Latest / Thick No More / Nobody Joined the Dots | Adam Petrie on ADHD, School & the Signs We Miss

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Nobody Joined the Dots | Adam Petrie on ADHD, School & the Signs We Miss · Thick No More

• 0:01
  Everyone and welcome back to another episode of Think No
• 0:04
  more. I guess the Neuro Spicy podcast
• 0:07
  is what I'm going to start calling it today.
• 0:11
  I have someone with me whose story really, really interested
• 0:16
  me a because he's he's kind of seen send from both sides of the
• 0:22
  fence. So Adam Petrie is a teacher.
• 0:25
  He's worked with children who are neurodiverse special
• 0:28
  education needs, and he was diagnosed with ADHD himself.
• 0:33
  He's now the founder of a product called Lonella and the
• 0:38
  man behind Early Signals. What really caught my attention
• 0:41
  though, and which is why I've bought him on on the podcast, is
• 0:45
  the problem he's trying to solve.
• 0:49
  Often somebody noticed something isn't quite right, which is good
• 0:54
  these days, right? A teacher sees something, for
• 0:57
  example, a parent may see something, the child struggling.
• 1:02
  But what we need is all of those pieces of information, they all
• 1:07
  sit in different places. And sometimes it takes probably
• 1:10
  years before anybody joins the bloody dots together.
• 1:13
  And Adam's trying to change that.
• 1:16
  So before we get anywhere near the early signals, I want to
• 1:20
  find a bit more about Adam. So Adam, thank you for joining
• 1:22
  us on the podcast. It's amazing to see you my
• 1:24
  friend. Good morning, Jeff.
• 1:26
  Thank you so much for having me on this.
• 1:28
  Really excited. You're very.
• 1:29
  Now you're very welcome. Now listen.
• 1:31
  Doesn't matter who you are, right?
• 1:34
  You can be a superstar or you can be Joe Blogs off the street.
• 1:39
  It makes no difference. Every single person, even if
• 1:42
  you're a teacher, my friend, gets this question right.
• 1:44
  It's the same question. So I want you to imagine you're
• 1:47
  about to walk into a room, the doors fling open and the song
• 1:51
  starts playing. Watch your song.
• 1:55
  It's the Middle by Jimmy Eat World.
• 1:57
  Absolute banger. Wow, OK, all right.
• 2:01
  Why mate is there? Is there a memory attached to
• 2:03
  that or a reason do? You know what it is, mate?
• 2:05
  It was honestly, it was the first song I popped into my head
• 2:08
  and then I told, I told my other half about it and she went
• 2:12
  right. OK, that's good advertisement.
• 2:14
  What? What do you mean?
• 2:15
  Well, you've got a, you've got an article out called called The
• 2:17
  Missing Middle. Haha, right.
• 2:19
  OK, well, we'll link to that. I mean, look, it, it, it, it
• 2:23
  does kind of epitomise my life. Really.
• 2:26
  It's all about being stuck in the middle of the ride.
• 2:28
  But you know, everything's going to be all right.
• 2:31
  You know your middle, no matter kind of how how tibultuous it is
• 2:36
  gets you to your end point, right?
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  Like no matter how hard it was, no matter how easy it was, you
• 2:41
  know, you've still got you've still got to go through that
• 2:45
  middle. And it's also quite synonymous
• 2:47
  in terms of what what we're doing with early signals.
• 2:49
  You know, someone notices something at the start, you've
• 2:52
  got all that missing middle in the middle where there's nothing
• 2:54
  that kind of supporting people just now.
• 2:56
  And then at the very end, you've got all that useful evidence.
• 2:58
  So we're all in the middle of something, Miss.
• 3:01
  No, no, totally. And and and that's that's it's
• 3:05
  really a really great tune. It really is a banger like you
• 3:07
  said. But what, what, what is quite
• 3:09
  interesting about that is what you just kind of talked about
• 3:12
  being in the middle. The whole the reason I started
• 3:14
  this was because I know there are people listening now and,
• 3:17
  and the vast majority of my parents, and they are at that
• 3:22
  point, some of them at the beginning of that journey, some
• 3:24
  of her in the middle and some of them are near the end and they
• 3:27
  can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• 3:28
  But it kind of epitomizes what what this podcast is about.
• 3:32
  So right, listen, I want to kind of, I want to paint a picture
• 3:36
  here. So I want to go back to Adam at
• 3:40
  school. I want you to tell me what Adam
• 3:44
  was like at school. You don't, you know, see me?
• 3:48
  I tried making a few notes on this and it's been quite painful
• 3:50
  actually. You know, there were bits of it.
• 3:52
  I've been really quite hard to do.
• 3:55
  If I think back kind of really early doors, I think the whole
• 3:58
  overriding kind of narrative is that I just wanted to be a lad
• 4:02
  who was liked, you know, I think I think that was kind of it.
• 4:06
  I was relatively bright, you know, So it's it's an odd one,
• 4:09
  right? I know that I know on a podcast
• 4:11
  called Thick No more, but I don't think I was ever thick.
• 4:14
  I just think, you know, I was I was desperate for validation
• 4:18
  from people. I remember being called Walter
• 4:19
  Mitty when I was young, you know, by there was a teacher I
• 4:22
  had like nice man, you know, nice man, be just any kind of
• 4:26
  like off the cuff to know you like Walter Mitty, you know, but
• 4:29
  actually, when I think now I know who, who that is, you know,
• 4:32
  it's like, you know, compulsive lion and it's kind of attention
• 4:35
  seeking And, and those words, those words really still echo in
• 4:39
  my ear. Now, you know, verbal diarrhoea
• 4:41
  echoes in my ear. Now I remember I would, I would
• 4:45
  just get, I would just get sent out of the class.
• 4:46
  I had one teacher who would literally say, you know, Adam,
• 4:50
  you know, you've got one. And I'd shout out once and then
• 4:52
  as soon as I'd shout out the second time, he'd send me out,
• 4:55
  right. And now when I think back on it,
• 4:57
  like, that's just quite poor behaviour management.
• 4:59
  But, you know, it's the 90s, right?
• 5:01
  And I remember always, nearly always anyway, standing outside
• 5:04
  that classroom because it gets sent out five, six times a
• 5:06
  lesson. Why the hell have I done that
• 5:08
  again, You know, and kind of, I didn't think I just did things.
• 5:12
  It was total impulse. And then kind of as I got a bit
• 5:15
  older and I got a bit bigger, I started doing bigger.
• 5:19
  And after things, I was really easily LED, mate.
• 5:22
  You know, I made some poor choices, you know, and obviously
• 5:25
  when you're little or when you're younger, those they're
• 5:27
  just little things, right? You know, you say silly things.
• 5:29
  You know, I remember giving my mum the finger outside of a
• 5:32
  outside of a shop up near where we used to live in Sunderland.
• 5:35
  And I remember her turning around and like the world just
• 5:38
  slowing down and like she came back to the car and and it was
• 5:42
  just kind of a, it was just like such a silly thing.
• 5:44
  But I mean back, I think the main thing that I really want to
• 5:48
  get across is back then I just was desperate to be liked.
• 5:54
  And kind of now, now, now I think about it, I just wanted
• 5:58
  the dope main hit for my people sort of saying nice things about
• 6:01
  something that was going on. Now it's been what, 8 months,
• 6:05
  nine months since since I started me, since I finished
• 6:07
  titration, start my treatment proper.
• 6:09
  I'm telling you now, I don't chase validation from anybody at
• 6:15
  all. It's a really odd thing, man.
• 6:17
  Interesting. That's interesting.
• 6:20
  Yeah, so again, there was something I'd forgotten about
• 6:24
  mate, which is really, I think quite traumatic actually, which
• 6:30
  I hadn't remembered, right. It was.
• 6:32
  So I was on report, right In secondary school, Yeah.
• 6:35
  So I had a card where teacher would either put a ticker across
• 6:38
  depending on their behaviour. Right then that changed to
• 6:42
  something called the monitoring book.
• 6:44
  I remember the book. It was like a it was like a
• 6:45
  school exercise book. And a teacher would like write a
• 6:48
  comment every single lesson about how I'd done and you'd
• 6:51
  hand it in at the start of every lesson.
• 6:53
  You'd walk in a class with everyone else.
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  You'd walk the front, the class and you put it on the put it on
• 6:56
  the desk and then you'd collect it at the end and it invariably
• 7:00
  there'd be really quite enough comments in it because, you
• 7:03
  know, behaviour didn't change because it was being logged,
• 7:07
  right? The behaviour never changed.
• 7:08
  There was just nothing ever. There was no support ever put in
• 7:10
  place for me like ever. You know, I don't remember any
• 7:14
  kind of conversation. There was no kind of pastoral.
• 7:17
  There was nothing, right. I think it was just kind of
• 7:20
  believe that I was just a bit of a nugget.
• 7:22
  You know, I spoke to mum the other day about my reports and I
• 7:25
  was like, you know, Mum, can I get can I get my reports out, my
• 7:28
  old reports out? And, you know, they're kind of
• 7:30
  lost in the ether in, in the in the loft.
• 7:32
  But her overriding thing was just, you know, has lots of
• 7:35
  ability, but he's a class clown, you know, and I think.
• 7:38
  Did you, did they ever see, do you think they ever saw what you
• 7:42
  were capable of or not? The teachers.
• 7:45
  Yeah, yeah. And I think sometimes I think,
• 7:48
  you know, I've listened to a lot of people on this pod, so you'll
• 7:52
  have to forgive me. The the the gentleman with The
• 7:54
  Who who's broken the world records.
• 7:56
  Yeah, Andy. Andy.
• 7:58
  Yes, thank you. Sorry, You know, I was listening
• 8:00
  and it was kind of like, you know, just being unable to kind
• 8:04
  of access what you're what you're capable of.
• 8:06
  You know, that's that's the overriding thing for him, right?
• 8:08
  He's done incredible things. I haven't yet, right?
• 8:11
  You know, I'm coping and I'm managing my life and I'm doing
• 8:13
  the little things right, which is which is more important to me
• 8:17
  right now, right, rather than, you know, a kind of a huge
• 8:20
  thing. It's just, you know, lots of
• 8:22
  small things make up a really great thing.
• 8:24
  Big, big part of what early signals is right?
• 8:27
  Little bits in isolation mean out, right, You know, getting
• 8:30
  up, making your bed means nout or getting up, making your bed,
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  doing your breakfast, looking after the children, getting your
• 8:36
  ice of coffee, going to work on time.
• 8:38
  Those things all together create really good kind of life.
• 8:43
  You know, I think, you know, I was talking about my mom just
• 8:46
  before. I think she deserves a bit of a
• 8:48
  bit of thank you here actually, right.
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  Because I think I remember sitting in my room and like just
• 8:53
  not revising, right? And whenever.
• 8:55
  And she'd be in that room every honestly 7 minutes, like just
• 8:58
  tried to check out what I was doing and what I was on and
• 9:00
  she'd really focus me. I think without that structure,
• 9:03
  I wouldn't have got where I am today because I'd have just
• 9:05
  flunked, you know, I would, I think if I just go back to that
• 9:09
  kind of that monitoring book just for just a second, right?
• 9:11
  That book, book or no book, I still didn't know how to not do
• 9:16
  those things. I didn't know how to not shout
• 9:18
  out. There was no, and in fact, it
• 9:20
  wasn't even about knowing because even if I did know, I
• 9:22
  wouldn't have been able to stop, right.
• 9:25
  So handing in like a book like that mate, at the start of every
• 9:30
  lesson, the end of every lesson doesn't have to get you noticed
• 9:32
  by your peers. Like you know, you just see it's
• 9:35
  different and weird and kind of what you know, what's in that
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  book sort of thing. I remember people nicking it and
• 9:39
  reading it out loud at break time to people and like.
• 9:42
  Come on. That's just grim, isn't it?
• 9:44
  And like, I wonder whether it looked to everyone like I just
• 9:47
  didn't care. But like, the truth of the
• 9:50
  matter is, I cared a great deal, arguably too much, but my
• 9:54
  ability in my performance were two completely separate things
• 9:58
  in there. Which is 2 things that you've
• 10:00
  just said first of all, is one that keeps popping up on this
• 10:03
  podcast. And I I'm not the only person
• 10:05
  that said it. Loads of people have said this,
• 10:07
  but you've just you've just. So this is the 90s, right?
• 10:10
  To be clear. Yeah, yeah, you've just
• 10:13
  highlighted something there. First of all, you talked about
• 10:15
  your mum, your mum coming in every 7 minutes Jack in.
• 10:18
  So your mum was never really really able to be a mum.
• 10:23
  Your mum was your mum was a teacher.
• 10:26
  A reminder for you to do your homework, a reminder for you to
• 10:28
  revise. So that's the first thing that
• 10:30
  keeps popping on this podcast that the parents can't just be
• 10:34
  parents can't parents can't be mum and dad.
• 10:36
  They have to describe as readers, teachers, revision
• 10:39
  tools. So that's the first thing.
• 10:41
  And did you did I guess just to quickly touch on on you, you
• 10:45
  touched about like your peers there.
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  And so did you, if you can think back, did you know you were
• 10:51
  struggling or did you just think, well, this is who I am,
• 10:56
  so. That that this was the biggest
• 10:58
  realization that I've had made from coming on this pod because
• 11:01
  I've had to have a think, right? You told me we're going to talk
• 11:03
  about, you know, your youth and then right and so on.
• 11:06
  And I've really thought about this.
• 11:08
  I think my behaviour, right, led to people's expectations, which
• 11:16
  then fed into my identity, right?
• 11:18
  I think the way that I behaved, the way I went on, right?
• 11:22
  And that this goes up to kind of 35, by the way, right?
• 11:26
  Lowered everyone's expectations of me, right?
• 11:29
  I remember all the eye rolls. So all the eye rolls, you know,
• 11:32
  I'd say something that would even be mildly interesting.
• 11:34
  That was true, right? Because I'll be totally frank
• 11:37
  with you, mate, I was a massive storyteller, right?
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  Because, you know, you say something interesting and you
• 11:40
  feel great when people react to you.
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  And the thing was that's important.
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  There is it didn't matter how they reacted, whether it was
• 11:46
  positive or negative, they reacted and that was what was
• 11:48
  important, right? And now I'm actually doing
• 11:52
  something genuinely interesting, right?
• 11:54
  You know, I'm speaking to people who I never thought I'd be able
• 11:58
  to, you know, be hanging in a room with.
• 12:00
  And I think now for some people, even people really, really,
• 12:03
  really close to me, that eye roll is still there.
• 12:06
  And that the huge problem is over time, you start to either
• 12:09
  believe you're on hype or you start to live inside other
• 12:13
  people's expectations of you. For me and for a long time, what
• 12:18
  people thought of as a think of me shape how I see myself.
• 12:23
  So I've just stopped asking and looking for it because it's not
• 12:28
  good, you know. But unfortunately I was always
• 12:30
  kind of unable to unable to sort of help.
• 12:34
  But like I never understood why it was always me because it was,
• 12:37
  it was always me, you know, I just knew it always was like
• 12:41
  there's no one to blame. The 90s context does matter.
• 12:44
  You know, this, the stigma was a thing.
• 12:47
  You know, I remember there was a young lad in my class, Colum M
• 12:51
  back in primary school, He was on Ritalin.
• 12:52
  And I remember there was a day where he hadn't had his meds and
• 12:56
  everyone started calling them mental, right.
• 12:58
  And like quite kind of openly. And again, 90s I was probably, I
• 13:01
  was in my first primary school, first two primary schools and
• 13:04
  moved around quite a lot. And he must have been like 6,
• 13:08
  right? And like, I remember kind of
• 13:09
  quite clearly people call him the mental because he was quite
• 13:12
  literally running around the dining hall and couldn't stop
• 13:14
  himself, right? You know, So the 90s context
• 13:18
  does matter. I know that.
• 13:20
  I do wonder whether my parents just didn't, whether they knew
• 13:22
  and just didn't kind of want the stigma attached.
• 13:24
  I understand that, you know, fearing for your child's future
• 13:27
  in the kite in the 90s. Probably not.
• 13:29
  Probably not mate. As tough as it sounds, you know,
• 13:34
  it's heartbreaking and and you know when I first start, when I
• 13:38
  realized that I got bored, you just mentioned about like the
• 13:43
  eye rolling and this that and the other right.
• 13:46
  Like I think what you're doing is is is incredible and we are
• 13:49
  going to come on to it. I promise you.
• 13:52
  The reason I do this back bit is is for a couple of reasons.
• 13:56
  First of all, for people that listen, it's, they may be on,
• 14:02
  like I said, the journey they're on with their, with their
• 14:04
  children. They're at different stages or
• 14:06
  they're the end or the beginning.
• 14:08
  And they're probably going through what your mum went
• 14:10
  through with you, your parents went through with you and my mum
• 14:12
  went through with me. And, and it's important for them
• 14:16
  to hear that what the, what the child side of your, your, your
• 14:22
  memory. So when you've gone back, you
• 14:24
  said it was quite traumatic. It's it's interesting how many
• 14:27
  people have come on and kind of gone shit, man, when I went back
• 14:31
  and and and and got my report called or thought about this, it
• 14:35
  really affected me. And and that is one of the most
• 14:39
  important things. And that's what I want to nip in
• 14:41
  the bud. And I love what you're going to
• 14:44
  tell us because I think it just, it rolls on for so long, your
• 14:50
  life, you know, this, this, this feeling, this emotion, the word
• 14:55
  you use, mental thick in my case, you know, it, it, it's a
• 14:59
  horrible, horrible thing. And, and you know, I've always
• 15:04
  said as a child, I wish I'd just got a tattoo on my forehead
• 15:09
  saying, you know, oh, I'm thick. It would have just been far
• 15:12
  easier for me to go through my, my school life.
• 15:16
  So a people didn't need to think I was thick or call me thick.
• 15:19
  The teachers just knew that anyway, you know, but it's
• 15:23
  breaking that mould and it takes time make to break what you
• 15:27
  what, what you, what you think you are compared to what you
• 15:31
  actually are. You know, I, I told you this
• 15:34
  when we spoke, you know, it took me years for me to put my hand
• 15:37
  up Years, mate, 4745. I can't remember years of my
• 15:42
  life. And I never asked a question
• 15:44
  because I just thought they're going to think you're stupid,
• 15:48
  man. Don't ask that question.
• 15:49
  That's a really stupid question. Just don't ask it.
• 15:52
  And it could have been something like, hey, I don't actually
• 15:55
  understand how to do this. Could you just show me one more
• 15:58
  time? I was too scared to ask.
• 16:00
  So I understand what you're going through, but you need to
• 16:03
  give yourself credit for what you've created.
• 16:05
  And I can't wait for people to to learn more about it.
• 16:09
  And yeah, thank you very much for talking about the past,
• 16:11
  mate. You, you, you said something to
• 16:13
  me when we spoke. I've actually written it down
• 16:19
  about ability and performance don't always match.
• 16:25
  Just just what do you mean by that?
• 16:27
  Tell me a bit about it. Yeah.
• 16:29
  So I keep on coming back to that, right.
• 16:32
  There's there are barriers in everybody's way, right?
• 16:37
  There were in everybody's way, every single person, whether
• 16:40
  that, you know, I'm thinking about my class in kind of recent
• 16:43
  years, young person whose mum had passed away, right?
• 16:46
  That's a massive barrier, right? You know, that young person
• 16:50
  isn't going to be performing at the best, right?
• 16:53
  But that doesn't mean that their ability has disappeared, right?
• 16:56
  This, they still have this infinite, this absolute infinite
• 17:00
  ability, right? And that's kind of the case for
• 17:02
  everybody, I think. I think for a heck of a long
• 17:04
  time my ability was plateaued and was sealing, right, because
• 17:10
  I could never get much further than where I was at.
• 17:14
  And the thing was, mate, I haven't done too badly, you
• 17:16
  know, despite everything, right? I look back at like the notes on
• 17:20
  my phone, a checklist and like little alarms and things like
• 17:23
  that. And like, and, you know, people
• 17:25
  around us who've put up with it and who've kept me in line, like
• 17:28
  my best mate Jack, right? You know, my best mate Jack, he
• 17:30
  would he would point out, he'd just give us a little nudge and
• 17:33
  go. Is that true?
• 17:35
  And I'd be like, no, it wasn't mad, you know, and just like
• 17:38
  really in like a kind way, right.
• 17:39
  That's really important. Not just our bullshit.
• 17:42
  You know, it was just kind of, you know, that's why that's why
• 17:46
  the people who are around you really matter.
• 17:48
  But but no matter what it is, there were the support has to be
• 17:53
  put in place for people to reach their full ability, right?
• 17:55
  I keep on thinking, I kept on thinking I'm smart when I was
• 17:58
  going through kind of adulthood, right?
• 18:00
  And when I started drinking and realizing that was probably
• 18:03
  about 16 years old, right, and started thinking, Oh, hang on,
• 18:06
  everything's going to be quiet here.
• 18:07
  Oh, that feels good because there's immediate dopamine,
• 18:10
  right? Isn't it right.
• 18:11
  That's that's what I now understand.
• 18:12
  I did a lot of research, right? As soon as I kind of found out
• 18:15
  that it might be that, you know, did a did a heck of a lot of
• 18:19
  research and you know, people, they do drugs, the online shop,
• 18:23
  the binge, the crash diet, they excessively exercise, right,
• 18:27
  Whatever it might be, they do something which gets them that
• 18:31
  quick fix. And on some things going to gym
• 18:33
  right might be quite healthy. Some things like having multiple
• 18:36
  partners, for example, right, is a big problem gambling, big
• 18:40
  problem. Drugs, alcohol could become a
• 18:42
  really big problem. You know, I think just kind of
• 18:45
  watching everyone else accelerate past year, right,
• 18:48
  when I know I'm working harder than a lot of them, not in terms
• 18:52
  of like output, right, but just getting by just like.
• 18:56
  Existing. Just managing, just existing.
• 19:00
  You know, my mum and dad always laughed at us and it's quite a,
• 19:02
  this was like in quite a nice way.
• 19:04
  I would go to bed at half it, you know, and like all the piles
• 19:07
  are going out and whatever else. And you know, my mum and dad are
• 19:09
  watching, you know, you know, an ideally drama or whatever it
• 19:13
  might be or you know, still and watch it with us and I'm
• 19:15
  knackered and go to bed at like half.
• 19:17
  It is like a 20 year old bloke or like a 19 year old bloke got
• 19:20
  a bed at half me. I was exhausted, you know, you
• 19:23
  know, my brother then accelerates pastors, right?
• 19:27
  Absolutely. Some brothers four years
• 19:28
  younger. I'm really proud of him, right?
• 19:30
  He's done really, really, really well.
• 19:31
  Like like sincerely, he's done very well.
• 19:33
  And what he does, he's kind of excellent, right?
• 19:36
  But I remember him kind of accelerating past me and going,
• 19:40
  I'm smart, man. Why can't I get past where I am,
• 19:44
  right? And I just couldn't get any kind
• 19:46
  of further. And look, that's that's a skewed
• 19:49
  perspective anyway, right? I'm proud of me, brother, right.
• 19:51
  I should never have thought like that.
• 19:52
  But I think you do you compare yourself with others, don't you?
• 19:54
  Do you just sort of do. And it was like, you know, he's
• 19:58
  younger than me, he shouldn't be doing better than me and so on
• 20:00
  and so forth. But that's, that's kind of what
• 20:03
  I mean by ability and performance.
• 20:04
  But I mean, I ended up having to go somewhere that was really
• 20:07
  quite dark to get the where I am now.
• 20:09
  Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, the what,
• 20:11
  what is it? The day's darkest before the
• 20:13
  dawn sort of thing. And mate, I'm telling you now
• 20:15
  and talk about a little bit if you like, But that that was
• 20:18
  that, that hitting that that floor.
• 20:21
  Was probably what I needed to do and luckily I bounced because
• 20:25
  I'm telling you now mate and I know from personal experience
• 20:27
  there are people who don't bounce.
• 20:29
  Yeah, no. So when you left school, do you
• 20:33
  think do you think? Life.
• 20:37
  Became harder because of the lack of structure of school.
• 20:41
  You mentioned there. You know, you had to hit the had
• 20:44
  to hit rock bottom. Do you think, I mean, were you
• 20:46
  making decisions, you know which, which were off skew and
• 20:51
  you know what was what was, what were your young adults years
• 20:55
  like really impulsive? Really impulsive and really kind
• 21:01
  of, I'm going to use substances like a loose term, but drink and
• 21:05
  whatever, right? So we kind of get around those
• 21:09
  things to make you just feel good, right?
• 21:12
  And just kind of give you that kind of, it's just what I was
• 21:14
  saying before, you know, some people gamble, some people do
• 21:16
  drugs, some people do whatever. Mine was kind of around just, I
• 21:21
  don't know, social side of things, just kind of, you know,
• 21:24
  and I quite liked it because when I've had a few drinks and I
• 21:27
  don't drink that much now, but I'll still have a beer or two,
• 21:29
  but I don't have much to drink now because it's, it's, I don't
• 21:33
  sort of need it. But you know, those, those sort
• 21:36
  of social situations where I'd be, you know, that part in
• 21:38
  between tipsy and drunk, you know, you know, that sort of
• 21:41
  sweet spot. I wish you could just live there
• 21:43
  forever, But unfortunately that's not how it works.
• 21:45
  All right? Particularly if you're like me
• 21:47
  and you go to excess every single time.
• 21:49
  I mean, you know, I was the life and saw, then I would crash,
• 21:52
  then I was life and saw, then I would crash.
• 21:54
  But that cycle went on for kind of for, for for years, really.
• 21:57
  You know, me and my best mate and the best time in my life
• 22:00
  went into railing around Europe and, you know, impulsive buying.
• 22:06
  I racked up 35 grand in, in three weeks in debt, you know,
• 22:11
  in debt. So yeah, I really good time and
• 22:14
  everything else, I'll never forget it.
• 22:16
  But you know, that followed me for a long time.
• 22:18
  You know, obviously, right. It was like 19 year old or 20
• 22:21
  year old or something. Then, I mean, I ended up
• 22:23
  modelling my way back into education again because I'd, I'd
• 22:26
  left, I'd left uni, I left it. So I went to do a drama degree
• 22:31
  because in my head at the time it was the easier option.
• 22:33
  It's not, you know, for anyone kind of sitting here thinking
• 22:36
  doing a drama degree is an easy thing.
• 22:38
  God Almighty, you know who's piage?
• 22:42
  Yeah. Goodness me.
• 22:42
  I'm trying to think back about, I'm trying to think back about
• 22:46
  some of the kind of the practitioners and things that we
• 22:47
  still need. It's a hard, hard kind of thing,
• 22:49
  the same as any expert in any, any sort of field.
• 22:51
  But you know, I should have gone and done law in rent respect,
• 22:54
  right? I should have gone and continued
• 22:56
  law. But I took the easy route for
• 22:58
  me, not the easy route. The easy 1 ended up going back
• 23:02
  in education. So I've done night classes to
• 23:04
  get myself through because in the period where I dropped out,
• 23:06
  the UCAS points had all changed. So I could no longer get into
• 23:09
  uni. So then I got to night classes,
• 23:11
  became a teaching assistant. You know, they're qualified.
• 23:14
  Get in, I've qualified. Oh my God, this is really hard.
• 23:18
  And it and it was really hard, you know, high workload and that
• 23:21
  first school of mine really high.
• 23:24
  And then had a break up, gnashed off to Dubai to teach out there.
• 23:29
  Met my wife on day one. You know, we met literally day
• 23:33
  one. And then COVID hits and I'm a
• 23:36
  caged animal into but now locked down here.
• 23:39
  Locked down here was one thing that locked down in the Middle
• 23:42
  East. Yeah.
• 23:44
  You know, like literally trackers on your phone,
• 23:46
  literally a tracker on your phone.
• 23:47
  You know, it was really militant.
• 23:49
  People couldn't walk the dogs, you know, you had to let your
• 23:51
  dog do the business on the balcony and things came home.
• 23:55
  And this is where we'd unravelled really badly for me,
• 23:57
  mate. I'm not going to go into it for
• 24:01
  reasons you'll understand when I thought you privately, but you
• 24:03
  know, we had a really significant life event, OK.
• 24:06
  And that that just made me pop. I think basically I was a
• 24:10
  probably already at capacity, it was probably already full, but
• 24:13
  we had this, this significant life event and, and I started
• 24:17
  kind of muddling my way through and really struggling,
• 24:21
  pretending I was fine to people who say I didn't live with say
• 24:25
  my mum and you know, my Gran and whoever.
• 24:28
  But the people I lived with us started really struggling with
• 24:31
  that as well because I was, I was, I just ended up somewhere
• 24:33
  really dark, like really dark. And, you know, probably quite
• 24:39
  fortunate that I've got the network that I do because, you
• 24:43
  know, it might not have ended quite as favourably.
• 24:46
  If I'm totally honest with you, man, I ended up speaking to a
• 24:49
  clinician and and she went, have you ever thought about, you
• 24:53
  know, being screened for ADHD, you know, go get a private
• 24:56
  assessment done. I think it's something worth
• 24:58
  looking at. Lo and behold, out of 18
• 25:01
  criteria, 17, you know, significant impairment to
• 25:07
  attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity.
• 25:10
  So all of all of the above all. Of the so when you got that was
• 25:18
  that relief when you when someone told you that I don't
• 25:21
  think I've ever asked anybody this question what's that relief
• 25:25
  so. The first conversation when she
• 25:29
  mentioned it, I was just kind of like, I just didn't.
• 25:32
  No, no. And actually my mind went
• 25:34
  straight to people who are around us and just kind of you
• 25:38
  know, who probably aren't the most walk people, you know, And
• 25:43
  it's just kind of, you know, it's a generation just kind of
• 25:47
  like what a lot of twaddle. That's where my mind first went.
• 25:49
  Lord of. We're hearing more of that,
• 25:51
  right? And we're going to hear a lot
• 25:53
  more, I think. And this is what scares me the
• 25:55
  most. But not.
• 25:56
  I get what you're saying but. You know, she said it and I
• 25:59
  started doing a little bit of research myself before I went
• 26:01
  and sought assessment. And the more I started reading,
• 26:07
  the more I just kind of went, oh, God, I've I've got this
• 26:11
  thing like, you know, like, you know, there was just kind of no
• 26:13
  doubt in my mind at all. You know, I sat with my friends
• 26:15
  and just kind of look at this list to me.
• 26:17
  And they were like, you know, and it was, it was, I mean, did
• 26:23
  you go right? Back, I mean, did, did, did you
• 26:26
  kind of like you mentioned at the beginning that when you
• 26:30
  thought about your childhood, it was quite traumatic.
• 26:32
  So when you got that, when you got that, let's call it
• 26:35
  diagnosis or label, here's your leaflet for ADHD.
• 26:39
  Did you kind of think shit childhood did?
• 26:43
  Did you go back and think about that as well, About the stuff
• 26:45
  you've done in class and the way you were treated?
• 26:48
  Yeah, I remember feeling like I actually remember shouting down
• 26:53
  the stairs. Hey, I'm getting a bit, getting
• 26:55
  a bit upset, actually. I remember sort of shouting down
• 26:57
  the stairs, like, yes, like sort like celebrating, like I'd won
• 27:01
  something. And then I became quite sad
• 27:05
  because I was like, come on, like I've lost a lot because
• 27:08
  someone didn't spot this thing, you know what I mean?
• 27:11
  And it's again, I don't think it's any one person's fault,
• 27:14
  right? I really don't.
• 27:15
  No, it's we're operating within a broken system or sorry, that's
• 27:19
  not, that's unfair. A system that doesn't operate
• 27:21
  to, to, to optimum, you know, my being told what was going on
• 27:26
  with me. I mean, that was to them because
• 27:28
  I was still skeptical. And then the day I got my
• 27:30
  medication world pancake knit. Honestly pancakes total 180°
• 27:39
  flip and quickly days like Andy said.
• 27:42
  This and you mentioned Andy, Andy said this.
• 27:45
  You are now the second person that's that's really really kind
• 27:49
  of mentioned the fact that that was it it was like A&B.
• 27:53
  She's like a. Light bulb.
• 27:55
  So bear in mind as well that I wasn't going to take any
• 27:57
  medication for it because I'll tell you if I was talking about
• 28:00
  that ended up somewhere dark place, right?
• 28:02
  Doctors were chucking every flipping thought I was depressed
• 28:05
  or I was whatever, every single tablet.
• 28:07
  And then I mean, you know, I ended up with what what the
• 28:10
  thinking is medical withdrawal sort of yeah, issues, right?
• 28:14
  And and because I just stopped taking them, right.
• 28:16
  So I'm not the biggest fan of medication, right.
• 28:19
  Got experience in my family where someone's had issues with
• 28:21
  medication that were kind of wrongly given as well.
• 28:24
  I'm not big. I don't take I had an extra
• 28:26
  mate. So I was quite against taking
• 28:29
  the meds. But my God, I'm glad I did
• 28:30
  because, you know, it gave me a, why It gave us like a, it's not
• 28:34
  an excuse. Good behaviours, right?
• 28:36
  It isn't. And there are times when I'm
• 28:38
  still impulsive, where I'm still kind of irritatingly so, you
• 28:43
  know, and I'll, you know, and I'll kind of horn in on
• 28:46
  something. But I know that it's, I know
• 28:49
  why, right? It gives me a better chance to
• 28:51
  notice what's going on and act accordingly rather than just
• 28:53
  going on. That's how we are.
• 28:54
  Ride the wave, you know, like, is it?
• 28:58
  Giving you? Is it giving you some clarity?
• 29:01
  A massive. Huge, I think back to like, you
• 29:04
  know, significant elements of my childhood, like big kind of
• 29:07
  things, you know, you know, everyone's got them.
• 29:09
  You know, that fight on the playground or that time when I
• 29:11
  did this or that time. And I said, you know, the things
• 29:13
  that the core memories that you didn't want to be there, but
• 29:16
  they are. I would attribute about 70% of
• 29:19
  them to in some way to to this a lot of the negative incredible.
• 29:25
  Which? Are self, you know, I've brought
• 29:27
  them on myself, a lot of them. It's my behaviour that, you
• 29:30
  know, made those events occur, right, But it didn't have to,
• 29:35
  you know, and again, not not one person sort of fault, mate, but
• 29:41
  you know, I can now. I've done quite a lot in seven
• 29:44
  months, really eight months, whatever to you know, I've done.
• 29:47
  I've come quite, quite a sort of a long way and I'm coming into
• 29:52
  some kind of semblance of normality now.
• 29:53
  I'm probably quite obsessed with what I'm doing, but I'm obsessed
• 29:56
  with what I'm doing for good reason.
• 29:57
  I mean, you know, I've got. So my wife's started asking me
• 30:01
  not to have my meetings with my earphones in so she can hear
• 30:04
  what's going on and she can hear the conversations I'm having
• 30:07
  with like, you know, investors with, you know, authors with
• 30:11
  like, heads of heads of local authorities, right?
• 30:14
  Like, people who I shouldn't buy, right?
• 30:16
  In my head, I've still got this kind of view, right?
• 30:18
  I shouldn't be in the room with these people, but I am right And
• 30:21
  they're talking to me about kind of, you know, market value and
• 30:25
  and you know, and things like that.
• 30:27
  And it's and now she's kind of going, you need to run with this
• 30:30
  like you're stupid if you don't sort of thing, you know, because
• 30:32
  it's a it's a really big thing that we're trying to do because
• 30:35
  the points, not perfection, right?
• 30:37
  It's, it's all about peace for the young person, right?
• 30:42
  Progress and giving them the possibility.
• 30:45
  Because actually, if we're not for me, there was no possibility
• 30:48
  of getting any further than where I was.
• 30:49
  I was just there and I was stuck and I was at a wall, and there
• 30:51
  was no breaking that wall down, no matter how hard you tried,
• 30:54
  because you'd start hammering away at the wall and then you'd
• 30:56
  see the next shiny thing and you'd start doing that, you
• 30:58
  know, so that you'll just never be able to chip away at it, you
• 31:01
  know? Yeah, I'd want to just touch on
• 31:05
  on on teaching a bit for my own, for my own curiosity, really.
• 31:13
  So knowing what you know and knowing what you've seen and
• 31:19
  what you've told us so far, you then stood in a classroom right
• 31:23
  in front of children. Is the part is there parts of
• 31:28
  you that recognizes bits of yourself in these kids
• 31:31
  sometimes? Do you look at them and go shit,
• 31:34
  no. Question, not a question.
• 31:37
  And there's Lords of them. But here's the important thing,
• 31:41
  right? Here's a really important thing
• 31:43
  about. And if if anybody listen, this
• 31:44
  takes any one thing away from the day, right?
• 31:47
  Don't listen to the sort of sob story about my childhood, right?
• 31:51
  You're not looking for the ones that are obvious, right?
• 31:55
  It's the ones who are absolutely fine, right?
• 31:58
  They're absolutely grand, OK? They're the ones you're looking
• 32:01
  for. And that's why we're logging in
• 32:03
  early signals, which I thought about in a minute.
• 32:04
  The whole MO, right? The whole modus operandi is that
• 32:07
  we're not login small, inconsequential.
• 32:10
  What seems like it might be irrelevant, but it could be a
• 32:12
  bit relevant. Little signals which then come
• 32:15
  together to form a big picture, right?
• 32:18
  Tiny things, you know I don't, I don't constantly stop shouting
• 32:21
  out today, right? That logged 3 years ago.
• 32:24
  If it's logged over time, that produces a pattern, right?
• 32:27
  If you then put that into the picture of he really struggles
• 32:31
  in Group, in Group settings, and then you add that to something
• 32:33
  that mum said at the gate and then you add it to blah, blah,
• 32:35
  blah. You've got a really decent
• 32:37
  picture and actually a decent clinician, a very good senko or
• 32:40
  even, you know, to be honest, any senko worth the salt should
• 32:43
  be able to make a good inference from that picture.
• 32:46
  Right Now I want to be really kind of clear here.
• 32:48
  Really hard moral boundaries for me on early signals that were
• 32:51
  non diagnostic, right? Entirely so right, that is my,
• 32:55
  that's my personal moral boundary.
• 32:57
  I've turned down 300 grand of investment because they said,
• 33:00
  well actually no, I think what you should be doing is
• 33:02
  integrating with the NHS and trying to diagnose 'cause I
• 33:04
  think that's a massive market, no.
• 33:06
  How can? Somebody use something like AIA
• 33:09
  computer to diagnose a social, you know, spectrum disorder,
• 33:14
  like, like autism, right. You can't right.
• 33:17
  That's that's my hard line. I'll never do it.
• 33:18
  So, you know anyone kind of questioning whether I'm doing
• 33:22
  this for money and whatever else I'm not because I've just turned
• 33:24
  down 300 grand Yeah, that's not that's not where I'm at.
• 33:28
  You know, I think I think what we what we don't have law is
• 33:32
  that system to be able to do that.
• 33:34
  Now I've written an article the other day about safeguarding and
• 33:38
  what we can learn from safeguarding, right.
• 33:40
  C poms brilliant at what they do right.
• 33:42
  For anyone who's not kind of familiar to piece of
• 33:44
  safeguarding software which just helps you to log events right
• 33:47
  and child's life. So I use an example from when I
• 33:50
  was younger. It was a young lad came in and
• 33:53
  he said my dad was smoking a really funny cigarette in the
• 33:56
  car, right. So your head, right, alarm bells
• 33:59
  go off, right. And everyone, every single
• 34:01
  person who works for young people or anyone vulnerable,
• 34:03
  first thought is safeguarding. So fair play to the government
• 34:06
  of 1994 and, and slightly before, because now every single
• 34:10
  person who works for young people's brain goes straight to
• 34:12
  safeguarding, as it should, because that's priority one
• 34:14
  young person's safe. Yeah.
• 34:16
  Now the following week, something else was logged where
• 34:19
  dad's friend had come with a shoe box full of money, right.
• 34:22
  Those two things in isolation don't really mean anything.
• 34:25
  You put them together and dad's selling cannabis, isn't he,
• 34:27
  right. You know, that's kind of that's
• 34:29
  sort that's the sort of thing that I'm talking about, right?
• 34:31
  And that turned out to be the case.
• 34:32
  But we don't do that for send, right?
• 34:34
  We wait for it to hit the fan. We wait for young person's
• 34:36
  attainment to drop off the Cliff.
• 34:38
  We wait for them to be self harming or not eating or running
• 34:40
  away from home or, you know, throwing chairs or whatever it
• 34:43
  is. And then we go, oh, sugar, we
• 34:45
  better do something for them, right?
• 34:47
  But actually in the interim before that, and then when you
• 34:50
  speak to a teacher or the teacher from last year, you go,
• 34:53
  did you ever notice this? Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 34:55
  He's been doing that for years. So what I did, what I did was,
• 34:58
  you know, whatever. It's just not.
• 35:00
  Logged anywhere like people are having these corridor
• 35:03
  conversations. So I spoke, I've spoken to quite
• 35:05
  a few people and the two things I wanted to highlight was from a
• 35:09
  head teacher, former head teacher, she's called Sarah
• 35:11
  Donnelly. She said, and I quote, that
• 35:13
  early send observations are rarely captured meaningfully.
• 35:17
  They're usually in corridor conversations.
• 35:19
  Staff turnover is quite high, so that information leaves with the
• 35:23
  teacher who's left because. They move on, of course.
• 35:27
  Gone forever, right? And the pattern across the
• 35:29
  journey gets lost. And then we spoke with Laura
• 35:32
  Wait, who was just down in Parliament talking about this
• 35:34
  very same thing. She's unbelievable, mate.
• 35:36
  She's from up here in the northeast of England.
• 35:38
  She's got 10 children adopted as well.
• 35:41
  And she said the families are repeating the same information
• 35:45
  to different people for years and years and years now.
• 35:48
  If a parent's haven't to repeat the same information to me to
• 35:52
  next year's teacher, next year's teacher that's telling you
• 35:54
  something there that's getting lost every single time it comes
• 35:57
  through, you know everything is. Frustrating, right?
• 36:00
  Because what you're kind of saying is the teacher.
• 36:03
  The teacher knows there's a problem, parent knows there's a
• 36:07
  problem. The send teacher may be seeing
• 36:11
  something else and they know there's a problem.
• 36:14
  The child knows there's a problem.
• 36:16
  Right. There's a voice getting lost
• 36:18
  somewhere, isn't there? Not just.
• 36:20
  One man, you know, and it's, it's, it's from all over the
• 36:23
  place, you know, and also there's evidence in their books,
• 36:26
  right? There's evidence on, you know,
• 36:28
  in drawings that they've done. There's evidence from when
• 36:30
  they're on the playground. There's evidence from when
• 36:31
  they're in the dinner hall, right?
• 36:33
  All those things tell you different things.
• 36:35
  Any decent teacher will put things in place for those young
• 36:37
  people, you know, whether they've given them a pencil grip
• 36:41
  or whether they're letting them have a walk before they do a big
• 36:43
  piece of writing, right? That whether that support put in
• 36:47
  place, because that's exactly what that is, even though it's
• 36:49
  small, right? Whether that worked, if it
• 36:52
  worked, it tells you something. If it didn't, it tells you
• 36:54
  something else, but it still tells you something, you know.
• 36:58
  So we're, we're going to intend to preserve all those we intend,
• 37:01
  sorry to preserve all those little snippets before they
• 37:03
  disappear. And it's not just for the kids
• 37:06
  who might end up with a diagnosis for every single one,
• 37:09
  because if we look at teaching standard 5, right?
• 37:11
  You need to be putting things in place to make sure that every
• 37:13
  young person is reaching their full potential.
• 37:15
  Like you're putting the right support in place to allow
• 37:16
  everyone to do as well as they can, right?
• 37:18
  Whether that is whether it is a cuddle at the start of the day,
• 37:22
  whatever it might be, right? It's about making sure that
• 37:25
  you're putting those things in place for those people.
• 37:28
  You know, I think right now, you know, eventually some
• 37:32
  information gets to the SENCO, they're overworked.
• 37:35
  The then the SENCO has to reconstruct a picture from like
• 37:40
  over the last three years so they don't have to assimilate
• 37:43
  this information to having conversations through whatever.
• 37:46
  So I was a little bit concerned about workload right with early
• 37:50
  signals because what I didn't want to happen was that we take
• 37:53
  the Sencos job and just foist it off on the teacher.
• 37:56
  That's not what I wanted to do. So I recruited someone called
• 37:59
  Carl recruited, I hired, I suppose someone called Carla
• 38:02
  Bowley. She runs something called the
• 38:04
  NDPP, which is an organization looking at organisations
• 38:07
  workload, right. She said she she was initially
• 38:11
  worried that it was going to be duplicate this right.
• 38:14
  So we were going to be, you know, just as I said before,
• 38:18
  just pushing all of that work on the teacher.
• 38:20
  She did a concept stage review and she said, you know, that
• 38:25
  wasn't the case. We're not doing it at all.
• 38:28
  In fact, we're we're lowering, we're lowering the Sencos
• 38:31
  workload probably by hours and weeks and days, right, But while
• 38:35
  adding probably a few minutes of workload onto the teacher every
• 38:37
  day, which I think is a fair trade off considering it is
• 38:40
  literally a teacher standards. You should be doing these things
• 38:42
  anyway, you know, and I think, I think obviously you've got a lot
• 38:47
  of parents on this podcast podcast, haven't you?
• 38:50
  Yeah, loads, yeah. So one of the biggest groups of
• 38:55
  people I've spoken to his parents, because ultimately
• 38:58
  they're more important than me, right?
• 38:59
  You know, it's it's their family at the end of the day, right?
• 39:02
  They're more important than what the school thinks.
• 39:04
  That's that's my view of it, right?
• 39:07
  Yeah. You see what the school says is
• 39:08
  important, right? But what what happens at home
• 39:12
  for their family and their family life is way more
• 39:14
  important than what happens in a classroom or GCSE results or,
• 39:18
  you know, whatever. Of course parents see what
• 39:22
  school can't, what school see what parents don't, right?
• 39:26
  Both of those things can be true, right?
• 39:29
  At the moment, what seems to be happening is parents might be
• 39:32
  saying something and schools go my way.
• 39:34
  Don't see it here. And the same thing the other way
• 39:37
  around. Do you?
• 39:39
  Just quickly on that, do you think that, do you think that
• 39:42
  the schools don't really want to use that word but don't know
• 39:46
  then what are the words I'm going to use it?
• 39:47
  Do you think the schools dismiss what the parents say and maybe
• 39:51
  label them as being overly worried, even though they've
• 39:54
  been observing this shit for years, right?
• 39:57
  We both know it goes on because we've both been there as kids.
• 40:00
  Do you think do you think some of that gets dismissed?
• 40:03
  Right I. Think dismissed is harsh, but I
• 40:05
  get where you're coming from, right?
• 40:07
  Yeah. I think it's kind of human
• 40:08
  nature, right? Yes.
• 40:10
  You believe what you see, don't you?
• 40:11
  I think that's human nature, right?
• 40:13
  If there's no evidence where you struggle mentally to kind of
• 40:17
  compartmentalize and process that information, right?
• 40:20
  So that's another part of what we're trying to do, right?
• 40:24
  A family reaction I heard was I kept honestly thinking I was
• 40:28
  crazy because I wasn't being believed, and I kept seeing this
• 40:31
  same behavior. And then schools are just kind
• 40:34
  of like, all right, you know, eventually, once you know, you
• 40:36
  become desensitized to something.
• 40:38
  So if I say to you, you know, I'm thinking back to a young
• 40:41
  person once said for impact, I think we're not certain, said
• 40:45
  I'm going to commit suicide when I get home, right?
• 40:48
  And it became quite that was wow rule, alarm bells, boom, boom,
• 40:51
  boom course. But then would happen quite a
• 40:54
  lot, right? And it would be, you know, we
• 40:57
  think it became a little bit of a kind of work avoidance
• 40:59
  strategy for that young person, right?
• 41:00
  And you I as trained as I am and in this fantastic a setting as I
• 41:04
  am, you become desensitized to that a little snippet of
• 41:07
  information which you never should, right?
• 41:08
  So so that then kind of happens for staff as well.
• 41:10
  You know, if a parent is coming and repeatedly saying the same
• 41:13
  things, it just kind of rolls off.
• 41:15
  So what's? The boy who cried wolf, Is it or
• 41:19
  something like that where you say the same thing and it gets.
• 41:22
  Yeah, OK, I I can see what you mean.
• 41:24
  And. And yeah, dismissed probably
• 41:26
  wasn't the right word, but I wasn't sure you know what I
• 41:28
  meant, though, right? I just.
• 41:30
  Think that's that's kind of the way that we need to think of it
• 41:33
  is. And the really important thing
• 41:34
  is everyone cares, right? Yeah, No, totally, of course.
• 41:38
  Just from different angles, right?
• 41:39
  Difference. Difference from you're just.
• 41:41
  Looking at it from a different lens, right?
• 41:42
  So here's what I proposed was initially right, I proposed to
• 41:46
  the parents. So when here's what I want to
• 41:47
  happen. I would like parents to be able
• 41:49
  to log blah blah blah blah blah. So just quickly then do do this.
• 41:55
  Let's let's do the parent angle first, right.
• 41:58
  So nobody on here, nobody apart from me and you knows what this
• 42:05
  is. So do the parents side first.
• 42:07
  Tell the parents what what you're what you're trying to
• 42:11
  solve for them first. So.
• 42:14
  I want parents and schools and the young person and
• 42:19
  professionals to be on an equal footing with the child in the
• 42:23
  centre, right? That's the most important thing,
• 42:25
  right? Everything is geared around the
• 42:26
  young person, right? All of that context, no matter
• 42:31
  whether they agree, no matter whether they speak to each
• 42:34
  other, is evidence of that young person right.
• 42:38
  If mum says that young person is jumping out the window right at
• 42:43
  home, but that behaviour isn't perceived at school, that is
• 42:48
  totally irrelevant, right? The fact that those things are
• 42:51
  unequal around happening in different settings is
• 42:53
  irrelevant, right? We're not going to flatten the
• 42:56
  information and try and get it to sit nice and neatly together,
• 42:59
  right? The thing that we need to be
• 43:01
  doing is preserving all of all of as much of as much as
• 43:04
  possible, right, of that young person, right?
• 43:07
  So that then a designated professional, usually the SENCO
• 43:10
  or the inclusion lead can look at it and go, there's a rabbit
• 43:13
  away there, let's have a little bit of a look, right?
• 43:15
  Because at the moment, if they don't have that information,
• 43:18
  what are they looking at, right? They're looking at the big event
• 43:21
  that eventually hits home or they're looking at the big
• 43:23
  communications that have to happen between home and school
• 43:25
  and professionals and whomever, right?
• 43:28
  All of a sudden though, if you've got that kind of
• 43:31
  chronology of a young person and we've got, we've in consultancy
• 43:36
  with people, we've, we've said, you know, what would make this
• 43:38
  information the most usable for you?
• 43:40
  And some people have said they'd want it across a timeline.
• 43:42
  Some people have said they'd want to be able to see the whole
• 43:44
  picture. So we've done it all, right?
• 43:46
  We've done it all and just giving everyone lots of
• 43:48
  different ways to use the same pieces of information, right?
• 43:51
  But what's really important for moment teacher and young person
• 43:54
  is it doesn't automatically decide who's right, right?
• 43:57
  It's human review. But what it does is it'll add a
• 44:00
  layer of visibility to that young person, right?
• 44:04
  Different environments, different presentation.
• 44:06
  And then a senco could infer whatever, right?
• 44:09
  For example, if a young person is brilliant at school, lovely,
• 44:12
  Placid, docile, and then 4:00 every day kicks off at home,
• 44:17
  that to me is a same professional says right, That
• 44:20
  young person's masking at school all day, struggling all day, and
• 44:22
  then pop in when they get to their safe place, right?
• 44:25
  The system won't tell you that, but it will give you the
• 44:28
  information to reliably be able to make that decision.
• 44:32
  What you're doing then? In simple terms for me is you're
• 44:37
  taking pieces of information, observations, right?
• 44:40
  Observation, observation, observation, observation.
• 44:44
  You're putting them all into one structured review, review ready
• 44:49
  document if you like, Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:52
  So we've moved away from the term review ready, right.
• 44:55
  So originally, right, we'll call it an intelligence readiness
• 44:58
  system, right, OK. What I what I didn't want to do
• 45:01
  is I want to preserve as much, if not all of the professionals
• 45:06
  judgement as possible. What I don't want a system doing
• 45:08
  is going, you know, flagging up saying, oh, we've got that,
• 45:11
  we've got that, we've got that all, but we don't have all this.
• 45:14
  So I'm not going to refer. We don't want them thinking I'm
• 45:17
  not going to refer. You know, the SENCO, the
• 45:19
  inclusion leads head should be going.
• 45:21
  I've got a feeling here on in my professional judgement this.
• 45:24
  So what we're going to do is we're going to say here's what
• 45:26
  we do have, right? Here's what we don't.
• 45:29
  You might want to find those things and that'll be down in
• 45:31
  the professional, OK. But we've moved away from
• 45:34
  readiness, right? And that's come from a lot of
• 45:36
  the challenge, not a lot of the challenge.
• 45:38
  It came from one challenge conversation that I had with our
• 45:41
  core team of kind of nine who were absolutely phenomenally
• 45:44
  credentialed. For the record, I think if I was
• 45:47
  to go back to to what we're saying about the kind of the
• 45:50
  masking element of things, there was this study in Durham, Munich
• 45:53
  done 2023. So it's relatively recent and
• 45:57
  it's, it's shown that 35% of the identified Sen population of
• 46:03
  girls, right? So that's quite a big
• 46:04
  discrepancy between male and female, right?
• 46:06
  There is a massive identification gap in girls.
• 46:09
  And we're trying to figure out that issue because there's a
• 46:12
  huge, there's a huge study which sort of shows one of the things
• 46:16
  that we need to be conscious of is that difficulties aren't
• 46:18
  always externally visible. It's not always kind of, you
• 46:22
  know, stimming or, you know, shouting out or whatever.
• 46:27
  A lot of a lot of time, particularly in girls, it
• 46:29
  appears to be the case that it's internalized, right.
• 46:32
  Yeah, very close to me, who's just been right in her, her
• 46:35
  masters and I work very closely with her.
• 46:38
  She's superb practitioner. And I started talking about this
• 46:41
  and she went, you're not going to believe what my thesis is.
• 46:44
  It's all about masking and girls and early identification.
• 46:47
  And I was like, you know, when things kind of fall into place.
• 46:49
  And she's been a really big support for me.
• 46:51
  By the way, you know, there was that kind of coke kind analogy
• 46:55
  of, you know, this, this young person is sat at school, male or
• 46:58
  female. That's that's not necessarily
• 47:00
  the point here, although there's more prevalent than girls and
• 47:01
  they're fizzing up all day and then they get home and back, you
• 47:04
  know, So the disagreement is actually the useful bit here,
• 47:09
  right? That's really important here.
• 47:11
  It's not that school and home align.
• 47:13
  That difference is what's important in this particular
• 47:16
  situation. So we need to be preserving that
• 47:19
  right. And you know, we want to be able
• 47:20
  to include the young person in this conversation.
• 47:22
  I'm not going to pretend that will crack that yet.
• 47:24
  We're still trying to working with, is it the CDC, the Council
• 47:29
  for Children, CCD, the Council for Children with Disabilities,
• 47:33
  and they're supporting us with how to collect the pupil voice
• 47:37
  here because these are quite big conversations.
• 47:39
  I mean, someone who's 14 might be able to access a conversation
• 47:43
  around where they're struggling. And I'm thinking about some of
• 47:46
  the young people I currently work with.
• 47:47
  And that will be a massive triggering event for them.
• 47:50
  You know it would have. Been it would have been for me
• 47:52
  if you'd have asked me that as a kid, you wouldn't have got
• 47:56
  anything out of me mate. Honestly, I just thought, as I
• 48:01
  said to you earlier, did you just think it was you?
• 48:02
  It was just what you, who you are.
• 48:04
  So maybe I would have probably told you that I was just who I
• 48:07
  am. So it's OK.
• 48:09
  I want to challenge you a bit here, right?
• 48:12
  I would say why I wouldn't say, I know, I know that over 60% of
• 48:17
  our listeners are parents, right?
• 48:19
  High percentage of those 60% are female.
• 48:22
  I'm guessing they're probably mums.
• 48:24
  There are also a lot of educators, a lot of teachers
• 48:26
  heads that listen to this. They're probably listening now
• 48:30
  and they're going. Come on.
• 48:32
  Jesus, man, I'm drowned in forms, evidence, assessments,
• 48:35
  admin meetings, you know, here comes Adam.
• 48:38
  Oh, yeah, here's another system. Like is that going to create
• 48:43
  more work for them? It's a good question.
• 48:47
  So This is why we brought Carla on board, right?
• 48:49
  This is why I literally because everything I've done, because
• 48:52
  I'm I'm doing quite well here, but I'm limited, right?
• 48:56
  I can't do everything. I can't be all things to all
• 48:58
  men, right? So, you know, Sarah Alston came
• 49:01
  on board, who's a wonderful author.
• 49:03
  She's the author of the the Inclusive classroom.
• 49:05
  Lynn Howe came on board, who was an incredible Sen consultant.
• 49:09
  If there's any Senkos listening, you'll be in a Facebook group
• 49:11
  this way, Senko, I would imagine, you know, these people
• 49:14
  are kind of really well credentialed in their area.
• 49:17
  So I lean on them, right? I clarify things.
• 49:20
  OK, So Carla Bowley from NDPP, she's the person who we went to
• 49:25
  about workload and I went, I want you to, I showed her
• 49:27
  everything, right? And I went, I want you to tear
• 49:30
  it apart, right? So the, the basic system of it
• 49:32
  is just so that everyone kind of gets a flavor is that someone
• 49:36
  notices something small, right? A teacher, a TA, whomever that
• 49:40
  might be parent, right? They would open their device,
• 49:43
  their iPad, phone, whatever it might be, and they'd create
• 49:46
  something called an Inotice. They'd speak or text into the
• 49:49
  agent and that agent will then clarify what that person means.
• 49:53
  And we're going to elicit expert level understanding from a non
• 49:56
  expert the same way that a clinician might get that
• 50:00
  information from you before a session with a young person.
• 50:03
  OK, virus. Our AI will then clarify that
• 50:08
  information. The contributor then checks that
• 50:10
  they're happy with what was said.
• 50:11
  They'll humanly review it because that's important, right?
• 50:14
  We don't let the AI decide. Human decides that then becomes
• 50:17
  evidence. Then those pieces come together
• 50:19
  to create our picture. As we've already spoken about
• 50:21
  before, the SENCO can then use it to create their EHCP, their
• 50:24
  ISP, their EHC and a what have you.
• 50:27
  All right, is it more work from Carla who we asked to honestly
• 50:32
  RIP it the bits. So I want to know where this
• 50:35
  breaks now so I can fix it before I go into schools.
• 50:38
  So we were aiming at around 90 seconds per piece of logging.
• 50:43
  And when we've spoken to teachers, that seems fair and
• 50:45
  reasonable. OK, at the moment when I'm,
• 50:47
  because I'm building this thing at the moment, I'm sitting at
• 50:49
  about two minutes. We're getting there, right?
• 50:51
  We are. We're getting there.
• 50:53
  We want it, though, to be captured while the context is
• 50:56
  fresh. That's why we want it to be so
• 50:58
  quick. Less remembering, less chasing,
• 51:02
  less reconstruction to be done later.
• 51:04
  The teacher can obviously pause and say, oh, and it logged this
• 51:08
  after class and we'll send them an alert.
• 51:09
  All right, you know, you started this.
• 51:11
  You log it there. Yeah, Carla, after the
• 51:14
  walkthrough, and I'm going to quarter if that's OK with you.
• 51:17
  So her initial concern was that SENCO workload was just going to
• 51:20
  be transferred onto everyone else, she said.
• 51:24
  I don't see that you're doubling up with work at all in any kind
• 51:28
  of way because you are literally asking somebody to simply voice
• 51:31
  record what they've already taken into their head, she said.
• 51:35
  I feel like your roles are still set.
• 51:38
  Roles in the sense of the teacher doesn't need to do more
• 51:40
  than what the teacher needs to do anyway, and the Senko also
• 51:44
  doesn't need to do more good. So.
• 51:47
  That's, that's from an independent report, right?
• 51:50
  That's not someone I've brought on board.
• 51:51
  It's not someone on the team. It's someone who we've, who
• 51:53
  we've sort of seconded to come on board.
• 51:55
  I mean, there's a professional responsibility here regardless,
• 51:58
  right? Teachers are already expected to
• 51:59
  adapt their teaching to the strengths and needs of their
• 52:01
  pupils. I'm not adding an extra
• 52:03
  responsibility. I'm just saying instead of
• 52:05
  having a chat about it in the staff room, which we do right,
• 52:08
  just log it. Log it.
• 52:10
  Or say if you're teaching right. Hello, Mr. Giddens.
• 52:14
  I know you're busy with Jack. You say that you're 2 year, for
• 52:16
  example. I'm just teaching.
• 52:17
  Would you? Did you see that there?
• 52:19
  Would you mind just going and logging that with Iris, please?
• 52:21
  Yeah. Pop outside.
• 52:23
  Do this. I.
• 52:24
  Like the I like the fact that it's not one of the things that
• 52:27
  pisses me off at the moment is, is like, what's the word I want
• 52:32
  to use another box ticking exercise.
• 52:35
  I like the fact that this isn't that, mate.
• 52:38
  I like the fact that you are the majority of people could quickly
• 52:42
  pick that up and go, yeah, I've just noticed Adam's doing this.
• 52:46
  You know, it's simple. It's not loads of extra work,
• 52:49
  mate. I think that's brilliant.
• 52:50
  OK, so, so here's the next thing again.
• 52:53
  I'm challenging you again here. Where's the evidence?
• 52:56
  What have you, what have you seen that makes you think this
• 52:59
  works or makes you believe this works?
• 53:02
  I'm so. Pleased you've asked that
• 53:04
  question, right? So I've got 73 in depth
• 53:10
  structured responses, right? In terms of here's what we're
• 53:13
  doing, here's why we're doing it, here's my proposed workflow.
• 53:17
  So shown on the screen, so on, so forth.
• 53:19
  There were teachers, sencors, inclusion leads, CEOs, local
• 53:22
  authority heads, occupational therapists, speech language
• 53:25
  therapists, EPS, safeguarding advisors, you know, academic.
• 53:28
  I could go on, right from that. We then had 100 plus hours of
• 53:32
  conversations with myself separately, right?
• 53:34
  I collated all the evidence and we ran of that 93% of our
• 53:39
  professionals and specialists within sense.
• 53:41
  That's all your clinicians, all of you send teachers and sencors
• 53:44
  and whatever else recognise that there's a problem, right?
• 53:47
  That this, what I'm discussing is a problem in terms of my
• 53:52
  solutions, in terms of early signals, 89% of them created the
• 53:56
  the direction either useful or very useful out of a sort of a
• 53:59
  sliding scale. It's nice mate.
• 54:01
  Nice for. Leaders that we spoke to rate a
• 54:04
  strategic problem. So you're talking Ofsted, you're
• 54:07
  talking the white paper, you're talking the direction of travel.
• 54:09
  86% of them said that it's going to be a strategic headache for
• 54:12
  them and that this would be a solution.
• 54:15
  Here's my most important thing, right?
• 54:17
  95% of those people over the professionals said that they
• 54:22
  wanted to help, they wanted to support, they wanted to help you
• 54:25
  build 95. That tells you something and.
• 54:28
  That tells you something. What about parents?
• 54:30
  What's the Have you had any feedback from parents?
• 54:32
  I know it's early days yet, but have you had any feedback from
• 54:34
  parents? Yeah, there's.
• 54:36
  A There's a percentage that's there that I don't like.
• 54:38
  It's an odd 1. I don't like seeing it because
• 54:40
  it makes it sound like bollocks. 100% of parents who I spoke to
• 54:45
  said that it's a big problem and that this would be a solution to
• 54:48
  their kind of headache simply because it puts them on an equal
• 54:51
  foot in, you know, there are some dynamics where the parent
• 54:54
  is more in control or the school is more and that depends on the
• 54:58
  parent. It depends on the school,
• 54:59
  depends on the Senko, right? But none of that's relevant.
• 55:01
  Which, which way around it is it just needs to be here, man, just
• 55:04
  needs to be, needs to be, needs to be kind of solid and what
• 55:07
  what's happened materially. So last night, well, on Friday,
• 55:12
  I went live with the pilot interest form.
• 55:15
  I didn't really advertise. I stuck it up in a Facebook
• 55:17
  group, right there was 444 bits that have come in as of
• 55:25
  yesterday. I've got, I've now got several
• 55:29
  pilots schools, you know, from Friday.
• 55:33
  I now have several letters of intent to buy.
• 55:36
  I now have people who want to contribute What in fact people
• 55:40
  are now chasing me because when I'm going back to them saying
• 55:42
  I've got my pilot schools now, you know, or I have, I have
• 55:46
  certain pilot schools. What I am still looking for, if
• 55:49
  anyone has listened to this, I'm still looking for nurseries.
• 55:52
  I'm still looking for local authorities because I want to
• 55:56
  see if there's a capacity where actually if you run that out
• 55:58
  across a local authority, then there's the communication
• 56:00
  between everywhere get better rather than just this school as
• 56:04
  it and this school doesn't, you know, does it get used?
• 56:07
  Does it actually help? Does the workload?
• 56:10
  You know, even though we've spoken about it hypothetically
• 56:12
  with Carla, it hasn't been tested in skills.
• 56:14
  So that's the evidence that we need next.
• 56:16
  So we're looking to get the control testing done.
• 56:18
  Um, there is an element of freeness for that because if
• 56:22
  you're helping us, we will let you use the software for free
• 56:24
  during that period. And I found in skills as well,
• 56:27
  I'll get a preferential founding sort of pilot rate for five
• 56:31
  years. I've decided that and now that's
• 56:34
  going into the world. So now I've got to stick to it,
• 56:36
  right? Because that's absolutely.
• 56:38
  Yeah, everyone knows that now, mate.
• 56:40
  Yeah, it's out there. So.
• 56:41
  So it's, it's all really shit then really, isn't it?
• 56:43
  It's not working at all really. It's really bad feedback, really
• 56:46
  bad scores. And yeah, tell us.
• 56:48
  Something I keep. Yeah, I keep on going back to
• 56:52
  the eye roll, you know what I mean?
• 56:55
  OK, all right then. All right, so, so I'm going to
• 56:57
  ask you this, but I'm going to now as soon as you just said
• 56:59
  that I've only ever had to you're my second founder on 1st
• 57:02
  founder and we had on was Ingrid and Erica from Neuroline.
• 57:05
  That was my second ever podcast, which was what, nearly 18 months
• 57:10
  ago. So you're the second founder and
• 57:12
  I didn't ask this to them, but I'm going to ask it to you and
• 57:17
  I'll tell you what every other fan to make you feel better,
• 57:19
  every other founder that comes on after you is going to get us
• 57:22
  this as well. What hasn't worked?
• 57:25
  You said the eye roll. What hasn't worked?
• 57:28
  And I think. Do you mean in terms of what I'm
• 57:35
  doing right now? What hasn't been working?
• 57:38
  What what do you think you may have?
• 57:40
  What do you think you may have got wrong?
• 57:41
  You need to tweak or are you just like thinking to yourself?
• 57:45
  You said the eye roll. Are you thinking so this?
• 57:48
  This all feels too good to be true, man, I've.
• 57:50
  Just got this. I shouldn't have spoke about it.
• 57:55
  That's what I shouldn't have done.
• 57:56
  Because there are people who were around me who were like,
• 57:59
  you know, wind your neck in, you know, it's your dream, the words
• 58:03
  you're dreaming or what came to me.
• 58:06
  But then then I go on. Then I go on and I have a
• 58:09
  conversation with an investor. Yeah, exactly.
• 58:12
  I'm not dreaming, I. Still, I still think it's a
• 58:16
  trick question. It was a trick question because
• 58:18
  you said the I role. I'm trying to make you believe
• 58:20
  in yourself. You've got nothing wrong.
• 58:22
  The fact, the fact I know stuff that you've told me and I'm not
• 58:26
  going to say it because it's confidential, but some of the
• 58:28
  stuff that you're telling me and and the people that are
• 58:31
  interested in this and the things that you've got lined up
• 58:33
  for this, mate, the most important thing that that I want
• 58:38
  to see is I want kid to be kids, to be kids and be confident.
• 58:42
  The greatest gift you can give a kid is to be confident, right
• 58:45
  fact, right? You shouldn't have to go through
• 58:47
  school. You said it, it's I'm not going
• 58:50
  to use broken. It's a linear system.
• 58:52
  It's not designed for people like you and I right.
• 58:54
  There needs to be some way of an early signal to find out, Hey,
• 58:58
  this child, this is what's going on here, right?
• 59:01
  That's the first thing. The second thing that I think
• 59:04
  that you're solving and you don't even know this yet.
• 59:06
  You're going to let mum and dad become mum and dad again, mate.
• 59:09
  And that is that is a massive, massive thing.
• 59:12
  There are so many parents that are.
• 59:16
  On the. Edge and I have had people
• 59:19
  reaching you mentioned like the child that was crying off.
• 59:22
  I've had parents reach out to me and say, listen, we are
• 59:24
  literally we're on the verge of divorce.
• 59:27
  I can't cope anymore. I'm at the doctors with
• 59:29
  depression like it's got to stop, man.
• 59:32
  So that's the second thing you're solving, right?
• 59:35
  And but it was a trick question and you've done nothing wrong.
• 59:39
  You're brilliant. Don't stop.
• 59:41
  Keep going. Right.
• 59:42
  I'm telling you now. Yeah, Like, I mean, everyone
• 59:45
  will love it, mate. Yeah, I mean.
• 59:47
  Look to be able to do that so I'll let you know I know I know
• 59:50
  that we're probably coming up with time.
• 59:51
  So I suppose where I'm at now, Jay, right, I'm wearing a lot of
• 59:55
  hats, right? I'm a full time teacher, but
• 59:57
  I've had the six weeks. So as we're recording this,
• 1:00:00
  it's. You know, 8:00 at night on on
• 1:00:03
  the the 25th, right, 25th of August.
• 1:00:06
  So I'll be back to school full time in September.
• 1:00:08
  So I've had five weeks to really have a good crack at this thanks
• 1:00:11
  to the support of my other half, right?
• 1:00:13
  I'm a dad, one year old and a three-year old, right?
• 1:00:16
  You know, I'm building the product myself.
• 1:00:18
  I'm developing the product myself.
• 1:00:19
  I'm doing the marketing, I'm planning for September, I'm
• 1:00:22
  networking, I'm fundraising, I'm project managing, learning and
• 1:00:26
  coordinating people that frankly are much cleverer than me,
• 1:00:29
  right? Answer the word right?
• 1:00:31
  It's been a slog, I'm tired, but it's clearly showing results,
• 1:00:36
  right? So here's where I am now, right?
• 1:00:38
  And this is a bit of an ask, all right?
• 1:00:40
  This is a bit of an ask I'm actually looking right now for
• 1:00:44
  and this is important aligned Angel investment, right?
• 1:00:48
  So there's anyone who's listening who wants to be
• 1:00:50
  involved in this in some capacity, right?
• 1:00:53
  And is wanting to invest in something that I do genuinely
• 1:00:57
  think, and I'm going to quote Sarah Alston here, right?
• 1:01:01
  This could be game changing for send in the way that
• 1:01:04
  safeguarding has been by sea palms right now.
• 1:01:08
  Sarah Alston is no slouch, right?
• 1:01:12
  She is a safeguarding queen, right?
• 1:01:14
  She's written about it extensively.
• 1:01:16
  That validation is probably the most important piece of piece
• 1:01:19
  I've had, right? But it's not chasing like I was
• 1:01:21
  talking to you earlier on about chasing validation.
• 1:01:23
  It's not about meaningful little snippets.
• 1:01:25
  That is from a real person whose credentials are really worth
• 1:01:28
  some some listening to, you know, So we are we're looking
• 1:01:31
  for these aligned Angel investors.
• 1:01:33
  So whether you have an interest in send, whether you're a school
• 1:01:36
  governor, right? Whether you might be interested
• 1:01:38
  in somewhere in Ed tech, right? I don't need need investment to
• 1:01:42
  make the thing prettier. What I need it for is to give
• 1:01:45
  myself the full capacity to give it the respect and the attention
• 1:01:48
  that it deserves. And that we can prove that, that
• 1:01:52
  that governance really to get us into schools safely, because
• 1:01:55
  that's an expensive thing. Now, obviously I'm in a lot of
• 1:01:57
  conversations with a lot of investors, but what I won't do
• 1:02:01
  is compromise my core values for a check ever, right?
• 1:02:06
  So hopefully if there's someone out there that's listening that
• 1:02:08
  can empathize with what I've just said, right, that actually
• 1:02:11
  it's the, the, the outcomes that matter more than, you know, the,
• 1:02:16
  the, the renumeration. Because ultimately, if we are
• 1:02:20
  doing the right thing, if we're hitting skills in the head
• 1:02:23
  because we're helping them do what they need to do.
• 1:02:25
  We're hitting families and young people in the heart because
• 1:02:27
  we're doing the right thing by them.
• 1:02:28
  And ultimately we're directly going to impact an investor's
• 1:02:31
  wallet in a positive way. So that's, that's not where we
• 1:02:35
  are, Jay. And I thought I'd sneak that in
• 1:02:37
  because. It's good, it's good.
• 1:02:40
  I'm going to put all your details in the bottom of pockets
• 1:02:42
  anyway. So a couple of things left to
• 1:02:44
  do. So a couple of quick fire
• 1:02:45
  questions and then the closing question, right?
• 1:02:47
  So, but I don't want you to overthink this.
• 1:02:50
  I've done this a few times. It's proved really popular and a
• 1:02:52
  lot of people listen to their poll and they want it back.
• 1:02:55
  So the quick fire questions, don't overthink of it.
• 1:02:57
  First thing that comes into your head, right?
• 1:03:00
  Most underrated quality kindness Favorite book Harry Potter.
• 1:03:07
  And the Goblet of fire. Interesting.
• 1:03:10
  Biggest myth about ADHD? That you're that you're 100%
• 1:03:17
  energetic all the time. Yeah, very true.
• 1:03:21
  Biggest myth about education? It works one thing.
• 1:03:29
  That every parent should stop worrying about.
• 1:03:35
  The end points and results good. OK, this one's for you, right?
• 1:03:40
  One thing that every teacher should hear.
• 1:03:44
  You're doing all right, OK, mate.
• 1:03:49
  I was going to keep talking then, but actually I think
• 1:03:50
  that's powerful enough. Yeah, you're doing all right.
• 1:03:53
  It is right? Everyone gets this closing
• 1:03:54
  question and I'm really excited for you to to answer this mate,
• 1:03:58
  knowing what I know about you and the way you you think.
• 1:04:02
  So you're on a podcast thick no more.
• 1:04:06
  It's called thick no more because it's aimed at me.
• 1:04:08
  What does the statement thick no more mean to you?
• 1:04:13
  That's a good question. I never really thought I was
• 1:04:16
  thick. So it's a tough one, right?
• 1:04:19
  More for me, it's more about potential and not never been
• 1:04:25
  able to kind of reach it. Now I think back to that lad on
• 1:04:28
  the monitoring book, it was the same behaviour, the same
• 1:04:30
  conversations and nothing was done.
• 1:04:32
  And eventually believes that you're thick or you believe that
• 1:04:35
  you're unable or you believe that you're incapable.
• 1:04:37
  But we'll keep coming back to this point, Jane.
• 1:04:39
  It's about ability. That does not equal your
• 1:04:42
  performance. So we need to be looking beyond
• 1:04:44
  behaviour. You know, people in my life now
• 1:04:47
  are still carrying that version of me around, right?
• 1:04:49
  They're still looking at me right now as that guy, right?
• 1:04:54
  That diagnosis gave me a reason and understanding.
• 1:04:57
  You know, the support doesn't need to wait for a diagnosis.
• 1:04:59
  So for me, Sick No More isn't about confusing what someone
• 1:05:05
  produces with what they're actually able to do, what
• 1:05:09
  they're actually capable of. It's about looking beyond that,
• 1:05:11
  given the right human, a better chance to understand them.
• 1:05:15
  That's what I want for young people, because I know now that
• 1:05:17
  what some of my pieces meant when you put them together.
• 1:05:20
  I just wish that someone had been able to do it a bit
• 1:05:21
  earlier. So that's what you think.
• 1:05:24
  Well, thank you for that. No, it's a good way of framing
• 1:05:27
  it. I think what you've taught, I
• 1:05:29
  want to thank you because I think what you've talked about
• 1:05:31
  today is for me is, is, is really important.
• 1:05:36
  You know, we've both been there. You know, the signs are there
• 1:05:42
  before the label or they are, they just are, right?
• 1:05:46
  You get the label after you get the leaflets as well.
• 1:05:49
  You know, congratulations, you're ADHD.
• 1:05:52
  But but the, the signs were already there, right?
• 1:05:54
  And I and I, I, I, I, I, I wish and I hope that this, that that
• 1:06:00
  people can start noticing this before that we, we should be.
• 1:06:05
  Technology's there. You've proved it.
• 1:06:07
  So, you know, it's about joining the dots up and going, hey,
• 1:06:11
  there it is. There it is, you know, so thank
• 1:06:15
  you. I can't thank you enough for
• 1:06:17
  coming on. I wish you I think no, no, no,
• 1:06:20
  honestly, I think it's an incredible product.
• 1:06:23
  I think it's incredible what you're doing.
• 1:06:24
  You're an incredible guy. Don't stop and listen, guys, if
• 1:06:27
  if anybody wants to reach out to Adam, I'm going to put his
• 1:06:30
  details below in the podcast. Feel free to reach out to him.
• 1:06:34
  You know, and it's super important for both of us.
• 1:06:38
  If you're a parent, a teacher, an educator, whatever it might
• 1:06:41
  be, and you know that this, this, this will resonate with
• 1:06:45
  someone, please share it with them because it's important.
• 1:06:47
  All right, Adam, thank you very much.
• 1:06:49
  The best of luck my friend. Listen, cheers.
• 1:06:51
  Thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:06:52
  I think what you're doing is brilliant, by the way, and I
• 1:06:55
  appreciate you just as a guy. I think you're a great guy.
• 1:06:57
  Thank you. Thank you buddy.