In this insightful episode, Australian Leanne Wakeling discusses 21st-century parenting, emphasizing understanding and supporting children who process the world differently. The conversation also covers generational parenting differences and the unique qualities of children with ADHD.
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Transcript
Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us, Leanne Wakeling and Leanne is a family relationships coach. She is dedicated to conscious, wholehearted parenting for raising 21st century adults. That's pretty big responsibility you’re putting on us.
Don't know whether you realised it's always been our responsibility.
And that's part of the challenge, I think, is to accept that it is a big responsibility and but it doesn't have to be hard.
So many parents these days end up getting.
So worried about teeny, tiny things.
And in worrying about all those teeny, tiny things.
They don't realize the.
Impact they have on their child.
Because children don't process the world the same way as adults now.
There'd be a good percentage of your audience.
That would absolutely understand.
That, but there'd be a tiny little bit of.
Think well, OK, yeah. But.
And it's that's part of the challenge. You know, both of those words are I'm I might be a little bit of a Brene Brown fan. And when I read Shefali Sabari's book conscious parenting.
It really resonated in what I was beginning to get clarity around at the time because I was that kid that never fitted. I have that mum who
Was kind of overwhelmed cause I'm the eldest child, but my sister is only 14 months younger than me.
And she was only 22 when I was born, and she went from being this young woman.
Barely out of maidenhood into.
Suddenly, she had two children. Her second pregnancy was horrendous and.
I reflect now on her experience, and I must admit I've been in tears. We've had deep conversations about it, cause she and I just didn't get along cause I kind of felt like the kid that was on the other cause.
I was the oldest. I kinda just became the good girl that.
Wasn't so good for her because she, she and I clash because we're way more similar than we are. Different and wholehearted has been learning to get vulnerable cause of course.
When you're a kid in that kind of environment.
Little kids, everything is their fault.
Even if we don't make it their fault, it's their fault. Because that's.
The way humans process.
And so the shame and vulnerability work that Brené Brown did. And of course, I really relate to Brenda's attitude because I'm kind of that as well is I'm more of a warrior lioness than I am a gentle mother duck.
And I really appreciate the journey that we have to go on.
And multi passionate.
Case we haven't worked it out. Could talk under dry cement and it's.
Looking at as a parent.
To slow down.
So that we have time to breathe.
Cause an awful lot of 21st century mums, millennial mums and I serve a.
Lot of them.
They were brought up differently to the way that I was brought up.
And some of that is good and some of it is well, OK. Is there an opportunity to really look at this and say?
Had some gaps too.
I have different gaps, but I have gaps too.
When you look at millennial moms, their moms were generally of that generation where they were expected to work, have a career, have a family, be everything to everybody and.
A lot of times they were latchkey kids, you know, they went to school, they had the after school programs. And yeah, everybody got trophies because, you know, they were never at.
Home. So they were never really able to form an attachment to their parents. And I think as they've progressed into being parents themselves, they've pushed back against so many of the things that they suffered for.
A lot of them.
Are you know if they're married? Only one of them is working full time.
When the kids are young and they're really dedicated to making sure these kids have.
Access to them that they didn't have themselves.
Yeah, and I agree. And but one of the things that you noticed out of that then is the increase in helicopter parenting and lawnmower parenting.
The experience I've seen.
Just thinking that same.
Term like.
Is it's the helicopter parrot that wants to make sure that everything is OK.
And the lawn mower parent that comes up and picks up and keeps on saving them from all of the stresses of life.
But what you end up is highly anxious children because.
They feel their parents fear they feel like.
Oh, my God. What am I doing wrong? Mum's here now. Ohh. Or Dad or, you know, it's the circle of security stuff. Where?
They're passing on their own gaps to their children because what the security is the circle of security tells us is that.
React our child will either duplicate or rebound
But without conscious intention.
All that does is repeats the pattern, so instead of it being a duplication, so each generation is the same
It's alternating generations.
And that's.
And that's because we keep on doing it automatically. It's being able to pause and realize.
OK.
If I get real with myself.
I'm I want to be not my mother.
That was me because my mum was shouty, angry, critical.
I now know that's not what she meant, but that was my experience.
And that's one of the things that.
We, as adults need to appreciate, especially as parents, but grandparents and teachers and anyone who works with kids is.
That how we intend may not be what they receive.
Because they processed the world quite differently. And so in that we're undermining the we're undermining the very success we're trying to achieve.
By through our own anxiety cause I truly believe.
No great decisions are made out of fear.
And if you're worried about what will happen to your child because they're doing that in this moment, right?
Now and you make a decision for their entire life. Cause, come on, we do it that if we don't stop that behaviour now.
They're going to be ruined forever.
Well, no.
Inconvenient, maybe.
In the moment.
What's more life stage, because I have, I have 4 kids, all adults now, but my book ends. Sorry, kids, but the two in the middle and then the book ends because they're five years each way. So there's 12 years between #1 and.
#4 but.
Both of my bookends have ADHD. Not clinically diagnosed, but my husband does that. That's his specialization and.
They're different to the two in the middle, who are much more responsible. They're slower paced, they're more thoughtful, planned, organized.
But the.
The bookends are the big one. I never thought I was.
Going to survive.
The big one? He was a whirlwind.
I was 22 when he.
Was born just like my.
Mum, but I didn't end up with two kids under.
Under ah, two.
Probably fortunately.
Because he was a handful and it's.
A lot of.
The work that I'm doing now is about supporting parents to understand their children, cause a lot of our own anxiety is because we don't understand who they are.
And what we need to do.
Is be the parent they need.
As much as we parent ourselves for who we needed, but may not have been.
Available to us.
Really interesting. I have five children of my own and I have 21 year gap between the oldest and the youngest.
That would have been a biggie, yeah.
I had.
I had my oldest when I was 22 and I had my youngest.
I was 44 when she was born.
So the different styles of parenting is.
Huge and I've gotten the opportunity because my older kids have children of their own and I watched how they parent and I.
I get it.
There's things that they do.
That I'm like.
That's interesting, but it is really interesting how.
How different they all are, even though they're, you know, they have the same parents. It doesn't.
When you have kids, they're each an individual.
Absolutely. And you know, I might be the little bit woo girl. Let's not woo. So I'm all about the science and the evidence. But I also do human design and energetics. And so.
It gets a little bit.
Interesting, but that's also been part of my own journey in trying to put myself back together, cause what happens with a percentage of kids with ADHD cause I only got diagnosed with ADHD it last year.
So can.
You define ADHD for me because I really don't understand what it is. I know people talk about it, but.
How? What? How does?
It present. How do you know if you?
Have it what are like.
Well, it's it gets really interesting because.
It's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but they're all like.
Ohh 45 different symptoms that go into a diagnosis and you gotta have more than 50% of those symptoms to even become close to being clinically ADHD. So you may have a whole lot of ADHD qualities.
But not have ADHD. It's like I've got a lot of autism spectrum disorder qualities, but I don't have autism spectrum disorder cause I have a silo of I have a same family of features that are that fit into autism spectrum disorder. And so for me, ADHD.
Stay get like cause I have some really.
Maybe, perhaps strong personal opinions about ADHD.
Because I my whole purpose is about living beyond the label.
Because I was.
Always that naughty kid. That's too loud, that interrupts. That is thoughtless and.
Doesn't sit still, and it's because we get into a lot of trouble when we're little and then.
We end up being highly defensive people and some of us who may be more fighters than fighters get very reactive, which was me and I think in some ways I'm very fortunate that I didn't get the diagnosis.
First, wasn't even on the only reason. In fact, I've been diagnosed is cause my husband's only been a psychologist for like 5 years and.
He's he has gone into specialization of diagnosing ADHD and cognitive difference. He he's specializes in cognitive assessments and.
I was his crash test dummy.
I think he already suspected, but he thought, well, OK.
Why didn't you just do this test, Liam?
OK, honey.
And I'm ADHD combined, which means that I have both difficulty with impulse control.
Difficulty with attention so.
Whereas my 2 with ADHD, I've got one that's attention deficit and one that's hyperactive.
And the hyperactive one is the child who.
God, I didn't think that he'd make his 19th birthday.
Because he always doing.
Things that I thought were poor impulse control, but really.
From as a behaviour profiler, which is what I do, I'm a human behaviour strategist and it's.
He's a variety adventure challenge motivated. That's how he operates. So of course, all of the things that I thought were problematic.
We're actually a an expression of who he is and.
I'm just lucky I've got a I come from a sporty family because otherwise I think I would have.
Been pulling my hair out.
And he he's.
He's done some pretty.
Are watering hair growing things over the years?
But he's.
41 he's.
Runs his own business. He's really successful, but boy, we used to Mrs. Wakeling.
Ohh OK. He's on the roof. He's up a tree. He was doing something that were as against school rules.
Or he was playing up in class, but kids typically with ADHD and he being on.
Side the more.
Overtly the hyperactive.
Which is more? I'm more of that side than the attention deficit side. You know where the kids that get noticed.
Where the kids that are.
I'm sure Mrs. Coops got a few calls about.
Leanne Nest and Leanne that.
You know, back in the day, cause I'm old enough that corporal punishment existed. You know, I got the coat hanger, the wooden coat hanger for talking in class and didn't sit still and then.
Andrew's all over the place because it's a lot of not thinking because what happens with the hyperactive and the attention deficit, they're actually either end of the same brain processing challenge and hyperactivity.
A lot of kids will get into trouble because they should do better. They should know better, they've been told.
Without appreciating that, that kid has probably been.
Maybe doing it without thinking and it certainly got me into a lot of trouble over time is.
It comes out of my mouth as it's being thought.
Because I'm an extroverted person.
But of course.
We are actually the minority.
When it comes to most things and the introvert things, how thoughtless is that? Well, yeah, but it wasn't intended to be thoughtless. It's just that it came out of my mouth.
Before any filters were put.
Over it and so.
Somebody else thinks that I'm rude.
Because I've said something that I was thinking because there were no.
Orders. So you know it, that's not necessarily everybody. It happens to be the form of my hyperactivity is that.
Saying without filters cause my oldest he's.
He's actually an introverted extrovert and what that means is that he.
Is more reserved than his hyperactivity.
Would indicate as well, so he's.
You know he's he was the kid that was the class clown.
You know, cause kids with ADHD are more prone to learning issues and then he's an E2 so high IQ learning difficulties and behaviour problems.
So if you're a parent of a child with ADHD, they often have multiple things going on and.
What happens for kids that are really smart with ADHD is they're to me, they're judged even harsher because it's a lot of you should know better. Why don't you do better? You're smart. Why did you do that? You know, cause my story too, whereas my other child is more.
Forget things.
Even though she's stubborn as anything.
She finds it difficult to stay focused.
On a task.
So there'll be this.
Like this phase out but.
With both of them.
They hyper focus as well and it's, you know if they find something that they really love.
You know you can't even get in because they're so focused on what they're doing.
And that's another thing that makes it really hard is that that's why Andrew, he was assessed when he was.
7-8 but he didn't meet the then clinical criteria.
Because it's changed.
You know, girls, did they used to think girls didn't get ADHD?
No, girls have always.
Yeah, my daughter, my oldest daughter.
Has a GHD, I mean I have.
They're the same age Andrew and my daughter, my oldest daughter.
And I they tested her back in the day.
She spent most of her elementary school career in the back of the room with her desk facing the back.
Of the wall.
The back wall.
It was horrible.
I was young.
And not very bright.
Otherwise, you know if it if it had happened.
Ohh, you may be right, but you weren't, yeah.
Today I would have been like.
I would have been right there like, no.
Is, yeah. Whereas I'm a lioness.
I know I'm not.
And probably because I was already like.
Talk about triggers like he was.
He was having the experience that I had where it was judged unfairly assumed a lot about who they are because.
We are in the, we are in the shallow end of the pond. There aren't that many of us and there.
Are a lot.
Of us, and they're noticing them more. And because I was.
Because I might get involved in.
Lots of Facebook groups. I might be a bit of an over.
Committer because I'm I just love to connect. I'm very connection driven.
But I don't connect well.
Because I have all of these things that.
Other people find uncomfortable.
So it's been very difficult to be me until I human design was the piece that.
I think was the final piece to help me understand.
Ohh OK cause I thought why do I?
Keep on doing all this.
Stuff, because I certainly don't do it intentionally. I'm just lucky I have a husband. The husband that I do, who is my second husband, but.
He just accepts, accepts me as I am.
And it's how I accept other people is as they are.
Yeah, if they if I.
I want to support them to know that they are.
Enough because.
I know that feeling of never feeling worthy and enough because of being misjudged, misunderstood, and that's what I think with ADHD, it's less of a disability and more.
Of being misunderstood. If people were less judgmental and more curious.
Which is parenting 101 to me.
Is curiosity first is.
Validate the child.
Because when your child's.
Losing it.
They ain't doing it to you.
It's happening. You may not like it.
But it's their experience, so you validate them. Hey buddy.
Seems like you're having.
A really hard time right now cause.
When you have ADHD and you're in trouble, a lot of the time, I think the anecdotal statistic is that kids with ADHD get 20,000 more negative comments by the age of 12 than.
Typical kids.
Because it's just the.
One more, except that that's like 4.
Additional negative comments every day. Well.
Swears on you.
Pardon me and it accumulates and then.
One of the.
When I first started coaching eight years ago.
It was.
One of the very first sessions that I received coaching like I was the client, the subject.
Was pointed out, Lynn.
Do you realize how much disassociated language you use?
What does that mean?
I'd fragmented.
Not fragmented into multiple personality disorder, but there was.
Her and me.
And I used a lot of.
Externalizing language.
Which I now appreciate is about safety, security, comfort of me protecting.
But it's one of the things that can happen to our children is that they'll disassociate from themselves.
Because they don't know how to be themselves, because the person that they are gets all of this negative feedback and nobody wants to feel that uncomfortable.
And you know, I'm actually highly functional and.
If you said to me.
About that Once Upon a time I.
Would have, yeah.
Doo Doo.
Doo, what kind of nut thing?
Is this except that?
We all have parts of us.
I just didn't realise what they were.
And learning about that cause I'm endlessly curious. I come in that model. I'm always trying to understand, probably cause I always felt misunderstood and it's what I bring to my clients is a level of understanding because my ability to see and interpret their world.
Is much higher than average just because.
My husband says. He says let you miss all of.
The stuff on the surface.
You're a social.
Awareness. You miss all of the obvious signs, but you see what's happening underneath. You see all the things that are unseen, which is another reason why people get can get really uncomfortable with me.
Because they realise I see who they really are, not who they think they're presenting to the world. And it's not that I do it deliberate, like it's just something that happens. And of course my lack of filters means that sometimes, perhaps, maybe I say.
Without social awareness that perhaps that won't be a good thing to say.
But what it does is for those who are open.
To hearing the uncomfortable.
They get to leapfrog.
Past that.
And that was the benefit that I had just before I started my coaching journey. I became a passion test facilitator because I love all of this. Being able to understand ourselves and build good futures and things like that. And during that.
I had a moment of discovery that.
I didn't know that I'm not responsible for everyone else's behaviour.
Now I was 50 something.
And most people think, well, of course not.
I responded to the world as if.
I was responsible for everyone's behaviour. You imagine how popular I was.
I was that person who was always pointing out what everybody's doing wrong.
You know the whole monitor at school well.
It was something that.
Was very deep, held in me. You know, it's that white noise which I think Doctor Patricia talked about in one of your podcast episodes about.
It's that soundtrack.
Because it happens in those first ten years at those first 7.
Years of life.
When we're running on Theta, it's why we learn so fast. It's why we learn more in the first seven years than we will for the rest of our lives. For the most, the vast majority of us, because it goes in with no filter.
That's the key. It goes in with no filter. There is no challenging it. It's everything is believed as.
If it's truth.
But what if?
What the meaning you've created is wrong.
Like for me, I had a belief.
That for me to be OK, I had to make sure everybody was doing the right thing because when I was five years old, I got into trouble.
Because my sister did something wrong.
Because I should know better cause.
I was the big sister.
And then that just kept on being reinforced. I kept on getting evidence to prove that for me to be OK to make sure everybody was doing the right thing.
It's a very human thing.
But when we don't know.
Sentence for somebody to carry through in life.
But it's it.
Totally subconscious. Like I didn't even realize it until, like.
50 years later when it was.
Brought up.
Is that really true?
And so I've learning these better strategies and you know, it took me a while to get into the comfort zone, but now I'm not ashamed.
Now I don't flush with that shame or guilt or anytime I'm being me. I'm much more aware of my responsibility, which is to be aware that.
I can be a bit of a handful to some people, especially introverts, especially significant introverts, which I'm married to 1 so.
I've had a bit of opportunity to adjust to that.
But having awareness about us instead of feeling shame or guilt for those things is to.
Look at. Well, OK.
What is my responsibility?
How can I?
Present in the world.
In a way that is me.
And considers others and that's where I think we get lost at times. It's. It's never an either or it's always an and.
And it's figuring out, yeah.
There are gonna be times where somebody's gonna say that they were offended by something. And I'm gonna realise, you know what? Sorry about that. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Right. But of course, I had been primed to be.
That's it because I didn't want to be wrong all the time, cause I was sick of being wrong and it feels horrible. And that's that defensiveness. And it's OK. So tell me more about that and getting curious about all. OK. And I must admit that perhaps sometimes I might.
Get a little bit.
Almost interrogation at times because I'm trying to understand. I'm trying to understand the thinking behind the thinking.
But they're just not having discussion, and sometimes I have to get a bit. Uh, it's not all about me and.
That that's been an interesting journey, and it's appreciating that there will be we do come on that sliding scale and some of us are really quite like it. It's really interesting cause I I'm.
I'm fascinated by different kinds of interpretation and profiling tools, and the first one that I was introduced to was Myers Briggs, and in the Myers Briggs, my husband is a 23 on the introversion scale.
And I am a 22 on the extraversion scale.
And so you can imagine we're, we're we are chalk and cheese.
But we work really well together because we know how to communicate with each other.
And we accept each other as we are.
Relatively keen.
And yeah, we've.
We've been married like.
Coming up to 38 years and.
There's a low growing together. There's a lot of rumble for those who are familiar with Brené Brown, there's a lot of rubbing up against each other.
Ah, and of course I'm the fighter, and he's the fighter, so there's been a lot of discomfort along the way. But there's been learning how to communicate because.
Yeah, OK. It's uncomfortable.
You need to learn how to fight functionally as adults.
You need to learn how to.
Validate the other person, even if you don't agree what they're doing saying.
And I'm not talking about abuse because no, no, that there is nothing appropriate about that. But in, in regular kind of.
The up and downs of every day is to.
Find that way, and most of us don't have the skills, which is what?
Is about is filling those gaps for our children.
So that they're successful when they become adults so that they can build relationships that are healthy and functional so that they know how to fight functionally, cause it's not that we never disagree, it's that we disagree functionally and resourcefully and we focus on the problem, not the person.
And that was, gosh, that was one of the first things my dad taught me as a parent is.
Your kid might be driving you crazy, but you'll still love him. You gotta separate the deed and the.
Doer and that.
Really sits with me really well because I am a person who's.
Driven by.
Equity and fairness very 6 year old quality.
Having the collective greater good and it's, you know, from a human design perspective, when I was looking at it, my job is to sit in the tension.
My purpose in life is to be able to be sit in the discomfort, and I do that really well. It's helped me to work with people from going through significant emotional trauma, whether it be recovering from.
Or being in.
A domestic situation that's not ideal to one of my best friends. When her mom committed suicide and how to walk with them.
Through those difficult times, and not everybody can do that happen to be somebody who can do that is just sit in the tension of that discomfort, sit in the chaos, and that's one of my superpowers is.
To be the grounding.
To be the flagpole in the middle of the whirlwind.
Something else?
To give something to land.
How do how do people?
Work with you. How do they get in touch?
With you to work with you.
Well, I'm. I have a Facebook page. Facebook pages are like lousy, but I have a Facebook page which is my Leanne.
Pickling and raising 21st century adults, or raising conscious, wholehearted adults, I don't know which version of it is at the moment, and you get I have a website which is leanne g wakeling dot com dot AU because I'm an Australian, so I have a dot AU website but.
Funnily enough, most of my clients are not Australians. I work with a lot of North Americans and I've worked with people all over the world, which is.
What I love about the modern age is that you can be working with people anywhere and clients in the Canary Islands.
Yeah, that is so amazing.
In different parts of Africa, yeah.
So sorry. Go on.
What's the one thing you want to?
Leave the audience with today.
Self acceptance.
To get really grounded.
We can't model.
Self acceptance for our children. If we don't have it, we can't support them to accept themselves.
As they are.
If we don't do that for.
Ourselves. And that's been a big learning for me.
Took me two years of working with my coach.
To even get to the point to admit how much I didn't.
Like myself because she.
OK.
Wasn't very popular.
And I'm a connection driven person. So yeah. So acceptance accepting where you are right now.
You don't have to like it.
But accepting it is the first.
Piece to being able to then.
Get the energy to change the things that you can.
But while we stay focused on what we don't want.
We're more likely to get more of it.
Universe is a little.
Contrary, when it comes to stuff like that, but very consistent.
What you focus on is what you get.
And just being able to focus on the things that you want and have a way of pushing those other thoughts aside really does help you to.
Transform your life.
Yeah. And it's not about toxic positivity, cause I really understand. Let us just say me and affirmations are.
I'm enough of a contrarian to think. Ohh yeah.
Go on, go on.
Yeah, there's that too.
That. Yeah, it's that. It's the.
But that backing that grounding and you can't give it to your child if you don't have it.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts.
Thank you so much for your time, Jill. I am so grateful for the opportunity and hopefully I didn't burn too many ears through the process. Yeah, yeah.