S2 E12: Life can change in one moment - the importance of Parent Mental Health: Nicole Bateman chats with Aisling Owens Nash

In Season 2, Episode 12 of "Conversations with a SEND Mum," host Nicole Bateman sits down with Aisling Owens Nash to discuss the critical importance of parent mental health. They delve into Aisling's experiences parenting neurodivergent children, making strategies fun for the whole family, and a terrifying freeze moment that profoundly impacted her life.

Episode Highlights:

• Parenting Neurodivergent Children: Aisling shares her journey of raising neurodivergent children. She discusses the unique challenges and joys, and how her approach to parenting has evolved over time to meet her children's needs.
• Making Strategies Fun: Nicole and Aisling talk about the innovative and engaging strategies Aisling has implemented to support her children's development. They discuss how to turn everyday activities into fun and therapeutic experiences, making the process enjoyable for both parents and children.
• A Life-Changing Freeze Moment: Aisling recounts a terrifying freeze moment that changed everything for her. She opens up about the emotional and mental impact of this experience and how it led her to prioritise her own mental health. This segment underscores the importance of parent mental health and the ripple effect it has on the entire family.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Conversations with a Send Mum podcast with me as your host Nicole Bateman. Today I'm speaking to Aisling Owens Nash and she is a mum of three and also the owner of the Love Life community. So Aisling, thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So first of all, can you tell me your connection to the SND community, please? Yes, I am a mom to confirmed two neurodiverse children and question marks over a third. Yeah. And I did have some experience back before I had children with working with SEND children as a special needs assistant on a, on a teacher. Actually, I did a lot of substitute teaching back in the day. Excellent. So can you tell, tell us a little bit about your journey as mom to us? Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. So my eldest child is actually nearly 16, would you believe this month? I can't believe it myself, My second child is nine and my youngest is seven, but it, it obviously began with my eldest child and I'm sure there are other parents out there and send parents out there who will probably relate a little bit to my story in that. Your first child is your first child and you, you as the individual, as the mum, just recognize that your child is your child, not that your child might be different because your child is just your child to you, right? So I never really had many issues, like many concerns about my child other than I knew the fact that he didn't sleep very well. I used to joke and say he had a super power that he could, you know, sleep for three minutes and be awake for three hours because Keep and then be wired and it turns out he does have ADHD so he is hyperactive and you know he did a lot of running. He would run in circles a lot. He would fall over a lot. But I also thought, right, my My dad is quite a messer. He's quite, you know, do a lot of tomfoolery. Yeah. Do a lot of roughhousing with him. He was the first grandchild. My brothers were quite young at the time. 17 and nearly 21. Oh sorry, 6, yeah, 16 and 20 actually they were when he was born. And, They just used to mess. They used to just mess all the time and boys will be boys or whatever. Since that they were just, they'd be trolling him around, they'd be running into beanbags and I just thought he was just falling because he was trolling himself around, right? Yeah. I don't think there was anything other than that, but I do remember my nanny always saying to me, please get that child checked. There's something not right. He shouldn't be falling like that. Why is he running in a circle around that tree? Why is this happening? Why is he doing that? Why can't, why can he not hold that spoon? Or, you know, cause it actually distracts it as well. He actually has diagnosis. He has ADHD with D. A. M. P., which is deficiencies in attention. motor control and perception. And he had a couple of other diagnosis within the school system from an educational perspective. So dyslexia, dysgraphia, and he also does have dyspraxia or DCT, developmental coordination disorder. Some people call it sensory processing disorder. I mean, the list goes on. And he was never accepted by a multidisciplinary team. And even in. In Junior Infants, I, I started to see the bigger difference in Junior Infants, to be honest with you. Because he had been in Montessori for two years, he'd gotten on well in Montessori. I could see a difference between his work and the other children's work, but it, I didn't think it was massively different. And because of the level of conversation that we were having and the Montessori principal, I had a conversation with her and I said, do you think he needs to stay back here? And she was like, no, he's far too bright. He needs school. So he moved into mainstream school, which, you know, we didn't expect anything else as he was just, he was just our child. And I did start to really see the struggle, really saw the struggle then when he was in junior infancy. And there was a lot more, you know, in Montessori they move stations. And they move around so for him that I think without us realizing he was getting movement breaks between learning moments lesson, whereas in mainstream it's very much sit in your seat. Don't make a sound. Do this. Do that. Write this. Write that. Color this. And I did speak to his teacher and say, I'm a little bit worried. He just doesn't seem to be able to read. He's really not getting the writing. He doesn't want to color. He gets really stressed. And it just, you know, wasn't, there was something not right. Yeah. Now my mom had started working with him when he was two and a half. She is a special needs assistant. And she was like, he needs to work on his coordination. And she'd worked with a lot of dyspraxic and dyslexic children and she had concerns, but I just kept saying. He's just a boy, he's just running too much, he's running too fast, he's just falling, you know. He was also a toe walker, so, and his daddy's a bit of a toe walker, you know, he bounces off when he's walking, so I thought, he just walks like his daddy, because he's going too fast when he's walking on his toes, that's another reason why he's falling, and I made all the excuses. I made all the excuses because I didn't understand and I didn't realize. And it wasn't until I'd spoken to the teacher and she kept saying, no, he's fine. And then I think his second or third term of junior infants they had a student teacher in the class. So the mainstream teacher was sat at the back of the class to be present. And then she saw, she saw hyperactivity, she saw the distractions. And then when they did their, their assessments, he failed all the gross motor tests. And she was like, okay, I think there is something here. Now it took us another two years to get any further support. By way of what we call a SCAPA here. So it's an educational assessment, but it wasn't done through the regular channels. It was like an additional thing that was requested by the school. And we were lucky it was granted. And that's when they said he looks to have, it seems to be that he has dyslexia. for joining us. And around the same time, we got to see neurologists and they diagnosed them with ADHD and D. A. M. P. So that was like my introduction to the send world and then you know going right I need to learn how can I support my child, what can I do differently, how can we do things. We got textured floors for him in his room, we we, we did a lot of work with Obstacle courses, believe it or not. I would make obstacle courses in the front garden. And invite all the kids on the road to play the obstacle course. And let's have races in the obstacle course. But that was really his physio and his OT. Yeah. I didn't know. That's just how we approached it, or I approached it. Because I've always felt like it needed, It's boring, right? You tell a kid they need to do an exercise or a stretch, they don't want to do it, and they just feel stressed, and it's a lot of pressure. He was only, you know, six and a half, seven when this all began, so he didn't have the understanding either, and with ADHD as well, that cognitive, that executive function is, it's that bit behind. So we're saying he was seven, but he, executive function, probably five, you know, four and a half, five. Yeah. His emotional intelligence level is that little bit behind as well, you know, for each group. So there are all those things to take into consideration. So anything that we've ever done, I've always tried to approach it with a, well, look, how can I do this practically without them realizing? So eventually got the DCD The Dysphraxia, Diagnosis and Dysgraphia. We learned that he only had 1st centile in his fine motor. And 5th centile for his gross motor. So, I put him in piano lessons. I got him into typing lessons. We were doing archery to strengthen his fingers. A little bit of wall climbing now and then. So, I wasn't making him sit there and do physio exercises with his fingers and squeeze balls. Like, yes, he did some of that, but that was his choice. We just did practical things that also build on those strengths. Yeah. I love that. I love that because that's, you implementing all of those things that are fun, that it's like through play, through getting others involved, like that's, that's so great. That makes, yeah, that makes me so happy and great tips for others who are listening as well. Even those little things, like when we went to the supermarket, I would wheel the trolley, but I would always take one of those wheelie baskets as well. It was his job to take the wheelie baskets and we would put in things. I would say what was on the shopping list and say, okay, which, will we put this in my trolley or we put this in your basket? Because he was having to pull, push and pull. So that he was getting that program step of input and carrying in the bags from the messages. I know the job I used to get him to do that at the time he loved, imagine he's 16 now. Oh, if I asked him to do it now, as we used to have leather couches, so I used to give him a cloth and he, it was his job to wash the couch. So it was just getting his, his arms moving and doing the motion and things like that. Like we can take chores, regular chores and saying, we all have responsibilities here. Help me with this job. Let's do this job together. And they're actually getting some inputs that they need without realizing. Yeah, definitely love it. It reminds me of, you know, cause with the Super Sensory squad with Flex. Flex is our penguin. She's carrying weights and her question is, what can you push, pull and carry as she links with proprioception? And it is, it's like those little things to get that push, pull and carry into the, into your day. Like you said, at the supermarket, all of those things, obstacle course is great for proprioception and, and so it's great. It is. It is something that we can put in because he couldn't manage, he didn't have the coordination for a bicycle. So yes, that's like my son, you know yeah, it's just, I think it's just making those little tweaks to fit into your lifestyle. So it doesn't feel like a chore and it doesn't make them feel so different. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really important. And yeah, it was my first one. And then my second child, he could dress himself, he could put his shoes on, he could feed himself with a knife and fork. I mean, my child is, my eldest is 16 nearly, and still can't use utensils properly. He's, he's just rock sick, so I don't know how it's gonna be. But because my second child was so good at all the physical stuff, and he was really chatty as well. We had nearly a seven year age gap between them. So I always think the second child, I think, tends to come along a lot quicker in speech as well. He's nodding away to us. I was like, it's because he has a big brother. And his big brother is talking to him. It's because there's more people around, you know. But I didn't realize, we didn't realize until he was around two and a half that there were really some issues. I do remember going to the Montessori and saying, Ugh, can he start early? Like, he really needs it. He's not getting what he needs from me. Also, at that point, we had our third child. It was like, he's bored of doing the same puzzles. He's bored of doing the same thing. He needs more stimulation than I can give him right now with a newborn hanging off. So he did start and they started to notice some things and they said, Oh, and he was only in there two days a week. He really didn't like, no, he really didn't like boundaries. And he would never say sorry. He would never say sorry. He would never admit that anything was wrong. He, he was right. He was right and you were all wrong. And he, and eventually we discovered he does have autism. Yeah. Diagnosis of pathological demand avoidance. Yep. So again, school is a lot of demands, even Montessori is, and Montessori is, you know, while mainstream is very demand led, Montessori is too, and as much as Montessori really played to my ADH dear, in that getting to move from task to task. Asking my autistic child who has PDA, and for people who don't know what PDA is, it is pathological demand avoidance, but basically it's a really, really extreme level of anxiety about needing to be in control of a situation. That's the easiest way to explain it. So giving him one activity and then saying 15 minutes later, you need to end this activity now and move to the next one was a, a demand on top of a demand was very difficult for him to manage. Within, within a year though, he had an AIMS teacher, so an access inclusion model support worker. So she came in and worked with him for the next two years, one to one in the Montessori setting, and that was before he had a diagnosis. They needed support. They were fantastic. I have to say the Montessori was incredible. The principal there was, you know, he wouldn't have had the help and we wouldn't have had the diagnosis. Her really being so aware and helping us to push for Assessments. Again, he was, again, because my children are both so expressive and well able to handle a conversation with an adult quite often people don't recognize them as having additional needs or certainly my middle child, we get told often, he's not artistic. He can't be autistic because he can't have a conversation. Not all autistic people are nonverbal, and that's a really big stereotype that's out there. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, there's a lot of stereotypes, isn't there? And I know that, for example, with PDA as well you know, having that, a lot of people would view it as a misconception, or they're just being naughty and it's They're just saying no, but it is, it's that anxiety, isn't it? Is it really high anxiety? And, and yeah, you can see like being asked to move on those demands. It's just like, yeah, that's actually even worse. Like 15 minutes, then move on. And the transitions between things struggling, now you need to finish up what you're doing, that's a demand, tidy that away, that's another demand. Yeah. Get up and move to the next station, that's another demand, and then the instructions for the next station is another demand, and that's multiple transitions within multiple demands. Yeah. Which put him through the roof. And the principal would often say, which we would do the parent we did get parent teacher meetings. She would say, Aisling, he's so amazing, the only reason I'm still, like, he's still in here every day because he would wreck the place is because I love him so much and he's so incredible, he's so intelligent, he's so amazing and we really want to be able to learn him. And she would say sometimes, I don't know how he's learning anything because it doesn't appear that he's engaged at all, but when doing lessons with the other children, we'd ask a question and he, he knows he's learning, but he's not doing the work. He couldn't sit and do the work. Do the writing or do the work, but he knew the work, understood the learning concept. Absolutely. So for parents listening what are some of the things you do? Cause you, you've got lots of different things to, to cater for and help and support and all of those things along with obviously all the amazing strengths of, of your amazing children. But for mums, how have you been? What's the impact been on you in this journey throughout the 16 years? Yeah, it was pretty bad. I didn't, I think I'm a fixer, right? I love to say, I, you know, you will be having a conversation with me and while you're having a conversation with me, my brain is brainstorming solutions for whatever challenge you're describing, because I just cannot help myself. I'm, I love to try to solve problems. I love a challenge and I'm like, without you. You can probably hear that in the way that I described implementing strategies in a really different way than I was told to by doctors or OTs. Because I wanted it to be fun for my kid and I didn't want him to feel different, right? But how that affected me was for James, for my eldest, I was still working full time. I was taking, at times when I knew I would have to go on a course, I would take unpaid leave. For four or five weeks to do the courses. It was hard, but I did it. I didn't know I was entitled to have. Carers leave, which is paid leave and my job, I hadn't known at the time I was entitled to that because people don't tell you. No. Unpaid leave, or I was taking holidays to go and do courses. And I was trying to learn as much as I could. And then I became pregnant on Ethan when James was about six. And I thought, Oh, I look sure I'll be on maternity leave. It'll be fine. I'll be able to do loads of stuff. This now and everything's going to be better and I'll have loads of time to fight all of the things and get all of this and sure it's so slow and it's so broken that didn't happen. Ended up going back to work when Ethan was about eight months old, nine months old, and then starting to beginning to discover that Ethan also had needs was really stressful. And I also had, look, to be honest with you, it was a compounded of everything going on. I had an awful lot of problems with a new leader in my job. And I became extremely stressed and I was really sick and I was really sick. all the time. All the time. Because I actually didn't know that I was in like, distress. I wasn't just stressed, I was distressed, but I didn't actually recognize, I didn't know, because I fix things. And I'm a doer and I get things done and I was running two shops and I had two children and I had a husband and I had things in my house every summer, you know, I was, I kept myself busy. I kept myself going and I was doing all the things and I was doing all the paperwork and making phone calls on my one day off. Yeah. Loads of phone calls. Yeah. A lot of phone calls and a lot of paperwork. You need to go to college, I mean you might as well get an administration certificate or something because you end up learning all the lingo. But I, you know, that became something else. Then I fell pregnant on Elissa and I thought, you know what? Now I've got two to deal with and I've got two to look after. I need to, I need to take some more time off. So at that point I had learned about carer's leave. So I said, when I'm finished my maternity leave for her, I'm going to take my two years carer leave. My job is going to be protected and let me see what I can get in place. And my intention was always to return to work. But before we even got to the two year mark things had gotten so bad for me. Elissa. Was born and was in and out of hospital five times by the time she was four months old. Five times including her birth, four times excluding her birth. So that was another layer on top. And eventually there was a day I was driving along and, you know, it had been a good day. I had gone to the supermarket. I was driving our station wagon. Lovely sunny, sunny, beautiful day. And I was driving along and I passed a slip road on the motorway. and a voice came in my head. That voice was really negative and it was really unsupportive and I had a panic attack. And when I got to my slip road, which was the slip road after the slip road that triggered me I was about to have a car crash and I knew I was going to have a car crash and I couldn't avoid it because I couldn't move my feet. I was in freeze. I had ignored the flight and fright for so long that I actually ended up in freeze in that panic attack. It was like everything just went quiet. And I could see the cars ahead of me. I could feel that my foot was on the accelerator instead of the brake, and my brain was saying, move your foot, move your foot. Move your foot, and I couldn't. And all of a sudden, all I thought was, I don't want to kill anybody else. If anybody's going to get injured, it's going to be, I want it to be me, because I could see three cars in front of me. In the end I didn't hit them full on, I actually, it was like I had parallel parked on this slip road, like, magically. And I actually, the front passenger side of my car hit the back driver's corner of one vehicle, which hit the next vehicle, which hit the next vehicle. And, it probably, the lights had just changed, and they had just been about to take off, so it was actually slightly less than it could have been. And that was my really big, like O S H E P T moment. How did that person get in my head? And the person who was in my head? was my GP. My GP who was not being supportive, who was not supporting me to fill out paperwork, who was not listening to me about my sick child, who was not listening to me about my two boys, and she was in my head. And I remember being really, really in shock for quite a while. But also getting home, driving back home, my husband drove around in our other car. I was literally like four minutes from my house. It was so close to the house, it was mad. And I drove the other car home, he drove the damaged car home, and I was still in shock. And the guards and all the people were more worried about me than they were about themselves. Like, here I was, it was the car that I actually hit, and I was like, I don't have any sweets, because I don't buy sweets for my children, but I have some sugary yogurts if, if they're in shock. And they were like, Are you okay? And I was like, yeah, have some food. Do you want to give your kids some food if they're upset? I'm sorry that this happened. I could see it was going to happen and I couldn't stop it. I was in shock. Yeah. I kind of, when I think I got out, like came out of the shock, I was like, I can't live a life like this where somebody, how did somebody else? I was such a strong person, such a doer, such a fixer, such a go for a person. How had I ended up with a life like this? That I was no longer loving, which is why now my business is called the Love Life Community because I'm trying to encourage people to take back control and make the switches that they need to, to love their lives more. And I was diagnosed with postnatal depression as well then. They were like, you have depression. This is what's going on. This is what's happened. Change GP. And the other GP surgery was full. They weren't taking anybody, but when they heard what happened. And they supported me so well and I said to the GP, okay, I will take medication because I know I need help right now. But I don't want to do this long term because I don't want, you know, I don't want to be reliant on something. I want to find a way out of this so that I can be me again. Yeah. Well, you know, I met there is 100 percent of time and place for medication. I'm not against medication. It was my wish to not have to be reliant on it. So that's where my business journey began and my lifestyle journey began after that, when I wanted, I said, well, I've got to take back control. What can I take back control of? First of all, I've got to take control of me. My health, my mental health, my physical wellbeing. So it started with my mind and I started listening to books. I learned what the purpose of the medication was to help boost my serotonin levels to make me feel happier. So I was like, well, what else can make me feel happier? So I'm such a nerd. I was reading all the articles. I have a whole range of foods. I know called my happy foods. Still to this day, the kids be like, you're having some happy food. I'm like, yeah, I'm having some happy food. Some beetroot, I'm having some avocado, I'm having some walnuts. I'm having my chia seeds, you know, foods that help your body to boost its own serotonin, I started eating more of. So I started to get less sick, but I was still not better. I would wake up in the morning, dry heaving. I couldn't get out of my bed without getting sick. There was a lot of inflammation in my body. There was a lot of stress stored in my body. And it took time. It took a long time to help myself. Myself, by the way, I had to stop. I didn't stop helping my children. Yeah, yeah. But I had to become the focus because I had to be better to be better for them. Yeah. And I had to show them the better way. It seriously impacted my life. And I would Not be doing what I'm doing now, and I would not be where I am now if it wasn't for their challenges and it wasn't for that horrific moment in my life that really woke me up to this is, I'm not living life, I'm just existing. And I think there are too many of us who are caught in that cycle of just existing and we're not loving our lives and we're not living them. Do not get me wrong, I am not living my life to the fullest, to where I want to be, but I am not living to that place that I want to be. And we're consistently making small little positive changes over time to get where we want to be. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, there's so many of us that are in that fight and flight or freeze or, because we are constantly, in the middle of fighting and getting nose and then having to fight and all of those things and yeah, you get to that point. It is exhausting. I was swimming and I was so angry. I was really angry with the water, so I was like, go for it so much. And then, I just got so dizzy that I was like, Oh, wow. If I faint right now in the water, I'm going to drown. So I had to get out, but it's, it takes such a toll on us to, have to fight the system. Our kids are amazing and we, but it's trying to get what they need to thrive. Because in, in a lot of the systems there isn't that opportunity to be able to thrive for some of our kids and, because they need some scaffolding or support in, and they're not getting it. So thank you for sharing that story with us, because it's a really important lesson for many of us to just. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And it, look, it is not easy. My mission and my purpose to attempt and my, my wish and my dream and my vision is that if I can positively impact one individual, one household or one business a day to make, to take back some control of something. Make, one or more simple changes at a time so that they can love what they're doing or love their life more and, and come back, come back to themselves because you lose yourself. You can very, very easily lose yourself in that paperwork and in that fight. And it is important to fight that fight. But we don't want to get lost in it. We need to be in control of it. And actually, the more in control of ourselves we are, the more we can actually push them more productively. And I learned that actually what I needed to do was that, mind myself, and I, because I came back to myself more, I became more confident again, I was, I was remembering to breathe. I was sitting up, I was putting my shoulders back. I would have my note, I would write in, I would listen to them talk, I would write down every word that they would say, and I would have my notes on the other side of the pages of what I wanted to say. But what I would do is take what they had said, what I wanted to say, and I would use their words. To get my point back to them, because if they've used a phrase to us, we, we need to use their words back because they can't argue with their own words. Right. Yeah. I got clever about it and when they understood that and when I became more back into myself where I wasn't just fighting, fighting, fighting, but I was banging my head off a brick wall as we do. Yeah. I was like, actually I'm going to take back control of this situation. You're not in control. I am. And when you own that. Yep. They find it very difficult to say no to us. Yeah. Like I said, we are using their words back to them. Yeah. And the other tip is, if you are filling out paperwork, don't say, if you're writing about your child and answering those horrific questions that make up the worst things about your children, the hardest things in your children's life don't say he or she. In every sentence, use your child's name. Yeah. Use your child's name. Don't say, Today he did this or when he was seven he did When Martha, Jane, Bob, whoever it was, use their names. They're humans, they're not numbers, and we need to humanize them. And we need to use the autocratic language back to the autocrats and get what we need for our children. Yeah. That would be my, like, really, that's, I just feel very strongly about that. Yeah. Absolutely. I can sense that. Yeah. Absolutely. They are individuals. They are wonderful individuals. And they're not just numbers or you know, Or problems. They're seen as problems. They're not problems. Yeah. You know what, our children are going to be the solutions for the future because they are going to be the most creative and innovative people. They're incredible. They have beautiful insights into this world. So many people don't have and they teach us so much and they can teach the world a lot and we need to help the world to see that. Definitely. Definitely love that. Yeah, absolutely. So if people want to connect with you further, where's the best place to connect with you? You can find me on any social media platform as Ashling Owens Nash. Simple as that. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you will find me as Aisling Owens Nash. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing that story and sharing, your whole journey and really, really helpful and a useful reminder for us all as parents, carers, to look after ourselves and, so that we can be. There and for our kids. So thank you for that. And yeah, I remember that each Wednesday, a new episode drops a conversations with the send mom, and you can follow along on Instagram conversations with the send mom and have a look at sneak peeks of new episodes and also have some encouragement there, so have a lovely week.