooling still serving them you know is it actually time to think about the pathway back into school and that's what's really exciting about ruth's daughter is that there was a period of time where homeschooling was the right option and then it was the right option to go to a sixth form college and that's what's i think really reassuring for families to hear that you don't have to come off the hamster wheel you never get back on it actually a lot of the ways we work most successfully with schools and why schools like working with us is because we say to them listen pass us i like to call it pass us the baton like when school can't serve that student at that point in time and it's just ever for everybody to see pass the baton to us this is what we do let us scaffold the student let's really put that program together and you cannot expect schools to do that nor not good or should they just not possible so like i always really believe in playing to everyone's strengths this is what we're set up to do we're a flexible homeschooling company and so we can then work with the student work with the school keep in contact if it's appropriate for the student to go back into that school great then we create that pathway back in all led by the student if that school is not the right environment then guess what we go on a another journey and maybe it's another school institution or we carry on homeschooling but i think back to giving students agency it's just so powerful because part of that paralysis it must be just horrific at school to be that student and to feel so lost so unheard of and to be able to unheard so so so visible or you know it's just an incredibly traumatic experience and obviously any normal human normal human being wants to minimize that and to to help and it really doesn't come from a bad place schools you know really are trying to help yeah but with 22.3
Speaker 1and 170 000 children that are not in school 50 of the time that's a that's a challenge for all schools in terms of being able to they can't possibly respond to that and it speaks to let the specialists in specific areas as you say pass the baton on and it's not i think quite often in terms of societally the way that we tend to view homeschooling is it seems to be an inferior option it's almost like that's what you do when you're child it's almost like that can't possibly be a good thing and yet actually there are lots of parents who are actively making the choice in terms of homeschooling there are lots of children who are child actors and actresses that are being homeschooled because that's part in order to facilitate what they're doing there are lots of families that navigate the globe and make an active choice that their children are going to be educated that way so i think it's about changing that narrative to what your child might need in that specific period of time and then speaking specifically to your daughter's experience and then school then became the good the right option at that next step how did that come about in terms of what i'm assuming that would have been driven by
Speaker 2her so the journey back into school after a period of homeschooling well she'd had a really successful time homeschooling the program that evolved over time was phenomenal she had individual subject teachers for areas and she also had a lot of things built into the way that her week ran that just you couldn't replicate in a school and i've really saw that during covid i have a another daughter whose entire school day was sort of brought into the house almost overnight and there was such a contrast between the intentionally produced homeschool plan for my eldest and the replication of a school day online for my youngest that was really difficult and she didn't enjoy at all and so you know i've got two very different children one loved school found being on online and at home really really difficult and another for whom the homeschool program was so well crafted and you know worked so well for her that actually covid didn't present a huge or difficult shift because we already had a very workable structure around her weeks so she took 10 gcses um through homeschooling and was very successful with them and by the end of it had decided that she really wanted to pursue sciences and she was very successful with them and by the end of it had decided that she really wanted to pursue sciences and she was very successful with them and she knew that pursuing sciences uh without laboratories as a homeschool student at sixth form was going to be possible and we looked into it and we scoped it out but we also knew there were going to be real advantages to being in a laboratory and that actually even homeschooled there would need to be some movement in and out of a school for laboratory work so at that stage my daughter really she'd gone through a huge amount of repair emotionally whilst homeschooling her social world had really um dramatically the landscape looked very different because she had built so many fantastic one-on-one relationships with her teachers through enjoy that her confidence had just blossomed her self-esteem had grown her whole way of relating to the world had shifted and she was actually i mean she really was just thriving and had flourished in all sorts of ways so she was very ready to tackle what was going to be difficult as a neurodivergent young woman going into a busy school environment and laboratory was was going to be a challenge and she knew that but she was much more ready to take on the challenge she was better equipped by that stage to manage her responses to challenging environments to protect herself from burnout to communicate with those around her when something was really too overwhelming or difficult to let us know what it was that she needed to say she she'd moved from being a child who whose environment sort of exposed her to things that were too difficult for her and reasonably so to a young woman who was able to advocate for her needs who had a really good understanding of herself and was sort of opting into certain challenges because they they were yeah but knowingly and willingly and actually i think when she first went into her sit form to to meet with the staff and i was there i think they were quite unused actually to a a sit former coming in ready to advocate for their needs rather they they looked at me you know mum what do you need for your child and where you know where are all the letters from you know cams or whatever and i said over to my daughter she's ready now to let you know what she might need by way of support or adaptation to her school life and she she made a real success of her sit form years and is now at university
Speaker 1and that's such a powerful outcome because fundamentally i say this all of the time it's not that i'm necessarily anti-qualifications but fundamentally we want to raise adults who can advocate for themselves and who are independent who can problem solve and fundamentally the process that your daughter went through gave her exactly that and i i would any teachers that are listening to to this will say i am sure that there are very few young people that are going to be able to advocate for themselves that would be transitioning to a six form college or a six form that would be in any position to advocate for themselves i mean we're talking a significantly small number and that is incredibly powerful in terms of her trajectory as an adult really when we think about transitions is often a challenging time for young people that's often where mental health issues that have potentially been rumbling will then become become more of an issue and that speaks volumes to to that which i think is a really important issue and i think that's a really important issue and i think that's then turns this whole notion of home education on its head that this it's it's the sort of the less than option and fundamentally for a lot of young people it is the growth option in fact it's the finding themselves and the confidence piece do you find that kate in terms of the young people that you work
Speaker 3with i do i have so many thoughts as you said all that um i think that it's not as simple as saying to turning plan z into plan a it's so much deeper than that because ultimately what you're allowing is the space for that student that child to get to know themselves to actually understand what works for them to be asked those questions because at school you fit in right pull socks up and you need to do what the school environment dictates and and that it can actually be very sure reassuring because you know we all like we all know that children and adults need boundaries you need to know you know what's what at the same time as where where does that start and stop becoming positive positive becoming a negative negative so i always think one of the most powerful elements of homeschooling is is giving children students that space to be them to actually say this is who i am and to understand a that's okay in fact that's brilliant um but b like how how do i therefore now that i understand who i am how how can i therefore interact with the world and i know that sounds very i'm not sure i expressed that perfectly but it's really about understanding that interaction because ruth has explained to us very articulately that it's not just about understanding that it's about understanding that it's about understanding that the world is a place for us to be and fantastic that then effectively students have found their voice that they know there can be another way they know they can always go back to that other way so that's a huge you know um scaffold for them they can always reach out and we we love to keep the relationships that students have built up over time with their homeschooling tutors to then be able to say hey like okay school's going well but this is difficult and to have people who really know them and that's a wonderful bridge as well to have to make sure it's not just cut off and then you know it's an all or nothing so i think that that's one element and i also think back to your really important point you made about homeschooling always feeling inferior i have two kids and we will be for different periods of time homeschooling them for the odd term for a period of time because i think it's just an absolute a huge opportunity for your children and you as a family to really understand like what's possible the art of the possible you've already mentioned about why homeschooling can be the best choice yes we've talked a lot today about homeschooling but i think it's about the the children where it's no longer a choice it has to be homeschooling but there are obviously the elective homeschooling pathways for talent programs be it sport art music all of that drama and we absolutely support students across all range of different needs and and desires and sometimes you know we have families come to us and say right with the program that my child's on they've got five hours a week that they can dedicate to education how are you going to make that work so we use that time so it's all about recognizing the potential and power of homeschooling and i think that's where back to your word of school refusal how that's a negative connotation homeschooling definitely carries that negative connotation and i can guarantee that if i went to friends of mine now and said great we'll homeschool our kids they'd be like wow really what's wrong what's wrong and well you know it's not like oh that sounds exciting and one of the things that actually i love most about the job that i'm lucky enough to do is is being able to be innovative in this space like really breaking the kind of the the social kind of moulds of like what's acceptable what what's okay because ultimately like what do we all want as parents we want our kids to to you know be happy too strong a word to be content and to show up to be able to to advocate for ourselves in the future to be citizens of the world i mean all these you know such important values and and ways of being and yes as i say like a huge advocate and hugely supportive of schools but it's just not right for everybody and i think that school and obviously to families and that's why we always talk about partnering with families from literally the age of conception through to post-university because tell me any any student out there who has had a perfect track from being a toddler well even you know literally being born to post post uni there's always going to be some blips along the way whether it's a broken leg a home situation a teacher you don't get on with i mean it's just it's just life and it's just really arming us our kids with the skills to to face those challenges not to you know take away the pain you've got it you know lean into that but it's just you know really creating the energy in the space and the support but really recognizing that homeschooling is is just an absolute game-changing positive impact when done well yeah
Speaker 1and it's it is that confidence piece i think i go back to time and time again when we've got confident young people they are much more likely to try different things they're more likely to be curious and you know achieve their potential than if we've got this you know overwhelmed kind of individual and i think i do wonder whether it's almost homeschooling these and a rephrase you know we've got we've got to think of it in a different context we almost use a different language because it's because i think it's all it's just about changing how society views it i think is is rather than it being that the oh goodness me something bad must have happened that for you to be doing that and now we're going to take a quick pause for a word from our sponsors
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Speaker 1ruth you've spoken before about you know it's september so let's face it and your phone is ringing off the hook we are at a time it it happens every single year that we start off with the best intentions maybe we've had some challenges over the summer with a child that that we know is not really happy about going back to school or transitioning or starting for the very first time and parents are feeling overwhelmed and isolated and i i'd like to talk a little bit more around this sense of isolation this sense of guilt the sense of shame because society we position it as the norm is going into school and going into school happily with your friends and having a wonderful time what can we do and what's that message i guess to a parent that might be listening to this at the moment who's in the thick of it and in the thick of feeling that they failed their child in some way or just totally isolated and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really
Speaker 2important thing to do and i think it's a really important thing to do and i think it's a really find it hard to regulate themselves through these stressful moments so there's a complexity there yeah um and i think that the more the family really sort of thinks about okay what are the things that soothe us what are the things that calm us what are the things that help us when things difficult and put in place as much structure as possible but also opportunities for self-soothing
Speaker 1for everybody i love that and kate in your experience what is what have been some of the things that you've guided parents to do around that sort of guilt and that shame and that sense of isolation i think
Speaker 3there are that every parent parents come with their own story so i think first of all it's unpacking the story and then really helping to understand what are the obstacles what are the challenges that are in front of you and your and your child to stop something happening so for example homeschooling can feel like a quantum leap from you know literally being at school my life i got a job i maybe have a partner have a child and the child is not happy and i couldn't contemplating contemplate homeschooling because that would mean what do i do about my job how do i even teach my child you know so much baggage that we would carry absolutely fair enough you know even if you're a teacher um trained in the special subjects your child wants to follow me are you the right person to do that so there's just a hundred thousand questions and that's really where you know one of the reasons i set the business enjoy education up is to actually provide great information for parents to make the best decisions for for their child it's critical that parents understand what the options and opportunities are so really it's about understanding where are we at what does your child need and want often two different things but again unpacking that but then i'm just trying to therefore take them on that journey of understanding what homeschooling is so they can better decide is that actually an option is it the best option is it not um really seeking again if they have other help already in place working with that community of people who already know that child be at the school or be at their therapist so it's not you know bulldozing through and saying great let's you know let's start homeschooling tomorrow not at all it's it's literally taking that time to strategically problem solve and and everything's bite-sized it's not solving the problem in one day it's saying okay what is the problem facing us right now but most importantly what i really want families to to feel and i always want to check in with them is like i want them to feel they have found the right place they are phone and they're like great i now have found people who understand this situation and there's nothing more reassuring and i'm not the only one out there who is living this hell um great i found the first step into a community and this is going to be good for the whole family i would also add that i think it's really easy to underestimate the toll on parents when you have a child who is suffering that way you know you kind of maybe try and put some time aside each night to spend that time with your child and you know you're juggling everything in your life you might have a lot of other stuff going on as lots of us do and yet somehow we've got to also navigate this this thing yeah and the thing it gets bigger and the thing starts to blow up and and that's really where we want to try and help families get ahead of the blow up the cliff edge that moment of extreme crisis um and ultimately by going on that journey and i'm so excited to see the the tide of change of actually normalizing homeschooling and creating a vocabulary as we have a neuro neurodiversity that normalizes it that makes it exciting that shows what the opportunities are because that's when we can all thrive and all show up as our best selves
Speaker 1yeah and it's that it's equally as well certainly resonating from your story ruth it's it's it's what does my child need in this moment in time it's not about what does my child need permanently what does my child need in this moment of time going back to that story that you said about you know maybe it's a skateboarding lesson it's just what do we need to do in this moment and taking that step by step and not worrying i guess about what lies ahead but simply knowing that you're taking it step by step that you're sort of building your team you're together that's helping you can provide a certain level of scaffolding as a parent but the parent needs the scaffolding and then the family needs the scaffolding beyond that and it's sort of progressing on the journey and in in that way and just
Speaker 2taking it moment by moment i think as well as the moment by moment which is really important is that when one zooms out and looks at the whole arc of development of somebody who might have struggled with school at a particular point that moment by moment brings bridge from perhaps the crisis the cliff edge into rebuilding the child through a homeschooling experience which i think one way of thinking it is a real kind of rebuilding time and a healing time potentially for a child who might be in mental health distress if you zoom right out it also potentially can kind of and i think certainly in a lot of instances that i've seen it can head off problems that might otherwise be saved up for later so what i'm thinking about in particular is uh you know i'm very grateful that in our instance we saw what was going on and actually you know she didn't have the capacity to attend school and we didn't push her through that cliff edge and over it but what i see is people coming to my practice as psychotherapist who managed to push through just through those school years but that cliff edge then happened later on at work it happened in the workplace and it really side blinds people later on in life if it happens in their 20s perhaps even in their 30s they've just become so accustomed to pushing over cliff edges that they haven't had opportunities in their development to consolidate to understand themselves to work out what they need to thrive yeah you know how to deliver in their working lives or their school lives how to be productive in society how to be with others without pushing through barriers that are maybe too great and how to navigate that so i think that there is the moment to moment but there's also if you zoom out i love that if i could go back in time if i had a time machine i would have really and i was actually just talking to kate about this morning if we'd had the opportunity to understand you know 2020 hindsight how useful a homeschooling period of time would have been for our daughter i think my husband and i probably would have opted to take her out of the school system perhaps a year earlier than we did to coincide with that stage of development where social skills in the typical teenager really rocket so that her social skills development that was looking like a slightly different trajectory could happen at home in a different way and where she could really have that opportunity to understand herself really really well which she did get but without having pushed her through a cliff edge type situation and we often think about co-ed and single sex schooling as a sort of diamond shape that's spoken about quite often that you know there are some there's some research that suggests that an ideal education might be to start off in a co-ed school until the age of about 11 or 12 and then perhaps have single sex education for a few years because of these social developmental differences that can occur and then come back at sixth form into a bigger more bustling you know more diverse environment and i i sort of think well that's interesting because that coincides exactly sort of diamond shape that our daughter ended up more or less having she was in a school environment up until 13 going on 14 and then she came out until sixth form age and then went back in with her peers having done that developmental stage slightly differently the social development happened in a different way
Speaker 1i love that and i love this idea about zooming out and considering it as a bridge and this idea about if we manage to push through and let's face it i mean i'm older than both of you but you know from a generation of just you know just crack on just get through things and that and we know that that isn't that just stores up a whole host of issues for later on in life and that's fundamental and i think that's a really good point and i think that's fundamentally what we don't want and it is about reframing that whole what does education look like and it doesn't have to be within a specific school for all children at all times i think
Speaker 3it also adds to that that if we get profound and thinking what is the purpose of education and get into the good old um heady questions such as that one of those kind of tendrils would be like self-knowledge like how can i contribute to society to how can i show up and i think that to take the time when you know there is neurodiversity or just something different whatever shape or form that takes doesn't have to be neurodiversity it could just be sexuality or whatever it is gender transitioning anything that perhaps you know is a is a more minority status at a school than than is the norm but i think whenever any student is grappling with something complicated like that to be able to take time in your teens to really unpack that and make sure that you're not just you know you're not just you know you're not just and maybe that is through a great supportive school network and maybe some therapy and brilliant that means no homeschooling fantastic but sometimes that that's not there and what are the other options it is about really arming yourself in whatever way is it that you know you need to understand your learning needs in a much more tangible practical form like how can i actually get through exams before i actually flunk them and then that's a hugely um you know upsetting situation for that student who knows they're clever but can't get it out and can't perform on the day and however that you know shows up could it be exact exam anxiety so it's unpacking all the obstacles and really recognizing what that looks like so you know just to reiterate it doesn't have to be all or nothing it doesn't have to be homeschooling or school it's just trying to really take that time to ask the right questions of of parents of the people who care and know about the child the best and and want that and obviously very much care about their welfare so i think that's really the space and i i hope and one of the one of my personal goals for the business as well is you really think about arming children with more knowledge about themselves earlier on i don't know if you can share this or have the same experience but as an adult you know i did good old personality profiling suddenly i'm you know getting these labels i'm like wow is that me and you kind of think oh that's so fascinating i had no idea i was like that even though i thought i knew myself quite well and oh wow people perceive me as this and it was kind of light bulb moments in my 20s and 30s and i just thought wow if you could pull that back to your teens and really see more about yourself and also appreciate of others and how they show up i really think that would help both if you are the neurodivergent one or if you're not but just really taking that level of understanding to to a better and more informed place
Speaker 1yeah oh my goodness me it has been an absolute pleasure ruth kate thank you so much i think we could probably talk for hours but i'm so grateful for your time for your knowledge for your sharing your wisdom your experiences thank you so much
Speaker 3thank you mariah it's been a pleasure
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