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Extraordinary Brains 25 with Joshua Muggleton
140 Plays2 years ago
A gentle and intriguing chat with Josh Muggleton, author, psychologist and autistic person, in which we finally get round to discussing his book, Developing Differently, which you can find here: https://uk.jkp.com/products/developing-differently?_pos=2&_sid=6afba3c13&_ss=r
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Transcript
Introduction and Catching Up
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello. Hi. I'm Max. And I'm Tess. And we are Extraordinary Brains Podcast. That we are. And we haven't done an episode for quite a long time. We really haven't, that's true. You've been away. I've had my GCSEs as well. Yes, you had your GCSEs, then you have been to Cornwall. I did. I then got ill.
00:00:33
Speaker
You did. And now I'm finally, we're both better and also here. That's true. That is, these are all facts. I've laid out a number of facts. Over the period of time between the last episode, my friends actually found this podcast. Ah, hello. Shout out to them if they're listening to this. They probably aren't.
00:00:50
Speaker
Well, I hope they do because I think it's a good one. It's slightly delayed.
Book Discussion: Parenting Neurodivergent Children
00:00:55
Speaker
It's a slight unfortunate delay because we miss the publication of Josh's, just Joshua Muggleton who and his book came out a couple of weeks ago, but it's a sort of late push for publicity really. His book is developing differently and I can say having read quite a few books, I think it's the best book about parenting a child
00:01:14
Speaker
who is neurodivergent that I've ever read and it's definitely a book that I would want the parent of children with certainly autism which is really something that he lays an awful lot about. I've never read a book about raising a child with
00:01:32
Speaker
Who isn't a divergent? So by my standards it is the best book I've lost the ability to read it's the best book about late It's very very good and Josh is a lovely man and very very thoughtful and himself autistic so really has a fantastic kind of
00:01:59
Speaker
perspective on the problems of neurodivergence and both by his own experience and also in his work as a psychologist. Yeah. Which is what he is. Anyway, we'll stop gassing and we'll come back to you at the end. Is that a phrase? Yes, it's a phrase. I wish you'd stop gassing more often. Thank you very much. All right. See you.
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, hello. Hello.
Interview with Josh Muggleton Begins
00:02:23
Speaker
Hello. Today we are delighted to be joined by someone I've worked with before and talked to before and I'm excited to talk to again, Josh Muggleton, an autistic clinical psychologist.
00:02:34
Speaker
And author, who specializes in neurodevelopmental conditions. And one of the people that made me think of this little mini series on neurodiverse people who work with neurodiversity. I must come up with a better, neater title. There must be an acronym in there somewhere. That's a researcher there. You do research and stuff, so they love their acronyms.
00:02:59
Speaker
The, you know, the kind of spiral study is on the way, that sort of thing, they like that. Anyway, one day test when you're a researcher. I'm not going to be a researcher. No, you may not be actually. I'm not very good at organizing information. Yeah, not a meticulous person like me. Right, I'm not a researcher. Right, anyway, shall we talk to Josh? Yes, probably. Hi! How are you doing? Lovely to be here, thank you.
00:03:26
Speaker
Great. Very great to see you. We're just sort of slightly waking up. Shall we just crack straight on with our first question then? Yeah. I think we should. So Josh, thinking about when you were growing up, when did you become aware of your difference and how did that feel?
00:03:45
Speaker
That's a tricky question because I think growing up, I didn't necessarily have the insight to realize that I was different, but looking back, I can certainly recognize things. So one of my earliest memories was at Playgroup.
00:04:01
Speaker
And they had this giant construction set. And often, the playgroup workers constructed it to be a house for people to go in and pretend it was a house. But sometimes, they constructed it into a windmill. And everyone loved it when it was made into a windmill. And people would put it in the sandpit, and they'd climb on it, and push sand from one end to the other while turning the handle, and pretend that they were milling sand.
00:04:32
Speaker
which didn't really make sense to me. And I'd stand there and I'd watch these kids wondering why they were doing this with the sand, doing this over and over and over again. And I'd wait until they would get off it. And then I would go up and there was a kind of a windmill blades and a handle to turn them. And I was fascinated by how at the edges of the windmill blades, they seemed to turn quicker than in the middle. And so I turned the windmill blades watching
00:05:01
Speaker
the move, but I'd only do that if there was no one else playing on it. Right. So looking back, yeah, that was, I suppose, quite an autistic thing for me to be doing and thinking. But at the time, I certainly didn't have the realisation. I think that sort of happened more in primary school. And certainly in primary school, I started to get quite depressed because I just didn't get on and understand people I couldn't get.
00:05:31
Speaker
friendships to work. And part of that might have been that I quite enjoyed, even in the heat of summer, going up in this thick winter coat and walking around the lines of the playground. So you know how they'll put like on a tarmac playground, they might put football court in white lines and then a netball court in blue lines. And I'd like try and work out what's the quickest way
00:05:59
Speaker
or the shortest distance to get from point A to point B without going through a certain line.
00:06:05
Speaker
and I trace it out walking through trying to find, basically it's graph theory. I was just trying to go through and do that. It's probably a nice little mobile game that everyone will be playing. Exactly. And it's even more challenging when people are actually playing football and at the same time. Well, that's level three. Yes, exactly. Still getting the music on for the course. Yeah, exactly. You can imagine it now. We would get George to make it.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, someday. Tessa's younger brother who's an aspiring game designer. That's what he is. I'm jealous. To my dad, my uncle and my grandfather were all very kind of computer Cody people.
00:06:51
Speaker
I did jobs related to that. I tried it and I do not have a brain for code. Which initially disappointed me because I thought it's kind of the stereotype that autistic people are kind of good with coding and stuff. No, definitely not me. And I think even from a couple of things you've said,
00:07:14
Speaker
It's not even a smashing of stereotypes, it's gentle pushing against them, isn't it? Which is quite you, I think. Because when you think about the child, the autistic child who is
00:07:29
Speaker
watching a washing machine spin or those kind of things you hear when you're being taught about autism or watching some windmill wheel spin. You think of it, it's almost presented as a mindless thing.
00:07:45
Speaker
as a kind of satisfying, some kind of base, you know, a brainstem sensory need. Do you see what I mean? Rather than anything high minded or cognitive. But actually, I think you're right to think about it. The real question is, what is it that they're fascinated by? And what are they thinking rather than what, you know, is this what what kind of
00:08:14
Speaker
animalistic urges this kind of satisfying for them. And the same is true of your sort of graph theory game that you played with yourself in school. It's interesting because I think probably quite a few people will have had a fleeting thought of doing that, but maybe didn't follow it through. I certainly, when I looked at those courts,
00:08:44
Speaker
was like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder how it all, what the patterns are here. But then I would go and get distracted and go and do something else. I never had the kind of persistence to actually follow through and work it out. I was always just speculating while I was running from one place to another. Which is supposed to be the difference between ADHD and autism. This is why I think ADHD and autism work so well together because
00:09:11
Speaker
There's a few people I've worked with who have ADHD and it's great because they've got all the energy and enthusiasm and lots of ideas and kind of saying, what about this? What about this? Whereas I tend to be kind of the very slow, methodical one doing, okay, we're going to do this bit, then we're going to do that bit. And I think the two together is magic.
00:09:34
Speaker
It is magic. Unless they're in the same person, in which case it can be very difficult. Yes. Yes, it can be. And that's the paradox, isn't it, in a way?
Understanding Disability: The Social Model
00:09:43
Speaker
You almost need two different people. What? Yeah. This is Tested Signal 4. I'm lost. No, I kind of get it. But, I mean, I wouldn't know. I don't have... I'm not autistic. No, but I think you have an understanding of autism and I think...
00:10:04
Speaker
Yours is probably in some way more sophisticated than a lot of clinicians, a lot of doctors. Oh, nice. You put that on my CV. Yeah. Well, I think it's just the key is to move away from stereotypes and the key is to move away from pathologizing people. I don't know. What do you think, Josh? And the question that we were asking, and that's fine. It's very much part of our brand to get off track.
00:10:34
Speaker
Now I think one of the things that I'm kind of seeing and I suppose hoping that we're going to move towards is I think at the moment there's this idea that you have typical and then you have atypical which is somehow by definition pathological and I think actually it'd be really good to move to a point where we are saying well yes this is typical in a statistical sense and this is atypical but atypical does not mean pathological.
00:11:06
Speaker
Pathological means, well you go. So that there's something, that's a pretty good question actually, what is pathological? I suppose the technical kind of medical definition probably be that something that is wrong or detrimental. Oh okay yeah, like a pathological liar. Yeah, that's a good example. Because that's the only context in which I've really heard it before. Yeah. Sorry, carry on.
00:11:32
Speaker
So pathological changes within the body, another way of explaining I suppose is pathological changes within the body is a finding which is harmful to the body as a whole. Yeah. So it's something that is harmful to the person who has this feature. Oh, right. Yeah. Or to others actually, because actually quite a lot of the time in this particular area, the pathology is actually how whether the person is
00:11:56
Speaker
Do you see what I mean? How they react with other people. It's not necessarily the person themselves who's harmed by this feature, which is another weird feature of neurodevelopmental conditions. Yeah. And I think it's tricky as well when we think about the social model of disability, which I'm guessing you're both familiar with.
00:12:17
Speaker
I am, but I'm just... The what model? The social model of disability. The social model. I just missed that one word. Okay. I'm not familiar with that. Okay. So social model of disability kind of says that it's not the person that is inherently disabled, it's the society environment that's disabling. And so we need to change the society environment. And I think for
00:12:45
Speaker
a lot of people that is a very valid and very helpful model. There are some children I meet who I think are really impaired by their differences. And maybe it's my limitations that I'm struggling to conceptualize how we could create an environment that could meet their needs that isn't going to also cause them harm. So some children I meet who
00:13:15
Speaker
We really struggle. So I work with a lot of children with intellectual disability or genetic disorders. And they've got such great characters and so many great qualities, but at the same time, some of them have behaviors where they really hurt themselves.
00:13:36
Speaker
And it's really hard to work out what it is we need to change to mean that they're not hurting themselves. And it's really tricky because I feel like I need to watch my language very carefully because I think that there are lots of people where neurodiversity is a fantastic thing. And yes, it's society that makes it tricky sometimes to be neurodiverse.
00:14:06
Speaker
But I think there are a much smaller group where actually, and again, maybe it's my limitations, I can't fully understand what it is, but where it's much harder for us to work out what we need to change in the environment in society to make it work for them. I think that's, I mean, I would completely agree with that. I mean, I think that the social, I think it social model of disability has made a really great contribution.
00:14:30
Speaker
to the debate. But I think it doesn't mean that one has to adopt it, lock, stock and barrel in a sense, and almost erase the biological or genetic components of disability to say that it's purely socially constructed, which kind of doesn't make sense. Conceptually, I don't think it makes sense because if you completely erase the difference, then what are you actually
00:14:56
Speaker
adjusting to, you know, we have this concept of reasonable adjustments in disability or in, you know, in difference. Well, if you don't know what you're adjusting to, because you've erased it using this social model, then, then actually, it disappears. And then, well, then actually, the whole system collapses. And I think on a practical level, part of the impairment caused by these different kind of differences and disabilities is
00:15:25
Speaker
interaction with society, people are not isolated, people are not islands. And actually, if everyone got all of the adjustments that they need for their environment to be perfectly adjusted to them, well, actually, those adjustments would clash. So I might need something fast
00:15:46
Speaker
Like even if you and I are both in the classroom, I imagine if we were both the same age in the classroom, I would need quite quick information. I would need a lot of quite quick information.
Exploration of Education and Exclusion
00:15:58
Speaker
You might need it at a slower pace, not because you're less intelligent, but because you have a different way that your brain works. And I will make many more careless mistakes.
00:16:09
Speaker
So even on that mundane level, we exist in society and we interact with other people. And if we actually want to continue to do that as neurodiverse people, there's going to have to be a degree of compromise.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. I think, and it's not like we can really put children into, well, this is the class for ADHD children. Can you imagine? That would be an absolute nightmare, I think. Sadly, the class for ADHD children is the pupil referral unit. It often is. It often is, is the exclusion unit.
00:16:46
Speaker
And that is obviously something that makes me very angry. I mean, it's not just ADHD kids. If I think about our crew, there's autistic kids there as well, but there's a huge amount of ADHD kids. And a lot of kids I imagine with language issues, often quite subtle language issues that really end up with this miscommunication, this frustration, trying to get out what you're trying to say. Yeah.
00:17:13
Speaker
And a good people referral unit. So probably international listeners of which we have some.
00:17:22
Speaker
we do we do there's a little map of where all our listeners come from yes and there's sort of odd things as the occasional Moldovan tunes in um which is nice uh hello Moldova you have received 12 points that's a Eurovision joke um the Moldova in Eurovision was very much was it good I think
00:17:45
Speaker
Were they the ones who did the, sorry, this is completely off topic. That's fine. But were they the ones who did the one that was like, that was quite silly and it got those points. I didn't listen. I didn't watch the Eurovision. That wasn't a question to you. It was a general question. Okay. Internet, please tell us. And if you're from Moldova, please, please let us know. Anyway, that sentence started off with me saying a pupil referral unit is essentially a school where you get the local authority, local council, whatever you want to call it.
00:18:14
Speaker
will send you if you are excluded or your current school can't cope with you. So that's what those are. And what I was going to say was that they're very largely the ones that I know of, was a really brilliant one that I know of in Lambeth, where I work, who are amazing, Kennington Park Academy. Basically, they're just assessing these children and trying to find a way back. And so they do a huge amount of assessment and, you know, kind of referral off to sort
00:18:42
Speaker
find out what's actually going on with these children. And that's a lot of their job. Because it's not necessarily done that well within the mainstream vision. You've got to look behind the behaviour. You've got to try and understand how someone thinks and what their experiences have been. If you want to help them to learn and to grow.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, you have to understand it. Talking about understanding, understanding new diversity.
Josh's Personal Autism Journey
00:19:12
Speaker
Josh, what was your process towards understanding your difference? Very good. Segue. Segue. I like it. Nice. Excuse me. I'm fighting a cough. Not Covid, thankfully. Hooray. Hooray.
00:19:28
Speaker
So I have a brother who's two years younger than me, who was diagnosed with autism when he was about three, so in the early 90s. And my parents kind of off the back of that got very involved with the local branch of the National Autistic Society. And they brought a guy called Tony Atwood
00:19:53
Speaker
over to do a big kind of day-long seminar on autism. And Tony Atwood, especially then, and I think still is quite a big name in autism. He's massive, yeah. And my dad, being the slightly techy guy he is, was kind of tasked with setting up to record the lecture series that he was doing for us that day. And he was listening to it in the car with all of us in it.
00:20:24
Speaker
and Tony was talking about, as it was then, Asperger's Syndrome. And I listened to it, and then I borrowed the cassette, because back when we had cassettes, and I listened to it again, and yeah, the penny just kind of dropped. I realized he's talking about me. And I remember... How do you roughly then use it to primary school, you said?
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, I reckon 11, 12, something like that. Cause you know, all 11 and 12 year olds like to listen to lectures on tape. Yeah.
00:21:01
Speaker
I mean, Tess has got a 12-year-old brother. He's definitely listening to a lecture on Take Up Stairs. Yeah, that's what he does with his friends on Discord all day. Listen to loads and loads of intellectual lectures. Can't beat it. Can't beat it. So yeah, and then I got up, I kind of said to my parents, I think I have this Asperger's thing, and they were a bit skeptical at the time. I think because my
00:21:30
Speaker
I think because it was generally my difficulty were put down to anxiety and mood. And what were the difficulties at the time? Because you sort of talked a little bit about earlier years, when did the anxiety and mood start to become more prominent for you? Certainly I remember in year five of primary school,
00:21:53
Speaker
my teacher calling my parents in because we were assigned a poetry task and I'd written this very bleak, very disturbing, depressing poem and they were quite worried about me. And probably quite rightly. And then when I moved to secondary school, everything fell apart and I became very depressed. I became suicidal and I got into child and adolescent mental health services quite quickly.
00:22:24
Speaker
And it was after a few years in cams that they said, by the way, Josh, we think you're autistic. And I said, yes, what took you so long? Because of course, by then you'd worn out your Tony Atwood tape. Yes, pretty much. So that didn't really come as a surprise to me. But it was just the social stuff at secondary school to change the
00:22:55
Speaker
that the fact that teachers will, a teacher will say one thing, but then a different teacher will say something else. Or the secondary school I went to was, it was a very big secondary school on a huge campus. And it had two main buildings and you had a five minute movement break to get from one lesson to the other. And if you were at the far side of one building, had to go to the far side of the other building, you had to sprint. And I was doing that
00:23:26
Speaker
I couldn't stand the idea of getting a detention. And I saw someone in my first week get a detention for not remembering to bring the right textbook. So I brought every single textbook workbook, piece of stationery, everything I could possibly need in my bag every day. And so I was kind of carrying this
00:23:49
Speaker
Basically, it was a Bergen all the way from one to the other. And yeah, it was not good. It was a pretty dark time. So you must have been in pain and you must have been constantly stressed. Yeah, I didn't sleep properly for years. I'd go to bed worrying about it, maybe get to sleep around 2 AM, then wake up for school at 7.
00:24:20
Speaker
So constantly, and the social stuff, I mean, you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but the social stuff, was it that transition to secondary that really made social interaction and friendships extra difficult? Was that what happened? Yeah, I think so. I think primary school
00:24:43
Speaker
there was the benefit of that you were in the same class throughout, pretty much, and that helped. And it's much smaller. It's easier to build a relationship with some of the teachers. Whereas at secondary school, you're kind of on your own, almost. And the classes are much bigger and much, they change, come to subject. And yeah, it just,
00:25:12
Speaker
I think partly my organizational skills at that point weren't great so it was partly that and partly why you went for the Bergen option which actually I have to say at least one of my children nor still does yeah because I'm so forgetful well you and your brother do it well do we yeah John does it as well for years
00:25:32
Speaker
It's not good for you. To this day, I still kind of lean forward because I was carrying this bag for, that was so heavy for so long. Yeah, so that didn't go very well. And then around, excuse me, I think I got,
00:26:01
Speaker
partway into year 11, I think it was. Maybe it was year 10. And I was signed off school by my psychiatrist. And honestly, it was the best day of my life. The weight that lifted off my shoulders, I slept for hours. It was
00:26:22
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, it was just incredible. So what, so that obviously was part of the weightlifting. What helped? What brought you back in a sense or what, you know, sort of, what was the thing that sort of led you to then get to where you are now, having been signed off school? So I tried kind of studying from home and we did a few different, um, there's a few different organizations, which kind of do home study for kids. Um,
00:26:51
Speaker
And I could do that fine until I had to set exams. And I was doing science subjects and you had to do the practical exam in a school. And I couldn't go into a school. And we were kind of a bit stuck as to what to do because my mental health at that point was quite fragile. And we ended up finding a specialist school for young people who were autistic. It's actually a specialist college.
00:27:22
Speaker
And I went there and it was really tough. It was residential and it was down in Somerset. So it was a hundred or so miles away from home. And that was really tough, but I didn't have any other, this was kind of a last ditch, didn't know where else I could go. And that kind of helped
00:27:50
Speaker
start to turn things around and they didn't do anything particularly revolutionary. Actually what helped was I'd go to lectures and there would be someone who was there who, A, take notes for me, but B, I knew and it was just a bit of a confidence boost that I could be in a classroom again. Kind of an anchor for your day I suppose. Yeah, exactly. They got me
00:28:19
Speaker
to use public transport, which is something I couldn't do before. Admittedly, so it was getting the bus from the college that I attended to the residents.
00:28:32
Speaker
And that worked great because I kind of knew exactly when to press the button. Because I've learned that there was an art to button pressing on buses because you press it too early, then you end up coming off at the stop before you want it. And if you press it too late, then you make the bus driver very angry because you have to slam on the brakes. Yes. It's one of those subtle unwritten rules of communication that we always talk about when we talk about autism, don't we? Exactly.
00:28:58
Speaker
like if you if you press the button and the bus driver thinks that you wanted to get off on the stop that you just left that you just left and so he's like oh sorry and he stops the bus again you're like no no it's the next one there's the next one but there is there is an etiquette to it which is never ever written down yeah i normally rely on the other people who are getting off on my stop exactly exactly and that's um so then when i went to university that's what i had to rely on initially until i found my new kind of like points where i had to
00:29:26
Speaker
to identify that is the optimal button pressing time. But yeah, because I got that support at college, I suddenly went from quite mediocre grades in a handful of subjects, because I'd had to cut my curriculum down massively, to actually quite good grades. And I realized I could actually do stuff.
00:29:52
Speaker
And then I went to university and they had, I think part of it is just that the university, it was quite small. So I went to St Andrews, which is this really nice small university out in the countryside. And it's like, people call it the bubble when you're there. And it felt like a bubble and you're quite isolated from the rest of the world and it was brilliant.
00:30:18
Speaker
And they also do something called academic parenting, where like third and fourth years adopting coming freshers. And we happen to have a family friend who had a son with autism and a daughter at St Andrews in third year, or fourth quarter of the time. So her daughter adopted me and understood what I might find tricky.
00:30:44
Speaker
and really helped me to kind of settle in and feel comfortable there. And it was just the perfect environment for me. That's great. And so what I'm thinking about, because the sort of thrust of our second question is how your understanding and diagnosis in your case helped you. So what, just to kind of go back through that great story, what was the significance of diagnosis in that story? Did it matter?
00:31:12
Speaker
or was it just a kind of footnote? I think it was a bit of a nice validation but I think what really helped was the psychologist I was working with, I think quite early on realised that trying to do
00:31:35
Speaker
of like cognitive challenging with me trying to kind of show the flaws of my arguments was not going to work because these were things I spent far too much time thinking about but what she did spend a lot of time doing was helping me and her to understand how my brain worked and why I found certain things tricky why I was good at certain things and that didn't need a diagnosis and we did a lot of that before I got a diagnosis yes but that
00:32:02
Speaker
kind of process effectively of understanding why I was finding things tricky, but also understanding my neurotype, that that's what I think helped. That's what was more meaningful, I think, to me than necessarily the diagnosis itself. That's interesting. I mean, the obvious point, I suppose somebody might listening to this go, well, you can't you got, obviously, the college that you went to was very helpful to you, and it is reserved for people.
00:32:32
Speaker
who are autistic, so therefore you, by definition, probably it was a gateway into other things that were helpful. I suppose that's another thing that could say about it. I mean, I would always argue back that that's a bit of a circular argument because, I mean, if you're arguing against the importance of diagnosis, well, if something that's helpful, which is not actually, you know what I mean? It's just a kind of way of filtering people.
00:32:58
Speaker
then there's nothing inherent to the diagnosis. But anyway, I'm not here to kind of knock down diagnosis because I literally do it myself. Yeah, I think diagnosis can be hugely valuable. I think it can be very validating for a person. And sometimes it's not even when I've been working clinically, sometimes it's not even the diagnosis on a piece of paper, it's actually a professional doing that kind of bit of assessment. And actually just saying, yeah,
00:33:26
Speaker
I agree. I think you are neurodiverse. I think you're artistic. I think you think differently. And sometimes just having someone acknowledge that just in itself is really powerful. But the thing on a piece of paper is also really, some people really need that, that kind of, it's their black and white. And like you say, unfortunately, we're still in a position where it opens doors. Sorry.
00:33:51
Speaker
I think one of the things that I like about those, you're right, because when I assess a family, a child, one of the moments, yeah, obviously giving a diagnosis can be a nice moment, but actually one of the nicest moments is if you get the opportunity to say, I believe you, you're right about this. There is something going on. It isn't just
00:34:12
Speaker
because your husband left you or it isn't just because um well I think in a way we were talking before we started recording about some of the stigmatizing way people talk about fetal alcohol effects and it isn't just because you had a couple of drinks when you were um in a yeah I will answer that question Tess um when you were pregnant you know there's lots of other stuff going on oh yeah so yeah but it's the you know that there is
00:34:39
Speaker
good sound advice that pregnant people shouldn't drink and that's fine. I was just thinking like maybe feta was being used in another context but no that does make sense. Yeah yeah yeah but sometimes that's if you happen to have drunk
00:34:53
Speaker
even if you didn't know you were pregnant or you drank a little bit but not too much, there is a bit of a tendency sometimes for professionals to seize on that and try and tell you that that's why your child has X or Y problem, which I'm not sure about. I mean, it's not even whether it's right or wrong. I don't know how helpful it is. Yeah, and I think
00:35:25
Speaker
I think that comes back to me about what is a diagnosis meant to be. And for me, yes, it's become a key to access services, which I don't think it should be. I think that's kind of what we've got to because money's tight everywhere. And so people are raising thresholds and looking for criteria. But I think really a diagnosis should be a communication tool and a tool that helps
00:35:54
Speaker
everyone understands a person, including the person who tells. And I think if you can, if a diagnosis, I think a good diagnosis helps people make sense and there's that sense making. And I think, yeah. And again, this is why I, sometimes I see children who have this kind of whole alphabet of letters of diagnoses.
00:36:23
Speaker
And I'm sure that they're all valid, but that doesn't explain the person. And actually it needs a bit of sitting down and really thinking what.
00:36:33
Speaker
How does this child think? How do we understand that? How can we put ourselves in their shoes? Yes. And one of the difficulties, I mean, I can get onto a whole rant about this because we focus on making the diagnosis, not actually understanding the person. And we spend all of our time doing these instruments that are designed to do the first, but don't actually spend any time on the second on actually understanding the person.
00:36:57
Speaker
But all of that takes time. And that's the difficulty in the system, which is either cash strapped or in other systems where you have to pay for the time. And so it's how much time people spend understanding you depends on how much money you have, which doesn't seem fair either.
00:37:19
Speaker
I suppose my question, the question I've been thinking about was, so what point did you decide to pursue clinical psychology as a kind of, as your kind of profession?
Pursuing Clinical Psychology
00:37:33
Speaker
And when did you then choose to focus on neurodevelopmental stuff?
00:37:40
Speaker
So during my A levels, in my first year I did maths, physics and business. And then I realised partway through the year that I could not do physics to save my life. So then in second year I decided to pick up psychology because it seemed interesting
00:38:07
Speaker
And a few weeks in, I just thought, this is easy. And maybe that's because I'm particularly good at psychology. Maybe it's because the A-level is a bit easier than maths. Good news for me. I'm taking it. Yeah, this is going to be psychology A-level. And they offered a one-year version to do both years of the psychology A-level. So I thought, right, I'm going to do that. And I still loved it.
00:38:33
Speaker
And so I decided at that point, it was like, okay, this is what I want to do for a degree. And I was really interested in what my psychologist had done and why they did it. And so I'm not sure what she thought about the idea of me pursuing clinical psychology, but at that point, I kind of said to her, right, I'm going to go to university, I'm going to do psychology, I'm going to become a clinical psychologist. And yeah, it was just,
00:39:05
Speaker
I loved understanding how people think and why people do the things they do. And so that stayed with me throughout. I'm currently studying pediatric clinical neuropsychology to try and understand how the brain builds itself and why it can wire itself differently.
00:39:29
Speaker
I'm really interested in something called behavioral economics, which is kind of where psychology and economics meet and how people make really odd decisions. So like if there is a sale and every duvet is 50% off, a lot of people might need a double duvet.
00:39:54
Speaker
But let's see, I can get a king size for less than the price that I budgeted for my double. So I'm going to get the king size, even though they don't need it. And it makes no sense to spend more money when they could spend less money to get exactly what they need. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. And more is not always better.
00:40:20
Speaker
But if the king size is less expensive than the double, is that what you said? Yeah. So the king size, let's say that the double, pick some easy numbers, is usually 50 pounds and the king size is 75. If they're both half price. Oh, I see. If you save more on a king size, you're buying king size because the saving is greater. Yeah.
00:40:46
Speaker
even though actually you're shelling out more money on something you don't need. Yes, I understand what you're saying. I get that now. Or one of the things I mean, another bit of this is confirmation bias, which I think affects clinicians quite a lot that we don't really talk about. Oh, yeah. And, you know, there have been times when I've been working... Is it worth just explaining what confirmation bias is? You will know probably because you're doing... Vaguely. Vaguely. Let's just explain confirmation bias. It's actually really important for neurodevelopmental conditions, I think as well.
00:41:17
Speaker
So confirmation bias is when we seek out and overweight information that confirms our suspicions. So the example I always give of this is
00:41:32
Speaker
I remember seeing someone in my cams placement for anxiety, panic. International listeners, cams is child and adolescent mental health services. Continue. And I remember from saying, talking about
00:41:54
Speaker
having all these symptoms of panic. And I sort of said, before you had that first panic attack, did you have a lot of coffee, a lot of energy drinks? And I said, yes, yes, how did you know? And I kind of had this nice warm feeling of, ah, yes, I know how to do my job, I can predict this. But actually, that's confirmation bias. I should really, if I'm being scientific about it, I should be trying to disprove what I think is going on, rather than thinking, ah, right, I think this is panic. So I'm going to ask all the questions that are going to confirm that this is panic.
00:42:25
Speaker
because then I'm just going to find what I'm looking for. Yeah. And directly around neurodevelopmental conditions, this is why I thump the table and get very cross about this. We should not be assessed. If someone comes to me from a non-developmental service and wants me to assess for X condition, I will always say, I'm not assessing for this condition, I'm going to assess this person. Yes.
00:42:52
Speaker
I try really hard not to have too much information which is going to send me down one rabbit hole. It's not easy, you can never completely get rid of it. I was thinking about some of what you were saying and when you're trying to do so much in an assessment,
00:43:11
Speaker
there's a little bit that creeps in. So I think that may be, you know, you have a problem with sleep. And I'm like, is it because, you know, there's a change in the environment? That's why you wake up at night. That's a little bit of confirmation bias, because I'm thinking that that's the pattern that I usually see. So. Yeah. So I'm kind of do you fit this pattern that I usually see? Because that will save me a lot of time. You know, rather than being extremely meticulous about it, because I haven't got an hour, I've got five minutes.
00:43:40
Speaker
I guess is one thing. Yeah, it's mental shortcuts that we all do. And yeah, usually they're helpful. It's just sometimes they're really not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's and it takes time and experience to know which ones are helpful and which are not really. And maybe I maybe I kind of
00:43:59
Speaker
because it's something I'm so passionate about, I may be kind of just chapped about it too much and I should relax a little bit there. I think you're right though, confirmation bias is really important. But this kind of understanding how people work, going back to me watching these kids in the play group with the windmill, Pardon was wondering why they find this so interesting. Yes. And I've kind of kept that
00:44:28
Speaker
kind of curiosity as to why everyone else does the things that they do and thinks the way that they do. And actually, when I speak to other autistic clinical psychologists, it's often quite the same thing. It's this kind of, well, I've always been interested to try and understand how people work because that was quite adaptive early on. Excuse me. A fascination with the human condition. But I think I was wondering,
00:44:56
Speaker
Because we do see a lot of neurodiverse people in psychology, psychiatry, this bit of pediatrics that I do. So you think, in a sense, your own autism has made you more, you know, I'm cautious about saying a better clinical psychologist because there's all sorts of baggage about that, if you see what I mean. But given you that curiosity that then
00:45:25
Speaker
It gives me, I suppose it gives me a different, a different maybe additional source of motivation. And I think it gives me a different perspective. I don't think that one perspective is certainly better than another. But I think when you have lots of people working the service with lots of different perspectives, with lots of different strengths,
00:45:49
Speaker
I think that's, again, that's where the magic happens. It's where you have lots of different neurotypes together. So for example, my supervisor for a long time, we would always say that she is on a mission to make me more flexible and I'm on a mission to make her more rigid. Because I was very much about following processes and doing things exactly, whereas she was all about
00:46:17
Speaker
sort of doing things, not ignoring processes, but being flexible with them. And I like to think that, yes, I was more flexible, but I've also made her a bit more rigid. Well, there you go. Everyone's a winner. Yeah. I just think we only have really one neurotype.
00:46:35
Speaker
in our house, apart from mum. We probably need some more different neuropaths. It does manifest in different ways. We're basically talking about it already, but I may as well ask the third question now. How do you feel about your difference now? I think I've got more comfortable with it. I think for a long time,
00:47:04
Speaker
it almost felt like it was the defining thing about me. And then
00:47:13
Speaker
I think I kind of got, not that I was ever uncomfortable being autistic, but it now feels easier for it to be a part of me without being necessarily the central part of me. Ironically, I think it was then replaced by being a clinical psychologist that I'm now in the press of being comfortable with the idea that actually there is more to me than being a clinical psychologist as well. It's one of those professions that does become all encompassing, isn't it?
Embracing Autistic Identity
00:47:41
Speaker
Yeah, which can be a double edged sword. But yeah, I think.
00:47:51
Speaker
I remember at university feeling that I had to try and be social, that I had to try and do all these things and I was very aware of when I found things too much and I felt I got quite annoyed and quite depressed if I wasn't able to do something. I did find something too much or too overwhelming.
00:48:14
Speaker
actually now i feel much more comfortable saying actually you know what that just isn't me more rather than being on the outskirts kind of of a party or at a wedding thinking i don't feel part of this i'm like from the outside looking in yes um actually being comfortable being the person that he's just observing and just noticing what's going on yes um
00:48:43
Speaker
without that needing to be a problem. So yeah, I think more comfortable. I think that's really interesting. I was thinking about myself actually in a way, because although not autistic, I don't find conventional social gatherings easy either. Chat is not something that small talk has never been something that I'm strong at. And you said weddings and other things, I've often
00:49:09
Speaker
Yeah, just felt on the outside of as well. And there's, it's interesting, I think my natural reaction
00:49:17
Speaker
other people's natural reaction may be oh I should be able to do this I'm bad you know what's wrong with me my natural reaction being a basically quite arrogant person is what's wrong with them why are they talking about this nonsense you know and and to feel a little bit superior but they're both dysfunctional reactions in a sense yeah and I think you're right just to say well I'm just a bit different to them and that's fine and there's nothing wrong with them either is probably the best and you can you can
00:49:46
Speaker
Think about you on the outside of a wedding, and then think about that as a metaphor for being slightly on the outside of society as a whole. But it doesn't have to be either self-hatred or hatred of other, I suppose. I suppose that's where you've got to get to at some point, haven't you?
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that, and maybe it's something that everyone has that as they, you know, whether or not they're, they're, um, then you're a divergent, they kind of be getting comfortable with yourself as a person. Um, cause I think that being a psychologist, you know, there's this whole identity formation teenage years and kind of getting comfortable. So maybe it's just part of that. Um,
00:50:30
Speaker
But yeah, it does feel, it feels a bit easier to be near. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that is a process that different people have at different rates. And I suspect some people never get there, which is a shame. I suspect the more time you spend on Twitter, the less time you can, the less maturity you manage because you're constantly being told to hate the other. Anyway, I'm a bit down on Twitter at the moment.
00:50:59
Speaker
Twitter sucks. It's fun, but it sucks. There's a kind of, there's a hate culture to it. Yeah, there is. But there's also, even if it's a well-meaning hate culture, anyway, even the good guys are bad guys on Twitter, I think sometimes. There you go. There's your aphorism of the day. Shall we do question four? We haven't even talked about your book yet. I haven't forgotten.
00:51:22
Speaker
That's fine. Sorry, just before we do question four, I was going to ask this earlier, what does being a clinical psychologist actually entail? That's such a great question. I assumed knowledge. Yeah. So I. So the first thing I'm going to say is it's not a psychiatrist, because often that's what people confuse. So I'm not a medical doctor. I've not been to medical school.
00:51:50
Speaker
I kind of have studied how people think and so my training is much more in psychological therapies to try and understand how to apply psychological theory and research to mental health situations and how we can use that to help people
00:52:13
Speaker
to feel better, to cope better, to understand themselves better. That said, I often say that I'm a pretty bad psychologist because I don't really like a lot of talking therapy. I'm much more interested in a slightly more niche area, which is trying to understand how a person's brain's working. And that's why I'm kind of interested in neurodevelopment, neuropsychology,
00:52:42
Speaker
So I do a lot of things like IQ tests and memory assessments and assessments for like problem-solving skills to try and understand if a child's having difficulties, why is that? Can I pinpoint, for example, that they've got a very specific issue with language that I can then say, ah, right, okay, so these are strategies that might help this person in everyday life.
00:53:10
Speaker
So that's kind of my niche to it, but clinical psychology is much broader and it's much more about applying psychological knowledge and theory to a person, to a service, to try and help it work a bit better. It's very interesting to go back to your experience of having a psychologist yourself because you mentioned in briefly
00:53:39
Speaker
I think it was her, challenging your, you know, how the challenging of your cognitions, the challenging your thoughts wasn't terribly helpful. And it's worth just emphasising that a lot, particularly CVT, one of them, obviously, the bread and butter of talking therapy, the kind of McDonald's of talking therapy, one could say.
00:54:04
Speaker
Well I think it is, it's very much based on that and I suppose maybe that connects to your current inclination towards understanding rather than just almost manualised therapy. I know not all manual therapy is manualised but very often CBT is quite manualised by which I mean you're following a manual, you're following a bit of a programme rather than just understanding what's happening. Yeah I think
00:54:33
Speaker
from professionally I find the talking bit of talking therapies I find quite often they're a bit like a magic trick in that they'll kind of make sense but they won't change the feeling or they won't change the fact that someone is really anxious and struggling to go outside. I think what real change happens when we work with
00:55:02
Speaker
people's motivations, what they're interested in, what they're, you know, what, what, what they can get them out of bed in the morning. And we look at behavior and actually, what are you doing? I think. So just just just because this is a really important point about therapies, and it might be interesting to people. So what you're saying is that things like CBT or DBT, behavioral cognitive behavioral therapies, DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy,
00:55:31
Speaker
Cold. There you go. Knowledge. They magic tricks in the sense that they will convince the person in the moment that something's changed, but underneath
00:55:43
Speaker
has so well i should say it might be that i'm just not very good at them that's just my personal experience as a as a therapist and as someone who's had it um i find for example i can talk to someone about for example let's say they've got social anxiety and they feel like everyone's looking at them and i can kind of talk them through and help them see that yes logically that is
00:56:10
Speaker
a belief that doesn't make sense and that they've got no evidence for. But it doesn't stop them feeling like that's the case. There's that disconnect between thoughts and feelings. I find what's more powerful is saying, okay, you're really nervous about going outside. How far could you currently get outside before it felt too much?
00:56:38
Speaker
or what situation would be too much and what would just be okay that you'd be able to manage and actually gradually getting someone more comfortable in those situations that are still uncomfortable, but they're not gonna cause them to be really, really stressed. It's that kind of baby steps, it's actually doing it.
00:56:58
Speaker
If I'm struggling with stress or mood, I find it's far more helpful for me to go out and to be in nature, to go for a run. I think physical exercise is one of the most effective ways to manage stress, anxiety, low mood.
00:57:20
Speaker
And I think it's those kind of, it's the doing that makes stuff happen. Now, that's not to say, CBT doesn't work for a lot of people, for a lot of people, CBT is great. And like I say, this might be that I'm just not particularly good at it. And it's why I don't tend to do much of it. I tend to do much more, more acceptance and commitment therapy, which is much more kind of behavioral based. And why I do a lot of
00:57:49
Speaker
kind of assessment, trying to understand how someone thinks. It's interesting, because you do an assessment, you're assessing, not even a scientific way, but it's kind of analytical way. And I was thinking of have this sort of similar conversation with with my wife and Tessa's mom, who's a chart training in psychotherapy. And she has a similar critique of the kind of cognitive behavioral therapies, but from a psychotherapeutic angle of, you know, let's explore the
00:58:17
Speaker
experiences and underlying feelings and embedded trauma, et cetera, which is not a different approach. Well, here's a different approach to yours, but it shares with it an interest in what lies beneath. Shout out to my mum. Shout out to your mum.
00:58:35
Speaker
And you know, your mom's right. The biggest, I'm pretty confident the research still stands, even though I've not read it in a while. But across psychological therapies, the biggest predictor of good outcomes is the therapeutic relationship. It's the being with someone who's listening and interested and wants to understand. And
00:58:57
Speaker
Lots of psychological therapies, I think, are the same kinds of things dressed up in different language. Yeah, you were telling me to talk because that's what she says too. But what I think is really important is having that person who is genuinely interested, genuinely wants to help you, genuinely wants to understand. And I think the power of someone just listening and
00:59:23
Speaker
having that curious, non-judgmental mindset of wanting to try and help. I think that by itself can go a long way. Yeah, and when we do it right, we can do that in medicine, but we're just not given the time or the continuity of care or, oh, I'm going to growl now. It really won't come out well, so I'm not going to. But yes, I mean, it's incredibly frustrating because you're right, that is something that we can do alongside all of the medical stuff.
00:59:50
Speaker
and it's actually really helpful and I think a good GP, that's a lot of the skill, that's a lot of the magic of a good GP. Thinking of some of the people I've seen, it is listening and actually feeling like the other person is actually there as a person rather than just as a vessel for whatever manual or whatever diagnosis or whatever
01:00:15
Speaker
you know, whatever scan they're going to kind of lay upon you that you're actually in the room as a patient or client, whatever you want to call it. I have my feelings about those words, but feeling like there's another person in the room, not just an agent of the state or an agent of whatever psychological method you're using. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I even remember during my training, the point where
01:00:45
Speaker
I felt like I knew the theory well enough to put that down a little bit and to just be me. Yeah. And that was a big moment in my training that I could really progressed and felt more confident in what I was doing and was doing better at what I was doing. Yeah. And it isn't, you can't just, you can't just do it from the off. You have got to work out.
01:01:10
Speaker
how to do the job and then, yeah, that's true actually. And then, yeah, and then you can start to bring your own stuff in. So yes, that's very true actually. And it is hard when you get started. Shall we do our final question?
01:01:24
Speaker
Yeah. I was reading in the Guardian today. Dad, we haven't even done the fourth one. Oh gosh. We were going to do the fourth one and then I asked a question and then we basically just answered. Onwards. I was reading in the Guardian this week that a good podcast should be an hour, an hour and 15 tops.
01:01:48
Speaker
Exactly, we're hitting the hour mark, don't mind. But that's only the Guardian. We can ignore the Guardian. Well it was partly based on the fact that they don't want a podcast to last more than one or two commutes. And I'm like, well yeah, because in the Guardian world, every commute is within London. So therefore... Okay, fourth question. Right, go on. Looking back, is there anything you wish have been different?
01:02:18
Speaker
I think more teachers, I
Supporting Neurodiverse Students
01:02:23
Speaker
think education can make such a difference. And I think there were a lot of teachers who looking back were really trying to help, but didn't have the time, didn't have the understanding, didn't have the resources. And actually a huge amount of my waking hours were spent in school.
01:02:45
Speaker
And I think more teachers, so teachers themselves have more time to spend, like we were saying, in the room to really try and understand someone, to take the time to know their students, to take the time to do bits of professional development actually in their working hours rather than having to cram it in after school in their evenings or in their weekends. I think teachers are
01:03:13
Speaker
I think teachers are miracle workers. I think we can do amazing things and we need more of them and we need to treat them a lot better.
01:03:21
Speaker
It's one of the reasons I wanted to stay all at my current school is because the teachers already know me well and they already understand my neurodiversity. And I don't want to start over after that because it took, it took so long. Maybe it's because I didn't have my diagnosis yet, but I think partially to, because obviously ADHD isn't just like, it's not the same in everybody. So it's, it's, yeah, it's just been really good to have that understanding in them.
01:03:47
Speaker
And I was interested in what you say, Josh, because a lot of people have said, I wish the teachers had more understanding. I wish the teachers had different attitudes. But actually what you say is probably more helpful because it's not that the teachers don't want to have the understanding. It's not that teachers are prejudiced necessarily. It's just that there isn't the time and the headspace to properly understand their pupils. So actually more teachers is actually the answer. And then again, there are some teachers who are just
01:04:18
Speaker
OK, yes. So I'm sure I've met a psychologist who falls into that category too. Sorry, you say that again? I'm saying I'm sure that you have paediatricians and psychologists who fall into that category too. Let's say more good teachers. Yes.
01:04:34
Speaker
Yes, I know. Yes, it's true. They're going to be started on some of the pediatricians. Well, you're going to say some of the teachers. I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm really serious. You don't get me started because I could get in trouble anyway. Shall we? Well, that's the fourth question done that I completely forgot about. Yeah, there you go.
01:04:54
Speaker
hopes for the future, and then we can talk about your book. That's my question to ask. Okay, you take the ask the question. What's wrong with me today? Excuse you. I know, I'm trying to talk now. I really should have taken my meds. So what are your hopes for the future?
01:05:12
Speaker
I mean first you need to get over this cough. I'm hoping you can edit out half of these coughs. People will be saying what cough because Max will have edited these coughs so expertly. I'll leave the last one in because otherwise people really won't know what you're talking about. I think we're in a really exciting time where
01:05:38
Speaker
we're getting neurodiversity is coming more to the fore. What I'm hoping to get to is a point where
01:05:50
Speaker
I mean, I don't think we should be getting away, you know, doing away with diagnosis, but where actually we're putting understanding a child's differences first, where we've kind of had that uncoupling between atypical and pathological, and where actually we're thinking about, okay, well, a huge number of children
01:06:16
Speaker
going through education going you know huge number of adults in employment are going to have some neurodevelopmental differences so rather than let's focus on assessing all of these kids let's focus on just generally let's understand people who have different profiles of strengths and weaknesses and who who think in different ways and have just supports generally built in for that i think
01:06:45
Speaker
there's much more scope to build a supported neurodiverse society that works for everyone. Now, I take your point from earlier that you can't have a classroom for all the ADHD kids and you can't have a class before the ADHD. In society, that's probably not going to be feasible. But I think having people generally more aware of what it's like to have ADHD and what kind of things can be helpful
01:07:16
Speaker
because actually a lot of strategies that are helpful for people with intellectual disability, for autism, for ADHD, for dyspraxia, anything. Not all of them are going to be helpful for everyone, but they're usually not going to do harm if you apply them with a bit of common sense and ask the person. And if they're helpful, then let's use them. Yeah, absolutely. I think we really need to, yeah, 100% makes sense. I think we really need to better
01:07:46
Speaker
how we are educated on the university because no one there's no point in school in the education system where they sit us down and they go this is what new university is yeah the only things we know from our experiences and from what we consume in the media which is what where so many of these stereotypes come from because we're never taught what they're actually like
01:08:08
Speaker
And that's interesting, isn't it? Because they're important aspects of school life, particularly school life as opposed to other parts of life. And yet there isn't teaching on them. That doesn't make sense in a way. No, there should be a PSHE lesson for that. Yeah, there should. There really should, because people need to understand. Understanding is the first step towards helping. Is there PSHE on diversity more generally, on racial and sexual and gender diversity?
01:08:37
Speaker
There's not enough. But there is never enough. There's never enough. But I suppose what you could just thinking about how you make a change in that way, you could lobby the PSA, you could lobby for the the diversity curriculum of PSH. PSHE should be this is to include neurodiversity. I think PSHE should be a more common subject. It should be at least once a week because there's so much we need to learn.
01:09:03
Speaker
There's so much we need to learn and we're just not learning it. We had one lesson on, maybe this is because of lockdown as well, but we had one lesson on diversity, like sexuality, and they were like,
01:09:15
Speaker
this is what this is what gay means okay because we had we had a substitute we had a substitute for PSHG she had no clue what she was doing she was reading off of a piece of paper that's not gonna teach us anything international listeners personal social it's just life skills basically yeah life skills education
01:09:34
Speaker
It's embarrassing because I've actually worked with that a lot. And she was just completely ignoring the fact that everyone was just going on their Chromebooks and not paying any attention to what she was saying. It's not a subject which is respected within the teaching profession, I think. No, not at all. And it should be. It's very, very important. Sorry, I've gone on a bit of a rap a lot of it. My test is chair of the PSHE Association and a specialist PSHE teacher. We can look back on this conversation.
01:10:03
Speaker
We will. I'm taking sociology for a level as well. I think that's what you should do Tess. I want to. And I think you know even I think this almost falls under there's so many things I want to kind of come back to because I think you're so right Tess and I think PSHE should be about equipping people for life and I think
01:10:29
Speaker
understanding your own neurodiversity, let alone academic all the breadth of it, but actually taking some time to help kids to look at all the different aspects of, for example, attention, language, managing emotions. What are you good at? What do you find tricky? What are the kind of strategies you can use? I think that in a very practical and personal way could be hugely helpful. I think teaching people about
01:10:54
Speaker
mental health and about ways to recognize when that's starting to slip, what you can do just generally to help you look after yourself. I think self-care gets a really bad name. I think people roll your eyes when they talk about self-care, but actually it's so important. And when you let, I've experienced, when I've let it slip, things go south very quickly. And I think equipping kids with these skills and these tools and this understanding,
01:11:24
Speaker
At school, I think we would take a big bite out of the massive demand on mental health services because we've gotten there early, because we're talking about prevention and giving people these tools and normalising
01:11:44
Speaker
before things get tricky. And I think that applies as much to neurodiversity in terms of just understanding yourself and understanding what strategies work for you as it does to mental health. I think that's absolutely right. Go on. So I think if we teach students about like race and sexuality and neurodiversity, then they're not going to grow up and show
01:12:10
Speaker
Well, they're less likely to grow up and show hatred towards these groups. But it's worth a try. Yeah. And it's gonna, it's gonna help these people in the future. And I think people just, it's, it's people, I don't know. I think, yeah, like I was saying, I think we should take it more seriously because it can be really, really helpful for individuals and for how people treat those individuals.
01:12:35
Speaker
Just speaking of helpful and educational, Josh, I've read your book and it's not out yet, but I was very lucky to get a proof copy. And I think it's not a math, it's not, okay, it's a deliberately awkward segue, but in a sense, the way I felt your book was at a family level to do some of that education and to do some of that,
01:13:01
Speaker
conveying an understanding of difference, a lot of the things you've been talking about, an understanding of difference, and what are your, I suppose, so the book's called Developing Differently and it's out in June with, published by Jessica Kingsley Press, I think. Yes. See, I have, look, pay attention. Why did you write the book and what are your hopes for
Josh Muggleton's Book: Developing Differently
01:13:28
Speaker
it? That may be the same question.
01:13:30
Speaker
So I think there are lots of great resources out there for parents of very articulate autistic people. What in my experience I found there's less of is stuff for parents of particularly young children with things like global developmental delay and intellectual disability.
01:13:57
Speaker
or kids who are diagnosed quite young as being autistic in a very limited language. And I think for those parents start really early on in their journey of parenting this neurodiverse child or this neurodivergent child rather, particularly a child who has
01:14:19
Speaker
all children have lots of additional needs because they're children but with a lot more needs, often due to language, I felt there wasn't really much out there for them and it's something that in my clinical practice I felt I was giving a lot of the same advice over and over and I thought that there must be a simpler way
01:14:44
Speaker
And equally, one thing that I think isn't really talked about is, we were talking about self-care earlier, but parent self-care. And there are some parents I meet who love their child dearly and go above and beyond their child. And often this child is really struggling and has really high support needs because
01:15:04
Speaker
for example, things maybe aren't going well at school, or maybe we're still struggling to understand how we need to get this environment right for that child. And it's really tough for the parent. And actually, often, my work is partly with a child and trying to understand that child, but also trying to help the parent look after themselves so that they can then meet this child's needs who are a bit different to what they might be expecting. So they have to think a bit harder. They have to work a bit harder.
01:15:34
Speaker
So that's why I kind of wrote it. So yes, I'm hoping it's something that for parents of children who are quite young who are quite early on in that journey of trying to understand, you know, quite early on in the journey of that child developing.
01:15:56
Speaker
and something I can hopefully come back to and kind of get things, just get the basics in place early on and again to try and prevent difficulties and try and understand that child a little bit better.
01:16:10
Speaker
And I think it achieves those, richly achieves those aims. It's a fabulous book. And one of the things I think I put in the quote I gave you was, I wish I'd written it myself. No, it's not jealousy, exactly. But I was like, oh, yeah, this is the book.
01:16:30
Speaker
It's not completely the book I've been stewing in my brain for the last 10 years, but yes, it's very close and I'm never going to write that book. So this is a fantastic, for exactly that group, a fantastic guide to understanding and just making everything. It's so practical as well, and it's written with such empathy.
01:16:56
Speaker
for the for the for the children and also for the parents but I mean that must come from your own experience as well as everything else do you see what I mean it's yeah I mean I think certainly from my professional experience the yeah well actually from both you know the the kids I meet a lot of the kids I work with do have an intellectual disability
01:17:23
Speaker
But I can still, whether it's just because of me, whether it's my autism, but I can still kind of relate to them like the sensory bit, but someone who
01:17:35
Speaker
But I remember at school running my fingers along the chain link fence and feeling the sensation of that as I walked and the rhythm of that and hearing about a child who's doing the same but with a fence. And I can understand why change can be so challenging and why people changing their minds can be so challenging or not doing things or you interpreting things a different way, why that can be so challenging.
01:18:05
Speaker
Yeah, I know I won't do it fully for everyone, but I try as much as I can to get inside the head of the children that I'm working with, and I hope that translates to the book. Wonderful.
01:18:20
Speaker
I think we've breached the Guardian guidance over an hour and 15 minutes. Oh no! A number of people in Shoreditch will have switched off by now. No, not Shoreditch. We've lost Shoreditch but hopefully we've gained Moldova.
01:18:39
Speaker
That's what really matters. Yeah, exactly. That's the important people. Thank you very, very much for joining us. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about or plug or sort of what's happening at the moment? I don't think so. That said, if you ever fancy writing a book on assessment of neurodevelopmental differences, pediatrician, psychologist, ADHD, autism, I think would be a great combination. All right, let's write that book. Yeah.
01:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'll be I'll be I'll be the one telling me what to do telling me how to go about it and just trying to bring you back to what's That would be good I was gonna say my wife would like me to be more rigid, but that's a little rude and
01:19:36
Speaker
Tess has just given me the most horrendous look. It's awkward, Simon. Right. Anyway, I'm going to stop it there because I've appalled my daughter and probably everyone else. Yay. If you're in Moldova, please send us an Instagram message. Thank you very much. Josh, I don't know that you're on social media or have any interest in being so. If people do, I mean,
01:20:06
Speaker
If people want to look out for the book, where will it come out? And what's the situation there? So Jessica Kingsley have all their social media. It will be out on that, I imagine, I hope. Jessica Kingsley website, you can buy it from that. Or I've seen it listed at Amazon and Waterstones and other prep school bookstores. So I'm sure they'll be able to
01:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, to find it. I think I am on Twitter. I don't tend to use it much because of a bit like you. I'm not sure how I feel about it. But yeah, they'll certainly if they search for developing differently and Joshua Muggleton, they'll certainly find it.
01:20:53
Speaker
I will do that and I will put a reputable bookshop link in the show notes, not I, not Amazon. And then we will hopefully boost your sales so that you come back from a
01:21:11
Speaker
Bahamut Penthouse next time we saw. You do not make money from writing books. No, no, you do not. Absolutely right. Okay. Thank you very much. Josh, Josh Muggleton. Thank you very much and goodbye. Bye.
01:21:26
Speaker
All right, so we're back and Josh, what's up? So that's probably the last episode we're going to do until probably the autumn because we are very, very busy. Yeah, we are. You're very busy. You're away a lot over the summer and I need to recharge a little bit, I think.
01:21:46
Speaker
got some ideas for what we're going to do in autumn but we will kind of let people know if you do want to speak to us in a future series or season of the podcast if you have an idea for a theme that we can have a few guests on the same theme that's really fun i think having a theme
01:22:05
Speaker
And if you're somebody that just wants to have your story heard, we're definitely still listening out for those, particularly if your story is just a bit different, something unusual we might not have heard before. Basically, if you have anything that you want to say, don't hesitate to just say it. Yeah. So we're on Instagram, we're on Twitter and Facebook at Extra Brains Pod, and the website is extraordinarybrainspodcast.com.
01:22:31
Speaker
So I hope you can see us all there and have a great summer. Tess is going camping again and all sorts of things. I've got prom in a couple of days. You've got prom in a couple of days. It's all very exciting and you're going to become 16 quite soon. All right. That is how we communicate now in this house. Bye. I'm moving out. Bye.