Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / When conditions collide. Episode 6.

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When conditions collide. Episode 6. · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to this, the final episode in the series When Conditions Collide.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is intended to bring the series to a conclusion by focusing not so much on the difficulties that such children and their families experience, but those strengths that are possible foundation stones for enabling children to make progress.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this is about strength, identity, and the future.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this is because when we talk about neurodevelopmental differences, quite often what will happen is that the focus will be only on the difficulty.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that just tells us one part of the story.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose the same is true in any situation where a child's difficulties are apparent, those parts of them that don't have difficulty are still there.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: But somehow they get overshadowed.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: People see what they see, but they don't see what is not visible.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now the strengths that such children have are quite often seen.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Many individuals will demonstrate quite remarkable qualities.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: They may show deep curiosity, analytical thinking, creative thinking, intense focus in areas of interest, and original, quite unusual problem-solving abilities.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And these qualities emerge when the nervous system is supported rather than constantly struggling to compensate.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to return to the little boy Daniel, because towards the end of my work with him, and this is the boy who built intricate Lego cities, something had shifted.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: His parents and teachers now had a greater understanding of how his brain worked.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they structured the learning differently and they connected tasks to his interests where possible.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a really important stepping stone because you're widening the lens that the child may see themselves and their lives through.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in addition, they allowed things like movement and breaks when his attention began to fade.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: One afternoon he showed me a notebook.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: He often showed me a notebook, but this was different because it was filled with drawings of mechanical inventions, and some were imaginative machines designed to solve everyday problems, but others were complex transportation systems.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And looking at these drawings, it was very clear that the same mind that had once appeared chaotic possessed extraordinary creativity.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if we look at this from a different point of view, what we see is that here was a part of Daniel that was emerging and which needed nurturing.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Another Daniel, this time Daniel Siegel, the psychiatrist, describes mental health, good mental health, as the integration of different parts of the mind.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've spoken about this in other podcasts where the bringing of the parts together is the ultimate goal.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But for children with AUDHD, the goal is not to eliminate the neurological difference, because that's just not possible.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is to help the child organize their experiences in ways that allow their abilities to emerge.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So children with such conditions often grow up hearing messages about what they struggle with.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when the environment begins to fully understand the neurological profile, something changes.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, many of these children grow into adults whose originality, insight, and creativity become genuine strengths.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: We can probably all think of very, very well-known people who have a neurodevelopmental difficulty, that which, whilst they may have struggled with it, they have been able to utilize their the skills that those difficulties might actually produce.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so their sense of identity, their sense of being a viable person becomes built on those things.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: From a clinical point of view, whilst those principles underpin my practice, there is also, of course, a necess a necessity through what we call psychoeducation to help children to understand their difficulties as differences.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is really important because when we understand them as differences, it's a more benign approach.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It says, well, you do things in a different kind of way, and that works for you sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: But we maybe can can just we can fine-tune that a bit and make it work.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is really fascinating for me to see how children emerge and how their capacity to, regardless of their difficulty, their capacity to become themselves is there waiting to happen.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I do hope this series has been helpful to you.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are aware of people who may benefit from listening to this, then please do feel welcome to share it with them.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.