Your Child Is Perfect!

In this episode I encourage parents to think about their child's neurodivergence in a different way. That perhaps what is broken is everything but their child. I ask them to recognize that we live in a culture set up to work against recognizing and nurturing the innate abilities of neurodivergent children. I discuss the detrimental effects of traditional education systems on neurodivergent kids and stress the importance of integrating cognitive and somatic intelligence. I share my personal journey of rediscovering a natural way of being, challenged by societal pressures to conform. I emphasize the unique strengths of neurodivergent children, particularly those who are twice exceptional, and the need for parents to support their natural talents. I criticize the institutional approach to education that separates emotion and intellect, advocating for a more holistic understanding of intelligence. The episode calls on parents to protect and nurture their child's compassionate empathy and creative potential, offering hope for a future where neurodivergent individuals are valued for their contributions.

00:00 Welcome to the Gift of Neurodivergent Podcast

00:18 Embracing Neurodiversity: Understanding Your Child's World

00:47 The Unique Cognitive and Somatic Intelligence of Neurodivergent Minds

01:31 Navigating the World with Compassionate Empathy

02:37 The Struggle Against Systemic Suppression of Neurodivergence

04:16 The Importance of Nurturing Twice Exceptional Children

04:37 Redefining Success: The Power of Somatic Intelligence

06:40 Breaking Free from Conventional Education Systems

13:34 Cultivating Genius in a Multidimensional World

14:19 A Call to Action: Empowering Neurodivergent Children

18:47 Closing Thoughts and Disclaimer

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Transcript

Your Child Is Perfect - Grow With Them

[00:00:00] 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the gift of neurodivergent podcast. My name is Lillian Skinner. Today I want to talk about. How perfect your child is and how this is an opportunity for you to learn and grow with them. I have written a bunch of posts lately, about how messy and wonderful our children are and how basically our systems are set up to destroy that in them. 

 Our goal really should be to allow them to be exactly that. I have come to realize my way of being in the world is pretty rare. But actually maybe the way of being in the world that we need to go to. 

My brain uses its somatic and cognitive intelligence as one. It will use them together. And then also we'll go back and forth between them answering questions, pulling up memories, figuring out whatever was in front of me and [00:01:00] trying to understand it so that I know how to navigate it. 

I thought everybody stood this, but it turns out that's not true. 

Most people sit in one or the other, which makes sense since our school system separate our emotions and intellect. I actually think the way I move through the world is probably the way I was supposed to as a child. But I wasn't allowed that because my parents were so trying to not make me neuro divergent. I had to find my way back and when I found my way back, it turns out. Most people never find their way back. Almost no one. That was profound for me because what I gave my children was . To stay there. They became prodigies for it. 

 my oldest one is not as quite connected to it as his sisters. But that's partly because he's still in the world. He's living at college and it's really hard to do it when you're not settled, and have your space too find your center. My daughters they'll do. I find that our world pulls us out of it. 

 For me it pulls exceptionally because I am [00:02:00] so sensitive and aware of other people's work, moving through the world and how they feel about me and how they feel in general. As a little girl, I didn't know which ones were mine and which ones were theirs. I really don't think I had any of my own emotions until I had them so strong I was screaming. 

 A lot of our children are like this as well. That they are so overwhelmed by the outside world, that their inside world is shoved down into a little compact ball. 

 Then when it comes up, it's an eruption. That's not how it's actually supposed to be. What's actually supposed to happen is eruption supposed to produce insight. It's supposed to be an epiphany. It's supposed to be a genius moment. But our systems make it so hard for us to exist and ever find that. That it doesn't occur. 

What happens is that child erupts, but they never resolve it. They never go into it and figure out what it was at the core, so they can fix it, and not have that in their life anymore. 

Another way to put it is, do you know those angel and demons that sit on your shoulders? Those are your somatic and cognitive. They're not [00:03:00] supposed to be sitting on your shoulder separated. They're supposed to work together. Those are all the messages that you are being told about captivity versus what your needs are for your actual self. They're mixed up. It's hard for you to tell which one's on your side and which ones on the side of the system. That's how good they are at making it confusing. 

The way animals move through the world that aren't in captivity. They seem to know what they're doing without formal instructions. They just learn by living. Yes, that's how it is. Your brain takes it and puts it all together and gives you a path based on your sensitivities. 

That's how it is for me. That's how it is for those of us who are in our full creative intelligence. We know what we're supposed to do. It lays out. We have foresight. We can just see how it goes. That is the healthy state of humanity. That's what we're going to need to navigate our future. That's coming. But when you're in captivity, they pull this apart so that you don't follow it out of captivity. 

 What I'm going to ask you to do today? Is allow your child to be. [00:04:00] Allow them to figure out what their natural rhythms are and what their way of moving through the world is. If you can, if you need to pull them out of school. I will help you build a micro school for 2e . 

I will do whatever I can to help you make money so that you can do this for your child. If your child is a twice exceptional child like mine. Your child is the future. Your child has the ability to navigate what is coming when no one else does. Twice exceptional children are both gifted in somatic and cognitive. 

Our system suppress the somatic. Your child is actually showing the suppression of our systems because they're so brilliant. When you cultivate the somatic. You make a genius. If you look at our savant that we recognize there's six. 

Including Dr. Temple Grandin. Rain man, Kim peek, stephen Wilshire, Daniel Tammet and two others. I can't remember their names off the top of my head. You will find that these six [00:05:00] people, their parents were told that they should have been institutionalized, or that they would never be normal. Their parents ignored that their parents said I'm not sticking my kid in there. 

I love this kid. I'm going to do best by them. The result is these kids became exceptional. Now their sensitivity was really high, but we have to realize that. These children have a purpose that the reason that these children we're born was not because they were meant to be average but because there was meant to be something different. It's the same case for your child. Your child's sensitivity is different. 

These parents are actually the exceptional ones. The parents are the ones who changed their lives upside down so that their children could be exceptional. Most parents stick their kids in institutions. Most parents listen to the institutions and don't trust themselves. that's been stripped of them. I am one of those parents who don't trust the institutions. 

I trust myself. As a result, my children turned out to be prodigies. But , my oldest was in the system. The little bit that I did listen to them , it back slid [00:06:00] really fast. . I'm very glad that I didn't listen to them. . Because it would have been horrific. 

My children would be destroyed if I had listened to them. The younger two would be dead. The oldest one would be a mess. I am so glad I didn't listen to them. When I was going back and forth with AI, trying to get data on where the were . They kept giving me these six people. and saying, these are the ones that you have to be an idiot savant. 

And I said, no, my family is savant and they're not idiots. And we were going back and forth and it just came out quite simply that. There are no servants because average functioning people go into the institutions where they're pulled apart. They're pulled apart from their emotions and intellect. The whole purpose of the schools was to do that. They separated them in ancient Egypt. 

They furthered that in portion education system, they further that in the Nazi education and they 

further that in American education, because this makes pliable, masses. This makes people who are. Independent thinkers, broken. 

Our kids are [00:07:00] institutionalized in our school system. It breaks apart your emotions and your intellect, and they're supposed to be one. In our natural state as humans, they were one. Up until the ancient Egyptians built their civilization. We recognized in literature that our emotions and intellect, worst single entity that they, that your intelligence was one. 

I have an intelligence that is one, it can break apart when I'm around people who are insisting that I be that way. It's very uncomfortable and I feel in despair. But when it's together, 

I feel centered and interested, curious. I can figure everything I ever needed to figure out. I feel. Content. 

My emotions and intellect make life easy for me. They make things very clear. The world makes a complicated. 

I read these articles written by people who are phD's have so much education. I am like, why are you making such a complicated. Thing out of this, it's really simple. People need to be free. People need to figure out what they're good at and they [00:08:00] need to go into it. Your child already knows this. Don't tear it away from them. Your child's sensitivities are so high, they're actually pointing at it. The savant, which your child could possibly be one. are 500 million people in the world. We're missing them. 

We're missing them because our school systems separate our emotions and intellect because they force your child., If they're sensitive, to look inward and fix themselves. There's nothing to fix there. Your child's perfect. If you go on this journey with your child, you will grow and you will be better for it. They will just be the same. There'll be the same little sweet thing they always were. 

Our children are different. The way our children feel is different. It's more profound. There's a theory by Barbara Fredrickson called broaden and build. It talks about how good feelings. Generate more complex thinking and it's enjoyable and you keep thinking. 

She was talking about how we can take average people and make them deeper [00:09:00] thinkers. It's the opposite for us as neurodivergents. We actually have more negative experiences in our lives. We actually will go into shame spirals or we'll go into spirals downward. But if you follow those spirals out, they result in huge insights. If you follow the spirals up, they can result in good things. But ours are more profound. They're bigger. 

 I have learned to follow my spirals down because they tend to go down. Because life was not kind to me. And they result in Epiphanes they're very uncomfortable epiphanies, but they're profound. It goes the other way as well. And I'm getting more and more going up. Rather than going down. 

I know that I was able to give my child this, where they didn't have the negative experience . When my daughter was three her dad broke something. She said, oh daddy, you did a bad job. We all stopped and turned and looked at her. She looked at us and you could tell that she was aware that [00:10:00] she didn't do it right. So she said, you did the worst job ever. We all started laughing because she thought she didn't give him enough encouragement at his bad job..

I realized negative things for her. We're not negative. It, she thought that she was supposed to give more oomph into it. But it wasn't a negative thing. Cause you're just saying it broke. So therefore it was, bad, but not bad in like your bad, which is true. We should be able to say things that are. , that didn't work out. And it'd be okay.

But we have been all conditioned because we have such a discipline focused system and society. That we are now afraid to say negative things. But we need to admit that things don't go well sometimes because that's how we fix them. And I really felt proud of myself in that moment when she was three, that she had no clue that negative was bad because negative isn't bad. 

It's just. Failure or success. , and honestly, there's no such thing as those either because [00:11:00] failures are learning opportunities that are much bigger than most success. So even failures, it's oh, okay. Try again. 

This is profound. This is profound for me because I grew up in so much negative language. I didn't really actually have positive language. I had mostly negative language and those voices were in my head. My sensitivity is such that, thing we call imposter syndrome, those shame spirals. I have the individual voices in my head and I can hear them and I can identify which teachers said them, which parents said them, which grandparents said them, which neighbor said them which person at church said them. There that clear to me, it's like, oh, let me just take myself back to that spot. 

And see every little time I ever heard this before. That's how sensitive brains work. That's how profound they are. 

 I know with my oldest, I wasn't as clear on that. He was in the system and it was hard because the system was constantly trying to pull him apart from us. And I hope you realize that our system is based on Prussian education system. Which whole goal was to [00:12:00] pry the Polish children, which the Prussians had conquered and make them a part of the Prussian system. So that they could be soldiers. 

They could be workers in the Prussian system and pull them away from the Polish culture. He's Polish parents didn't stand a chance, honestly. They forced them to send their children there. We did the same things with the native Americans here, and we did the same things with our children. 

Are the creatives. Are destroyed in our system because creatives make change and they don't want change. They want to control the system. This is why the systems keep going off the rails and we get tyrants and billionaires . The creatives are oppressed and your child is a perfect creative. 

What I want to do is teach you how to get that child to be their full potential, to be a savant, because I'm not really sure that we're going to survive in the future without being that. The savant or the people who are the most sensitive, the talent thing. 

I don't really know that's like such a big deal. I think that's a manifestation of you following your sensitivities. We have very clear sensitivities that taken more inputs. And so we have more knowledge of that space. [00:13:00] I know for my sister, who's a music savant. 

She has superior hearing and superior sensing. Sensing as in rhythm. She's very aware of the music and very aware of the rhythm. She's a poet today. She's a poet a rapper poet. Because she has a very distinct rhythm. She never needed to go to college for poetry, just like I didn't need to go to college for people. I understood them. 

 When I went into psychology , I knew they were lying. She felt the same way about poetry class. She got a D in it. It was her worst class. I'm seeing this with my daughter right now in math, in college. She hates math now. She hates it because they make it into 2d. Our children are meant for the multidimensional world. People keep offering me AI apps for the gifted children, for the neurodivergent children. 

And I want to laugh and cry at the same time. The children don't need AI apps. The children will make AI apps. What the children need is nature. We need nature schools. We need nature communities. I really want this for my children and your children. 

The world needs our children. It needs them to be protected. It needs them to be cultivated. It needs them to be [00:14:00] allowed to be who they are. Our children are the ones who have the genius to fix, or save, or figure out a solution that , will help people. They're being destroyed in our systems. Our systems are not going to figure this out. There running down the path they've always run because a few people will not give up the control they have of the masses. 

I am electing to bow out and I am trying to figure out a way. And I have, that we cultivate each other, that we cultivate our children and we called evade away that the rest of the world will eventually come over to. 

But first they're not going to see or trust it. And I don't blame them who the heck wants to trust some random people who the whole world has deemed as less than. I'm willing to trust you because I am one of you. I'm sure that other people are going to need time. And I have no problem giving them that. 

 I will trust you. If you're twice exceptional, if you have compassionate empathy. If you have compassionate empathy in this world, we are destroyed for it. Your child will be destroyed forward. And so what we have to do is figure out a way to preserve it, preserve them because they're [00:15:00] perfect. They're already showing it with their compassionate empathy. Compassionate empathy is actually the highest form of intelligence because you're connecting your emotions and intellect, and they're working as one. Anyone with compassionate empathy has already demonstrated genius. Now we need to spread that to the other areas of the brain. I don't know if I can fix people who don't have compassionate empathy. I don't think they need to be fixed if they do. 

 Your child is perfect. If you grow with them. They will go straight. If you don't. They will be forced to bend to you or away from you. Both cases are going to be pretty sad. 

My son's friends. Too many of the most brilliant ones are stuck in their kids' parents' basement and they're suicidal. I don't want that for your kids. I don't want it for my kids. I will move heaven and earth for my children. I will move heaven and earth for other people's children because. They don't deserve the future we're walking into. I didn't intend this for them. if we can make it better. If [00:16:00] we can make it better in one way. Then let's do that. 

I put a post up, not too long ago about my son playing soccer when he was 6 . he was running around the field, falling down doing pratfalls because he's an actor and he's been an actor since he was born. And the ball wouldn't even. Near him, kids would barely be near him and he would fall dramatically on the ground. 

This is like the sixth time. And I turned to this father next to me and said, , should I do something about that? It's entertaining, but should I do something about my son being so over the top? This father turned to me and said, No. The world will do that for you. Your job is to love him, shore him up, keep him safe. I looked back at him and I was like, oh, okay. 

Thanks. That was profound. My own father told me a thousand times that my son was going to turn out super messed up because I loved him too much. He Told me that. Children need. Strict guidance otherwise, they would end up in jail. 

He was not lying. They put the savants in jail. They put [00:17:00] the most gifted and creative in jail or institutions because we struggle with captivity. . But if you can raise your child without abuse, if you can raise them in a healthy manner. They're not going to struggle with it the same way, because they're just going to leave. I figured out something else. We cut off their ability to figure out something else when we hurt them. When we punish them. When we discipline that at all, because they don't need discipline . They're learning patterns in the world. They're taking it in laying down more. I've come to realize that those of us who have our largest cognitive growth spurts later, the reason is we're big picture thinkers. 

We're big pictures of ants. And we're laying more intricate. Patterns down. And that's why they come later because the body is actually allowing for the somatic intelligence to build up, and create more and to lay down thicker deeper patterns. When I had my largest cognitive growth spurt at nine. And I switched over to my talking to the mode. It was like my brain came online and all of a sudden I had detailed pictures and clarity and more color and it wasn't blurry. At least in my memories. But it makes sense because I was laying down [00:18:00] such profoundness. 

 Had I grown up in a space where people understood that children have their clarity come on at different times and they've, we shouldn't hold them to this extreme way of being. Because a system says so, or because it's average. 

I would have probably already had my emotions and intellect connected, and I wouldn't have learned this whole process. Maybe I'd still talk to my parents today. That might've been nicer. 

 I don't want that for you. I want your children to love you and cherish you, and you do the same for them. I don't think what I'm offering is profound. I think that the trauma that's coming our children will have to learn what I learned and connect their emotions and intellect to survive. But you could teach it to them now and give them a headstart and have sensitive, connected children. 

That's all for my podcast today. Thanks so much for listening. Take care. 

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