Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi, it’s Nicky Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host, and for nearly 2 decades now, I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show, I share evidence-based insights from my coaching, leadership, and psychological expertise, and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work life and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here, and let’s get on with today’s episode. So welcome, Jo. It’s great to have you on the podcast.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:00:49]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:50]:
So as I said in the interview, we, we know each other because I, I sought out your expertise for my own parenting, and you were So useful in my journey. I was like, more people need to hear your insights. And, um, so yeah, I can’t wait to jump into this conversation.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:01:10]:
Oh, brilliant. Thank you for having me on.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:12]:
So obviously we’re talking today about neurodivergence, and it’s a term that has become more and more in our everyday vocabulary, but often it can be misused. Would you mind sharing kind of what your definition of it is and, and how kind of it might show up for people?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:01:32]:
Yeah, and I think, you know, neurodiversity and neurodivergence actually hasn’t been in kind of our common vocabulary for that long. I’ve been working in this field about 20 years now, but it really has only kind of come along in the last 5 years, I would say, even though the term itself was introduced back in the ’90s by the autistic community to talk about how brains are different and diverse, just like we have biodiversity, we have neurodiversity. It didn’t really catch on until relatively recently. And I think what we understand now is, like I was saying, a bit like that biodiversity, that brains are all different. But I think nowadays we’re using it more as a bit of a shorthand for neurodevelopmental diagnoses like autism, ADHD. It also covers things like dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia. Tics and Tourette’s, intellectual disability, giftedness, all of this kind of thing. And there’s also a little bit of disagreement actually in the field as well as to whether it might include things like trauma, wider mental health differences.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:02:41]:
But I think it is a useful shorthand, even though I think sometimes it is useful to be more specific as well about if we’re talking about a particular diagnosis, because they’re not all the same. Um, but I think it’s useful to think about, uh, shorthand for when, you know, you or someone you know, you feel like it’s just kind of wired up a little bit differently, uh, to perhaps the majority of people.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:05]:
Now that’s a really great summary, and one of the questions I’ve got actually is just from a personal reflection. I’ve noticed, particularly on social media, some people have potentially a disagreement about whether we talk about neurodiversity or neurodivergence, and what’s the difference, and when those terms applied differently? Because I kind of— I think I’ve applied them both in the same way and realized, well, maybe I shouldn’t be. So I wonder if you have a perspective on that.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:03:36]:
Yeah, it’s a, it’s a bit of a grammatical thing. I think a person can’t be neurodiverse because diversity is the way we would describe a group. So we have a diverse group. So a community can be neurodiverse, but a person would be neurodivergent, if you see what I mean. And I think people can get a little bit het up about it because I think it’s almost like a bit of shorthand for if they feel people don’t understand them or they don’t understand the neurodivergent community if people get it wrong. But on the other hand, from the other side, I think people become fearful of saying the wrong thing and getting the words wrong when actually they are curious, they are interested and open, and then they become worried about saying the wrong thing. So, from my perspective, I think it’s not about getting it right, but yeah, it’s useful to kind of try and keep up with a little bit of what the current language is.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:34]:
No, and that’s really useful. And already, what I’m hearing from you is, what I know about you is, you bring compassionate curiosity to this. And that is my hope, that anybody listening comes at it with that same sense, because I think where I’ve seen challenges is when somebody says, oh, I’m neurodiverse, the kickback is, no, we are all neurodiverse. It’s what is your particular experience and your, maybe your flavour of neurodivergence, if that is the experience for you. So that absolutely makes sense. And it feels like we’re talking about this more and more now, and I’m wondering what your view on this is as an expert in the area. You know, do you see that it is more prevalent, or there’s just more awareness, or both? What What’s your experience of that?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:05:19]:
I think my view is that it’s about awareness predominantly. You know, we used to be looking for a very narrow stereotype of what, you know, if we focus on autism and ADHD for the moment, because they’re the ones that we see in the media most, perhaps the most common, what we used to think autism looked like was a very narrow stereotype of what it looks like in some boys, even not even the majority of boys. And now that we realize that it can look really different in a wide range of people, we’re now realizing that those criteria do apply to that broader category. It’s not that there’s more people, it’s just that we realize that, that, you know, that’s a category that applies to lots more people. I think that perhaps the way that we’re applying the diagnostic criteria might have broadened a little bit. So the way that we’re understanding, let’s say, social differences, we’ve broadened that out to understand what that is like. For example, in women, women are very good at camouflaging, masking, learning strategies to get by in social situations. And whereas in the past people would have said, well, that doesn’t count because you’re doing it, nowadays we understand that if it’s very effortful and you’ve kind of learned it manually, then that now counts as a social communication difference.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:06:53]:
And you might notice I’m also saying the word difference, not deficit. And in the past it was very deficit-focused. And now we’re sort of understanding that this isn’t necessarily about deficit, although for some people they might experience it that way. It’s more about differences in how different people and different brains are going to go about things.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:14]:
Yeah.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:07:14]:
So for me, it is about awareness. We know that they’re highly heritable. So just from a logical perspective, we know that maybe even up to sort of 90% heritability, some studies showing. it doesn’t make sense that that’s just come out of nowhere. It makes sense to me that actually, if you start looking back through the generations and you talk to people, oh, well, you know, what were your grandparents like? What did they say their parents were like? And you hear the same characteristics coming through. You read historical accounts of people from the past and you’re like, oh, that sounds a lot like ADHD-type characteristics, or that sounds a lot like autistic characteristics. And obviously you can’t go back in time and diagnose people, but you can see that I guess humans have always been human and there’s always been a diversity in the way that, you know, our nervous systems are and the way that we— yeah, our characteristics are.

Nicky Lowe [00:08:11]:
Okay, no, that, that’s really useful. So I suppose the, the big piece of today’s conversation is something that I experienced when I reached out to you, is As parents, we can hit all kinds of bumps in the road with our children. You know, we might struggle with behaviour or interactions, and it’s sometimes difficult to know what’s just part of a neurotypical experience and what might fall into that neurodivergence. I know that was a big question I had in my own parenting. So what guidance can you give? somebody that’s listening that might suspect or just wonder or be curious about their own child’s experience?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:08:57]:
Yeah, and I think this is such a common experience. In fact, I wrote a blog post about this because I was just finding it was coming up so much called, you know, Is My Child Neurodivergent or Am I a Bad Parent? You know, just as a— basically just as a summary of like how people feel. Like, am I just getting this wrong? Am I imagining it? Maybe have I even caused it? Or, you know, is, is there something here? As a really broad brush, my experience is that by the time parents are wondering whether their child might be neurodivergent, you know, that’s not come from nowhere. You know, this isn’t a parent who’s seen their child do something once and is like, oh, what’s that all about? That isn’t how we are as parents. You know, we know our children fluctuate, we know our children Just shift and change and do certain things one day and react in different ways. So parents who are starting to wonder whether their child might be neurodivergent, to me, that’s somebody who’s taken time and has sort of noticed patterns, noticed things that maybe are a little bit different over quite a long extended period of time. So they’re already, that’s not someone jumping to conclusions. So, in my experience, by the time parents are wondering, it’s usually pretty likely.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:10:13]:
But I think it is something about that, the frequency, perhaps the intensity of the differences that you’re noticing. Do other people notice? Although that’s not reliable because you often get a completely different picture of your child from school and from home. Yeah. I mean, obviously there’s temperament there. We know that people People are different. But I think if, if you’re starting to have those questions coming up like frequently in your mind, I suppose my message is that’s not coming from nowhere and you’re not imagining it.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:45]:
Yeah, it’s almost like that parental intuition, isn’t it?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:10:48]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:49]:
And I think that’s the point I’d got to when I reached out. I’d had, I’d had kind of this sense for quite a few years actually that there was just something that was different to my experience of myself and my experience of seeing other children. And I think comparison can be so difficult, can’t it? ‘Cause the worst thing you can do is compare. But equally, that almost that neurotypical about what are people’s typical experiences? And once you get past certain age milestones around perhaps emotional regulation was one for, in our family around, actually I would expect a bit more emotional regulation at this point. And so are there particular points where you go, actually, we don’t tend to even look at diagnosis before a certain point?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:11:41]:
So technically, autism, for example, can be diagnosed from toddlerhood onwards, and ADHD, the guidance is over 6 or over 7. And that is because a lot of the characteristics associated with ADHD do look a bit like a busy young child. Autism can be a little bit easier to spot in younger children, but not always. And it really depends on the other characteristics of your child. Girls are notoriously more difficult to spot. So I think often for parents, it’s at these sort of moments of transition. So sometimes it’s like when children are transitioning out of babyhood and there’s a really kind of quite obvious development that isn’t typical, then that’s when things might get looked at. Or when they’re starting school is another big transition that, you know, usually there’s a bit of a grace period in reception, but if things haven’t changed by about year 1, people might start to think, ah, okay, yeah, that things might be a bit different between their peers.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:12:45]:
But then I do often find sort of age 7, 8 onwards is when parents start to wonder because it is that emotional regulation piece often. Up until that age, parents, if there’s meltdowns and sort of anxiety, parents sort of write that off as just kind of toddlerhood gone on a bit longer. But actually when they kind of get to age 7 or 8, they start to think, ah, maybe there is something a little bit different here. So yeah, I think it’s those moments of transition. And then I guess secondary is another big one. secondary transition, because often, again, girls will sort of roll through primary relatively easily. But then when all the demands step up at secondary, with the academic demands, social demands, sensory demands, um, organizational, you know, everything kind of steps up, then that’s when differences can show themselves more obviously.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:39]:
Brilliant, thank you. So if somebody’s listening going, do you know what, I have got this like inkling that something might be different, where would you encourage them to start? What can they either do, or— one of the things that you did brilliantly for me was help me look at my own parenting and about the lens in which I was seeing my child. So would you mind just kind of sharing some insights for anybody listening?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:14:08]:
Yes, I feel like there might be 2 questions there. So like, where, where might they start? I think I would encourage people to write things down. Even if it’s just to yourself, if there’s things that you’re wondering about, just write it down what you’re wondering about. Parents often start to find that certain things just aren’t, in inverted commas, working. Typical parenting strategies just don’t seem to work. Write down what you’ve tried, write down what you’re noticing. I might send you to my blog to have a little read through my description there of the kinds of things you might be noticing. And if some of those— bells are ringing, then that might be another bit of evidence that you’re not imagining it.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:14:51]:
And then in terms of sort of, I think the second part of your question was about how are you looking at your child and how are you thinking about your parenting? I do think parents can really easily slip into that guilt spiral, especially if you’re in that sort of spiral of, is there something different or am I a bad parent? It’s that like, Why is nothing I’m trying working? Is it me? What’s wrong? Is it my child? What’s happening here? And it’s almost being able to sort of step out of that guilt and stress spiral. Take a step back and look for patterns. And children, neurodivergent children, often one of the things we see is that they tend to struggle with unpredictability can often sort of underlie a lot of the difficulties. And we think it’s because, and there is some sort of neuroscientific evidence that neurodivergent brains process information in a different way. So whereas other brains might have more of a top-down process, so they kind of make assumptions and predictions about how the world is and sort of roll with that. Neurodivergent brains tend to take more information in on a bottom-up level, and so everything’s a little bit more overwhelming. You know, that might make you much better at spotting details, seeing patterns, thinking in a sort of out-of-the-box way, but it can also mean there’s lots more sensory information coming in. The world seems a bit more unpredictable.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:16:30]:
And so you might start noticing that your child struggles with transitions, Things when plans change, things that don’t go like how they expect, might struggle to kind of keep their attention on certain things, or they might be really good at keeping their attention on one thing and it’s difficult to kind of get them away from that. So I suppose what I’m describing is sort of taking a step back and being curious and maybe just noticing, like, would it make sense if my child was processing things in this more bottom-up way? way, and that they’re kind of actually experiencing the world in a more unpredictable way. So that’s the why they’re behaving the way they are. It’s difficult to kind of go into lots of detail about that, um, with you now, but does that make sense in what I’m saying?

Nicky Lowe [00:17:18]:
It does. And I’ll tell you what’s coming to mind is a specific area that you helped me with my parenting. So I came to you going, There is— you were great in our session about, give me an example, give me an example about where you’re struggling, give me something really concrete. And I brought to you a situation where I was struggling to parent around time on the TV, and that it was creating arguments because I was trying to give time to both my son and daughter on the TV. They didn’t want to watch the same thing because there was an age difference where they didn’t want to watch the same thing. We had actually got enough TVs in the house that they could watch different TVs, but they both wanted to watch the same TV at the same time, and there were constant arguments. And when I was trying to parent around this, I was just, it was causing so many arguments, and I was like, I’m normally a really resourceful person, like this should well be in my capability, which again is something you’ve said, isn’t it, about actually when you get to the point where you’re like, this, why am I struggling to parent this? This doesn’t make sense.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:18:25]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:26]:
And I was like, why have I not got any tools? And you helped me understand how my child might be experiencing that with a neurodivergent brain, which was often I was coming in and going, right, you’ve had your time on the TV, it’s now the other child’s time on the TV. And you just helped me see it with a— that unpredictability of it. So I don’t know if that example helps.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:18:53]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I’m a very concrete person. I like to work with very real-life examples, and I think that’s a really good one. And I think it’s so easy, isn’t it, as parents to slip into the emotion of it and like, why is my child being so difficult? Why do they not care that their sister wants to watch the TV? Or, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I? And then you end up just in this sort of spiral of thoughts that aren’t really about what’s going on. And I do think the kind of lens of predictability helps us step back and be like, okay, like you say, what is their experience of this? Let’s assume that they experience the world as more unpredictable than I do. Like, how can I put things in place that’s just going to structure this in a bit more of a slightly dispassionate way? And not to say that we’re not— of course we’re empathizing with how hard the situation is for them, but just not getting sucked into moral judgments or, you know, our own guilt or that kind of thing.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:00]:
So you did things like, let’s put a timer on, like put a physical timer and get them to agree what would be enough time each that feels fair, because this is— there was this kind of thing of fairness, and they were very— and actually I was like, why hadn’t I thought about doing it Well, the reason I hadn’t thought about doing it is I’ve got more of a neurotypical brain that wouldn’t even think that that would be needed. But when I could see it through that lens, I was like, oh, of course. And it literally, it was like you’d cleaned the lens on my kind of glasses. I was like, okay, I can now be more curious and compassionate about their experience rather than seeing it a failure of my parenting, or as you say, a moral judgment on their character or how I’ve raised them with the values of sharing and all of that kind of stuff.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:20:50]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:50]:
That always comes into play for me.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:20:54]:
Oh, I really like that idea of cleaning the lens. And yeah, sometimes things just aren’t obvious until you look at them through a different way. Or sometimes parents have thought of things and they’ve just thought, oh, well, they shouldn’t need that, or they’re too old for that. But actually, I think a lot of the things that I often recommend and things that make life more predictable, we do use them as adults. And children often, they’re in a world that It’s more unpredictable if they have a neurodivergent nervous system. Yes, but a child’s life just is more unpredictable. We have our calendars, we can tell the time, we have all kinds of different tools that we use to make our life feel under control and feel predictable. And children basically aren’t as in control of their lives as we are as adults.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:21:45]:
And that’s for a reason, obviously. But anything that we can do to make them feel more in control where appropriate, things more predictable where appropriate, collaboration. So, what I really like in the example you just said is that it wasn’t that you said, right, you are having 5 minutes, you are having— you sat down with them and like, let’s make a plan together. So, the plan’s predictable, but they’ve also made the plan themselves. So, they feel in control of that, they feel in charge, and they’ve you know, everyone’s agreed it beforehand, so everyone knows what to expect and everyone knows that you’re on board.

Nicky Lowe [00:22:22]:
So we ended up actually, just so for anybody listening, we ended up with a planner on our fridge which was the days of the week, like before school time, after school time, and divided up the who has what when. And so it was really predictable and it did help to a point, and then they just wanted to keep overriding it and we had to bring some control back to it. But it absolutely helped, and I was like, oh, I would never have even thought that that was needed. And I think another thing that you did for me, which is again a concrete example for anybody listening, I was having a real issue at mealtime. So one of our family values, and something that’s really important to me, is that every evening we sit down as a family at the table and have home-cooked food together. And, you know, I was raised that you don’t get down from the table until everybody’s finished. And like, for me, that’s a really important family value. And I brought to you in our session, my one child eats really, really quick, and the other child eats really, really slow.

Nicky Lowe [00:23:21]:
It’s like you couldn’t get opposite ends of the spectrum. And it was causing real arguments at the dinner table. And I was like, oh my gosh, I’m trying to create this really like lovely family environment where we all sit down, and it is just backfiring. And I’m like— And it was, it was crossing my values, so it was triggering me. And you were great because you just brought— I, I was like, we— they just need to do it. And you were like, and why? Like, what, what are you trying to achieve here? And you really challenged me on my parenting of not being like trying to be the perfect parent and all of that. Hmm.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:23:57]:
And I think, you know, with our values, it’s, it’s hard, isn’t it? Because we want, we want to have values that are important to us, but at the same time before we become parents, we have this idea in our heads of, you know, what we want our family life to look like. And sometimes that we just get different kids to that, or other things happen in life that just doesn’t quite fit with that. And so we have to, have to be able to sort of flex. And of course, when we’re in the mire of parenting, just day in, day out parenting, it is hard to take a step back. And that is why, you know, it is useful to, to talk to a professional or even a friend or, you know, somebody neutral now and again, just to take a step back and be like, what is it about this that I’m kind of not seeing? And if your value, not yours, but if someone’s value is spending time together as a family, but there are struggles around the mealtime, it’s like, well, how can I kind of act in a way that’s in accordance with this value, but maybe in a slightly more flexible way that actually works for everyone? And I think, what was our solution? I think I was like, maybe it’s not that fair for him to have to wait for his sister to finish his dinner, her dinner.

Nicky Lowe [00:25:08]:
That was exactly it. And I’d never seen it through that lens of you, like, actually, if we look at it through a neurodivergent brain— and by the way, my child has never been diagnosed, like, I didn’t feel that that was needed, but just my understanding of what could be going on for them. And what you shared was if The brain is wired in this way, this is how they might be experiencing that. That isn’t them just being like unkind and impatient, it’s like literally that is a real struggle for them. They’re, they’re almost in like a physical pain having to, to sit there.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:25:43]:
So, and not know when the ending is, you know, because it’s, it’s like just when— yeah, totally unpredictable. Like, when is she gonna finish? We don’t know. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 20 minutes.

Nicky Lowe [00:25:52]:
And then it would get to And she might weaponize it and go even slower because she knew it would wind him up. And so we’d get into this, oh my goodness. And you gave a great compromise of like, I was probably in the middle in terms of my eating speed. And we came to, once I had finished, that was appropriate because his sister’s probably an outlier in terms of being incredibly slow. So yeah, and that really works. And he still checks in, he’s like, you finished, Mum? Am I okay to get down? And sometimes it’s not. It’s like, no, you just need another 5 minutes.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:26:23]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:26:23]:
or sometimes it’s, yeah.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:26:25]:
Um, so yeah, that—

Nicky Lowe [00:26:27]:
and it just resolved it. And I’m like, okay, I was holding on to a rule that just was so unhelpful. And I imagine— I see more intensive parenting in my kind of world. Do you see that in the parents that come to you, that there’s this— we have such high expectations now of ourselves and of our children?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:26:48]:
I think so. And I think Parenting has become a sort of industry, hasn’t it? Whereas perhaps in our parents’ generation, it was just, well, you have to look after your child. Whereas now it’s a sort of, well, how are you going to parent your child? What value system? It’s not just about the values of your community or your family anymore. It’s wider than that, isn’t it? There’s a lot of pressure. And I think sometimes those things don’t fit with our family, and I think it can feel really loaded to sort of sit back and say, you know what, actually this doesn’t fit for us, so we’re going to have to do something differently. And that can feel like a failure. And I think for a lot of women, particularly professional women who’ve grown up being successful, and kind of, you know, we were in that generation where we were told that could achieve anything we wanted and we can break those glass ceilings and do all of that. Then when you become a parent and you find that it doesn’t work like that, you can’t— you’re not in control of everything.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:27:55]:
There’s not a kind of input in, result out type of situation. You can’t achieve parenting. And I think that’s really difficult to shift. for a lot of people, particularly women. I’m not ruling dads out of this, but I think there’s a particular focus for women in this arena.

Nicky Lowe [00:28:19]:
So when somebody might be sitting listening going, okay, I’ve got some evidence where I think that there might be something more going on here, and they may have done what you’ve said, like, actually, let’s track and keep a record of what might be some of the triggers and what am I noticing, what then would you recommend somebody might do?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:28:44]:
I think there’s a range of things that you can do, and I think one of the things you just said is interesting, that actually for lots of people, they might not feel that their child needs an assessment or a diagnosis, but that if you just start looking at what’s going on through the lens of neurodiversity and neurodivergence and parenting them as if they might be neurodivergent in some way, autistic or ADHD or both. Well, they tend to go together quite a lot of the time. That is enough for a lot of people because it can just make the difference. It can help your child feel more regulated and it can help you feel lot more regulated because you are noticing that instead of all the parenting stuff you’ve been trying not working, things start to work. And then you can sort of take the blame off your shoulders a bit and everybody just feels better. And so from a kind of psychological point of view, there isn’t, there’s no downside that I’m aware of to parenting any child through this lens because if it turns out that they’re not neurodivergent, but it helped them, You know, this isn’t— it’s not like a medicine that you’re taking that has to be for like a particular thing. It’s just, you know, let’s think about how your brain might be wired up, and if this helps, then great. So I think that reassures a lot of parents because I think it’s low— it’s kind of low stress, isn’t it? You can just give it a try.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:30:19]:
But then lots of people are in a situation where things are a little bit more stressful than that, and they do think, actually, my child’s starting to need help with school, or things are getting a little bit more tricky. The first step probably is to go to your GP and explore what their perspective is. Maybe talk to school and find out how things are there. As I said before, often There isn’t always a kind of consistent pattern between how a child is at home and how they are at school, but it can be useful to get school’s perspective as well. And if you are thinking about an assessment, you can find out what the NHS options are in your area. I think we all know that NHS waiting lists are often very long. It does still seem to be quite dependent on area though. There are some areas where there are kind of right-to-choose options that are a bit more accessible if you are looking for a an autism or ADHD assessment, but other areas, you know, the waiting lists are basically closed.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:31:24]:
In which, I mean, I think that’s definitely true for adults. There are some adults’ waiting lists that are actually closed. I’m not sure whether they technically can do that with children’s, but they’ll be like 4 years long or something like that, you know. But it really depends on where you live, so, you know, I think it’s always definitely worth seeing your GP in the first instance. And then if you are looking in the private space, it’s, I guess, about trying to find a team where you think that you’re reassured by the qualifications and the backgrounds of the clinicians there and getting a kind of neuroaffirmative feeling, perhaps from their website, or if you speak to them on the phone, that they are recognizing neurodivergence as, as a difference, and they’re not kind of operating from an old-school deficit model, and that they’re going to be following a gold standard assessment process that’s recommended by the NICE guidelines in the UK to make sure that it’s a robust assessment. And also looking at perhaps what the post-diagnostic support would be, because that’s often quite important. You don’t want to just be left with a short report and a closed door. You, you know, ideally you want to make sure that, um, whether or not your child gets a diagnosis— because of course you’re going for an assessment, you’re not going for a diagnosis— you’re going— you want to know that you’re going to be getting some recommendations and suggestions and a really kind of thorough picture of your child’s strengths and weaknesses, um, and then what, what’s on offer to support you.

Nicky Lowe [00:32:57]:
What kind of support should people be looking out for? What, what might be— and I know it’s like, well, it depends— but what, what What might be some of the components that could make up support for a child?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:33:09]:
Yeah, quite right that I was about to say it depends. Um, it really depends on what, what your child— why you’ve gone for the assessment. You know, some people are in a really difficult position where their child’s really dysregulated, struggling with an awful lot of kind of meltdowns or shutdowns and maybe aggressive behaviour, difficult to get into school. Like, things are quite extreme then. I think In that situation, you absolutely don’t want just a report and then nothing. You could be looking for opportunities for parent support. So someone to support you not only with your parenting, but also with your mental health. Like, if you are really struggling and your child is really struggling, then having tools as a parent, yes, but also having support.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:34:00]:
just for yourself, I think is important. Some children, I mean, there’s no, you know, we don’t try and therapize children out of being neurodivergent like that. I’m sort of saying that a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but that’s been the case in the past that people have thought that that’s something we want to do. We don’t, obviously don’t want to do that. But there are certain things that can be helpful, like around emotional regulation and emotional literacy often. Neurodivergent children might just learn things a little bit more manually that other children maybe pick up more naturally. Perhaps learning a bit about emotions and how to recognize them and different ways of coping with them can be helpful. And as we know as parents, we can try and teach our children things, but they don’t often listen to us.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:34:48]:
So even As a psychologist, you might know all of the stuff, but actually not be able to impart that brilliantly to your child. So I think sometimes having a neutral third person to work on them with those kind of skills can be really helpful. A lot of neurodivergent children struggle with anxiety, which I guess would make sense if your experience in the world is more overwhelming and more unpredictable. Again, that makes sense, but having some of those specific tools around how, how to support your child with that, but also for your child themselves to have, you know, what they can learn and how, how they can start as they get older to cope with anxiety themselves. That can be helpful. But often as the first step, it is more about environmental adaptations rather than therapy for your child. Often, often it’s about, you know, how do you change the environment as a as a parent, how does the school change the environment, um, to better support your child?

Nicky Lowe [00:35:49]:
And have you got any recommendations from that school piece? Because I think a common theme I hear around among my network is even if somebody does get an assessment and a diagnosis, then it’s really quite difficult to engage and get the right support within the school system. And it’s not because people don’t care, but I imagine there’s just kind of all the challenges that we might know. So, is there any resources or advice that you would give in terms of helping somebody who may get to that point?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:36:21]:
Yeah, it’s really hard because it, again, it really depends. It’s a bit like the, the health system. Schools are so variable in the way that they approach this. Um, so some schools are absolutely fantastic, you know, really sort of have skilled themselves up and got training and understanding neurodiversity and are able to put as much support as they can in place. Um, of course, if, if a child needs something that’s over and above what the school can do without extra funding, then that’s where the education healthcare plans come in that need to be applied for to get extra funding in order to support children with more specific needs. But schools should be able to make reasonable adjustments without that. But again, it really does rely on the attitude of the school and how they view what they’re already doing and how they— yeah. So, I don’t know if I’ve got any sort of broad brush.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:37:26]:
I think skilling yourself up as a parent and actually making sure you understand what it is you think your child needs can be helpful. I mean, obviously it is a burden for parents to have to do that, but I think puts you in a better position because then if you have meetings with school, you’re able to go and communicate in an assertive way. I often actually do kind of assertive communication work with parents because if that’s not something that comes naturally to you, then going into those meetings can be quite overwhelming. But if you’ve kind of armed yourself with some information and clear ideas of what you want, it’s a bit kind of going back to the SMART goals type of stuff. You can use a lot of stuff from the workplace, I think, when you’re communicating with schools. And trying to build up a good relationship with school is key if that is possible.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:26]:
Yeah, and I think that piece that I think you do so brilliantly is helping somebody see it through the eyes of your child. Is we know that under normal circumstances this is what we would expect, but for my child this is how they might experience that situation. So we had a situation, and you were brilliant at helping me, giving the— give me the lens, where we’d had a situation where my child had had a clash with a teacher and the teacher called me and I was like, fuming at my child. I was like, I have not raised you to be disrespectful. You know, the whole, you know, it triggered me of like, we’ve got family values, you were not representing family values. And what actually happened is the teacher had moved them from the back of the class to the front of the class, and my child had almost refused to move seats. And I was like, what is this about? This is not okay. It was very black and white in my mind of the teacher has the ability to do what they want Within reason, and you will respectfully follow their orders.

Nicky Lowe [00:39:30]:
And you helped me see it through the lens of how my child might have viewed that situation, which was a shame response. And at the front of the class, all eyes are on them, they struggle in this particular class, and you were like, that might be why they are kind of resistant to be sat there. It’s not that they are being resistant to the authority. they are struggling with that experience of everybody looking at them in a class where they struggle, and there is probably, um, their shame resilience is being challenged in this moment. And I was like, oh my God, I never even like considered that. I was just like, you’ll do as you’re told.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:40:10]:
Yeah, and now I’m hearing it again, I’m thinking, and it was also very unpredictable. Was this a planned move? Like, was there a preparation period? Like, you know, So probably all of that going on as well. And I think, yeah, schools are often, they’re busy, they’re stretched. It’s very hard for them to kind of take a step back sometimes and look at things through this lens. But I think it is helpful because it makes things like nobody’s fault. This isn’t about whether it’s parent’s fault, child’s fault, school’s fault. It’s just about taking a step back and being like, okay, if a nervous system is processing information in this way, that’s makes the world seem really uncertain, unpredictable, and overwhelming. What would be, you know, what would follow on naturally as a strategy to, to help this? And like, when we see a dysregulated child, rather than thinking immediately, oh, they’re, they’re being naughty, they’re being difficult, um, whatever it is, can we think, well, why?

Nicky Lowe [00:41:08]:
Yeah. And also what I love about your approach is that it’s not just accommodating the child’s needs no matter what, ’cause you were this beautiful about, it’s like seeing it with unconditional positive regard, like that there is a good intention there and they might need firm boundaries. So how do we stay with the curious compassionate side and also hold boundaries that are important? And I think I often hear that, I think my tendency as a parent was to go to the hard boundaries of like, no, you know.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:41:41]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:41:42]:
this is a non-negotiable, you just do it. Whereas other parents might be, oh well, we just need to, like, for that teacher, they should just leave them at the back of the class. And it’s like, no, they might need to sit at the front of the class for good reason, but how do we manage that transition in a way that doesn’t create a dysregulated nervous system, as you said?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:42:04]:
Yes, exactly. This isn’t about— yeah, we want to avoid a kind of a black and white situation where it’s, you know, it’s either my way or the highway, or it’s like, yes, we’ll just do whatever they want. Because actually that isn’t good for children. That doesn’t actually make the world feel more predictable. If a child’s reacting with anxiety about something, definitely there are situations where we need to take a step back and be like, okay, maybe we are not going to push you into this. But at the same time, sometimes there are things that need to happen. There are rules that we have at home and at school that are about safety, There are transitions that just need to happen because that’s just part of life. And it is about the how, isn’t it? It’s about the how can we make this okay for you? Not like, oh, either we’re going to ignore all your needs or we’re just going to say, okay, do whatever you want all the time.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:42:59]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:42:59]:
Accommodate everything.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:43:00]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:43:02]:
So one of the things that I would love to just briefly touch on is about what happens if you’re a neurodivergent parent that, you know, you may not have a neurodivergent child, but— or it might be that you do. As we said, if it’s heritable, chances are it is. What insights can you share around that that might be useful for somebody listening?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:43:28]:
Yeah, and I think lots of, you know, women particularly are noticing that they’re neurodivergent later in life. And it tends to be that sort of collision of hormones as well that can make characteristics that have always been there just make them a little bit more obvious, makes masking more difficult. And when we’re in parenthood and the demands go up and perhaps we have aging parents and suddenly where we might have been able to cope in our 20s, Now with fewer resources and more demands, that balance is different. And then I sometimes talk about the neurodivergent triple whammy where realistically, because of the high heritability of autism and ADHD, it’s likely that if we have a neurodivergent child that at least one parent is neurodivergent and sort of the other way around. So we kind of have our own needs, Then we’ve got our child’s needs, and then we’ve got the mismatch between those needs. Because you might have a child, for example, who’s really loud and lots of sensory kind of input, but you yourself might be really noise sensitive and kind of really struggling with that need time alone. And it’s sort of being able to manage not just one, not just two, but the sort of Venn diagram aspect of it.

Nicky Lowe [00:44:52]:
Yeah.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:44:55]:
I think that’s why a lot of people say, well, why do you need a diagnosis? Or why do you need to self-identify? And of course, nobody needs to do anything, but I think it’s very useful in terms of the self-compassion aspect. If people have spent their whole lives thinking that they are, or been being told that they’re lazy or they’re difficult or they’re dramatic or— that kind of thing. To have sort of a much less pejorative name for why you are the way you are can be really a huge relief and allow you to be a bit kind to yourself. And it can also open the door to you actually meeting your needs, because if you’ve spent your whole life feeling ashamed of certain things, you often develop a really strong inner critic that often won’t sort of allow you to actually do things that you need to do for yourself. Whereas if you suddenly like, oh, I’m not antisocial, I just find it really difficult to sustain kind of social interaction for hours on end. So I’m going to go to this party, but I’m going to leave after 2 hours. And that’s because that’s what I need. rather than beating yourself up about either avoiding it altogether or, you know, pushing through but then crashing the next day and, you know, really struggling.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:46:21]:
It gives you that space to, yeah, not only avoid the shame but actually meet, meet the need that you have. I mean, that’s just one example, but there’s, you know, there’s so many.

Nicky Lowe [00:46:31]:
Yeah. And again, is there any advice you would give somebody if they might suspect actually in, in looking through this lens for my child, I’m starting to see something for myself. What route would you suggest they go down? I know you mentioned you’ve got a blog, and I would love to signpost that in, in a moment, actually. Is that a blog that actually for adults they could look at, or would there be something else you would recommend?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:47:00]:
So that blog is more focused on kind of signs that you might see in your child. But I also have a kind of sister project called the Neurodiversity Practice, and we run a community for parents who are neurodivergent themselves or wondering if they might be, you know, this very inclusive space. And we have a kind of a blog there, and we have a webinar that’s about kind of wondering about your child but also about yourself. So I would definitely kind of suggest maybe browsing through some of the resources that we have and some of the blogs just to see if any of it rings a bell. Again, it’s a bit like with your child. Some parents feel like it’s enough to just wonder and to sort of tweak things as if I might be neurodivergent. That’s enough for some people. The next step, I guess, on is to sort of self-identify and say, yeah, I think actually, I think I might be ADHD, or I think I might be autistic or ADHD, and say that you are because you identify with that.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:48:05]:
But for a lot of people, they do find that they do want a formal assessment because it removes that element of doubt. You know, people feel like they’re an imposter. People struggle. They’re like, am I just making excuses for myself? And so a lot of people do find that they benefit from having a formal assessment so that they can feel sure.

Nicky Lowe [00:48:28]:
We’ve covered a lot, and this is such a massive subject. If there was just one thing that you want somebody listening to this taking away as a parent, what would you want that to be?

Dr Jo Mueller [00:48:38]:
You know, the thing that I come across with parents most is just that kind of guilt and shame and self-criticism, and it’s because of these messages that we get bombarded with all the time of like, people are just making excuses for themselves, you know. Neurodivergence is overdiagnosed and people are just looking for labels and all of that kind of thing. And I just think, obviously, I don’t agree with any of that. I don’t think that there’s an upper limit on how many neurodivergent people there might be in the world. For all we know, it might not really be neurodivergent at all. It might be sort of just equal amounts of different types of nervous system. I do find that if you can spend time with other people with a similar mindset to you— so this isn’t just sort of a plug for my community, but just to say that when people come into the community, they immediately feel better because they realize that they’re not alone and they’re surrounded by people who are like, yes, this is real. You are not imagining this, whether it’s for your child or for yourself.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:49:42]:
So whether you do that in a community like ours or whether you do that with people surrounding you that you know you can trust and you can actually be open with and take some of that weight off your shoulders. I do think that connection piece is really, really important. Trust your instincts. You know your child, you know yourself. If you think something is different, then it probably is. Yeah, seek out people that are there to neuroaffirm you, um, and not criticize and judge you.

Nicky Lowe [00:50:20]:
No, that’s brilliant. Thank you. And you’ve already kind of given us an insight into all of the different resources you have because you— like, the resources you have out there are incredible. So would you mind talking us through the different areas that you, you provide? So would you mind talking people through? And I’ll put all the links into the show notes so people can, can find you and these different resources.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:50:43]:
Oh, thanks, Nicky. Yeah, so I have basically, I kind of have 2 different projects. So one is me at Dr. Jo the Psychologist. I work one-to-one with families, although I sometimes have a bit of a waiting list. So for that reason, I have an audio program called The Guilty Parent Club, which is based around my 6P framework. Essentially, it kind of builds on that sense of if the world is unpredictable, for your child, what are the strategies that could be helpful in making life feel more manageable for them and for you? So, it breaks it down into really kind of bite-sized practical strategies that make sense, but it’s very much not like a rigid, it’s not like rules. It’s about kind of, here’s something that might be helpful.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:51:32]:
What do you think for your child? And it also involves things that help you with your own regulation as a parent, because obviously you can have all the ideas, you like, um, but if you are struggling with your own regulation, then you’re not going to be able to put them in place. And so that’s why I have Stuff for You and Stuff for Your Child, and that’s, um, yeah, that’s an audio library that parents can work through, um, in their own— at their own pace.

Nicky Lowe [00:51:56]:
And then you mentioned about the community.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:51:59]:
Yes, so as part of the neurodiversity practice, which is focused more— so, so just to say that the, you know, the Guilty Parent Club is kind of more for families where they’re wondering. So it’s written for children who are probably neurodivergent, but it’s very much useful if you’re not quite sure yet and you just want something that’s going to work and it’s not just typical parenting strategies. Whereas the Neurodiversity Practices is explicitly focused more on families where they’re a bit more sure that that’s what’s going on. We have lots of webinars that we run, one every month, live, and then there’s kind of a webinar library. We have low-cost kind of PDF download resources that you can explore. But I guess my favorite thing about it is the community for parents who are either neurodivergent yourself or wondering if you are, because everything is included if you’re part of the community. You can come to every webinar for free, access to the whole back catalog of all the past webinars, all the downloadable resources, plus, you know, we have kind of a routine each week of different chats and polls that we have. There’s also emotional regulation course for parents as part of that community.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:53:09]:
So yeah, that’s also a great resource. And the last thing is that I’m writing a book, but that’s not out until next September, September 2027. So I’ve got a little bit of a wait for that, but that’s going to bring these 2 worlds together a little bit.

Nicky Lowe [00:53:27]:
Which is amazing. And, you know, just thank you, Jo. Thank you for the work that you’ve done with me personally, for joining me on the podcast, but also for the work that you’re putting out into the world, because you are helping so many families with, with what you’re doing. And, you know, families that are feeling really stuck and probably at their most vulnerable kind of place with feeling like they’re very unsupported. So, um, yeah, just thank you.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:53:54]:
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Nicky. It’s been really lovely talking to you.

Nicky Lowe [00:53:58]:
Just thank you, Dr Jo.

Dr Jo Mueller [00:53:59]:
Thanks, Nicky.

Nicky Lowe [00:54:01]:
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you, so head over to illuminate-group.co.uk where you’ll find ways to stay in touch. And if this episode resonated with you, one of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on iTunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening. Until next time, take care.