Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode.

Today we have a very interesting guest.

I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Amanda Dieckmann, who is an autistic adult parent, coach and an author in the neurodiversity space.

And Amanda's become a leading voice in the movement for low demand parenting practices with her book Low Demand Parenting, which came out last July 2023.

And Amanda also runs a successful coaching practice for parents of neurodivergent children, including online courses and a vibrant membership community.

And she lives with her husband and her three neurodivergent children in North Carolina in an intentional community.

Which we're going to talk about, which I've just been hearing about off air, which is just fascinating and very inspiring, but we'll leave that to the conversation.

So, but I just wanted to welcome you, Amanda, because I've been so looking forward to this conversation.

Thank you.

I'm really excited about it too.

I feel like processing the ways in which low demand can be really life giving for ADHD years is a conversation I've been wanting to have.

So I'm really, I'm really excited about this as well.

You're using the word low demand parenting.

Now there's going to be a lot of people that may have not heard this terminology before, but they will really feel that this is probably something they need in their life.

Obviously we're going to be talking, we're talking to parents right now because I hear these common themes of exhaustion, overwhelm, pressure, just feeling like they just have so many expectations and outside stress and everything just feels so complicated.

And it sort of comes with this, I guess this trend of being helicopter parents where we want to be doing the best we can for our kids kind of education wise, and all the activities and making sure the kids are eating and, you know, the right food, organic cooking, home cooking.

Like there's just so many pressures and it is, we are seeing Just like this frazzled state of parents.

But then on top of that, we've got newly diagnosed neurodivergent parents who may have not known that they were neurodivergent parenting their own neurodivergent children.

And it feels like there's this common theme of so many of us just on the breaking point.

And then when I came across yourself on Instagram and this term low demand parenting, I just thought, this is a revelation and we need to talk about this.

And I'd love you to be able to explain, I guess, the origins how you came into this and what it looks like.

Really?

Yeah, definitely.

Well, I can relate to everything you just shared because that is my story also, and how.

And that is the origin story for me of what low demand looks like.

Is it is me asking, can I live like this?

Like, is there a way through that doesn't just burn me out over and over and over again?

There's gotta be more to life and my own quest for that.

So in 2001, my middle child hit autistic burnout, which just defined that a little bit.

I didn't know he was autistic then.

I'd never heard of autistic burnout, but it just looked like a kid who suddenly couldn't anymore.

Like he'd been trucking along, doing, doing, doing.

And then there was a day.

And for some people it's gradual, but for us, it was suddenly he just couldn't.

How old?

Do you mind me asking?

He was six.

Right.

He couldn't go back to school.

He couldn't speak to me in any other way besides screaming or calling me names.

His food intake reduced down to just two or three foods.

He mostly watched YouTube alone in his room for 10 hours a day.

And it was terrifying because I had no idea what this was, and I didn't know he was autistic.

I was really very much at the beginning of my neurodivergent journey.

So anybody that's kind of in a similar place, like, I don't even know what I'm seeing.

I just know that this is big.

And it felt like a failure.

It felt like I was a failure of a mom and that he was a failure of a kid, because what other.

I didn't have any other lens.

And I had been raised to see the world in terms of success and failure.

And I.

It broke me because I didn't want to be a person who looked at their child and saw failure.

I wanted a way of viewing him and viewing the world that had room for this too to be okay, for me to be able to trust this part of his life story, just like I was able to trust the part where he was growing and thriving and going to preschool and learning new things.

And so in that season, it became.

It was such a hard time for me and for our family.

And at the end of that first year, I knew so much more.

We had his autism diagnosis.

We had so many new words and labels flying around, but it had been such a difficult year for me that I ended up being diagnosed with PTSD from the experiences that we'd gone through both in our home and interacting with professionals who were supposed to be helping us and who ended up shaming and blaming me.

And through all of that, I.

A couple months after that PTSD diagnosis, after a good amount of intensive healing, I wrote Low Demand Parenting in a six week period.

I just sat down and just blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, like, it all.

Flowed out of me, out of this.

Like, cry out to the universe that this is what I have learned, Like I have survived and there is another way and we all, we must know it.

It was like a battle cry kind of.

So that context that you're speaking to, that overwhelm, that exhaustion, like, that is actually the fertile ground, like it birthed something really beautiful in our lives.

So practically speaking, low demand is about attuning and aligning with what's in front of you and saying this is also allowed to be.

It's not about striving or making things better or always trying to improve.

It was about me saying, I can be.

I don't need to be a good mom or a bad mom.

I can be a brave moment.

I can show up for what life has brought me.

And in that season, it brought me a kid who was in deep distress.

And so when I say a tuning and a lining, it was like, okay, you can eat pretzels and Nutella and you can eat ice cream from a bowl by the cartload, and I'm going to provide you those foods because this is what you need in order to feel safe.

It looked like me saying, if we can't talk back and forth, then I'm going to learn to communicate with you through thumbs up and thumbs down and through notes slid under the door.

And that's good, that's good enough.

You don't have to say, yes, ma'am.

You don't even have to say, yes.

Just, I can accept that this is where you are and make this safe.

And the beautiful thing about this process is that we've been trained to believe that if we aren't always pushing ourselves and our kids, that we will become lazy and self indulgent and that we will just like kind of crumble into pieces if we're not always holding ourselves to a high standard or always put.

And I believe that about myself.

Absolutely.

And I believe that about my kid.

And I thought, well, if I come down to his level, like, if I make this okay, well, then how much worse could it get?

You know, and he'll never, he'll never whatever, you know, that's what the fears and the projections said.

Like, he'll never eat anything else.

If I say it's fine for you to eat pretzels and Nutella, then that's all he'll ever eat.

Or if I don't make him come out of his room every day and get fresh air and exercise, his body will never get strong again.

He'll just stay in this room playing video games and YouTube forever.

That's what the fears said.

And the beautiful thing is it was not true, not in any way true, that safety and affirmation and support is what we need in order to grow.

And that when we drop those high standards for our kids, it bounces back for us and we have a chance to heal.

All of those stories that we've told ourselves about, like, well, if I don't push all the time, then I'll be lazy and I'll be a mess and it'll just be, you know, everything will fall apart.

First of all, what a horrendous time that must have been for you as a parent.

I can't imagine how scary and worrying that was and the impact on you and your family and just everything.

And I'm so glad that they're doing, you know, better now.

And I, and I hope that people listening to this right now and perhaps they're going through something similar.

I know, I hear it a lot that, you know, through a lot of my coaching clients, they come wanting to talk about them, but there's so many worries about their own children.

Children and most of us who have got children, we worry about our kids and we do worry about the future.

So let's strip this back because I really want to be able to hopefully highlight to parents now that even if they want to bring in a little aspect of this lower demand parenting today, tomorrow, what would you say?

If someone has intrinsically invested their energy into parenting being good parents, especially if we've not been parented the way we wanted to be parented, then we overcompensate which I see a lot of that we didn't get the parenting and the love that we wanted.

So we're going to do 10 times more at the detriment of our own health.

So what little tiny tweaks can we bring in?

Oh, that's such a beautiful and important question.

One tweak is probably a big tweak, but it's something that you can let start small and then see how it grows.

It's a wondering question about big system ableism, which is this like whole big blanket for like all the other isms that make their way in.

It's not something we're doing on purpose.

It's like this is the air we breathe, the water we swim in.

It's been baked into us since we were itty bitty and talking about that generational aspect oftentimes our parents very consciously taught us some of these more ableist ideas when we were really little.

And so I'll just make that practical.

It might be something like, you know, if you were an adhder and you were a little person who had a lot of energy and a lot of ideas and you needed to pivot from one thing to the next to the next to the next a lot, your parents maybe said something like, you know, you're too wild, you need to focus, you need to buckle down and get serious.

You know you're only going to make it in life if you can finish something that you start right.

So you got that message and that was like it was stated as an absolute.

Like if you don't get a handle on yourself, you are going to be a failure.

That is an ableist view about your brain.

That is a view because ableism is this idea that there is one right and best way to be a human and that all of us will succeed or fail to the degree that we can approximate that.

So the closer we get to the good and right and best way to be a human, the more successful we'll be in.

The further away we are, the more we're going to fail.

Like that's the idea.

And so the wondering, it's just is this true, this thing that someone else is saying?

Maybe it's an expert who's like, well, you know, you need to have a chart for your kid of like all the tasks that they need to accomplish in the morning because they need to be able to put their own shoes on and get their own lunch ready and be out the door on time.

Like that's what it, that's what good Kids look like.

And you could just back up and be like, is that true?

Is that true?

Is that really what this kid needs to be learning right now?

And then maybe back up to yourself.

Like, maybe you're saying that same thing to yourself.

Like, if you're late, you are.

You're letting other people down and you are violating the social contract and you are less good of a human and less worthy of love and less worthy of affirmation because you're always late.

Right?

And is that true?

Is that true?

Can you be just as worthy and just as wonderful without a ingrained sense of time?

You know, like, who decided that being on time was also a moral?

Like, that you were better for being on time?

You know, so that's one thing is like, find your little.

Maybe it's like a teenager part of you that like, wants to sort of step back and cross their arms and be like, yeah, but who says yeah?

And let that part just have a field day with all of these ideas swirling around.

Because I think just asking that question can open up a possibility of making a tweak and letting something go.

It's when we go from the thought to the action really, really fast.

Like, well, then I have to.

Then we get like, okay, well then I'm going to Google, like, what does Etsy say about the best charts?

And we're like, all lost.

It's already done.

Yeah, you're inside my head right now.

Right?

Once you're on Pinterest, you've already lost.

Like, back up.

Is this true?

Is this right?

Is this aligned?

Is this actually what matters to us right now?

Or does something else matter more?

And it's very possible that safety and trust actually matter more than all of the doings, things that you're spending so much of your energy trying to make happen again for you and your kids.

It's the same conversation.

You can drop demands for your kids or you can drop demands for yourself.

Whatever is the way in if you feel like we are scheduled to the max.

My kids need all these activities.

It's really important.

We can't let any of them go.

Okay, fine.

Then that's not your way in.

Step back and look at yourself.

What are the things that you're expecting of yourself that are just not doable right now?

Maybe you need to be in a paper plate season for a while because just the getting dishes in, dishes out, or dishes washed, you know, like, maybe that's just not.

It's not your season.

You're in a paper plate season and that in There is no moral failing there.

Or maybe you're in a.

We don't wash everything after we wear it season.

You're like a.

You know, we wash the essentials, but we're not going to wash every single T shirt.

They're fine.

So I define a demand as anything that is too hard in the present moment.

And it is as simple as that.

You get to decide what is too hard right now.

Because some things are hard and they.

And we're brave and we show up and we ask for help and we do our best and we don't have to be perfect.

And that.

And that.

That is beautiful.

That is a whole category of hard.

But we can really only sustain so much hard in our life.

We have.

We have capacity for hard.

And then what's missing, though, is too hard.

Because when things are too hard, we let it go.

And I think we've.

We've learned only hard.

That's all we know how to do, is, like, push through and do more.

And I actually think push through and do more is like a whole thing I just want to put on the shelf.

Like, that doesn't exist for me.

There's hard where it's like, I have capacity for this, and I will show up and I will do my best and I will ask for help.

And when something is a demand so it is too hard, then let's say it's like having friends over is now in your too hard category, or having them every week is too hard or something.

You kind of define it.

Then for every demand that this is too hard, I always like to find the layers.

So it's like, if you've seen that image of the iceberg and only a little bit sticks up above the water.

So the demand is that teeny bit sticking up above the water.

It's like your signal that there's a lot more under it.

So then the demand is a concrete thing.

Having friends over twice a week, brushing teeth every night, doing weekly laundry, going to gymnastics class.

You know, it's like.

It's a concrete thing.

Eating at the dinner table.

It could be anything.

But then for every demand, underneath it is a positive expectation that we have for ourselves or our kids of what it looks like to be good.

So something like good kids do lots of activities, or good kids have lots of friends, or good moms entertain or good friends host parties or whatever it is.

It's like a general statement that we have about what the good life looks like.

And there's so much work to be done there with saying, wait what if none of that stuff exists?

What if it's all made up?

What if I am good enough just as I am?

I don't have to become good by doing certain things.

I am good just as I am.

And so that's the work there.

But then there's a whole nother level if we're like, really subterranean with this stuff that has to do exactly with what you mentioned.

Like, it's so specific so that the love the expectations level might be really similar between us.

Like you mentioned.

Like, it might be baked into us.

Like, good women do these things, or good moms do these things.

But the really deep stuff is particular to you and your story.

It's the things that only you can say.

So it might be something like, we didn't have enough money for gymnastics class growing up, and I always wanted it.

And my parents told me that I didn't matter enough to spend our precious extra income on the one thing that I wanted in the world.

And, you know, they spent it on their stuff, but never on me.

And I swore that I would give my kids everything so that they could thrive.

And so, no, you can't quit this gymnastics class because we have paid money for it and you have to keep going.

Right?

Like, that's why when our kid is like, I don't like gymnastics, we're like, oh, yes, you do.

And you will go, and your coach is expecting you.

It's that, like, really deep stuff and sometimes we forget to go down there.

We either get stuck on like, yes, you will go to this gymnastics class and we never go beneath the surface, or maybe we get down to like, well, good kids follow through on their commitments and you don't waste your parents money.

And that's kind of in the expectations, like, the good life category.

But we don't really go there to like, well, how did I build that view?

Like, why is that so important to me?

And we really can't drop the demands until we go all the way down.

I mean, we can let it go for a week or two, or we could say, okay, fine, we'll lose the money on gymnastics.

You don't have to go.

But deep down, there's going to be this belief of, like, am I a bad mom because I let her off the hook?

Or like, is she not going to follow through on her commitments?

Or does she not really feel loved or whatever those, like.

And it's going to live in us and then it's just going to come out the next time.

Yeah.

So to really do the work, we Gotta go all the way down to the basement.

So I'm just interrupting today's episode to let you know about a brand new live workshop that I've got coming up on the 24th of May at 1pm and this workshop is all about reducing your ADHD overwhelm in family life and discovering and welcoming in more calm and regulation.

Now, I want to let you know that I don't have all the answers, but it's something that I deal with on a daily basis.

And I've discovered over the years of understanding my own ADHD and coupled with all my coaching and talking to my experts on the podcast, as well as all my hundreds of coaching clients, that there is a way of living without feeling in this sort of default state of feeling like you're drowning, that you're stressed all the time.

And juggling family life alongside an ADHD brain can feel overwhelming at best and debilitating at worse.

And life is happening at the moment at breakneck speed.

We are all struggling to feel balanced, like we're keeping up.

And so I wanted to share with you six steps that I know have worked for me and six steps I often talk about to many of my private coaching clients.

I wanted to share this in a group live workshop.

So if this is something that you are dealing with right now and you would love some more support, new ideas, different perspectives, I would love it if you could join me.

All the details are on the Today's Show Notes, but also on my website, which is ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk if you head to the Show Notes or my website, you'll find all the information and it's in one hour.

You'll learn some new ways of coping and feeling more resilient and looking at life differently and feeling like you don't have to be at the mercy of everything that's piling up on top of you, that you do have have control and choice over what you choose to bring into your family life.

So I really look forward to seeing you there.

It's the 24th of May, 1:00 and it's all the details are on my website.

Now back to today's episode.

This word burnout that perhaps we were only hearing maybe from like a corporate sense ten years ago, but I'm hearing it so much more in the female community with regards to parenting and juggling and just everything and that we just can't give anymore and we're prioritizing everyone else and our needs are right at the bottom.

And I want to Bring that back to ableism as well.

It's a conversation that I hear more about in the autism community than I do in the ADHD community.

I feel like there is still among a lot of ADHDers, this sense of like, well, I have this kind of brain, and so these things are hard for me.

So I have to work ext so that I can still do all the things that are expected of me.

And that's where executive functioning comes in.

Tools, hacks, it's all around like, I've still, I've got to do all the things, but they're really hard.

So I have to layer on all of this in order to meet.

And I again, I just want to ask the question, like, could you say I have a kind of brain that makes these things impossible for me and it's not aligned for me to do all the things.

I don't need more hacks and more systems and more tools.

I need to say, that's all for the birds.

I'm not gonna do it.

I'm not gonna play that game.

It isn't made for me.

It's made to burn me out.

That's what will happen if I spend my lifetime trying to become something that my brain was never made for and I'm opting out.

I mean, I don't know what that looks like, but it may in my family, it means me being more honest with my kids about my own disabilities and saying, look, guys, I love you to the absolute moon and back.

I will do whatever I can for you.

And there are some things that are too hard for me and we can't do them because they are too hard.

Same as I would if I had a physical disability and they were like, I really need to get into this building to get this class.

But let's say, you know, they only have stairs and there's no elevator.

And I'm like, guys, I cannot.

I cannot get up there.

We can't do that class, because this building was not built for me.

It is inaccessible to me.

I can't get to the second floor until this building changes and adds an elevator.

What would it take for that WhatsApp group to get its stuff in a pile and send out one concrete bulleted meaningful communication per week and then have an optional, here's all the stuff.

You know, like, that's a systems question.

That's not a you problem.

That's a them problem.

It wasn't built for your brain.

You're never going to be able to to manage all of that, no matter how Hard you work because it's going to burn you out.

So use your precious energy saying, either I'm going to opt out of this whole thing because it is not for me, or saying, hey, look, system, this is about my kid.

My kid wants me to be able to sign her forms and pick her up on time.

And in order for us to get that for her, you got to work with me.

Disabled adult who has a brain that is not built for your system.

So fix your effing system, right?

Like that's what we need to do collectively as a community.

And I do think that if ADHDers got on board with this view, we could see a lot more systemic change.

I wish it was that simple because we're here, especially here in the uk, we are, you know, we're really at the beginning stages of people even understanding neurodivergence, understanding what it looks like, and asking for accommodations at work, you know, simple accommodations where there's still so much stigma and shame.

And in the uk we've got this kind of, you know, stiff upper lip.

Just get on with it, stop moaning.

All this woke nonsense, you know, like, you hear about it and you feel the undertones, even if they're not saying it.

And if you work in a corporate environment, it's just, you deal with it, you know, you want a job, deal with it.

Stop moaning, stop asking for things.

Other people get on with it.

This is the kind of narrative I'm hearing from different places.

You know, even I've got a client who is a doctor and she is, she's been diagnosed with ADHD and she still feels from the other doctors in her practice that there is still a sort of a level of really, like, is this whole ADHD thing real?

Like, are people really this bad?

And that's coming from doctors.

So there's still so much invalidation, so much.

It can be really scary, you know, to unmask, to ask for what you need.

Because there is still this quite wide systemic reaction, I think, to saying, I'm an adult, I've just been diagnosed with autism or adhd.

And they'll be like you, you've got your shit together, you've got a family, you work.

Like there's no.

Your house is tidy, like there's no way.

And then we have to over explain and it's exhausting.

And like you say, you know, we only have a finite amount of energy and then it's on top of that having to explain ourselves and ask for things and, you know, feel that we're worthy of asking those things as well.

And sometimes it's easier just to kind of go, you know what?

I'm just going to put up and shut up and just deal with the broken system.

None of this is correct, none of this is right.

And I hope that over time, the more we're having these conversations and the more people are just kind of going, you know what, I can accommodate that person if that person is telling me that working in the office five days a week with all this background noise and artificial light is burning them out.

Let's see what happens if they work from home three days a week.

And let's just, you know, it's just about the open mindedness and the curiosity that people are willing to, I hope, just lead with a bit more compassion and just say, okay, well let's, let's try these things out.

But we also have to feel safe.

Safe to go there.

It is about this radical acceptance of where, where we are right now.

And I know you have taught, you talk a lot about like homeschooling or unschooling.

There is a lot of people in the community whose children are, you know, this school refusal, they're finding it really hard to get them into mainstream schools.

We're juggling full time work and we are needing to reduce all these expectations.

How are people navigating this if they are working and the children are refusing to go to school and where do we begin?

Gosh, that's a really, really hard question.

I'm grateful for the advocates who are getting loud about this and I know that there's a whole movement going on in England right now around just a huge pushback.

So I just feel like we all need each other.

And so thank you for the people who are picketing and writing letters to government and changing laws and all of that.

That's so important.

But for me, you know, I'm just like, I'm just another mom trying to figure this out.

So I'll speak from that perspective.

What it looks like for me is again, it's about letting go.

The things that I have control over that I'm able to drop so that I have more emotional energy that I can put into figuring out how to make it work.

So it is about identifying what is droppable and what isn't, what's a priority and what isn't.

And I kind of like a little square for myself of like with one column is can I drop it and can I not?

And then the vertical is, does this matter?

And does it not?

And it just helps Me, in any given moment when I've got a thousand things swirling in my mind is I just try to chart out where they fall.

Because if it doesn't matter and it's droppable, like, boom, easy peasy, let it go.

If it's not droppable and not doable, then I move into another process where I take those things and I break them down into as many itty bitty pieces as I can.

Like, I can't drop the whole thing around school, but what can I drop around school?

And just trying to get as many pieces, okay, I could drop that.

We always wear the right thing.

Like, maybe I could get a special dispensation around uniform.

Or maybe I can drop communication demands.

Like maybe the teacher could email me instead of us talking at the door.

Because that's super overwhelming and I'm never going to remember what they tell me or, you know, like, what are the tiny things around school that we could let go of while we're.

While I can't drop the whole thing.

And then I also look at what is droppable.

But it, but it still matters to me because sometimes those things, then that's where we kind of go deep under the water.

Like, well, why does this thing matter to me?

Is there deep work that I could do to let go so that I can drop?

Like, I could let it go, but it just, it hurts me.

Like I don't want to.

Is it because this really matters for my thriving or is it because I'm scared of what would happen if I let it go?

So it's like different work is needed depending on where it falls in that.

In those quadrants.

Yeah, yeah, that's really helpful.

Yeah, getting clear on that so that we're not.

We don't need to do the deep work around some of the stuff and other stuff we do.

The other thing that I think is important about unschooling and this whole process is a big piece we can drop is the time that it takes.

I think we're often in a hurry to figure this stuff out.

And that makes a lot of sense because we've got to figure out what to do about work.

We've got to tell school, you know, we've got to, we got to figure it out.

We got to figure it out.

And the reality is that it takes a long time and that it's always shifting.

And I can't drop the world's urgency, but I can drop my own judgment of like what it all means.

So I guess practically what that means is when we were in a year long discussion with school about trying to navigate home based schooling and all of this, I just regularly said to myself it's okay that this is taking a long time.

It doesn't mean I'm a failure.

We have time to figure it out.

My kid is okay, just kind of like narrating things, being slow as not necessarily bad.

And same thing with the deschooling process.

Once we did come out of school, but we still couldn't really do much of anything because we were so exhausted from the whole journey of trying to be in school.

It took us like a whole nother year just to like figure out what it meant to be in the same home all the time.

And for me to figure out how to do my work around my kids needs and different childcare arrangements, it just took a long time.

So I'd say now we're in year three and I'm finally figuring out okay, how do I do a 3/4 time job while I homeschool my 3 kids while my husband has a full time job.

Like it just has taken us a while to figure it all out.

I mean, and that sounds such a big change and a lot of work.

Yeah.

And I know you sort of talk about the low demand parenting but that's really hard as well to know that you've got three kids at home, you're homeschooling them and that pressure on you to be the educator.

But also on the flip side, I guess then you now know what your kids need to thrive and when you need to let them play.

And it's not as structured and there's all these different, I guess these, all these nuances that I guess this conversation is literally an opening to anyone that's listening right now who kind of thinks something needs to change and they're noticing all this overwhelm and pressure and exhaustion and.

But they don't really know how to, didn't know how maybe how to articulate it.

And I think what you've done in this conversation is amazing because maybe it can heal, it can heal something or it can give us that permission slip to say this week everything is going to be freezer food or this week we're having cheese, cheese toasties or jacket potatoes every single day.

And you know, for me the biggest thing that's ever happened in my life is the air fryer because it has enabled my kids to be really independent.

I buy loads of like what I hope is relatively, you know, healthy freezer food.

They can then make themselves food they're not shouting to me that they're hungry.

Sometimes, you know, dinner is made in 10 minutes because I put it in the air fryer and it's on the table.

And I have to say, it's made a big difference to our life, the air fryer.

So it's finding these little things that it's okay if you've not stood by the stove stirring for 20 minutes doesn't make you any less of a parent or wife or whatever you want to describe it.

What's kind of changed for you?

If you look at the you five years ago, 10 years ago, maybe the beginning of a journey, what's that big change for you?

I put a lot of energy into things that.

It turns out once I did that, like, under the iceberg, work didn't matter to me at all.

Like, getting everybody to sit down at the table and eat a meal all at the same time every evening.

I put a lot of energy into that because it was so hard.

And so then I'm like, okay, well, then we need feeding therapy.

So I've got to find it ot that can do feeding therapy so my kid can eat the things that I'm putting in front of them.

Then we need this whole, like, disciplinary chart for what do you do when you hit your brother at the table?

Or I'm researching, like, why is my toddler throwing their food?

Like, there's so much work that went into trying to get us all to sit at the table.

And what I would do now, like, if I could go back to those early days, I would be like, oh, eating at the table is too hard.

We're going to drop it.

Yes.

And just, like, shortcut all of that work that I poured into trying to make that thing work, because it doesn't matter to me.

I think if it really mattered, like, if I was truly getting something really important out of that act, then maybe that work would have at least been in service of something.

But, like, deep underground, I don't care.

I put so much work into something I do not care about.

But I never even asked if I cared because it was like, I should care because, like, this should matter.

Or if people found out that we don't do family meals like X, y, or Z, bad thing might happen.

It was like, all fear and projection and trying to be somebody I'm not.

And then what I discovered in letting that go is that what family meals were all about was about connection and trust and having shared family rituals around those things so that we knew that moments of connection and trust would Happen on a regular basis.

And like, for us, that's around play.

We wrestle or we play charades, or we swing in the yard and stim together.

We have all these like little stim games that we play as they're swinging where like one kid makes a sound and then we echo the sound or we like rhyme words or just like things that make us feel happy.

Whereas trying to sit at the table and have a back and forth question and answer conversation.

I mean, we tried so hard at that stuff.

None of us like it.

Like, none of us like to be asked questions.

So why we had these like little games where you would pull a card and then everybody would have to go around and answer it just to try to learn neurotypical communication.

And again, if I could just go back, I would be like, dear heart, you don't like asking or answering questions, and yet you have now spent months making these rituals that you don't even like.

So, yeah, I think I would.

I would say one of the biggest things is discovering my own quirky weirdo humanity is like discovering who I am underneath all of the trying to be somebody I'm not, which is the unmasking.

But that happens, like on a deep level and at home.

And again, it's slow because for months I was just devastated about losing this family mealtime until I was able to do the deep work around, like, well, what are meals even about?

And can I let go of this idea that we'll be able to go out to a restaurant and be like everybody else and just kind of like sit there quietly?

Like, we can't.

My children are plenty old enough to be able to sit in a chair like they're 11, 9, and 7.

But we can't.

We cannot go to a.

They'll be crawling everywhere loud.

That's just what their bodies do in those environments.

Again, like, they're not built for us because they're always really noisy and there's so much going on visually, all that stuff.

So, yeah, giving myself a lot of permission to be who I am, which then ripples outward to be able to give my kids permission to be who they are and figuring out what is a good life look like for us.

That's not about approximating everybody else's thing, but just being like, very wild and free and being ourselves.

I love that.

That's beautiful.

And I think so many people will relate to that because, you know, I'm speculating, but I guess you guys are probably good if you go to a park or you go and hang out in nature and you running around.

And a lot of families don't do that.

A lot of families only connect in one way, and they don't connect by going out and, like, you see playing.

And I just think if there's at least if you're connecting in some capacity, whether it's around the table in a park, playing games at bedtime, it just.

As long as it's your way that feels really good and really natural, then your kids couldn't ask for any more.

And I love that you've given people this invitation to let go and to just feel a bit freer in their family unit and to trust that they do know best and they do know what's good for their kids and for them.

And I know I mentioned it right at the beginning of the podcast that you have decided to live in this intentional community and you explaining to me that there's what, about 100 families and you have chosen to all buy houses next to each other, and you all have different disabilities and I guess, different needs, and you support each other.

And in a few sentences, can you tell me a little bit?

Because I just think it's so inspiring.

And I just wanted to finish with that, maybe see if wanted to start their own communities.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, we live in an urban area, so we were able to buy, like, one city block which has a bunch of different multifamily units in it.

So it's a mixture of, like, apartments and homes.

And they're not 100 families, but 100 residents is our numbers.

And it's called the north street community.

You can learn more.

We've had a couple of different news stories done about what we're doing.

As far as I know, we're really the only community quite like this.

But there have been many other communities that we've modeled ourselves on over the years.

But, yeah, what we do is very ordinary.

It's like we help each other get groceries, we get rides to work, we share meals, our kids play together.

You know, we're just like neighbors.

But the intention behind everything we do is really around creating a place where we don't have to hide the things that we need support with, where they can just kind of be right out in the open and where there's the possibility of getting really genuine care in community from the people that we live near.

It's called north street, and it's in Durham, North Carolina, if you want to learn more.

That's beautiful.

And it just shows, doesn't it, the power of community and support.

Support and connection.

And knowing that you can be authentic with those people and having that common.

The common ideology of being open.

And I think it's beautiful.

So I will link that, I will put that in the show Notes.

If people are interested, they can learn a little bit more.

But I think a lot of people might want to get in touch with you, Amanda.

And can you tell people how they can find you?

Is your book available on Amazon?

Tell us more.

Yes.

Okay, I'll start with the book.

It is available.

It's published by a British publisher, so very much available in the uk.

You can get the print book, you can get Kindle, you can get the audiobook.

So however you learn is it's all out there.

And if you just kind of want to get a sense of our story, you can get the first chapter for free on my website, which is amandad.

And the first chapter is very much a narrative style of what we've been through and a kind of overview of the philosophy of low demand.

So I think you'll have a sense of whether or not it's worth spending your money on after you read the first chapter.

So that's a good way to get that for free.

And then I'm online in many of the places at low demand.

Amanda.

I'm most active on Instagram and Facebook, but I'm kind of popping up in some other places as well.

I really love creating community too, among the.

Among parents that many of us who are practicing low demand feel really lonely and a little bit scared because we feel like we're the only ones doing it this way.

And so a big part of what I want to do and be about is bringing people out of the shadows and giving them a sense of like, hey, keep your head up high.

Like, I dropped an ans and I'm proud of it.

So that's part of the permission slip too.

It's like you don't.

You don't have to hide it, you know, make it like this sort of secretive, shameful thing.

Like, I don't make my kids change their clothes every day.

Like, no, be like, I don't make my kids change their clothes every day.

Celebrate.

Celebrate.

Yes.

So we do a lot of celebrations on social media where people can share the things that they're dropping and the whole community can cheer for them.

And, you know, it's anonymous, but it's still feels really good to know that you're not the only one.

Amanda, thank you so much.

Really appreciate your insights and all of your wisdom, and I really hope to.

Speak to you again, thank you so much.

This was really fun.

I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And please do check out my website, ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk for lots of free resources and paid for workshops.

I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there.

Take care and see you for the next episode.