Mental Health and Joy: What Parents of a High Needs Child Must Focus On

Welcome to Parenting That Kid. My name is Ashley Tolliver. As a mom of twins, one being a highly sensitive child who responds to the world in a non traditional and sometimes challenging way. I understand the desire to find the golden answer. Maybe there is no golden answer. But there are resources, tips and tricks we can all use to help us make this uniquely normal parenting journey a little more fun. This podcast is a roadmap to parenting that kid for myself and other parents. If recording my journey as I seek a clear starting point, community and effort to normalize what sometimes feels abnormal, supports at least one parent, then my time is not wasted. And hey, if it doesn't, well, there's documented proof that moms deserve a glass of wine. Cheers.

Thank you, Amanda, for joining me today, I'm gonna give a little introduction for my guests so they know who they're about to speak or listen to and hear your story. Amanda Newbry is a mom, who lives over in England. And I found I don't even know how we connected on Instagram to be honest, if you found me or I found you. But I find that the connection between the two of us was mental health. And so for my podcast, one of the things I like to talk about is the importance of caring for yourself as a mom, and you are only so good to your children, if you're good to yourself. And mental health is so important for parents to evaluate and really foster for their own selves. And so that's where we create this connection that you have a history of mental health. You are a mother to two children, I believe a seven year old and a four year old if I'm not mistaken. That's right. Yeah. And you have a history of postpartum depression with them. And that you understand one the struggle of mental health being a mom, and to the importance of focusing on that and caring for that, and fostering that in your own health. And so I think that's why I said, Amanda, please jump on and talk to my audience about that. You're also a homeschooler. Which kudos to you. I don't know, I check out right there. And I've heard people say, you can do homeschooling and I thought, No, I can't. No, I cannot. So thank you so much for being anti left run, and I'm a runner myself. So there was just a lot of connections there. And I think you have so much value to bring to people and mothers that I would love for you to share your story. And let's just chat about the importance of mental health for moms. So thank you so much, Amanda, for joining me today.

Cool. Thank you for having me, actually, I'm really, really happy that we got to chat actually all that stuff to think train for about a year to sort this out. So it's really good. Thank you so much. Yeah, that was a really nice intro, my story goes back quite away. But I'll just try and make it brief. I've had mental health struggles, I think pretty much most of them most of my life since childhood really quite severe anxiety on enough. But it kind of kind of peaks and troughs and peaks and troughs all the time. And I kind of found ways to just manage it, keep a lid on it, basically not get rid of it completely. And then I spend a lot of time traveling in my 20s and actually moved to Australia for just over eight years, which I loved living in Sydney and it really I thought I got on top of it then I was feeling quite good with myself I was happy and everything and I was still have my moments. He's really anxious thoughts and moments, but I've managed to keep on top of it. And then I had my first child was fine actually with that it was a bit of an anxious mom, but I was fine. I didn't have depression after my first child August. But I found that I did struggle quite a lot with a realize now with that son just changed from relatively young, independent living in the city. And then suddenly life just changed. And I didn't realize that till now. And I didn't feel it as like a loss of identity I just couldn't. My head had took a while to catch up with my life. And I really that started to kind of interfere a little bit with how I was feeling I noticed now looking back, but I was okay. And then with our second child, we really struggled and we had to go through IVF. In the end, we had a lot of fertility issues bizarrely the second time around. So that put a lot of mental kind of pressure on me for quite a few years. And then for some reason, I can't really remember why but we decided when I was about six months pregnant middle of winter, we decided we were going to move back to the UK I just wanted to be closer to family there was stuff going on not the smartest thing in the world to do to move from Sydney to England in December was not a great idea. And I realized now I had quite severe post or pre partum depression, which didn't get diagnosed. But I know looking back now that I was I look at kind of journal entries and that was not in a good place at all. And then when Ashton was born and actually suffered with postpartum psychosis, which I can't really explain, to be honest, I don't know why it happened. It's something hormonal apparently and I was really quite poorly but we had we have a really good mental health facility here for perinatal mental health anyway, we're lucky that still not in all parts of the UK but where I am, we had a really good kind of Center for Women so I've got very good care, but with the psychosis it generally like nine times out of 10 will end up being severe postnatal depression, you kind of go off into that area and I was quite unwell for a good 12 months I had pretty severe postnatal depression. It was quite difficult actually. It was really, really challenging, especially having an older child as well. It was just really hard to manage, but I was lucky I had good support and I had my mom and this center. So I did really well with it. But I realized now that sort of at 12 months you care from the center kind of stops. And it's like depression doesn't just stop them. And it's quite challenging in that way. And even though I was out of the worst of it, but I knew that I wasn't quite right still, I was just in this kind of gray zone this in between not like struggling every day, but not back to me. There's this weird gray zone that call it and I kind of muddled along for a few months. And then six or so months after that, my mom was diagnosed with quite aggressive breast cancer, my uncle who I was very close to died relatively suddenly, which was pretty hard. My eldest actually started school at the time, and we'd kind of bought our first house and it was just all came crashing down again, around Christmas, it literally came crashing down, I was starting to get severe insomnia, again, thoughts racing away, getting scared to go out the house, and it was just coming back. And I couldn't believe it. So I've been through so much. It's like, how is this happening again, and then on Christmas Day of 2018, it was, I had a really severe breakdown, and the first sort of three I had over that month, and probably even worse than with my depression, to be honest, because they just hit me like a bus like really, really hard. So that was the first time that I actually had to go on medication because I just couldn't, I couldn't function. I was so so unwell. Sleeping like two hours at night, like it was pretty awful. It was the worst that being to be honest. But bizarrely in a way, when I came through that when I started to kind of what's the word sort of just come out of it a little bit enough that I could sleep and sort of just be myself a little bit again, I realized that I didn't want to live in this up and down and up and down, I wanted to like take some really decisive action. Now to kind of know, it's feeling a little bit calmer, because the medication did help me in that way, just to quiet down my head, you know, doesn't make you I was very nervous to go on medication, because you have all these ideas about what it will do to you. But it just writing down my head, I just needed it basically. So it helped me a lot. But then I decided I really can't spend my life just going in and out in the mountains didn't want to live like that anymore. So I made a bit of a plan. And the initial plan for me it was I'd heard so much about running and mental health. And I just thought I want to get in on that. I love exercise, I need to get in on that. And it was a January. And it was I remember the first night I went and joined my local Run Club, it was icy on the road, it's freezing cold. But I just I need to do this, I can't like I need to take some power back basically. So I went and did it join my local club. And running. I knew from that moment it was it was gonna change my life. It really did change my life. Like I met some I have met some amazing friends in the club. I just love it. I'm really passionate about running and mental health. And even though it didn't fix me immediately, but I just knew straight away and like this is it, this is what's going to help me get about my power. And I love it. I still run this down three or four times a week, I still run. But I also found then that I could kind of incrementally add other bits and I tried to create this formula for mental health circle it and I started to commit to my meditation, I dipped in and out of meditation, again, trying to heal myself for years were never really committed to it. And I started to commit to just small sort of 10 minute daily meditations, but really committing to it, trying to like learn about mindfulness and learn about how your thoughts, I think I realized that through my teenage and 20s that you just let all these thoughts into your head and you never say stop, I don't need to like listen to you just let them all and welcome you know, coming to McMunn. And I realize actually I kind of have some power of what thoughts are going to come into my head. And I just have to sit here and then wash into my brain sort of thing. So I learned a bit about being mindful of your thoughts and observation and just awareness really, you know, awareness of what you let is a very, like I'm passionate about eating well. And I thought I really take care about what I put into my body. But I just let any thought whatsoever come into my brain. And I just need to give the same kind of commitment to my thoughts as I do to my food, which was pretty powerful for me. And I started various other things. I tried journaling for a while. vision boards nature, I realized he was like a really huge healer for me. So I entire my founder call it this formula. But I found this the thing that I needed to do to keep myself mentally well. And when I look back now of the last couple of years, I can't. It's hard to describe like how much I've changed in that last couple of years that my confidence and self esteem and belief in myself, it really is hard to think back of how it was a few years ago, but I know it's because I now put myself first which sounds really weird. As a mom, I'm a homeschooling mom. And you know, my life is now homeschooling and my kids. But I think the most powerful thing and the most beneficial thing that you can ever do for your kids is to look after yourself first. So I'm quite passionate about that I'm ruthless about myself care. And my kids know that which is great. And yeah, that's basically my my story to this day. So yeah, I just right now in my blog, I write about things that have helped me through my kind of journey to this point and things that will help. I think other moms and other homeschooling moms in particular. That's my story, basically.

That's so powerful because I think you went through this entire journey. You have the experience, you felt the experience, and then you saw that you could you could change that experience. You have the power to do that. And when you thicken it, it's hard to see that. And so you have, like you said, you had to dive deep and realize that yourself, and then you created a plan, which I think it's really hard as a mom, you made a good point here saying that you have to prioritize your self care. And so many of my listeners and my blog readers have children that struggle, whether they're struggling with ADHD, sensory struggles, just challenging behaviors with not something's off, you know, at school or at home. And, and we naturally as parents just dive into our children and like, Okay, what am I going to do to fix my child or support my child, and we completely forget about ourselves and our own is really concerned to unwind when we don't think about ourselves. So we just shift everything to something else, or our children in this instance. So I think it's beautiful when you said, I have to prioritize myself, and your children know this. And I think this, I preach this all the time, I tell my children, I'm going to go take a bath for myself, right? And go run for myself, because when you are an adult, I want you to be able to say the same thing for yourself. I'm going to care for myself right now and take that it's okay. 100%, because you're going to be better for that for everybody else around you once you've done that. So I think you have so many good little points there that I think we lose when we're so deep into whatever it might be whether it's the postpartum depression, or your children's struggling in the world, and you're just pouring into them. Can you give some ideas on how you talked about running as you're saying, which I mean, I love running, I'm slightly biased. I'm a mom, too, like, oh, no, I fact, I tell people I run they go, I would not even be able to run that same thing. That looks beautiful, but never happen. But some other things that you've heard or read or that you've experienced when it comes to the just even getting your body moving. And the importance of that I think people don't realize that we're such a sedentary world now. And I think running is quite the opposite. Do you have any other ideas or tips that people can find? What what is their answer you said you just knew, but maybe you have ideas and how other people will just know. Yeah,

I think like I really like journaling. I think journaling and free writing is a really good way to kind of find, find nothing yourself, but just find maybe things that have been hidden in your own head. Like I love the idea of just sitting and sometimes I'll have journal prompts, or sometimes I'll just write and just say, you know, if you could do if your perfect day, you could look like this, what would you be like and I will write and write write, write, write, write. And then you're going to leave little kind of nuggets from there. I really think it's good to just like I believe in trying lots of things. I think there's this notion that when you get to an adult, you always have to do something for a purpose, like you learn to bake because you want to set up a bakery shop where you learn to play the piano because of blah, blah, blah, but I really like just trying stuff for fun. I think we have that right to still do this as adults, it's not exclusive to kids. So just try lots of different things like I, I also do a yoga class, every day online. Now I've found you might literally this lady Yoga with Adriene she's like really, really popular. I love it. I just found her I'm like really late to the game. But like every day, I'm like, I just love her classes and the next 20 minutes like it's great that we can do online classes now because like when I lived in Sydney, it was easy to jump to a studio whereas where I am now there's not much around. So being able to jump online and have a go, you know, you can do peloton the biking or you can do yoga or pilates. I think that's really cool just to try lots of things and something will fit or it might just be something that you might not be into that kind of exercise. But there's other ways to really get your body moving like gardening is brilliant. It off more nature walking, I think nature walking is so powerful, and it doesn't have you don't have to be out in the middle of the wilderness to like, be in nature. Like there's patches of nature everywhere. And just being in nature is great trout, indoor rock, climbing, electric, anything you want. Like there's such an abundance of stuff to try and like just give yourself the opportunity to go out and be playful. And try something and then when it you know fit, you'll find something you will find something. And it doesn't even have to be exercise. Like if you're I've got a friend who's just really into knitting and crocheting and that's her like therapy, and she'll just sit and do that for an hour at night while listening to music. Like I think you just have to try lots of different things and find what fits for you and you might be lucky and you know, find something straightaway. Or it might take several months and lots of experimenting, but that's okay. Just have fun with it really have fun be playful.

Yeah, absolutely. You're right. It doesn't have to stop in childhood. We spent so much time with her. Like, try this, do this and that. Yeah, we're so straightforward as an adult, and we don't have to be at all, we should just be having more fun too. That's wonderful. Can I ask them? How about relationships? Parenting is hard. It's hard. Even if you perfect children and the perfect life. It is not an easy thing to be a part of that when you have mental health that you're struggling with or you have forgotten how to care for your own self. And so then you create maybe it's not a chemical mental health but you think certain circumstances where things just are really challenging. How does it work as a parent in a co parenting relationship and how do you support co parenting when you have to also support yourself and not get lost in all of that?

I think it depends what sort of stage the right word what sort of area Mental Health you're kind of in at the time, like when I was suffering with depression is very different to what I could do today, like when I was in depression, co parenting would just be about getting through the day, like, I still feed my kids and you'd have the clothes washing, you know, try and do small little bits for them. But it wasn't much it was just the basics. But then I would think well, even just literally reading a page of a book that inspires me or lighting a candle and sitting right, like, I think you have to just depends what stage you're in. Like, if you're in that really difficult time. Just take it really, really small, I like to call them like nuggets of self care. So it doesn't it can literally be like stopping and listening to a beautiful piece of music for a second or I don't know, I like have I have birds outside my house, I've got loads of bird feeders around. And if I see them, I will literally force myself to stop and just focus on them for like 30 seconds. So I like nuggets of self care work really well, if you're in a quite a challenging place. And then if you you know, at the moment, I'm feeling really good, and I can do a lot more and challenge myself more. So it just depends really, you know how you're feeling at the time, as regards to relationship with kind of Children and Family that again, like when I was very unwell, my relationships weren't great. I think on my older child, I had a lot of like, it's awful. But with them postnatal depression or postpartum depression, I think you call it suffered with rage quite a lot. And it's an area of that condition that people don't talk about much because it's the there's a lot of shame associated to it. But that was my real challenge. And something that I had to work my way back from once I was, well, I had to kind of rebuild my relationship with my child birth. I think that children they are quite resilient. And if you're honest, and you apologize, and you talk to them, like my kids know that I've been through depression, they know what depression is, I've been quite not, you know, overly not to scare them, but they just didn't know what's happened to me. They know that I was unwell for a time and I just think having a conversation being honest and apologizing when you need to. And yeah, and like I like I'm in a my partner or my husband, Adrian, he works sort of full time but in a shift job now. So I make sure that I'm quite happy to give some of the like the homeschooling and the care over to him when he's here. I don't feel like I have to be the one doing it all the time. Because my life from the things that I do outside of parenting are really important. And again, I need to do them to be a good mom, I need to do them. I need to do a blog for myself, I need to run for myself, I need to read things for myself, so I can be a good mom was most of the time, Mr. Handle all the time. So yeah, I didn't answer your question. If I'm rambling.

Well, that is good. That while you said you know, he does some stuff, too, he has to do right this is you co parent CO was to apparently somebody else hanging out in your house. And I think that idea of the other your spouse or your partner, whoever might be in that household with knowing that for your mental health or for your family to benefit your mental health also has to be supportive. And that means that they need to take the load at times, or they need to do their job. And you would do the same for them. Right this is. And then I can only imagine how challenging that is, if you're a single parents are you're finding those times, and that thing goes back to the nuggets. I really preach to people that self care for your own whole body, whether it's a physical or internal or a mental does not have to be this extravagant thing. You do not have to go to the spa for all day or go get your nails your hair, all that fun. But that is not self care. Everyday self care is taking the time saying I'm tonight, instead of a quick shower, I'm going to take a 20 minute bath and just lay there or I'm going to not read the mail, it will be there tomorrow and said I'm just gonna pick up a book and read that. So finding those nuggets of time is so good. And then as you said your children No, I think honesty we each try to shelter our children and there is a you know there is porous boundaries within what we do. We talk about it, but I think that knowing about it is only a support for them to the interesting you're coming from and then of course, what could possibly happen later on with them on the road. How does it look when you're when your children I mean, you have kids and whether they struggle or not in the world, they all have meltdowns, they all have difficult moments, right? This is childhood, it is supposed to be so messy. And generally, how does that work? Then when you yourself are like I need to care for myself right now. But my child is also needing me to care for them. How do you find that balance or times to tap out? Or? I don't know, I think that's probably one of my most tricky situation comes to things and I do have I anxiety. Usually it's in the middle of the night. So nobody's awake for that. But then of course, the lack of sleep the next day is out does that work when your children are meeting you in that moment that you also need to think of yourself?

Yeah, it happens quite a lot. Actually my eldest son, he's very highly emotional and sensitive. He's not diagnosed. I think that he has ADHD but it's quite difficult in the UK to kind of get diagnosis for this. So we just work. You know, we know our child when he's like He is very emotional and quite different to my second child so we have a lot of meltdowns still and difficult times. I think this is why I genuinely am very ruthless with myself so that I can cope with these times when they come on. But there are days definitely when I'm struggling, like it's I do suffer with insomnia still on and off. So there are days when I'm tired. I've been learning quite a lot about this recently, actually myself. So I think, knowing I'm trying to become more and more aware of when you're escalating situations, so I am trying to really start to learn like his cues. And when I can like jump in and escalate things and tips that I've learned, like, just if things are getting too heated, I just sit down, and sitting down seems to like chill everything that out if you just sit down on the floor, or No, I think knowing his cues more like I have a bag of Lego in different rooms on the house. And if things are getting heated, and I'm getting heated, I'll just think well, he needs to chill out, I need to chill out, let's just grab Lego and start making Lego and that will distract him. So it's just more for me personally, I can only talk from my experience, but learning his cues, learning how to calm me down on him down with one kind of activity like the sitting down like the Lego, like I'll just suddenly, you know, like into the garden and we'll just start walking around barefoot. I've just had to learn all these little techniques that work for you know, my child and me basically. So it's something that myself I have been working on a bit lately.

Yeah, oh, those are good ones. I like you said, I have that around my house, you almost set yourself up with tools around your house.

Because in the past, I've like been almost like walking on eggshells. That thing, like seeing what's going to happen and trying to predict stuff. And you can't do that, you know, when you're out. It's different, like out when you're out is quite different. But because we homeschool, we're having a lot more, you know, than a lot of people. So I set off and I just I think about it in a read like what what can I do to help him when he gets like this, especially if I'm feeling for that day? Like because I've noticed that when I'm fraught, you can you can escalate things so quickly. And then it's hard to come back, you know, and then you always get the guilt, you will get the guilt later on. So I've just been learning myself, like, how can I be aware of this? If I'm not seeing it always works. Like I'm not saying at all, we still have our difficulties, but just learning those little cues and little things I know that worked for him for August. Yeah, is what I've been doing.

Yeah, I love that. Well, and you said to that, this is why you're so dedicated in between those moments, so that you will, they will come that you cannot prevent everything but that you're more prepared for those. And I think that's such a good piece of advice. And I find that I sometimes want to push snooze and like, oh, I don't really want to get up and go run this morning. But then I can lay there and think but boy, what will the rest of day be like if I don't spend this next hour and a half on myself for the first hour of the day doing what I need to do so that I can handle the rest of the day. So that's and then you are better off. But I love that little tools you thought you said I just actually normally walk outside barefoot or I've got the Legos around the house and it's learning your child and it's setting up like you did you said I've got him everywhere so that you're already prepared, you know, those moments are gonna come but can you prepare yourself to handle those a little bit? That's wonderful. I love that you said to you said he got diagnosed with ADHD. And in America, the biggest challenge is really just getting on the list for the doctor about it, it's you can have a diagnosis and last place to but it's just you're on this waitlist. But we also don't have mental health support. Like you were saying you have a wonderful place in the UK close to you. And we we have mental health support. But it is not very, not very strong. And it's definitely in the last years years years, like multiple years really has faltered. And I think there's a shift there's I hope we're at the beginning of a shift. So that's beautiful that you guys have that support there. And I would love to see mental health support for moms, I think people don't realize that we carry such a heavy load or in our health us but we do carry such a heavy load. And we carry it more internally to I think we are so hard on ourselves internally as moms that meeting that mental health. It's just so important. So important.

It's very varied here in the UK really much depends on your postcode. So where I live right now, if I'd have had Ashton, here, I wouldn't have had access to the same center was because I was living with my parents, and we've moved back from Australia is a more scenario with more challenges, basically. So there's a lot more funding for mental health and things. So that's why wherever I was living, and I'm literally 20 minutes away. So it very much depends on where you live, to be honest, but I do think I do think there's definitely a more awareness about mental health. And I do think things are shifting, I think for still quite challenging for young children and adolescents. That's what I found with August, I tried to get some support, and it was just impossible. So I think for moms and adults, there's definitely been an improvement by children and adolescents I think needs to catch up. But you know, it's changing all the time. I think these conversations are happening more and more, so I do feel quite positive about it in the future. But yeah, like I don't feel because since we've taken you out to school, and he is a lot more calmer now and we just know our child we know kind of what you need, basically. So I don't really feel I feel happy basically to deal with it in the way we're doing right now. So good. Yeah.

So you have a blog, mum tastic. And so that obviously is a great support for mothers to come to they can read that they can learn things, but what are Other tips, tools, resources that you suggest for moms out there that besides your blog, which I think everybody, and I'll ask more about that here and metadata here, they should log in. What are other books? Maybe your podcasts or activities that parents should claim to you?

Yeah, sure. So, so meditation in particular, I found that I tried to do it on my own for many years, and I didn't really stick to it. And so I eventually, I downloaded one of the apps, I use the comm app. And I found that so, so useful, not only gives you like, you can do all sorts of different types of meditations, I do them with my children as well. But this kind of introductions to meditating, there's all different journeys you can go on. But I found just having a guided structured meditation, committing to that daily really, really helped me and it also has on their sleep stories, which when I had severe insomnia, like really severe insomnia, they were a lifesaver for me, because I went from just laying there all night in this kind of state of panic to just listening to my stories and kind of dozing. So I love the karma app. I've used it for years. And I'm really, really grateful to that app. So I think just yeah, for meditation, I would maybe use an app like that, I think quite a few different books, actually. Actually, this is one of my doing this reasonably big magic, which I absolutely love. To be honest, it's, it's really good. Because when I first started my blog, I did it because I just wanted some sort of part of my own mental health formula and wanting to do something that would spark an interest for me again in life. And I'd always wanted to write a blog, but you have all these kind of like, Well, you shouldn't do that looks, it'll do that, you know, it might 60 Below that, so I didn't do it. And then I thought, no, I really want to do that. And I read this book. And it's about just enjoying Big Magic, creativity and sacred creativity, which I love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And this really sparked that kind of desire for me to just go and do it. Don't worry about the outcome if people are really just do it. So it was a really useful book for me. I've recently found a book Call of the Wild or free, which is by a homeschooling mom in America, and I love that it's all about like the connection to nature, and how important that is for kids and for parents as well. So and I love her podcast, actually, as well. So I've been reading that recently. And other resources I've used for August. So I find, I don't know, you know what your readers might think. But I love the idea of sitting there meditating as a family. But with a child who struggles to sit still, meditation doesn't really work that well. And whereas my younger child, he'll sit there for hours with me doing yoga and stuff. So I found that I've read this blog post, I'll have to try and find it. And it was just talking about different ways to try and encourage a child who may have ADHD or just struggles sitting still to be mindful without having to sit there and meditate. So being like chatting about, oh, you know, the food looks really interesting, what different colors are on your plate? Or how does that feel in your mouth? Or let me go for a walk in the trees? Or what does that sound like when the leaves fall? Just finding ways to kind of I'll try and find blog posts, we're trying to find ways just to encourage kind of mindfulness and mindful living in your whole family, but with a child that might struggle with that kind of quietness was really useful. Are there resources? What podcasts do I so I can think of at the moment.

And I like that it's almost putting your child in the moment of where they are right now. Yeah. And your thoughts are racing and your energy is increasing. You need to come back to the moment here. Yeah. All about it's not going to improve anything until you can send to yourself again. Yeah, I really like that. That's such a good idea. Do you? You talked once about your while back, we talked about a diet you were you had to look at your care for yourself, like you look at the food. You do you find that that helps how you are Val helps your mental health and how you respond and react to your children if you are paying attention to your diet and your food versus just letting it go off and do whatever. Yeah, I

think so. Like I don't eat. I'm not saying I'm a perfect diet at all, but we eat a mostly pretty healthy diet. And I do think, yeah, I do think your diet affects you. I definitely do like I gently for myself, if I have a week where you just don't eat while you're eating in a rush, and it's too much of, you know, the wheat and sugar you don't you don't feel good. And my head feels like he gets funny, he gets funny, definitely. And I think well, in fact affecting me, you know, my child, but he's a lot younger, they're gonna be affected a lot more by this. So yeah, I do think it makes a difference and that I have to be very mindful of, like, I don't give Auguste Nash and a lot of kind of sugary stuff. But I noticed that if they there's somewhere else and they get too much, I just have to be mindful of that. And I try and keep foods sort of make most of the stuff from scratch, like lots and lots of veggies were vegetarian, so lots of lots of veggies and pulses and I'm just I'm mindful of it. But I also I'm realistic as well, like when we were children. I was eating things Yeah, I don't think I don't think I could live a completely perfect diet life but I'm happy that 80% of the time, it's fine. So yeah, and I do notice a big difference if we've been away or something and foods going off. There's definitely a correlation with how I feel um, with how he's kind of responding. So yeah,

yeah. That's, that's good to just get to know I think we all think about that and then don't realize that and ourselves and then we're nourishing ourselves with stuff, that might not be the best thing for disaster there. So

it's good to journal I do kind of general what I've been eating as well. And sometimes it's nice to just, I don't know, pick out days where or like weeks where you've not been feeling so good or things have been going on, it's nice to see what you're eating. And I think journaling is actually quite harmful, it's good, you might not get any answers straight away. But then when you can look back over a month, it's quite a powerful way to see things or things that have been affecting you in a good or bad way.

Absolutely. That's actually one of the parts of my mentoring program is we I give I have a layout for parents to journal about their children and why don't you put their children have eaten? Because, like you said, you might not notice one two days. But if you look at the trend, yeah, people really see how that is and what's going on with your child during that time how maybe there's a correlation between and I think journaling is so powerful. Um, that's how I started to learn about my child. Years ago, I just sort of writing anything down. I didn't know anything, I knew I could write it now. Today is this and dadada. And then after months, I went back and started and and then this is what my mentoring program is all about. But it's I love journaling, for personal and for facts to learn facts about stuff that you might not have realized. That's wonderful agree. How can people reach out to you if they want to find your blog or talk to you more, get some more advice to find you.

My also my blog is mumtasticlife.com And I am on Instagram. I am not on Instagram all the time. But I like to go on there and just see who's around and I'm under g Newbury on Instagram. And my email is mumtasticlife@gmail.com.

So thank you so much, Amanda, for speaking with me today and kind of open it. This is such an important topic. And I think as I said earlier on, mom's push this down, and we shouldn't be doing that. I really appreciate your knowledge and your information. This is going to be welcome. Welcome.